Putting Female in the Formula

*Warning: the male racing-enthusiast ego may slightly bruise on reading this article.

Formula North 2012 took place this past weekend - May 24 to May 27 - at the Barrie Molson Centre in Barrie, Ontario.

It was Canada's first-ever student engineering design competition. Spanning over 4 days, consisting of both static and dynamic events, the event promised to be quite intensive and exciting.

While around 20 teams participated at Formula North 2012 bringing about 5 to 15 members each, mostly male, it was interesting to see that the executive staff and the event organizers of Formula North were mostly female.

Formula North 2012 was successfully run by a team mainly led by females who were all under the age of 25. 

Engineering has long been perceived as a male-dominated field not to mention the macho atmosphere at most motorsport competitions. Formula North Inc. has acknowledged this issue in one of their interviews with Samantha Kurcsis, blogger at Girls Like F1 too (www.girlslikef1too.com). The interview (which can be found at www.formulanorth.com) speaks about how challenging it can be for a female in the F1 industry but also shows that there is a growing number of females interested in automotives and motorsports.

Formula North 2012 incorporated females in a variety of roles at their first annual competition. From the chair of the entire event, Cathy D'Souza, to the technical inspector, Simren Gill, right down to the drivers for some competing teams - females ran the show. It was therefore not a surprise when the organizers were told from participants, audience members and even judges how impressive it was to see so many females involved in such a thought-to-be male dominated industry.

Attendees at the event, along with volunteers were pleasantly surprised to see some of the teams having chosen a female driver who was comfortable driving an F1 style open cockpit car.

This surprise shows that there still does exist some sort of gender division of labour even in today's 21st century, but the fact that it was pleasantly received can be appreciated.

This initiative was the epitome of a grassroots event, showing that small ideas can indeed lead to a successful 4 day long event and make quite the impression on the audience. Formula North 2012 showed that females in the engineering industry do indeed know a thing or two (times a thousand) about the industry.

It can only be hoped that such an event like Formula North, while showcasing Canadian ability to host an engineering design competition also showcased the growing number of women in the F1, automotive and motorsport industry as actual active participants and not just behind the scenes showgirls, continues to grow.

A huge congratulations goes to the Event Chair and the organizers involved in making the success of Formula North 2012.

For more information on Formula North: 
Website: www.formulanorth.com
Twitter: @FormulaNorth #FN2012
Facebook: Formula North

What happened to KONY fever?

The KONY2012 video first made its way to our computer screens and twitter feeds in March of 2012, the video went viral and almost everyone discovered the raging activist inside of them.

About a month later the sequel was released and it garnered about 2% of the audience that the first video achieved.

So... what happened to KONY fever?

Tomorrow is April 20th, 2012 the night during which the whole city was supposed to be 'painted' red - covered in KONY posters in order to raise awareness of the need to capture KONY. #coverthenight

No doubt many people in March wanted to be part of this movement in April as can be seen by the number of kits bought and the number of people who posted the link to the video. Back then I surely thought that it was going to be a sea of red on Friday April 20th. However, now I'm not so sure. I've heard many say that they bought into the video, purchased the kit, and then did some research and decided to opt out of the movement.

The campaign showed us two important things:
Young people have a desire to be part of a movement
There are indeed injustices that exist in various parts of the world (if not all parts of the world)
Social media is an amazing form of information transfer

There were/are many criticisms to the KONY video from the use of myths/stretched facts, footage that was past due, KONY not being an issue in said country, catering to a specific audience, not exposing the real needs of the Ugandan people, and the focus of Kony in Uganda being a way to get foreign troops onto Ugandan soil in order to secure their hold over Ugandan resources. 

The viral video caused people to gather together and the criticisms created cracks in that unification. Criticisms of course are necessary as many are unaware of what they are buying into and many these days need to be told of the criticisms as they will not research into issues themselves.

However whether or not KONY should be a priority, the issue of the use of child soldiers continues to exist and something needs to be done about it. What is the right way to go about this is still not known but that does not mean that the matter should return to the backburner.

I'm curious to see what the turnout tomorrow will be; will people gather in numbers that could have been expected had the video been released more recently? Will they want to be part of a movement, part of something bigger encourage young people to gather? Or has the spark truly burned out and has KONY fever forever ceased to exist? Only tomorrow will tell...

It also got me thinking, what would be the reaction if another video, similar to that of Invisible Children was created about another all together separate issue in a different part of the world, would the audience react similarly to KONY2012 giving rise to their inner activist or will people here on forth think twice before endorsing such a video again? What does that mean for other real issues that exist out there?

Why so drastic, Mr. Fantastic?

Why do people have the tendency to listen or hear out another only once something drastic has been done?

Why do we only listen to people after they've done something big? Why it's so hard for people to listen? Why can't we look at the root, at the problem when it's small, before things spiral out of control. Why are we so reactive that things have to fail in order to be fixed? Why don't we ever take the time to listen to someone's backstory and understand where they are coming from and offer them alternatives or solutions. Simply speaking, why does someone have to engage in deviancy or do something unconventional in order for people to realize that 'said person' couldn't afford to pay rent or send his kid to college or was being used as a child soldier? Why does a person have to go into depression in some serious cases for their partner to realize that they are hurting? Why does a kid have to disappear in order to students to realize that bullying hurt her/him? Why does someone have to make a video go viral in order for us to realize that there are child soldiers being used in various countries of the world? Why do people have to make these grand gestures in order to be heard, why weren't we listening when the problem was small?

I understand that this may sound simplistic: smaller problems are harder to hear because people may not judge them to be longer term and growing issues. Also a simple solution given may be that those who need help to simply seek it.

HOWEVER, with unfriendly institutional/bureaucratic services, labelling/stigmatization of those who 'seek help', and a lack of relateability to strangers, there is some onus on 'us' as human beings to pay attention to problems that may not in fact affect us. Notice the inequalities in society, the unfairness in courtrooms, the injustices in the job market, and if you can't do anything about it, fine - at least talk about it, make people aware of it, raise questions in discussions.

Learn to recognize the need to listen and the need to be heard, you never know if you will one day be the one who needs to be heard.  

KONY 2012

The recent upsurge in postings about Joseph Kony and the Invisible Children has received worldwide attention. While there are also criticisms on the video that was released earlier in the week, it has already received 57 million views: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4MnpzG5Sqc&noredirect=1


The abduction of children and the use of childsoldiers has been a longstanding issue. Therefore I think the success of the video has been to raise awareness on these issues and to get young people thinking and caring about things other than themselves. There may be complications on facts used, myths or the donation aspects of the not-for-profit organization, and for more information on the criticisms read article: http://jezebel.com/5891269/think-twice-before-donating-to-kony-2012-the-meme-du-jour also Invisible Children has responded to these criticisms here: http://www.invisiblechildren.com/critiques.html


However I think that the most important aspects of this whole campaign are:
1) Raising awareness of the use of child soldiers
2) Making audience members want to get involved and do something


Doing something can involve simply re-posting the video, tweeting/blogging about it, donating, putting up flyers, and talking about it. Whether or not these doings can have an impact or what the extent of the impact will be, simply getting young people talking about atrocities going on in the world today is great and the quick rise and leaps in the amount of viewers is impressive.


From here, people can be drawn in to read about the details of the LRA, the US deployment of the 100 advisors, the workings of a charitable not-for-profit, etc. Either of these ways...it's a start to something.


*more opinions on this campaign:
http://justiceinconflict.org/2012/03/07/taking-kony-2012-down-a-notch/
http://innermostponderings.blogspot.com/#!/2012/03/thoughts-on-kony-2012-critical-optimism.html