[oldboys] welcome again!

[Cornelia Sollfrank <cornelia@snafu.de>]

dear boys,

for unidentifiable reasons many of you semm not to have reiceived my welcoem mail from march. as it contains some important information regarding obn which is helpful to understand the new structure of obn.

very best, cornelia

Welcome to the <oldboys>-list!

As I have already announced to you individually some weeks ago, OBN has finally installed it's mailinglist. It is running on the list server of CCC, Chaos Computer Club in Berlin, which is the German hacker's club. About 150 cyberfeminists have subscribed so far. 

Attached to the list is a searchable webarchive: http://www.nettime.org/oldboys 
This means that <oldboys>-list is an open list and everyone who is interested can follow what is going on here.

In order to give you a better understanding of what OBN used to be and what it is now, and also what the list is supposed to be used for, I would like to describe the situation of OBN from MY PERSONAL point of view. 

I am sure, most of you know OBN through our conferences and the documentary readers. Indeed, the ’real' platforms of OBN have been dominant so far, in contrast to our ’virtual' ones. But this mailinglist is the first step to improve our virtual presence and communication, and is meant to host a global discourse on Cyberfeminism. 

As a matter of fact, we are also working currently on the relaunch of our website. Irena Woelle from Ljubljana is our webdesigner, and we are looking forward to our new site, which will represent what OBN is, much better than the current one. Amongst many other things, next to a theory section, there will also be a gallery space, and a calendar which contains all current events in which cyberfeminists take part. As soon as we have a Beta-version, we will put it up and inform you, as well as ask you for your contributions. 

Furthermore OBN is planning a third international conference, called ’next Cyberfeminist International' which hopefully will take place in November this year in Hamburg. The current situation is, that we are in the middle of organizing the funding for the conference. We will keep you updated about this and send out a call as soon as we can verify the details.

OBN itself has gone through several major shifts in the almost four years of it's existence, shifts in personnel and shifts in the organisatorial structure. Some of you might know our video ’processing cyberfeminism' which represented the so-called core-group of OBN. Our current website also still contains this outdated information that there is something like a core-group. There used to be one, right, and it consisted of Cornelia Sollfrank, Susanne Ackers, Julianne Pierce, Helene von Oldenburg, Claudia Reiche, Faith Wilding, Yvonne Volkart, Verena Kuni. But we had to realize after a while that it was no longer functional, for several reasons. For me, most irritating was the fact that the existence of a core-group transported the idea of a closed inner circle to the public, and consequently many interested people felt uncomfortable and not really welcome. I feel very sorry for that, because OBN was always meant to be an open network.

About one year ago, the core-group abolished itself in order to open up the structure and make space for new boys, new ideas, new projects, and new cyberfeminisms. Still, there was no infrastructure where we could have announced and praticed our desire for change. We found ourselves in the contradictory situation that it was up to the ex-core-group again to build these new structures. 

In this very transitional phase during the last year, a fragmented ex-core-group consisting of Helene von Oldenburg, Claudia Reiche, Verena Kuni, myself and partly Susanne Ackers gathered again and made efforts in order to realize the transition of OBN. We have set up the list, made the concept and raised money for the new website, thought and talked about the possible future of OBN, and are now busy making the next International happen.

I would like to welcome you, on this list and in the network. Please understand OBN as an open structure where activities and contributions are welcome, and of course a lot of qualified critique;-) And, be also aware that all the work which the boys have invested so far in OBN was voluntary. Although, our ressources are very limited, we try to make things happen, but we can not function as a service business. 

I'm looking forward to your input and many lively discussions, and hope you enjoy this piece of autonomous infrastructure. Make the best out of it! 

To find out more about OBN and the current regulatory structure, pls. send a mail to <oldboys-info@lists.ccc.de> and/or <oldboys-faq@lists.ccc.de>

Cheers from Scotland, Cornelia
March 20th, 2001    

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:::::"A smart artist makes the machine do the work"::::::::::::::::::::::::
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::::::::::::::::::::::: [net.art generator]: http://www.obn.org/generator :
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:Cornelia Sollfrank | Rutschbahn 37 | 20146 Hamburg | Germany :::::::::::::
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