Girls In Tech

Gnomedex was great. This was the first year I’ve been, and I loved it. The flat track format was refreshing and took off a lot of stress, since there was no regret about having to chose one talk over another or missing half of one talk to barely make it to the Q&A of the second because they were scheduled concurrently. It was more like a huge group discussion, which was really nice.

The conference was ultra well organized and a total pleasure to attend. Everyone was so engaging and friendly, and lots of people came by the Girls In Tech table to show their support and share their thoughts on women in technology.

The volunteers from the Seattle chapter had a blast. We even adopted an unofficial mascot for the weekend and got a video spot.

Very special thanks to Chris Pirillo, Mona Nomura, and Adriana for helping us get table space at the last minute and to Jessica, Ellen, Jennifer, Tirzah, and Scott for volunteering! You guys rock!

VIDEO: Girls in Tech interview with Annie Katrinia Lee at Gnomedex 9.0

Tags: Chris Pirrillo, girls in tech, Gnomdex, MJ Kelly, Seattle
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Catherine Kaputa, Brand Strategist, Speaker, and Author of The Female Brand

Catherine Kaputa, author of The Female Brand: Using the Female Mindset to Succeed in Business, has some great tips about how to maximize your strengths as a woman in business. She urges women to “stop trying to act like men in the workplace” and instead to utilize our innate strong points at every opportunity. She lists 5 business-savvy aptitudes that women tend to have in abundance.

Aptitude # 1: Social Perception.
Aptitude # 2: People Power.
Aptitude # 3: Communication Agility.
Aptitude # 4: Vibrant Visual Identity.
Aptitude # 5: Leadership that Includes and Empowers.

“Such a leadership style will result in loyal, committed, hardworking colleagues and employees and will give you a distinct advantage and reputation as a problem solver.”

Her tips especially apply to leaders of technical teams, where close collaboration, tight deadlines, and frustrating specification changes can create major interpersonal tension.

Read more details on her blog.

Tags: business skills, entrepreneurship, Leadership, women
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Earlier this week, Jeff at Jumpstart Lab asked me for tips on how to get women involved in computing projects. He was inspired by Kirrily Robert’s OSCON talk on diversity (watch her presentation) and posted a statement on diversity at his company site: http://jumpstartlab.com/resources/general/diversity.

Here are some easy steps that I think would help make any project more accessible and attractive to women in technology. Please add your tips too!

5. Provide a community. Forums and wikis are great tools for sharing information and for creating a sense of belonging. Women are hard-wired with a need to contribute and belong. Open, collaborative environments make us want to stick around!

4. Respect gender differences, but don’t harp on them. Technical women know we’re in the minority right now. While we really appreciate support and encouragement, it’s possible to draw too much attention to differences and make a female colleague feel isolated, like the ‘token’ girl on a team. Try to create a culture of underlying respect for different viewpoints/approaches while keeping the focus on technical contributions and advancements.

3. Don’t mistake lack of specific domain knowledge for lack of skills. This suggestion applies to both men and women, but I’ve seen this issue alienate women especially often. If someone uses the wrong terminology, don’t assume that she is a useless N00b. She might be new to the project, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t have a lot to contribute.

2. Watch your language (and I don’t mean swearing.) Being helpful and polite does wonders for attracting and keeping women on a project. (In fact, “be polite” and “be helpful” are the two core rules of the LinuxChix community.) Women can often take things more personally than men do, so while telling a guy to RTFM might actually make him more determined to find the answer, telling that to a girl might send her packing for good.

1. Just ask. The best way to attract women to a project is to simply invite them. Women need to feel welcome. We’ve all had awful experiences where we’ve been ignored (or worse) on a project, and it’s not something we want to repeat. You don’t have to send a big pink balloon welcome package or anything. A very simple message like “Hi, here’s the project wiki link. We’d love to have your input.” on a related forum/blog would go a long, long way.

It’s so awesome to hear from our male colleagues how much women are needed and wanted on technical teams. Great opportunities are out there just waiting for the right mix of people to come together and make them happen!

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I’m here in the San Jose airport about to head back to Seattle from OSCON. The conference was great for me personally, and for Girls In Tech.

I was really impressed to see how much interest there was in both women in technology and social activism. I had no idea that there was an even smaller percentage of women in the open source computing world than on the proprietary side. There are a lot of theories about the root cause of the gender gap, and the true reason is surely a combination of a lot of those conjectures. It’s great that analysis of the issue hasn’t stopped us from working together for a positive change.

There was a lot of interest in Girls In Tech. I was so encouraged when I approached a presenter with a question and she, upon seeing my badge, said, “Oh! You’re from Girls In Tech. I’ve been reading about you all!”  Several people suggested contacts and collaborations as well. One very outspoken new friend ran down a crowded hallway calling my name so that he could introduce me to a fellow woman in tech from the Portland area.  Also, many convention goers that I spoke with mentioned LinuxChix, a group for women interested in Linux and people who support women in computing.  I contacted the LinuxChix group in Seattle, and I’m very excited about our chapter meeting them. Who knows? Perhaps we have some friendly code competitions in our future.

