Should you notice I'm a woman? Should I care?

So, following on from my observations of being an outsider at FOSDEM because I'm not an open source developer, I do have another story to tell where my female-ness is actually relevant.

I'm going to give specifics, but it's not to name and shame or anything like that, it's just that anonymising it will probably erase some of the subtleties.  But I'm not telling this to make anyone feel bad, because this is not an oh-poor-me story, this is just the way it goes sometimes and I want to share what it feels like.

At JFokus (a conference I really enjoyed, where I got a chance to spend time with some awesome people) I was on a panel (well, game-show really) about static vs dynamic languages.  Not unusually, I was the only woman on the panel.  Also not unusually, one of the reasons I agreed to take part is to do my bit in demonstrating that women have technical knowledge too (in my opinion, it's important where possible to avoid a stage full of white men of a particular age, and I'm in a position to be able to do something about that).  And, as per usual, I was a bit nervous about this in case the only woman on the panel also turned out to look stupid, but hey, looking stupid is one of the risks of this job.

During the session, my gender was mentioned twice - once with "ladies first", and once to specifically point out that our static-languages team was somehow superior because we had both genders represented (well of course we're better, I'm on the team). Note that neither of these was derogatory at all - both were, in fact, positive towards me, and I wasn't troubled or offended by them. I'm used to people noticing and commenting on my gender.  I got used to it in the same way you get used to your commute to work, or dealing with merge conflicts - it's something you do, it's not always comfortable, but it's no one's fault and they're not out to get you.

I didn't really process how the gender-mentions made me feel until after, at which point I was drained from giving yet another new talk that day, as well as the surprisingly physical panel discussion. But afterwards, when I was back in my hotel room packing for yet another plane journey, I was thinking "is it normal?".  Was it inevitable that someone was going to notice/point out that I'm female?

Was it down to my choice of clothing?  I debated long and hard with myself about wearing what was definitely a ridiculously short skirt for a session like that, but in the end I decided I didn't want to wear jeans like everyone else, and wearing tiny skirts is something I find fun. But I did think I'd be behind a table and it wouldn't be too obvious.  Should I worry that much about what I wear?  I used to plan what to wear for work, I used to love dressing up for going out with friends, so over-thinking my clothes for a conference is part of who I am.

And one of the reasons to wear the skirt is because I've found myself wearing jeans and t-shirts more than ever.  I think the combination of travelling a lot (I hate packing, so packing a couple of pairs of jeans and a bunch of t-shirts makes life easy) and being part of a tech company where that's basically our uniform has lead to extreme laziness in my clothing choices, and I want to change that.  Who wants to look like everyone else?  Not me.

So back in that hotel room, at the end of a long day, knowing I have to get up at 5am the next morning to get on a plane to New York, I felt drained.  I felt... vulnerable? But if I dig down to find out what's really making me feel not-cool, it's not because a couple of people noticed I was a girl.  It's because I was tired, because I was on display, because I had been worried about my choice of clothes, because drawing attention to yourself is not terribly British, because I didn't know if my new talk was any good.

It's easy to blame impostor syndrome, or something similar. And maybe this is what impostor syndrome feels like. But I'm pretty sure every conference speaker, whatever their gender, race, sexual orientation, age, has felt this way.  I don't think it's because I have two X chromosomes and I'm in a male-dominated environment.

I'm not really sure what conclusions to draw from this experience.  I did want to share it so that other people know what it feels like.

Possible conclusions:

• When you're tired, it's easy to blame the first thing that springs to mind for your lack of shiny-happy feelings
• When you've got a lot on your plate, seemingly-innocuous (even those driven by positive intentions) comments or actions can increase your stress levels
• Don't think too much.  It can drive you mad.

Feel like an outsider?

So, FOSDEM.

I've heard great things about this conference, so I was pretty exited to go

The Java dev room

Now I know people talk about impostor syndrome whenever they mention the woeful lack of diversity at tech conferences.  Interestingly, I felt like an impostor at FOSDEM - not because I'm a woman (there were quite a few techy women around at FOSDEM, more than I expected) but because I'm not an open source person.

I mean, I am, technically - MongoDB and the Java driver are both open source, and I have real live code on github.  But I didn't get there via the open source community, I was hired to do a specific job that happens to be open source (for which I am extremely grateful).  So although I knew the MongoDB folks I was there with and a lot of people who were running or speaking in the Java room, I didn't feel really at home in this conference.  I think I feel more comfortable with the ones aimed at enterprise Java developers (by which I mean Java people who work producing software for companies) because this is more similar to my background - I understand the attendees and I think I know what they want.

It's also possible since I've been to a lot more of the enterprise-aimed conferences that I used to feel just as awkward there, and I've become much more comfortable now I've been to many.

Which leads me to another observation: when I first went to JavaOne, in 2011, I felt extremely conspicuous as a woman.  I mean, I didn't do much to help, my skirts and shorts are occasionally… not really enterprise-developer-length.  But I felt like everyone noticed me and I felt the pressure to assert early on in every new conversation that I was, in fact, a developer and not a booth babe or a recruiter.  But these days, I feel much more comfortable.  And do you know what's really helped with that?  Being a speaker; having my face on the website.  I don't have to prove I'm a developer, I was asked to speak at that conference - if the conference organisers think I belong there, then I belong there.

So… what.

Well, we can do things to combat this I-don't-belong-here feeling - I'm pretty sure we've all been there, regardless of gender, race, background etc.  To be honest, us geeks probably feel this more than most humans.  

Conferences and user groups and meet ups and so forth can all make life a little easier for those feeling this.  At the London Java Community, for example, we started having greeters at the door for our social events, to try and make everyone feel welcomed and to introduce people to each other.  I also liked what YOW did - they had a really informal social event at the end of the first day of the conference (with free booze, yay!) which made it relatively easy to mingle with other people.  FOSDEM, with its lack of free food and drink gave us less opportunities to mingle with people other than your own friends, although I did like the canteen area for random encounters.

But it's not just down to organisers of groups or events to solve this problem for us.  I've found that if you do feel like you don't belong, there's a way to get over that, and it's not to withdraw.  It's to get more involved.  Find the groups you feel most comfortable with (for me, it started at the LJC), find the medium that you're most comfortable with (in person meet-ups, e-mail, IRC, Twitter, whatever), and join in.  Have conversations.  Meet people.  Once you start to make friends you start to feel like you belong, and when you start to feel like you belong you can step up and do more.  You might even find yourself accidentally propelled into speaking at an international conference, and who knows where you find yourself after that?  Although I appreciate that's not for everyone.  The point is, find your comfort zone for entry and gradually push yourself more - as you find yourself more accepted and respected, you'll feel less like an outsider.  At the very least, you'll have friends to talk to at these sorts of events.

And don't be put off by a couple of bad experiences - you don't have to go back to that group, those people, that thing, but don't assume that all groups or events are like that.  I've been to a number of events, techy or otherwise, that I didn't feel at home with.  If, after two tries (in person, I'll give e-mails lists or chat rooms many more chances), I still don't get on with it, I try somewhere else.

