Eclectic Tech Carnival Weaving Networks

1. it's the first night in Timisoara, we're about 15 girls at a restaurant that serves Romanian dishes, a little cramped (so that we can all fit, and some backpacks), from time to time somebody arrives from the train station, or from the hotel, you can hear at least 3 different languages, traditional Romanian food and in general vegan food is ordered, phone calls are being received and made, there is, therefore, a certain agitation, and all this taken into account I realize surprised at one moment that we are not making noise almost at all! It is pretty quiet … and soothing …

2. the first morning at etc: people are gathering, to my surprise, before 9.30 … we arrange the space … I wonder when was the last time I carried so many tables and chairs? ... look that I can still do it!

3. the afternoon of the first day: we sit in a circle on chairs, donna made a presentation of the history of etc, next we need to present ourselves; I realize that the people are very relaxed, some of the girls are barefoot (this to me means freedom, confidence and chill), I shiver because I know there is no escape, sooner or later I will still have to say 2 words, so I take off my shoes, hoping I will feel better … next minute donna's look points towards me, so that I stand up barefoot and start talking with a strangled voice about how I started dealing with computers 10 years ago, but I still feel intimidated by this field, and, yes, I came here hoping to get over the inhibitions … uff, I got over with it, I can sit back, the other girls present themselves one by one, and at one point I catch myself shedding some tears…! Pfui, this could only happen to me… I hope no one noticed :-)

4. the morning of the second day: reni's audio workshop… I've never seen a mixer so close in my life… surely I found myself a couple of times very close to something like this, but I didn't dare look at it, out of fear not to embarrass myself in the eyes of the others or the dj god… this time I get to connect a MiniDisc player (that's how it's called?) to the mixer and then to the laptop, and through those cords the sound really is transmitted! uau! :-)

further at reni's workshop, I learned to compress really well a mp3 file, transforming it to ogg, with audacity! ... it makes it 10 times smaller, and I haven't noticed any difference in the quality of the sound! ... as much as I can tell …

5. the afternoon of the second day: donna's wallet with her papers disappears from right in front of our eyes! ... we are in the building of the youth house, at the entrance there are at least two doormen, from the rooms we occupy you can get to another office where there is a guy staying from I don't know what centre, but other than that, there's only women (so any suspect guy should be noticed!), but alltogether a guy came in and took the wallet… I say guy, because a lot of us saw him, but no one thought that a thief could walk in like that into that space, to sit and study us, pretending he's waiting for the guy in the other room… I say pretending because our office neighbour didn't know him, as a matter of fact… I'm absolutely sure that the guy (thief) was hand in hand with someone from the building's personnel, who knew of our event …

when this happened, I said to myself: it's obvious, donna won't feel like etc anymore, she will be too busy to run to get new papers, that will surely be a loss … and I think it was like this …

donna seems to me like being one of those people who confederate and channel energies …

7. the hardware workshop: I take the screwdriver into my hands and put everything apart in pieces, anca is my teammate but, fortunately, she needs to talk on the phone too (she is one of the organizers), so the little toy stays in my hands … aham, so the cooler sits on the radiator which sits on the processor, and the processor has some tens of pins (out of gold, says sara) which you need to take care not to break when you put them back!

8. the meeting at the japanese garden: sara makes a short presentation of the etc, nita tells how she brought etc to timisoara, then all the girls are invited to make their own comments … and many of them actually do :-)… I don't, of course … katha's film about women in romania I actually really like ("We are girls, but ... Women artists in Romania between everyday life and visions")… it ends with the encounter of the two feminin attitudes towards feminism: "I am in, I embrace it and I activate" vs "this is not necessary anymore, it is too political for me, it is not personal enough, I don't want to associate with ... "

9. the last night together: as usual, we say good bye by the time we got to make friends… :-)…