misbehaving.net

LIFT06, fashionable women in technology

  Originally uploaded by ullamaaria.

Anina, speaking on the women and technology panel at LIFT06, mentioned that she'd been invited to speak at 3GSM. When asked by the 3GSM organisers what she needed in order to do that, she requested a stylist. Anina says that as a fashion model, being styled for public appearances is important to her credentials. Apparently it was other women who opposed the request.

(I don't know if the LIFT06 organisers agreed to a stylist but she did look fantastic yesterday in her colourful poncho.)

Working across fashion and technology is proving challenging for Anina. Her model agency recently told her to give up the tech stuff, arguing that fashion and technology do not go together.

Carol A. Bartz steps down from CEO position at Autodesk

Change in Chief Executive Suite at Software Services Company: Carol Bartz held the position as CEO of Autodesk for 14 years, and has announced that she's stepping down, handing over the reins to Carl Bass, currently COO. The number of women helming technology companies is dropping rapidly with her and Carly Fiorina's departure in the past year. Meg Whitman of eBay and Anne Mulcahy of Xerox remain in their posts, hopefully for a long time.

Chicking Martha

One of my vices is trashy biographies, and the latest one I read was Martha, Inc. about Martha Stewart in which the author -- one of her former neighbors from Westport no less-- was really going out of his way to make her look bad. And it confirmed my suspicion that Martha gets a lot of flak because she is a powerful woman, as she's said elsewhere: her same aggressive business style would be praised in a man. The book doesn't give her any credit at all for her achievements or business acumen, or interview any people that were her allies. And she really did build an amazing media empire, with books, TV shows, products, and of course her magazine -- and created an entire industry: the Lifestyle industry, which has spawned impresarios such as P. Diddy, aka Puff Daddy, aka Sean Combs. The only person who is a Martha fan who was interviewed for the book appears to be Richard Sheingold, the man who took on her television proposal after her own publisher, Time Warner, had turned her down.

Sheingold came to sense something else about the way Martha's colleagues handled her at Time: There was a slight but unmistakable--and ever-present--tone of condescension in their words, as if the members of the Time Inc's boys club wanted her to know that they still regarded her as nothing more than the fashion model she once had been, instead of the business executive she'd become.

In time, Sheingold invented a word for what they were doing to her. He didn't share the word with anybody, but it popped into his head every time he heard them belittling and dismissing her, in that certain way that would make Martha's jaw set and her face go cold. ...'Chick-ing' her. They didn't understand that "chick-ing" her was why Martha was now standing in Richard's office, trying to get her idea for a TV show based on a Time Warner magazine syndicated in TV by one of Time Warner's own competitors. Chick-ing Martha Stewart was a mistake.

Of course later on Time Warner comes to deeply regret their error, which gave me cause for glee, as I've been 'chicked' innumerable times myself, and boy does it make me mad. (cross posted at Caterina.net)

Trisha Weir: How I became a Googler

Surfer and Linux geek Trisha Weir tells a fun story of how she became a data center technician at Google using her sysadmin skills and a tee-shirt. 

Amazing what the feeling of being in a bit over your head can turn out.

Four questions for a Misbehaver: Tiffany B. Brown

Kicking off our new weekly feature that will highlight women working in technology, web developer Tiffany B. Brown took time out to answer a few of my questions about what she's up to and her experience in the industry.

Misbehaving:  Tell me a little bit about who you are and what you spend your days doing.

Tiffany B. Brown:  By day, I am a web developer in the communications office of the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech). I design and develop web sites for various departments on campus on a LAMP platform. Since we're very big on web standards, everything I code uses table-free XHTML and CSS.

At night, I am freelance web designer-developer and blogger. I work on small web-dev projects, typically as a subcontractor for larger web firms with sales staffs :-). I also write three blogs:  my personal blog (www.tiffanybbrown.com), which is mostly about web design and development; BlackFeminism.org, a blog about race, gender and politics issues; and CulturedWino.com, which is about wine.

Actually, my "night job" is where I learn most of my new skills. I can experiment with new ways of doing things, and new technology that I don't get the opportunity to do at my day job.

M:  As a woman in technology, what's been your proudest moment or most gratifying experience?

TBB:  My proudest moment happened the other day. My department hired a new manager for my team. During our "get-to-know-you" meeting, she said that people were gushing about how clean my code was. Hearing that was a huge confidence boost. To think you're good is one thing. To hear through the grapevine that your colleagues also think you're good is another.

Smaller moments of joy come when I learn something new, solve a problem or finish a project. I try to have those moments three times a week.

M:  If you could turn back time and do anything differently in your tech career, what would it have been?