There are still going to be times when you're not in your comfort zone, but this is probably healthy - pushing yourself a little leads to different opportunities.  And in my case, it reminded me what it was like to be an outsider, a newbie.  And that gives us greater empathy for people in that situation.

Why is it News when a woman becomes CEO?

I'm pleased to see that GM has hired the "best person for the job" as their new CEO - that does seem like a good idea.  I'm happy her gender did not get in the way.  What makes me uncomfortable is the international news coverage of the decision of this large manufacturer to hire a woman as their CEO - if she were a man (and/or black/gay/disabled) would the headline read "The camera loves her. So do employees."?

But at the root of that is probably the thing I'm most unhappy about.  What I'm not happy about is that it is 2014, halfway through the second decade of the 21st century, and she's the first woman CEO of a car manufacturer.

I worked at Ford Motor Company as an undergraduate and, later, a graduate.  I basically did my apprenticeship there. I know that over fifteen years ago they were hiring graduates from different disciplines (men and women), they had a women-in-leadership programme (or probably several, as I was only involved in the one for the IT organisation), they had a great maternity package (a great package for adoption too, but only the standard paternity package, ho-hum), on-site creches at the bigger locations, and were actively looking for ways to improve their diversity across the board.  They had issues on the plant floor which they were actively working to address, but management did not have a culture of discrimination, to my knowledge.  I remember the number of "real" techies in my IT graduate intake year, not the number of women, probably because the women were better represented than the coders.

So why has it taken so long for these old, old companies (Ford turned 100 while I was there) to put a woman into a position of leadership?  Maybe all these actions are what has, finally, lead to this mold-breaking appointment.  Or maybe decades of doing what is supposed to be the right thing is not having any impact at all - Mary Barra's father worked at GM for 39 years, she herself started there as an intern and engineer, and has worked in different areas of the company as she's risen through the ranks.  In this day and age, it's probably more unusual to appoint a CEO who worked their way up to that position in that company than it is to appoint a woman - I'm not sure how many more there are out there when often it seems the best way to get a promotion now is to switch company.

I don't know why it took GM so long to appoint a female CEO, I don't know how they managed to be the first of the big automotives.  And although I really hate all this "Oh wow, a woman CEO" news coverage (and I dare not read the comments because I know I'll get angry), I don't know if it's something we need to do, to hold up these positive female role models, or something we should stop doing because all it does is point out how unusual women in leadership are - how news-worthy it is that a big, old organisation has finally joined the 21st century.  But the fact that I felt the need to blog about it I think means we still have a lot of work to do in this area.

Devoxx: The Problem with Women - A Technical Approach

As well as talking about, you know, actual work-type-stuff, I was encouraged to give my "Technical Approach to Women" presentation at Devoxx.  This went so well at JavaOne that I thought it would be difficult to top.  Also, I wasn't convinced it would work at Devoxx, because the theatres are not well suited to audience participation - the seats are warm and comfy, the room is dark, the speaker is on stage in front of a massive screen....

I was incredibly impressed with the audience.  There were literally hundreds of people, most of them men.  To me, it proved once again that the men in this industry are determined to "fix" this problem of gender imbalance.  And they're happy to extend that to improving diversity as a whole, once you highlight the bigger problem.  It says to me that this is not naturally a misogynistic industry, where you have to fight against the boys club to get anywhere.  It says to me that we are all in this together.  After all, in the "real" world the geeks are still outsiders, and different, so we're used to embracing our different-ness - whether that's because you're the only girl in the room, the only Java developer at a .NET conference, or the only techy at a dinner party.

Conferences are a self-selecting audience, I know - these are the people who are investing time and money in advancing their careers, or at least encouraging their employers to do.  But for the punchline of this session, these are exactly the right people.  We need to go out, tell everyone how much we enjoy our jobs; tell kids that programming is cool, and show them it's fun; mentor other people, and each other, and be a role model.  I don't care what gender you are or what colour you are or what your dark secret is - you are the role model to inspire someone.

Just do it.

JavaOne: The Problem With Women - A Technical Approach

Yesterday dawned, with a sense of foreboding (actually it dawned with me coughing my lungs out, but we've heard enough about the sub-optimal state of my respiratory system this week).   On this day, I was giving the talk I was dreading when I got asked to do it.  It's the talk I actually put more work into than any of the other sessions I was presenting at this JavaOne.  It was the Women In IT talk.

It's timely, given that conference season has one again led to cries of sexism and discrimination.  So although I really hate banging on about the subject (you'd never believe it from my blog) it's still necessary to cover.

I feel, and have felt for a long time, that the way we're approaching the "problem" of the lack of women techies is just wrong.  Obviously painting stuff pink is just not going to cut it (I hope that's obvious).  I think the fundamental problem is that we keep thinking about women.  While that should be great for someone like me, it actually triggers a whole bunch of gender stereotyping in our poor human brains which prevents us seeing the big picture - the fact that we're not attractive as an industry for women suggests we're losing a whole heap of talent because of some sort of image problem.  We just don't see the other missing minorities, or we're not comfortable talking about them.  I mean, can you image running a session about attracting more black people into programming?  I suspect there would be uproar in singling out a minority based on something as arbitrary as skin colour.

To be fair, even before the session there was a tiny bit of controversy:

It is nice though to see guys (because indeed this was someone of the male persuasion) getting upset at the thought of someone taking a shot at the girls again.  I think it probably would have been a little more helpful to the session if they'd put my name on it...

Maybe the publicity helped, because there was a really decent turnout for the talk.  I'm terrible at estimating numbers, and of course I completely forgot to take a photo of my lovely audience.  But I'd say there were... 60? 80? people there?  Between 50 and 100 anyway, and seemed like a roughly even split of men and women, and there were people of different backgrounds.  Which is great, it's more women than you normally see at a conference, and more men than you usually see at an event talking about "women's issues".  I really love running sessions about this subject with guys there, I'm of the opinion that talking about this with just women is almost completely useless, and isolates us from the rest of our community.


I took the novel approach of actually trying to treat the problem the same way coders treat any problem: break it down logically.  So I had the problem, the requirements, a retrospective, and the aim was to come up with a list of tasks going forward.

Georges Saab from Oracle was great as our "Business Analyst" - not only did he outline the business value in increasing diversity in the workplace:

1. Greater pool of talent to hire from
2. Happier and more productive employees
3. Greater retention rates

He also gave examples of how this is a bigger problem than just "Women in IT" - he spoke about being the outsider as an American who had relocated to Sweden, and how he benefitted from being in a country that recognises a father's rights when his daughter was born there.

At LMAX we're super-Agile (something we'll actually be talking about at Devoxx this year), so the logical thing to do is to have a retrospective.  The question was somewhat fluffy - tell me about working as a techie, specific points about being female not essential.  So as with all our retrospectives, we covered good points, bad points, questions and ideas.