Bettering the world through technological solutions was another hot topic. There were a few talks and a lot of hallway chatter on humanitarian efforts. During a tour of the Tech Museum, our guide allowed us to view a soon-to-open exhibit on sustainable projects that help developing countries meet essential, basic needs.  One was a water filtration system made from the seed shells of a local tree, and another used a recycled mesh net to collect condensation from fog. I was really inspired by the wide-spread interest in creative innovation for developing practical solutions to heavy-duty global issues like these.

From a more personal perspective, I attended some great talks on topics like ambient security, home automation over X10, open source in business, and geospatial applications.  I met some very creative, brillant, inspiring new friends, and I also had a really fun drive down to the beautiful coast!

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As an infosec consultant, I see technology used in unintended, malicious, and downright mean ways every day. Despite all the movie scenes of green binary numbers swirling around the heads of evil computer geniuses as they ‘hack the mainframe’, a lot of damage can be done with very little technical knowledge. Accessibility, extensibility, and many of the features that make online content popular and useful can be, by their very nature, security vulnerabilities that can be exploited without altering the applications at all. A little creativity goes a long way.

In the social networking arena especially, the pervasiveness of user-generated content combined with the very personal aspects of social interactions can create a mine field of hidden risks to an innocent, every day person’s reputation, relationships, career prospects, and sometimes life. Most of the readers here are familiar with risk mitigating tactics like those suggested by the FTC. There’s another less known and growing risk to social media users: online identity hijacking.

Since signing up for a social networking site generally doesn’t require authentication, hijacking someone’s online identity is as easy as typing in a name and a few pieces of information easily found on the Web. At one of last year’s Agoras hosted by the University of Washington CIAC, one of the speakers described his own identity hijacking experiment. A security expert volunteered to allow the researcher to hijack his identity. Using only what he could find online, the researcher created and maintained an account for the expert. It even fooled the expert’s own sister!

Last year, the Aladdin AIRC predicted that 2009 would see a surge in threats against social media, especially identity hijacking. While there’s no way to completely remove the risk, there are some steps to make things for difficult for the hijackers. Identity theft expert Robert Siciliano shares some great ideas on his blog at http://realtysecurity.com.

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One of our Seattle chapter members, Luna Flesher, shares a fascinating insight into the importance of women in technology in Iran–

This week, suspicions of election fraud in Iran inspired massive protests and riots.  Millions march in the capital city Tehran, demanding democracy and human rights.  They use technology — cell phones, computers, Twitter, Flickr, and YouTube — to communicate to each other and the world.  Twitter has become so important to the movement that the US State Department contacted the company and asked them to delay a scheduled maintenance until the middle of the night Iranian time.

It is clear that technology is important in Iran.  What role do women play in Iran’s growing technological base?

It turns out that in many Iranian universities, 70% of science and engineering students are women.  While they must study separately from men, they are allowed to get an education.  Women are also allowed to work (with their husband’s permission), so it is common to find women in technology careers.  This state of affairs is not free from controversy — many leaders in Iran fear this imbalance may leave men without jobs and disrupt family life.  Already, many women choose not to marry so they don’t have someone controlling their career decisions.

Here are a few famous Iranian women in technology:

Anousheh Ansari is an Iranian-American who became the first Muslim woman in space.  She is the namesake of the Ansari X PRIZE, the $10 million prize for the first non-government reusable manned spacecraft.

Mina Bissell is an Iranian-American biologist, the Director of the Life Sciences Division at UC Berkley.  She is well known for her research on the role of cells and tissues as they relate to breast cancer.

Reihaneh Safavi-Naini is the Director of Telecommunications and Information Technology Research Institute at University of Wollongong in Australia.  Her areas of expertise include cryptography, information security, and digital and privacy rights management.

Nahid Shahmehri is the Director of the Laboratory for Intelligent Information Systems at Linköping University in Sweden.  She has published many papers on information security, mobile communications, peer-to-peer computing, and programming environments.

Saba Valadkhan is a scientist in the biomedical field at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio.  She is noted for her breakthroughs in understanding genetic splicing.  20-30 percent of all human genetic diseases are now better understood because of her research.

Many of these great women studied in Iran, but moved out of the country to pursue their careers.  While a disproportionate number of women study in Iran, almost none of them are allowed to become professors.

At the time of this writing, no one knows the future of Iran.  I personally hope the protest (dare I call it a revolution?) succeeds in winning the human rights all people deserve.  I hope the women of Iran may one day know as much success as their counterparts who have immigrated away.

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Hi from Seattle!

This is our very first blog post, and hopefully I’ll have some pictures to share soon.

I’m very excited about the enthusiasm of the women in our chapter and all the support from our friends and the community. We’re steadily growing. There are new people at every meeting, which I think is great.

I’m really impressed with the amount of talent and social consciousness we have in our chapter.  We have an awesome resume. I love how our diverse fields and skills are starting to form together into a big ball of imfluevement. (That’s involvement, influence, and improvement all mushed together.)

I can’t wait to see where we, as a chapter and an international organization, go.

Tags: Blog, girls in tech, introduction, MJ Kelly, Seattle
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