Girls In Tech

As published on their website, Computing in the Core Coalition announces CSEdWeek 2011 from December 4 to 10, 2011. CSEdWeek is a highly distributed celebration of the impact of computing and the need for computer science education.

Last year, with leadership from Congressman Vernon Ehlers and Congressman Jared Polis, the US House of Representatives endorsed December 5 to 11, 2010 – the week of Grace Hopper’s birthday (December 9, 1906) – as Computer Science Education Week (CSEdWeek) to recognize the critical role of computing in today’s society and the imperative to bolster computer science education at all levels.  Going forward, CSEdWeek will always be held the week containing December 9th.

Kindergarten through 12th grade (K-12) education has fallen woefully behind in preparing students with the fundamental computer science knowledge and skills they need for 21st century careers. Click here to learn more about how your state is doing.

Computer Science is:

• Computing
• Computer Engineering
• Informatics
• Information Technology
• Software Engineering
• Information Systems

CSEdWeek recognizes that computer science is ubiquitous:

• It touches everyone’s daily lives and plays a critical role in society
• It drives innovation and economic growth
• It provides rewarding job opportunities

Computer science education is essential for:

• Exposing students to critical thinking and problem solving
• Instilling understanding of computational thinking for success in the digital age
• Preparing students to attack the world’s most challenging problems from a computation perspective

As the role and significance of computing has grown, the teaching of computer science has dramatically declined:

• There is insufficient innovative computing curricula for students at all levels
• Few students have the opportunity to study computer science in an engaging and rigorous way
• The lack of ethnic and gender diversity among those who take computer science courses is unacceptable
• Teachers have few opportunities for professional development in computing
• Certification for computer science teachers is virtually nonexistent nationwide

Tags: Adriana Gascoigne, Computing in the Core Coalition, CS, CSEdWeek, development, girls in tech, NCWIT, women in tech
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Join Women 2.0 for Startup Essentials, October 13-15, 2009! Held in San Francisco, all three evening sessions will include networking and a discussion workshop. Each night features a speaker covering their topic of expertise: development issues, legal issues, and PR issues. Find out the best way to support your venture in each of these areas on a tight budget.

Food and drinks will be provided.

Register at: http://www.eventbee.com/view/startupessentials
Startup Essentials: http://www.women2.org/october-2009-startup-essentials/

Tags: development, legal, PR, start-up, women 2.0
Posted in All Chapters, San Francisco | No Comments »

Browsers have been a pretty hot topic of conversation lately, with everyone from Mashable to the New York Times talking  ’bout browsers, and Google launching a whole browser-centric PR campaign yesterday.

Of course, the heavyweight championship battle in the browser wars is Google Chrome vs. Mozilla Firefox — at least amongst the techies in my life. So how does an enterprising girl in tech pick a side in the great Google vs. Mozilla debate? The answer is easier than a “Rock of Love” contestant. Just remember that browsers are like boys.

If you’re the kind of girl that likes a man she can mold to suit her own personal preferences and wardrobe styling tastes, then Firefox is your best bet. Because even though the whole you can’t change a man adage might be true for boys, it certainly ain’t true for Mozilla. All it takes is a simple trip to Mozilla Land to see the thousands (literally, 5000) of ways to change Firefox via add-ons.

Think of add-ons like accessories. Sure, your outfit provides perfectly adequate form and function without any additional bling, but the addition of a few choice pieces always takes things to the next level. The same is true of browser add-ons. If you’re a PR/viral marketing kind of gal, you’re going to want to add NoDoFollow, SearchStatus and Social Media For Firefox to see which sites will let google see your hyperlinked posts, which sites have page-ranks worth your time and how well your posts do. If you need to chase down development bugs, or just watch how the code runs on your favorite sites, you want Firebug, which is what I use when working on my site. But beware that debugging extensions will seriously slow down your surfing speed, so make sure you disable them when they’re not needed.

In fact, if you’re looking for speedy processing in general, then your best bet is probably actually Chrome. Using Chrome is like dating your best friend. It’s easy, it’s convenient, it moves quickly and it tends to anticipate your needs before you actually tell it what you want. It also uses much less memory than Firefox, so it won’t slow down all the other processes running on your computer.

