---
title: Democratizing Documentation
osem_url: https://osem.seagl.org/conferences/seagl2020/program/proposals/740
beginning: '2020-11-13T13:15:00.000-08:00'
end: '2020-11-13T13:45:00.000-08:00'
resources:
  internet_archive_identifier: SeaGL2020-Megan_Guiney-Democratizing_Documentation
presenters:
- name: Megan Guiney
  osem_url: https://osem.seagl.org/users/783
  gravatar_id: 43cc528e93adaf4be45fe2ff32c940de
  biography: |-
    Megan Guiney is an opensource enthusiast, infra hacker, and zine author from Portland, Oregon. She enjoys tinkering on jank old hardware, playing roller derby, and formatting endless pages of LaTeX in her free time.

    She can be found on twitter at @MeganGuiney or on IRC as shy_pangolin
---

Democratizing knowledge has always been a core value of open source and activist communities alike. However, as open source has grown into an institution in its own right, the norms of each community have become cemented, and thus barriers to participation built.

As these barriers have become increasingly apparent, we have seen the rise of a new kind of technical content- zines, which have long been used in activist communities to interrogate, subvert, and topple exclusion via the free sharing of information which has traditionally been available to a privileged few.

In this high level talk, attendees will learn about:

- Where zines came from
- Zine culture as an implementation of the “New Hacker Ethic”
- The strengths of zines as a source of technical knowledge
- How to find, read, and start making zines of our own
