Safe Space Offline

How can we create a safe space offline ? What are the different types and formats of physical safe space we can create? Who will be able to be active in the space?

Ideas have arisen in women and trans* tech conferences and skills workshops as how best to build safe spaces. Groups such as Flossie.org, Fossbox, Autonomous Tech Fetish (ATF), and Eclectic Tech Carnival (ETC) have each used a different set of principles to build safe spaces and are thus good examples to explore to highlight some of the differences, how to facilitate discussion about them, and how to arrive at a shared idea of an appropriate space for women and trans* persons to engage with tech.

Every group has to work out their own idea of an appropriate space for their participants. Once you have arrived at a shared ideal, it's time to look at the practicalities of implementing these ideas in material, offline, spaces. This will include thinking about how much formality you want, what kind of formalities, how you will accommodate diversity, how you will facilitate participation for all the participants both in terms of your practical arrangements and in the way you formalise the social space.