<aside>Incidentally, loads of people there knew about Agile methods and many were using them at work. Does this mean that agile is now more-or-less the norm?  Does it mean that companies that encourage people to go to conferences are agile or agile-friendly companies?  Or does it mean that people who care about people (i.e. those that go to a session like this) are more drawn to Agile methods? </aside>

(Yes, I'm wearing trainers to present, for the very first time! Thanks to Cecilia Borg for taking the photo)

((Also, special super-thanks to Stephen Chin who saved my presentation by sneaking in with a flipchart, stand and pens literally seconds before I needed it))

Everyone in the audience came up with really great points about working as a techie.  The thing I found most interesting was that very little of it was gender-specific.

Negatives

• "Pink it and Shrink it" marketing campaigns, allegedly for women.
• How do you get into the job?  Entry and career paths unclear
• Micromanagement
• The hours
• Lack of mentoring/role models
• Booth Babes (they are bad for women, but they are bad for men too - very demeaning to assume that guys as bright and successful as techies are drawn only to boobs)
• Salary discrepancies
• Brogrammers stereotype
• Education pipeline – women doing "computery" subjects decreasing from about 13 years old and onwards (UK numbers)
• Pressure to be visible when you're a woman/minority
• You're seen as a woman first and a techie second
• Time drain to keep current, 90% of what you do is learning new stuff not using skills you already had

Positives

• Being different makes you stand out
• The hours
• The salary
• Woman's perspective is a positive for the team (Later agreed that diverse teams generally were more interesting to work in)
• We've seen an increase in the number of senior women
• Balanced teams are more productive
• There are lots of jobs in IT, always hiring
• Flexibility and meritocracy
• Women Are Exceptional (rare to get in as a girl so you're either really interested, or really good, or both)

Questions

• I don't understand this, my CIO is a woman?
• Is there a correlation between gamers and professional programmers?
• Does the wider availability of technology (e.g. Facebook) lead to a wider appeal (of working in the industry) to people?
• As parents should we be doing more to encourage our kids into technology?
• Is the image of techies changing? 

We can replace the word "Woman" with person pretty much everywhere, and it becomes clear that we shouldn't be trying to work out the problems that face women, but instead be working harder to attract more awesome people into the job we love (I asked who in the room really hated the job, and one person half put his hand up.  So as techies, we generally like what we do), and to look after everyone who's here already as well.  So that lead on to the actions we could do to help this.

Actions

• Look elsewhere for technical talent (e.g. people with craft skills are creative and practical)
• We should be more actively networking (join your local JUG!)
• Get them young - go to schools and show kids what we do
• Challenge stereotypes - we're not geeks who live at home and code in our bedrooms, we're collaborative and creative individuals
• We need more role models of all flavours
• Flexible education - it should be cheaper to make "mistakes" - e.g. to switch degrees or to cross-train from other qualifications, we can't be limited by choices we made so young
• Work experience to give kids/young people a taste of different jobs
• Encourage / expect children to ask questions, more than just learning the school curriculum
• Buy kids technology e.g. raspberry pi, arduino
• Show our faces, we are all role models
• Be vocal about our passions.  We love this job, let's tell people.

I felt extremely positive at the end of the session, I think guys saw some of the attitudes that affect women, and women saw that guys were not only sympathetic to our "plight", but that they suffer discrimination too.  Basically we're all in this together, and talking gender specifically is sometimes dividing us.

One observation that I loved was that one guy's wife wanted their daughter to do what he does because he loves his job, and she sees hers as a chore.

I also had a number of spin-off conversations later, as always happens when people are dead interested, and a really good point someone raised is that as techies we're frequently the odd one out, the outsider, in a group of "normal" people.  We're actually quite used to it and pretty much embrace it. So if anything we're an industry which will be more tolerant of your outsider-ness (as a woman, as someone who looks different) than more traditional jobs.  It's a thought, and an attitude we should perhaps publish more.

The three things I think we should do as individuals are:

1. Take The Plunge
Women in particularly, but all of you who don't think you can be That Person - start talking at conferences, start writing blogs, start a new user group if you haven't got one, go into schools.  Be that role model.

2. Don't Point Out Her Gender
I know the guys mean well, and women are guilty of this too, but don't highlight to a women at a conference/interview/meetup when you meet her for the first time that she's female.  She knows this. It's almost always said in a positive way ("Wow, it's great that you're here, we don't see many women in these parts"), and I know you mean it to be encouraging.  But it just highlights how different she is, not how awesome it is she's doing the same thing you're doing.

3. What We Do Is Awesome
We're here because we like what we do, we get paid for doing our hobbies.  Not many people can boast of that.  We need to get out there and tell people how much fun it is to be a techie.  Don't let the Hollywood geek stereotype be the only image people have of us.

I had a really good time, and I came out feeling very positive about my job, my industry, and the people who do this.  I'd love to run this session again if I get the opportunity.

EDIT: The slides and audio are available.  The content catalog is a little counter-intuitive to use, hopefully that link will take you to a page with this session title on - click on it and there's "media" on the pop up window.  This session doesn't lend itself well to audio because of the audience participation aspect but I do repeat most of the points and you get a feel for the session.

On The Evil Of Stereotypes

I attended (one way or another) two events last week that got me thinking

The first was Girl Developers will Save the World - a session that had me a little confused as to whether that referred to me, or actual girls, i.e. those that are not yet legally classed as adults.  The second was the Remarkable Women Twitter party the following day.

Firstly, a caveat/disclaimer (as usual) - both events were useful, thought-provoking and overall worthwhile.  But the alarming thing to me was the number of times I heard "boys are…" or "women think…" or "girls prefer…".  And I know we often make generalisations to stress a point, but I'm becoming extremely wary of statements that group people together along some arbitrary boundaries.  

• "Google+ failed because it's design by men for men" - no, it's because it's not designed for anyone.  Its only purpose was to compete with Facebook.
• "Women are better at communicating and social activities" - what, all of us?  I'm better at communicating than every man I've ever met?  Than someone like Obama or Steve Jobs or John Stewart? 
• "Women do better with female role models" - where are the statistics?  And do men do better with male role models, or do they do better with female role models too because women are so much "better at communicating"?

I'm not saying these statements aren't ever true.  I'm not even saying they're not true "most" of the time (although I want to see proof).  But any kind of strategy based on gross generalisations had better take into account the fact that these are generalisations, that they are based on Statistics¹(and sometimes not even those), and that they frequently correspond nicely to things we'd like to think or we are trained to think.

Humans are great at categorising.  It's a survival skill - "yummy", "warm", "safe", "funny coloured = hurty tummy", "things with sharp pointy teethies like to eat me".  Without this skill we wouldn't have made it as a species.  And marketing people, who have to use psychology to get us to part with our money, understand this.  They identify trends and target their shinies to these trends (Yuppie, Baby Boomer, etc).  By identifying these groups and aiming at them, they make them real.  And since humans are a clan-based society, who (again for evolutionary reasons) need to fit in with their gang, these groups become aspirational.  Essex people drive BMWs and wear white stilettos?  I don't and I live in Essex, oh no! I'd better get on that right away, otherwise people will see I'm An Imposter.

So when people go around saying "Women are great at communicating", we believe it.  Those of us who are a bit sucky at it or maybe don't care about it wonder if we're aliens.  Or we believe we're great at it because we should be, and we don't work at improving our skills.  Men are terrible at cleaning?  Great!  I don't have to clean the toilet!  Women's minds aren't programmed for engineering because they're more communicaty than logical?  Fine, I'll teach physics instead of using it.