The downside to dating your best friend — and to using Chrome — is that you kind of have to take it as it is. You might hate that he always leaves the toilet seat up, or that Chrome doesn’t really have a legit option for Macs just yet, but those are just things you’re going to have to live with. No nifty extensions here. The browser runs the way it wants to run, does the things google wants it to do and gets the job done much quicker as a result. Of course, you’re not going to be able to dress it up with any add-on accessories. But, if your web browsing is more about performance than personalization, than Chrome is the one for you.

Of course, you could always go for the rebellious underdog type and try your luck with Opera. Or, go for the security of Safari or the familiarity of Internet Explorer. Just please, for the love of all things holy, if you’re still trying to make it work with IE6, dump the loser already and upgrade to a newer model. Some relationships just weren’t meant to last.

Tags: Dating, development, Internet, tech, web
Posted in Los Angeles | 1 Comment »

The 2009 DrupalCon Drupalchix BoF

Photo credit: by domesticat

Last week, over a 1000 Drupallers converged on Washington, DC, for the 2009 US DrupalCon (another will be held this September in Paris).  This year I was very happy to join the DrupalChix–a loosely organized group of women in the Drupal community–for their Birds of a Feather during lunch on the first day.  We were all very excited with the apparent growth in the number of women in the Drupal community.

While official numbers are unavailable, estimates of female attendance at Drupal events are on the upswing. Anecdotally, it’s just getting easier to meet up with other women at Drupal events, and our ladies’ cut t-shirts ran out well before the conference ended.  As far as real numbers, the estimates are that last spring’s DrupalCon in Boston was roughly 8% female, the summer conference in Szeged was around 10%, and this year’s event in DC pulled a roughly 15% female attendance.

In the context of open source, where women have become accustomed to being one of a few women, if not the only woman, in the room, that’s a phenomenal number.  Recent statistics are hard to find, though a frequently cited FLOSS-POLS report from 2006 suggested that only 1.5% of open source contributors were women.  Ouch.

Vanessa Haakenson of Vworld New Media, an 8-year veteran of open source  says:

I don’t have any stats on the number of women in general but over the years I’ve only seen a handful actively participating in projects I’ve been involved with. From my personal experience over the past 7 yrs I can say I’ve seen less than 10 women in what I’ve been involved with but hope to see more women in the future.

As a web developer and technical undergrad student, I got used to being the only girl in the room…sometimes quite literally.  It was not at all unusual to sit down in a new Java class and realize I was The Only One.  In the workplace, there might be another female dev and a couple women on the business side, but again, the web industry was clearly overwhelmingly male.

Despite the numbers, though, I never felt there was any hostility.  There were times I thought some colleagues were “playing nicer” with me than with each other, being less blunt in criticism or arguments, and certainly all the tech stereotypes skewed to a male persona; however, I did not feel that my skills were dismissed.  Nobody ever tried to keep me from tackling the tough code on a project, and once I demonstrated my ability, they were perfectly willing to come to me for help when they ran into trouble on my core technologies.

I always wondered why there were so few women in web development–my experience showed me about 10% on the tech side.  The real shock, however, came the first time I saw the FLOSS number.  As much as we were the minority in web development, it appeared that we were practically invisible in open source projects.

WHY?  Was it a lack of interest?  Skills?  Confidence?  Or…?  And why is it that the Drupal project seems to buck the trend?

Up Next: Being a “she” in open source today.

This post is running much longer than I expected, and quite frankly I’d like to do more research and make this something really substantial.  Let’s leave this off for today, and continue with my next post in two weeks, looking at the experiences of women in open source today.

So what do you think?

Why are women so underrepresented in open source?  Are you an open source gal with experience and insights to share?  What can we do to increase our numbers?  What deters women from contributing to open source projects…or do you think it’s just a matter of personal preference?  Is Drupal actually different, and if so, why?

If you have thoughts to contribute anonymously for the next post, you can email me at amy@girlsintech.net, and note that you prefer to not be identified.

PS – We’ll be making our big relaunch event announcement in the next few days, but you can get in early now! Click here to see the details and RSVP!

Tags: demographics, development, drupal, open source
Posted in New York | 1 Comment »