Nancy White's posting on mindful convergence set me thinking.  Many of us recognise the tyranny of email and try to find our own ways to create relaxing space in our lives.

In the last couple years, I have rediscovered knitting.  It is so relaxing and has much to recommend as an alternative to sitting at a keyboard.  I find it combines very well - a non-digital convergence- with listening to music and/or looking out of the window at the garden (especially in the sort of weather when gardening is not appealing).  It's also a great accompaniment to chatting with friends, especially ones who also knit.

A friend and colleague Alison Adam has always stressed women's use of  textile technologies as an example of how women do use technologies, e.g. her inaugural lecture" Desires and Devices: Exploring the Gender-Technology Relation".

I was aware that quite a few knitters blog, see purlsbefore swine part of the ring,

and swap patterns but I was quite surprised today to find how creative knitters (usually but not always women) in their use of web technologies.  I was blown away by the idea of knitting a Mobius strip , knitted trees, and knitting life montage.

My idea that knitting was an alternative to surfing has also been challenged - not only do knitters blog about knitting, they also knit whilst reading blogs. and spot their own knitting blogs on others' photos. Last, but by no means least, they also design and knit their own iPod cases.

So we really can knit a different sort of convergence - just as we always have done.

We are getting started with an ESF project called Know and Network (KAN) that is about supporting Women who work in IT with their information needs and with social networking.  We are developing the steering group, making great plans and getting the paperwork sorted out.

Thanks Marco Ro

But best of all, we are finding out as much as possible about Web 2.0 tools and services by having fun and experimenting (with tips from Beth Kanter here http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/2006/11/meet_tuesday_fr.html ).  This entails checking out the influential bloggers  like:

Nancy White at Full Circle who had some great posts theorising blogs and community  , and also told me how to use Technorati’s vanity search to check out people who link to your blog (not many in my case ;-) ) - thanks choconancy

Christopher Sessums whom I met at ALT-C in September and who uses images to great effect in his blog (no surprise that he won at Edublogger)

 Josie Fraser who has recently gone freelance and has agreed to join our KAN Steering Group.

So what are we learning about:

The mad things that people do then blog, photograph and talk about , as I used the example of knitting here.

What tools are available to blog, share knowledge and generally network.  Here was this week’s experiment with weebly, still on the theme of knitting

How to search flickr.com for images that can be re-used, knitting example. I have now reset my own default permissions to Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike Creative Commons  (but have yet to change permissions on previously uploaded photos.

Using our own tag at del.icio.us to gather useful resources – it’s KnowandNetwork – feel free to use it too.

Anyway, I’ll keep you posted here at this blog until we get our own KAN blog and Wiki up and running, so check back if you are interested.

We'd love to hear ideas from you on how we should support social networking for Women in IT - we only have 12 months and lots to do.