If I hear one more person say women don't do well in IT because they prefer more soft-skill-based roles, I'm going to scream. In that case, why are there more women entering accountancy than men? In that case, how do men ever get to manage people, and why does pair programming work so well?

If I hear once more that men put women off these roles because of the macho male environment, I'm going to drag that person through a tour of every office I've worked in - I'm constantly disappointed that my male colleagues enjoy football even less than than the girls I went to school with.

So, using stereotypes to try and address things like gender disparity in IT is not going to work.  The men in our industry are not beer-swilling, football-watching, womanising alpha males.  So why, when we talk about the missing women in our industry, do we assume they will be pink-obsessed, fashion-conscious, gossipy socialites who only hang around with other women?  Do you even know any women like that?  This is not Desperate Housewives, this is Real Life.

Really good marketing people don't target people as they are - no-one wants to be considered poor - you're a bargain hunter or great at identifying value.  Similarly, if you want women to use your product or  work for your company, you don't target to weight-obsessed, soap-opera-watching, child-caring fashionistas.  Instead you target how a person wants to be seen.  You might say using your product or working for your company makes a person look smart, savvy and awesome.  And who doesn't want to be all of those things?

Saying people in IT are sexy and intelligent and earn loads of money and have oodles of job options and can find work globally might be a compelling story for people.  Some of those people might even be women.  Some of them might even be the other missing minorities

Thinking in stereotypes can be damaging to everyone.  Gender stereotypes in both directions are so sweeping they are unhelpful, you can't categorise fully half of the world's population as one thing or another.  I hear men doing men a disservice by saying things that aren't even true for themselves, and the same for women.  It's something we're trained to do, and something the media loves to do.  But it's wrong.  

So the next time you find yourself saying "men prefer..." or "women are...", stop and think if this is actually true for all of the men and women you know.  And if it's not, just don't say it.

¹Lies, damned dies and…

The subject of women programmers is boring

I've been challenged to do a session at a very large conference around women in programming.  Which leads to two reactions from me 1) wow, what an honour! and 2) *sigh*.

The problem with these sessions is that you're preaching to the choir.  Those who turn up are a) women or b) men who are sympathetic and supportive to the cause.  People who are actively discriminating against women or, more commonly, those who don't know their actions are hurting diversity in our industry, are the least likely to receive the message.

This tends to lead to the same types of sessions - yes, our industry under-represents certain segments of society (i.e. women); yes, we all agree this is a problem; yes, everyone in this room is trying their best to do the right things; no, we have no idea how to fix it at the industry-level.

These sessions are boring.

How do you make this subject interesting, relevant, and appeal to the types of people it really should target?

I'm considering all sorts of games with the title, even going so far as to put "Boobs" in it.  I very much doubt that will make my final selection.  I'm thinking hard about the format, I definitely don't want it to be preachy, I want it to be informative, collaborative, and, preferably, funny.  Not too much to ask, right?

In programming, if something is difficult to do right, it's a sign of a smell - the feature being requested might be contrary to the purpose of the product; the application might not have been designed around the business's real requirements; there could be a large amount of tech debt that should have been cleaned up along the way but wasn't; the requirements might be fluffy, changeable, or simply outright wrong.

Does the fact that we can't get these sessions right point to a smell as well?

Are they pitched at the wrong people?  Are we saying the wrong things, suggesting the wrong ideas, tackling the wrong problem?  Should we even be talking about women in technology?

Or am I just the wrong person to do it?  I don't even want to be the spokesperson for women developers.  I can only be the spokesperson for me.

Overall I can't help but think we're missing the point again.  If I think that events aimed at girls are wrong, then I think that sessions at conferences aimed at highlighting the missing women there is also wrong.  But this is a great audience to reach - these are people who want to further their careers, who are likely to be putting in extra hours to improve themselves/their company/the industry.  Give a techy a tricky problem to gnaw on and there's no-one happier.  And what could be more tricky than the seemingly-unsolvable problem of attracting greater diversity into technical roles?

The answer might lie in shaping the problem such that it is interesting enough, difficult enough and technical enough for us.

Or maybe the answer is simply accepting the fact that you're not going to change those who are part of the problem, but you can change the message you are giving.  I know many men are tired of being berated about this issue because they're already doing the best they can.  I know many women are bored of hearing about it because they're already here.  Maybe it's time to look at the problem differently and suggest an alternative approach.

If only I knew what that was...

Interviewed for InfoQ at QCon London

I was flattered to be interviewed for InfoQ at QCon London.  It was a fun interview actually, and didn't feel anything like the half an hour it actually took.  In it, I get to talk about Agile at LMAX, the Disruptor (of course) and diversity in IT (again).

Update on events

Just a quick note to say I was interviewed for another podcast, again to talk about all-female events.  It's only a short one and there's probably not much in there that I haven't said before, either on here or in person.

From the 21st May, I'm at GOTO, both Copenhagen and Amsterdam.  I'll be talking about code & the Disruptor, thank goodness, and will be trying not to rant about the subject of women in technology.  If you see me there, come and say hello!

On Friday 25th May, after all the GOTO craziness, I'm going to repeat the Disruptor presentation in Rotterdam at 010DEV, an event rather fantastically called "The Disruptor and the Perfect Programmer", which someone on Twitter correct noted sounds like a fairy tale.

After all that, I'm hopefully going to take June off to play Diablo 3 and Prototype 2, and read the next Game of Thrones book.  All these joys I have been denying myself to make sure I get everything sorted in time for next week.

Featured on a BBC Podcast

This week's BBC Outriders podcast features yours truly venting about The Subject That Won't Go Away, Women in Technology.  I was interviewed at Sunday's Girl Geek conference, and got a chance to voice my opinions once again.  For those who can't be bothered to listen, they can probably be summarised as:

• There are genuine problems that face people in our industry, let's talk about those that you have actually faced, not ones that you imagine exist.
• In my opinion, now is a great time for women to make a name for themselves - conference organisers are crying out for you to attend and (if you want) speak, and our industry needs talented people of any type and isn't that fussy about who you are.
• Please, please can we start talking about the good stuff that we see as women in IT?  We shouldn't only talk about the issues we face.  Yes, we need to highlight problems and address them, but I believe that this message is drowning out all the great things about what we do, and why we love our jobs.  We should be encouraging people (not just women) to join us, not putting them off.

In which I defend the Male species at an all Female event

Google Campus is an awesome space

Today I was at the Girl Geek Meetup conference.  I didn't advertise it much because I've said in the past I don't really agree with women-only events, and actually I felt quite uncomfortable telling you guys I was going to be there, knowing the majority of my readers weren't allowed to attend.

It's probably worth explaining why I went, so a) I can give you guys and excuse but b) conference organisers can see what people like me are looking for in a conference.

