Hello from Beijing! The final touches are being put on the computerlab & press center. There is also a telecom center complete with phones (you can purchase phone cards) and fax machine. Microsoft office is available on both the Macs &hp PC. There are foreign language fonts on the Macs--great for posting documents, etc and there will be some fonts on the PCs.
Last night we met for several hours discussing gender & cultrually sensitive computer training. It is an ongoing project of womensnet/igc to develop gender sensive training materials and I hope to post much more about this project.
B^* One of the most interesting follow-ups to the UN Women's conf was The Women's Internet Conference Ottawa, Ontario, Canada October, 18-21, 1997 which took as its theme: "Knowledge Is Power: Access To Information Technology Is A Womens' Rights Issue". The working paper for the conference was authored by Scarlet Pollock and Jo Sutton, Women'space, May 1997 entitled: "Assessing Access for Women"--a "must read" for any person working on access issues from a women's equality perspective.
Today we finally logged on to both the macs & hp pcs to try out the apc interface. email accts for the participants have already been created. not only can the participants send & receive mail, but they can also telnet, access the www via netscape, ftp, & gopher (the igc/womensnet gopher is an excellent resource for different un & ngo documents). we also hope to provide for sale the important documents of the conf on floppy diskettes.
B^* The email program of choice was eudora. being old pros @ cc:Mail and unix pine we had never used eudora before. Eudora has a great interface and was so easy, that even the newest of newbie will be a point & click away from sending & receiving email.
Today we will have more meetings among ourselves & with apple. Everyone so far has there noses in computer screens. no one aside from the staff has really arrived. This makes A HREF=http://power.beijing.cn.net/bikeserver/cuisineE/cuisineE06>finding snacks for vegetarians a bit difficult unless one wants to trek back to the hotel--but the food pavilion promises to be fab & there are many signs for shopping which should open tomorrow or the next day.
What do y'all want to know? Please write me at jennifer@wcw.igc.org during the conf & i will try to answer your questions (yes you can still get a hold of me at netcom).
Did i tell you that as i was standing inline with jean at the airport money exchange, BELLA ABZUG was wheeled through, looking like a million dollars after a gruelling trip.
The mosquitos in huairou seem to be quite found of canadians.
B^* The canadians were EVERYWHERE, making friends & pinning everyone with tiny canadian maple leaves. They are just so happy to be here & their enthusiasm is absolutely infectous!
more soon!
Jennifer Gagliardi
gagliajn@netcom.com
moderator BEIJING95-L & BEIJING95-WOMEN