M a r k D i l l e y

http://www.uniglobalunion.org/secondlife
http://ibmslprotest.blogspot.com/

More than 1’850 -real- people protested behind their computers in over 30
countries to show solidarity with IBM Italy workers.
The protest took place at 7 IBM locations, and in particular at IBM Italia
and the IBM Business Centre in Second Life.
Many Italian IBM workers joined the event after work, from 7pm to 10pm
Rome, Italy time.

It was reported that Second Life was having some technical difficulties,
which is why we believe we could have reached an even higher number of
participants.

IBM did not officially react to our protest so far.
However, they did shut down parts of their Business Centre to visitors (or
really, protesters).
A number of participants managed to crash an IBM staff meeting during the
afternoon - where they were immediately asked to leave and to "protest
outside".
Instead, they demanded to speak to Management. But the staff meeting, which
seemed to be about the new IBM website functionalities, was called to an
end.

The media coverage for this event was impressive.
The news about the protest was covered by blogs, radio and TV stations,
newspapers and podcasts in numerous countries.
Italy's national TV station highlighted the event in the evening news
during 5 minutes, showing screenshots from Second Life and its almost 2’000
protesters.

More information about this historical protest will come in the next days.

Guatemalan Banana Union Leader Murdered

This event is designed to bring together women from a range of technology-focused disciplines who self identify as geeky. Our goal is to support skill exchange and learning between women working in diverse fields and to create a space for networking and to talk about issues faced by women in technology.
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I posted about the event and gone into some more detail about my motivations and hopes here.