Graduate Developer Community Meet a Mentor Programme
The primary reason I went is because the new Meet a Mentor programme I'm involved in does not have a lot of women mentors.  This is simply a numbers game - when you don't have all that many people signed up to be mentors yet, and you have the "normal" proportion of women in that group, you'll be lucky if you get one female mentor turning up at these events.  Since one of the things we want to showcase to undergraduates is diversity, it's pretty important we get all sorts of people involved, not just mining from the usual suspects in the London Java Community.  This was a good conference to target since a) the attendees come from different technology and industry backgrounds and b) yes, sorry, we want more women doing it.

Don't knock it till you've tried it
I've said before I don't think all women events are the way forward.  But I haven't been to one for a long time, and I firmly believe you shouldn't say bad things about something unless you've tried it out.  So I wanted to go to see what the advantages and disadvantages of an event like this were.  If I had a terrible time, at the very least I would have material for the blog.  I also feel like I have a bit of a responsibility to spy on these things, since my male colleagues cannot.

Networking
Similar to the Meet a Mentor goal above, I wanted to meet some different people.  I'm getting comfortable in my particular circles, and I'm starting to meet some of the same people at various events.  This event was based in the very start-up friendly Shoreditch, and didn't target a specific technology or business, so it gave me the opportunity to meet new people.

They gave me a platform to rant
I only really felt comfortable agreeing to go when I was invited to participate in a panel about whether all-women events were useful, or if they created a Girl Ghetto.  Knowing I could publicly voice my opinions on the subject at one of these events made me much happier to attend.



And actually... I had a very good time!  It was refreshing to meet new people, especially because they're mostly in different technology and business spaces.  I was really inspired to see the number of entrepreneurs, and people working for startups.  And I loved the range of ages, the diversity of people's backgrounds (ethnically, educationally, geographically...), and the fact that everyone bothered to come out on a very rainy Sunday to learn stuff and meet people.

It did feel different to "normal" conferences.  However.  I personally do not believe this was because it was an all-women event.

The LJC Open Conference last year had a very different feel to JAX London and JavaOne - it was more intimate, easier to wing-it in presentations, friendlier.  You could chat to pretty much anyone over the coffee. You could smile at random people.  These are all the same things I felt about GGM today.

I can't help but think this atmosphere of supportive learning and collaboration is at least partly a function of things like:

• Size - smaller conferences are less intimidating, and you get to meet with people more than once, giving you the impression you're with friends rather than spectators.
• Venue - being seated (or even standing) around a table or in a coffee-break area is more intimate.  It means the speaker can make better eye contact, feels more engaged with the audience, and there's less of a barrier for active participation.  If the presenter is less than 3 metres from you, it's much easier to ask a question.  This leads to a chattier, more tailored session - more of a dialogue than a speech.  As a speaker I really prefer these sessions, and I think as an attendee I get more out of this too.
• Common Goal - when you give up a day in your weekend to do "work" stuff, you have to have a clear idea of why you're doing it and what you're getting out of it.  I would say (although I could be wrong) that our common goal was to network, with a side-effect of learning "stuff".  Events at the weekend are really only something you do for yourself, since you're not being paid for it.  That gives you common ground.

I wanted to get a feel for if these awesome women were only going to events like these, and weren't going to "normal" conferences.  I think it was a mix.  I don't think (and I could be wrong) that people were coming to this because there were no guys.  I think they were coming because they were invited.  

Someone mentioned that a conference organiser once told them they have to ask a man to speak at their conference at most two times.  They have to ask a woman up to seven times, to overcome their concerns and reassure them that they really do want them.  I wonder if women also need to be asked several times simply to attend conferences?  This would make a lot of sense - about 15-20% of the technical workforce are women, but around 5% of conference attendees are women.  It's possibly that by the time women have been invited to, or told about, a conference enough times to make them want to go, it's totally sold out.  Do we need to very explicitly invite women to our events?  Show them we really want them?  Multiple times?  And this is just for attendees, not even speakers.

I'll come back to some of this.

The schedule

I presented on four occasions - yes, I was so greedy for fame that I actually had almost no time to talk to people or to see anyone else's sessions.

Why Open Source Your Secrets

A different spin on the Disruptor, when I answer the number one (well, number two actually) question: why did we open source it?

The slides are pretty simple and I'm not sure there's a lot of value in putting them online without the talking, but if anyone's interested I can either shrink it to a lightning talk at one of the LJC events, or attempt to expand it into a fully-fledged presentation

GDC: Meet a Mentor

What it is, what's involved, what's in it for you.  This is all material that needs to live somewhere on the interwebs so I promise to link to it as soon as it's available.  If anyone is interested in a really lightweight process for mentoring university undergraduates, drop me a line and I'll try and tell you all about it.

Technology in Electronic Trading (co-presented with Annalisa Sarasini)

This is the session I was most nervous about, since with Annalisa in Nepal and me in Seville, we didn't actually get a chance to talk about what we were doing, let alone rehearse it.  However I think it went really well - at the end of it, the folks who saw it said they had a better understanding of the use of technology in the banking/finance world, and I think it's a great way to show how computer science can truly be applied.  We'd love to run this as a full talk somewhere.

Panel: Women-only events - are we creating a Girl Ghetto?

Oh my goodness, all these women!

In which I get to say that I think it's grossly unfair we do not allow men to this event.  In which I state that this behaviour is sexist and (in my mind) unhelpful.  But in which I also am told that women are still either a) experiencing alienation/sexist behaviour at conferences (thankfully it seemed like a limited amount) or b) feel like there are issues around boys club, macho posturing males, and thought if they presented at a conference they might get questions designed specifically to make them feel stupid.

I think this is a very important point - even if none of this is happening, even if these women have never experienced this themselves, they think it might be happening.  Also, please note, these issues do not affect just women.  These perceived problems are stopping less confident men from attending or speaking at these events.

What can be done about these things?  My answer is, it's up to us.  The women, the less confident, the non-posturing non-alpha males, to make the changes we want to see.  And I can't claim all the glory for that answer.  When, during my very short stay at ThoughtWorks, I complained to Martin Fowler that GOTO 2011 was full of white, male speakers, he said to me, why don't you speak then?  Of course I said "who, me??".  I didn't think I had anything to talk about.  After attending a few conferences I realised that doesn't stop people.  And I realised people have to start somewhere.  And you have to start by doing some poor presentations to practice - you can't instantly be awesome.  It takes time, and practice, and Barrack Obama didn't come out of the womb knowing how to make an impact during a speech.  And guess what?  This year I'm speaking at GOTO Copenhagen and Amsterdam.

So my answer is, you want something?  Ask for it.  You want more women presenters?  Volunteer.  That panel is full of men?  Find out who organised it and what you need to do to be on it next year.  It's down to us.  Not to the conference organisers.  Not to some great beneficent them. The responsibility is ours.  But it's better than that - the control is ours.

Only you know what it is you want.  Only you can speak for you.  Not for all women; not for all white/black/purple people; not for all straight/gay/ambivalent folks; not for all geeks.  The question isn't "What do women want?" but "What do you want?".

I think I saw some lightbulbs go off in the audience.  I hope so.  These women were all awesome, they have a lot to share with the world.  We all do, even the tiniest experience, the smallest thing we've learnt is something someone else might not know yet.  Let's get out there and share it.