TBB: If I could do it again, I would have gone to school for tech. I got a journalism degree -- a *print* journalism degree. I graduated college just as many newspapers were starting to go online. I quickly figured out, however, that online was where I needed to be.

Working in journalism as an online producer was my entree into geekier things. But in retrospect -- especially now that I'm actually *programming* stuff -- I wish I had a theoretical and methodological foundation to draw from.

You know what's funny? My dad is a programmer, and has been for at least 30 years. He chose not to push me down that path. I didn't even have a computer until I went to college. I could smack him now. Had he pushed me, or at least nudged me gently, I might have been able to cash in on DotComBubble 1.0 (hee hee).

M:  What advice would you give to young women considering a career in technology?

TBB:  Be brave. Don't be afraid to be the only woman in a room. Don't be afraid to speak up. Don't be afraid to ask questions, even if you think they're stupid.

Be interdisciplinary. Technology is a commodity. Thinking of ways to applying technology and also understanding how people use technology is where the value lies. Bioinformatics, for example, uses computer models to gain insight into biological questions. It's not "the future" of technology. This cross-disciplinary approach to technology is happening right now.

M:  Now that's good advice.  Thanks for your time, Tiffany!

Are you a woman working in the tech industry interested in being featured here on misbehaving?  Or do you have someone in mind who should be?  Let me know at ginatrapani at gmail dot com.

Show your faces on FortyFaces.com

Hey XX chromosome bloggers, how about showing your beautiful face on FortyFaces.com?  The current grid of photos is saturated with testosterone.

Update:  Now that's better.  (Image added.)

Fernanda Weiden: Free Software in Brazil

Groklaw.net is carrying an article by Brazilian developer Fernanda Weiden discussing how she bolstered women's participation in Free Software development and usage in Brazil.

Few will be shocked at the barriers Fernanda Weiden found:

When they try to integrate into the user/developers groups of the Free Software community, most women find barriers, mainly related to two diametrically opposed behaviors: either they will be treated as the most loved person in the group, over treating them, or they will be victims of sexist attacks, jokes or dating approachs.

Another important point is that Free Software development is often done as a hobby, just for fun, and in one's spare time. Where is a woman's spare time? After their working day, most of them still have the second working journey, which is at home, taking care of the home, the children and her husband. If the men can have the privilege of doing Free Software in their spare time, sitting in front of the computer and having some fun coding what they want, women in general don't have this privilege.

She is not enthusiastic about some of the woman-focused groups she has encountered:

The problem is when these groups don't have a clear target, in the end they turn in Barbie worlds that don't exist in reality. Instead of integrating the women into the community, they serve as ghettos, re-creating existing groups in the community with the only objective “being more friendly” for women.

She prefers thinking of woman-focused groups as bridges to the broader development community, as well as to the world at large.

So Fernanda Weiden founded Projeto Software Livre Mulheres to attack the problem from a different angle. Its mission is to address the gender-based digital divide in Brazil by providing tech support to feminist organizations in Brazil and helping them see how Free Software can help them achieve their missions.

A fine article about a fine organization. The world could surely use a few more Fernanda Weidens.

Pakistan's Girl Wonder

Mia at Popgadget reports on a 'Microsoft engineer supergirl':

10-year old Arfa Karim Randhawa, who last year became the youngest Microsoft Certified Professional, was treated to a VIP tour of the Microsoft campus in Redmond, Washington, and a meetup with Bill Gates. What did she say to the tech imperialist and world's richest human? She criticized the unbalanced ratio of men and women on the campus.

"It should be balanced -- an equal amount of men and an equal amount of women."

Apparently Arfa plans to go to Harvard University or MIT, and then either go to work for Microsoft, in its developer division, or become a satellite engineer. Meeting Gates was second only to Disneyland on her list of things she wanted to see in the United States.

Maiden Names

A male friend (who's divorced) asked me what I thought about asking your ex to change her married name BACK to her maiden name. 

I had no clue really, despite being divorced, since I never changed my name in the first place and never changed it back.

Behind his question is his desire that she change it -- essentially release HIS name -- and return to hers.  She doesn't want to. 

I'd never thought of it from a man's point of view, that he might want his ex to stop bearing his name.  And that she would want to retain it.

If I had changed my name, I would want to go back to my original name ... but it's moot, as I can't now and couldn't then imagine changing my name anyway.

Meg Hourihan Interview

I hope everyone got to hear my interview with Meg Hourihan here on IT Conversations.  The thing that struck me in a big way was how Meg's mother created a world for her that was all about technology from an early age.  I think this was terrific, though perhaps not so intentional on her mom's part. 

Thanks again Meg for taking the time to chat.   It was great to find out about the beginning of Blogger and those long ago days of 2001 when it all got started.