Video: Why we shouldn't target women

If you have a Parleys subscription, you can watch the whole "Why we shouldn't target women" panel from Devoxx 2011 a month or so ago.  Watch me attempt to monopolise the whole panel as if it was my idea or something...

Interview by the Oracle Technology Network at Devoxx

Tori Wieldt from the Oracle Technology Network interviewed me at Devoxx.  Because I was there to be on the Why We Shouldn't Target Women panel, the interview is just another platform for me to air my views on this subject again.

Yes, I am actually wearing pink....

Why We Shouldn't Target Women

I'm back from Devoxx, having had lots of food for thought.  In particular, my panel on Why We Shouldn't Target Women generated a lot of discussion and I'm still trying to process it all.

Martijn Verburg; Regina ten Bruggencate; Trisha Gee; Antonio Goncalves; Claude Falguière; Kim Ross 

The panel went really well, we got decent interaction from the audience, and of course my fellow panel members were awesome.  I managed to restrain myself from using the opportunity as my own personal soap box and allowed other people to speak occasionally.  Sadly the only male on the panel stole the show somewhat, so Antonio won't be invited in future... Actually in seriousness, it was great to have a guy on the panel to present his point of view.  It was interesting that he's a father, highlighting that parenting issues are not the same as women's issues, and conflating those two concerns hurts both genders. But Antonio's hair is far too shiny and pretty and he's funnier than I am, so I'm not standing next to him again.

I'd love to make a note of all the issues discussed during the hour, but I'll be honest, I was too busy trying not to fall over in my girly six-inch stiletto boots to remember anything that happened.  The video will hopefully be available on Parleys some time in the future, so I will link to it when it's there if it's not too horribly embarrassing.

Someone let me have the microphone again...

One question that came up more than once throughout the week was: IT/programming is not the only industry with a lack of women, why should we care?  Maybe it's just natural?

I think we need to be very careful before writing off such an imbalance as "natural".  We need to make sure first that we aren't discriminating against groups, consciously or through some unnoticed system bias.    And for me, the thing is that we notice that women aren't well represented in technical roles, but we don't necessarily notice the other groups of people who might be being put off for similar (or maybe totally different) reasons.  We can't so easily tell if gays, jews, parents, shy people, folks from poor backgrounds or any other less distinguishable sets of people are finding it hard to make it as a programmer.

We can see the figures for females.  In the UK in 2008:

• 44.7% of people taking ICT (Information and Communications Technology) at GCSE (age 14-16) are girls.  As in many other subjects these days, the girls get better results than the boys.
• 38.6% of kids taking ICT at A Level (16-18) are girls.  Only 9.6% of Computing students are girls. Again, girls outperform the boys in both subjects.
• 19.4% of those studying Computer Science at university are women.  This is down from 24% in 2003.
• Through a not-very-scientific poll of the members of the London Java Community, it looks like approximately 15% of techies in industry are women.  Interestingly, some companies have a much higher proportion than others, but I think that's something to explore another time.

The thing that worries me about these figures are a) the "pipeline" hints at a drop-off in interest in the subject, not a lack of ability, since the girls are doing well tech subjects but choose not to pursue them and b) the numbers are declining in some areas, specifically university applications.  I've read studies that show the percentage of those in technical jobs who are women has been steadily declining since the 80s, but it's difficult to get specific figures, especially as I'm particularly interested in programming / technical roles rather than just the percentage of women "in IT".

If the numbers are declining, that seems like a smell to me.  Not only do we have some sort of image problem which puts people like those who have two X chromosomes off from entering our industry, we're driving them away when they get here.  And I don't believe that's because women find they're not good at it.

Other industries have been successful at attracting a higher proportion of women - for example, in 1950, only 15% of accountants were women.  By 1985 half of all accounting majors were women, and by 1990 the majority of the workforce was female.  It would be nice to think we could learn something from our friends in the Maths world.  After all, the skills are not dissimilar.  But they have a slight advantage over us - in many countries all children are required to study maths until age 16.  However, there are very few 16-year-olds who have any programming experience at all.  Either we need to accept that we're going to have to hire kids with other degrees and train them to be programmers, or we're going to have to do some serious outreach to interest kids in programming and technology long before they start to make their exam choices.  In the UK, they need to choose their GCSE subjects at 14, which means we probably need to be targeting kids as young as 10 or 11.  That's not inconceivable, when you think about it - how many of us were programming in BASIC aged eight or nine?  Could we not teach kids to write an iPhone app or a Facebook app instead?  I was very pleased to hear someone in our audience was teaching their daughter to program.  At an even younger age, the least you can do is buy your kids Lego - I'm sure that exercises the right parts of the brain.

The point is, that I don't think we can conclude that it's "natural" for girls to not be interested in programming.  The first programmer was a woman, and during the war and even into the '60s many programmers were women.  I think that if we can work with schools to provide some tutoring in computing at a younger age we might be able to attract kids who wouldn't have thought about programming as a career choice before.  Some of these may be women, some will not.  That's fine, diversity is our ultimate goal.

Which leads me onto another point - special treatment of women.  I've said it before I'm sure - I think singling out women to attempt to increase their numbers does more harm than good, for a number of reasons: 

1. It makes women think that there must be something wrong in our industry if women need to be treated differently, or mentored differently, or need additional training to get by. Or it makes us think that we really aren't as good as our male counterparts because we're being given special treatment.
2. It builds up resentment amongst our male colleagues, so they soon begin to wonder if we're doing our job because we're good at it, or if we got there because we got lots more help, or because we're there to tick some sort of box
3. It's not solving the problem of lack of overall diversity - where are the programs for people who went to the wrong schools, for those who didn't think about programming as a career, for a million other special interest groups that exist out there?

Some of the ideas that imply special treatment are things like: all women events (you should know by now how I feel about those); free entry to conferences for women; higher pay for women at certain companies.  Although I would benefit from all of these things, I hate them.  I feel like I'm being compensated for this terrible affliction of being born female.

So, what can we do?

• Reach out to those you want speaking at your conferences.  This might include women, it might include people from other "minorities", or it might just be awesome people that you want there making your conference look good.  
• Use these people for marketing and role models - it is indeed possible that if you have some female faces on your conference site and posters, you might attract more women attendees.  Actually, if you have more women role models you might attract more men, but hey, it's all about diversity.
• Buy your kids Lego and teach them programming.
• Treat women in your company like people the same as anyone else.  We were asked about how to deal with a younger female boss.  Kim's answer was perfect: "Like an older, male boss".
• Get involved in mentoring programmes, not just for women but for people of all ages - kids at school, undergraduates, or people who are already in the industry and want to take that next step, for example to speaking at conferences or writing or leading teams or becoming CTO.

Since the panel I've been pointed, numerous times, to this excellent article which talks about racism, sexism, and meritocracies.  I particularly like the line "Explicit diversity programs have the solution exactly backwards".  Well worth a read.

Devoxx: The story so far

Stephan wearing the Brazilian flag at the opening keynote

• European conferences are different (and cool) because you get to hear even more languages spoken than you usually do in London (apparently the most diverse city in the world for spoken languages).  I think the idea of a Paris Devoxx with 75% of the talks in French is brilliant - I'm always banging on about diversity, we shouldn't expect developers to learn in English only.
• Really great to meet up with some of the people I met at Java One and am starting to feel more a part of the global community.
• Seems to me there are slightly more women here than at the other conferences I've been to, and not just because Regina and I pulled together four women for a panel on women technologists.  And once again, a lot of guys asking why this is, because they want things to change.
• A highlight was seeing my namesake, AutoTrish, up on a cinema-sized screen in front of hundreds of people at Dave Farley's Continuous Delivery presentation.
• Building on from my twitter revelation at JAX London, I've found twitter very useful here for messaging people I want to meet up with, but also for chatting to new people and making new friends.  It's not quite as intimate as JAX London though because there are billions more people here, so the chances of actually bumping into the twitter friends is much lower.
• Have had lots of interesting conversations with people about the Open JDK, which I guess is the logical extension of the interesting conversations I had about the JCP In San Francisco.
• A community event like this is different to an event like Java One, because a single organisation isn't calling the shots.  It's interesting (and great) that Oracle and Google can both be here talking about the cool stuff they're up to.

The Diabolical Developer

Conferences are clearly something that appeal to me - I love meeting people and chatting about interesting and (sometimes) intelligent things; I love learning stuff and indexing it away, possibly for future references; I love hanging out with people like the LJC guys (Ben, Martijn and John); I love kicking around ideas of what more we can do at LMAX with our lot (Mike, Dave, Dali).

Dave's Continuous Delivery

I'm really looking forward to my panel this afternoon, I'm going to be ranting about how we target women for tech jobs.  Should be fun.

Nice 'tash!

Shameless plug: Mike and Dali are raising money for men's health with their rather awesome 'tashes.  It took guts to stand up on stage and present with that handlebar, please give a penny or two:

A NYSE Product Manager and an LMAX Developer walk into a low latency trading seminar...

"What... exactly... were you guys looking to get out of today's event? Because..."

"Because we're girls?"

"Um... yes..."

Kim impetuously opts for The Truth: "We're here to meet men."

Our interrogator looks round dubiously.

"No, really, why are you here?"

Phew.  My reputation is intact¹

Kim eloquently describes what her situation is as Product Manager and the criteria she's measuring third party products against.  I explain how LMAX aims to be the fastest retail exchange in the world, and therefore low latency is a tiny bit important to us.  I talk about how we created The Disruptor on our path to achieve that goal.  The guys gathered around us look a little... shell-shocked.

I'm exaggerating for Dramatic Effect.  Before anyone starts getting upset about the only two girls at the event who weren't staff or hospitality being singled out, you have to give the guys credit.  They approached us, engaged us in conversation, and had a very serious question about what we were after, and was there anything the vendor could do to either improve their offering or to make their sales pitch more appealing.

And don't get me wrong - it's brilliant being different in a situation like that, if people are brave / foolish / drunk enough to talk to you.  It beats the hell out of sitting in a corner trying to get up the nerve to speak to Strangers (been there, done that).

But it is quite a contrast, even from the Java events (JAX London, Java One).  There, I was in a select group of people of the female persuasion.  But I was also part of a community, and treated as A Developer.  At very specialised events (low latency, high performance in particular) diversity is almost non-existent.  You can count the number of women on one hand (if you can see any at all) and even the developers wear suits (poor bastards).  However it would probably be better if you could hide your surprise at hearing technical terminology coming out of a woman's mouth.

But... I kinda like it.  Yes, I'm an alien.  Yes, I'm special.  But if it means you make the extra effort to speak to me, I can live with that.


¹ "Extra extra, read all about it! Blogger And International Conference Speaker Only Does It To Meet Boys!"  Not quite Jordan Stalks Rugby Ace For Sperm Donor.  Which I really did see this morning.

EDIT: oh yes, and of course I forgot to plug my panel at Devoxx next week: "Why we shouldn't target women"

More videos from Java One 2011

It must be time for me to move on from talking about Java One, it has dominated my blog of late.  But also I want to talk about JAX London from this week.

But before I move on, it's probably worth rounding off with the last two resources from the conference.

1) Martin Thompson and I are interviewed about the Disruptor winning the Duke Award (we come in halfway through):



2) I'm interviewed by Duchess about life, the universe and everything (well, the London Java Community, the JCP, the LMAX Disruptor and Duke Award, and women programmers).

 

On The Similarities Between Girls And Aliens

I discovered, through the power of the search words that lead to my blog, that there was an incident at JavaOne that once again opens the can of worms that is Sexism In IT.

This Makes Me Sad.  I had a really positive experience at JavaOne.  In fact, I would say it was the one conference I've been to in the last 12 months where I felt like my gender wasn't a problem - I even got away with wearing hotpants (tweed is business-casual, right??) without being mistaken for anything other than a developer.

I know incidents like this cause a lot of tension, and I want to explore why.  Get ready for some gross generalisations: women get upset because they feel they're being marginalised or treated differently; men get upset because they think we're being over-sensitive, especially when the cause is something unintentional.  I sometimes wonder, as I'm sure other people do, if perhaps picking up every incident harms our cause more than advancing it.  But then I feel that the unconscious stuff is exactly the stuff that needs to be pointed out - if you don't realise you're causing a problem, you can't change your behaviour.

So what I wanted to do was... well, what I wanted to do was not rant about gender (again) and be a good little non-gendered programmer.  But then I thought that spreading a bit of understanding might be A Good Thing.  After all, we're all about continuous improvement, right?

I'm sure many people have been one of a minority at some point in their lives (brace yourselves for a litany of stereotyping) - the only man at their daughter's dance recital; the only white guy on a basketball team; the only straight guy in a gay bar (accidents happen!); the only girl on the development team... Speaking for myself, in those situations I'm not actually looking for things which prove that I'm Not One Of Them. I'm sub-consciously seeking reassurance that I'm not an alien, a freak of nature, the odd one out.

I've been in mostly male environments for the last 16 years - this is the norm for me, it's my life.  It freaks me out if I'm surrounded by women actually.  What's jarring and uncomfortable is when the difference of your gender becomes apparent: when all the t-shirts are boy-shaped and boy-sized; when someone makes a joke about "women"; when someone addresses the room with "Gentlemen" - or worse, they try and make up for it: "Gentlemen.  Oh, and Ladies.  Well, Lady <nervous smile>".  Thanks, that doesn't make me feel like an outsider at all.

Something else that really highlights the difference in genders is when you have plenty of women at the conference... but they're not the attendees.  They're manning the booths (marketing/sales or just plain hired "help"), they're taking tickets, they're dishing out the lunches.  In these cases, it becomes normal to assume that "girl" = "staff".  Not guest.  Not equal.

TradeTech was one of the worst examples of this that I've experienced.  Those (wo)manning the booths had been chosen for their aesthetics not their knowledge.  There was even entertainment consisting of scantily clad stilt-walkers - at a financial conference!  I made the mistake of turning up in a skirt - for those who know my dress sense, it was not one of my arse-length ones, it was just above my knees - and everyone assumed I was selling something. I had a job to persuade them that I had actually paid for my ticket.

So.  What am I trying to get at?

• We're not trying to make you uncomfortable when we point out tiny accidental possibly maybe sexist or sexist-seeming comments/incidents.  We're trying to stamp out behaviour that can subconsciously be pushing women (or other minorities/groups) out of our industry.  We like it here, we want to stay, and we want others to join us.
• It's very easy to alienate people who are not 100% comfortable in your environment.  Every time I see t-shirts in boys size only I'm reminded I'm Not One Of You.

...and what can we do?

• Well, the t-shirts is an easy one.  So easy, and so stupid, you might not think it's worthwhile.  Especially as people like me don't even want your free t-shirt.  But I want to feel like you wanted me to want it.  Please stock some skinny-fit tees in multiple sizes, and stock smalls and mediums of the normal shape.  There are guys who would like this too.  Even if you can't get rid of your skinny tees, it will do wonders for your image.
• Never assume your audience is all male.  Never even assume it's "mostly" male.  If your sister/girlfriend/mother/daughter might frown at something you're saying, don't say it.  You'll look like an idiot.  You can assume your audience is all technical, and joke about managers, or is all Java, and take the mickey out of C#.  Don't draw arbitrary battle lines based on gender/race/origin - any jokes should make all the audience feel included, not like specific individuals are excluded.
• There's already been a lot said elsewhere about encouraging women speakers at events.  I'm totally behind this, but it's a fine line because I'm also totally against positive discrimination.  For the purposes of this blog, I would just say make sure you have some women on your speakers list, in the same way you would probably ensure you have a Java 7 talk, or a talk on the shiniest new technology, or other miscellaneous checkboxes you need to tick in order to make your conference a success.
• Not sure what to suggest around many of the girls there being staff... I guess something simple like clear uniforms would stop people assuming female delegates are there to hand out lunch.  And making sure that your staff/helpers/organisers are of both genders too.

If you're interested in this whole topic, or want to tell me I'm wrong to my face, come along my panel at Devoxx - Why We Shouldn't Target Women.

In answer to one of the search terms which led to my blog...

..."what do female programmers look like":

Well, sometimes...

If there are any girl programmers out there who are interested in being part of a montage showing who we are, I'd be dead (see what I did there...?) interested in putting us all on one page.  And not just because I'm narcissistic. Although that helps.

On Changing The Image Of Programmers

Gah!! This is exactly what I was talking about - it's pink, it mentions shoes, and it's about as patronising as you can get.

Would the chart be different if your possible outcomes were Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, and Linus Torvalds?  I bet for a start it wouldn't mention Jimmy Choos or choice of handbags.  And it probably wouldn't be in baby blue either.

Which leads me nicely onto the next subject I have strong opinions on: Role models.  Why do we need them? Do we need them?

If there is any good to be salvaged from that horrific infographic, it's that it gave me what I've been trying to research - some female role models in technology. Unfortunately it hit the other button I was ranting about earlier - they're all very presentable and polished.  I don't doubt their value as role models, it's great to have people like that to try and emulate.  But surely there must be IT women out there who look like real people?  And how many of them started as programmers?  I know there's a wider issue around women in technical professions, and women at the top of organisations in any business domain, but I'm trying to keep focused on the issues faced by girl programmers specifically.

Do we need role models?
I feel almost a responsibility to be a role model.  I joined ThoughtWorks because I felt it would give me a better platform for greater visibility, so I could show that girls could do this job.  I feel passionately that the industry desperately needs excellent role models to overcome the stereotypes kids are absorbing (in our western society) about what it means to be a programmer(/developer/techy).

My friend Mazz feels quite differently.  She doesn't see why she should have a greater responsibility to be a role model simply because of her gender.  It wouldn't be expected of her co-workers.  She suggests that by making a career in programming an option for all, or worse, by targeting specific groups (e.g. women) we're devaluing the industry.  Surely we're stronger if we only attract people who are interested in the first place?

During a week long trip to Vegas (it's a hard life), Mazz and I realised we actually agreed on fundamentals:

• Mazz doesn't believe we need female role models to tempt women into programming
• I believe we need more diverse role models than we currently have.

If Mazz doesn't want to be a role model because she's perfectly happy getting on with doing her job bloody brilliantly, then that's totally cool - after all, if minorities are expected to do stuff which distracts them from their day job, it's going to make them less appealing to employers.

My aim in being a role model was not specifically to get more girls into programming, but to show to the world that we're not all speccy asexual white boys.  Some of us are speccy white girls.  And this shows the ridiculousness of trying to encourage girls to be role models - you've only changed one dimension. And having a token bisexual black disabled older lady is only going to narrow the field you're appealing to.

So what do we need to change?

Back to the question that started this off - "what do we need to do to encourage the girls?".  The answer, it would seem, is not to roll out the girls, dress them up and parade them around.  After all, we got here with no female role models.  And we may very well have been put off by role models like us - a teenage Mazz and a teenage Trish would probably not identify with the heel-wearing blonde I've become, despite my all-round awesomeness.

When I worked at Ford they used to tell us a story about marketing.  They told us that Harley Davidson understood that to market something, you had to market it at the person your customers wanted to be.  A Harley is a statement, a lifestyle choice.  They focused on promoting that lifestyle, promoting the image of the Harley biker, all leather and macho attitude.  They knew that the majority of their customers were CEOs, lawyers, doctors.  Guys who'd made it in life and had the cash to spend. But if they'd marketed Harley Davidson directly to the stereotypes of these guys they would have lost their market.  These men did not buy a Harley as part of their CEO persona.  They bought them because they aspired to be the leather-wearing macho guy.

I don't know how true that story is, but I do know Harley Davidson revitalised their failing business by focusing on creating a community around their brand.

So back to the question: How do we get more girls into programming?

And the answer is: We're asking the wrong question.

The real question is: How do we attract more than just the "typical" geeks into programming?  

And when you ask that question, you realise it's absurd to assume that attractive female role models and women-centered events are going to fix the problem, or even make any significant headway on it.  You're narrowing your field of appeal instead of broadening it.  You're being exclusive instead of inclusive.

Where can we find appropriate role models to represent us?

We have diversity amongst geeks.  We've got diversity along the typical dimensions (age/race/sexuality/gender etc etc).  But in addition we're all individuals and we're going to appeal to other individuals.  I might appeal to someone who likes shoes.  I might appeal to someone who likes photography.  I might appeal to someone who thinks Java developers should give a toss about the user experience.  I might appeal to someone who is massively OCD about the names of their variables.

We shouldn't care what little boxes those people tick on the dimensions that make absolutely no difference to their ability to program.  In fact, if we focus less on this and more on our general awesomeness as geeks, we might find so-called minorities are happier to represent us.

Even with diverse role models we might have trouble getting the media to let go of their stereotype of the geek programming in their bedroom.  But we might not - I did a search for "geek" on The Sun's website, and I found a lot more references to geek chic, and celebrities claiming to be geeks, than to stories of the lonely computer programmer who went crazy and killed everyone.

It is the time of the geek.  Let's ride the wave and bring other people to the party.

So who should our role models be?

Everyone.

All of us.

You.