What is Ada Lovelace Day?

Ada Lovelace Day is 24th March and to quote from the site is: “an international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology.”

Why Amy?

Amy was a hero(ine) of mine long before Ada Lovelace Day and it’s important for me to say that her being female is inconsequential of this status I give her (but it helps for the purpose of this post).

I first found Amy probably just about when I was learning Rails when I stumbled across her site. Here I found a wealth of information not only on Rails but JavaScript and web design, amongst other things. Amy has an amazing talent for explaining things and her in-depth and engaging articles certainly helped make my journey to Rails a smooth and fun one.

Another thing I noticed about Amy is her brilliance for both development and design. These together are a pretty rare quality, but she excels at both. Amy is also a successful business person at the age of 23(ish?) and also regularly speaks at major conferences. Amy’s services to the community are astounding.

One last thing. I have huge admiration for her attitude to the whole “Women in Technology” thingo. I particularly enjoyed her “I don’t like Articles about Women in Technology” article, I think mainly because it reflected my feelings on the topic at the time. I haven’t seen my gender as an issue, as I assume (rightly or wrongly), neither have others. Amy states her success as being down to her taking responsibility for herself:

So I may be very good at what I do, and I may be financially and professionally successful, but it’s not because I’ve got some special talent. At the end of the day, what I’m really good at is taking responsibility for myself, and all the rest has come from that. And none of it has anything to do with the fact that I was born a girl.

Why the Silence?

This only came to me last night, but I think I’ve worked it out. I think I dislike talking about “Women in Technology” because it makes me feel uncomfortable; because I don’t like to see myself as any different to anyone else and just a mere mention of the topic instantly reminds me that people may indeed see/ treat me differently in my job because I am a woman or may have done so in the past. I don’t really like thinking about that and I’ve done a good job of sweeping anything of that type under the carpet in the past and generally sticking my fingers in my ears and going “la la la la”.

I now realise that this is probably why I was initially uncomfortable with the “Girl Geek Dinner” concept - a seemingly girl-biased event to me only served to highlight the fact that we are different and that’s the very thing I thought we should moving away from if we were going to be seen as equals in this profession. But as John Leach put so well (please read the rest of his article too):

You only have to see the turnout of women at Leeds Geek Girl dinners compared to the turnout of women at Leeds Geekup to know there is a demand for these women-friendly events. For whatever reasons, some women are more likely to go an explicitly women-friendly geek event than another random geek event. Of course women should be encouraged to come to all events, but not all events are equally friendly to women, and it’s often difficult to assess how friendly they are from outside.

Next up for my realisations was “it’s not all about me“. Even though I follow Amy’s mantra that people should take responsibility for themselves, I can’t help thinking that I’ve been very lucky in the people I’ve worked with and the opportunities I’ve had. Just because I am ok and see no direct problems does not mean that there aren’t any and it would probably be rather self-centered of me to carry on thinking like that.

These probably don’t sound like big revelations to most, but I feel like this post has been a starting point for me to step out of my comfort zone and at least start thinking and talking about the Women in Technology topic some more, and thank you to Ada and Amy, and my other heros of the day Lorna Jane and Linda Broughton for opening my mind to the topic.

Your friendly host for the evening will be Mr Dom ‘The Hodge’ Hodgson who will be providing us with an evening of Powerpoint Karaoke fun!

Lucy Wurstlin will also be telling us all about 4iP

… a big thanks to everyone involved! If you’re interested in speaking or helping out at a future GeekUp Leeds, do get in touch!

Do tell us if you’re coming

Details:

• When: 6:00 PM Wednesday 18th March, 2009 (Talks start at 7:00PM)
• Where: The Lounge, St. Johns House, Merrion St, Leeds LS2 8JE
• Photo of the the Lounge
• GeekUp web site
• 20:20 presentation format

This month we are lucky enough to have three talks lined up:

• SSD - is it for me? - Tom Hall
• Linux-Fu for PHP Developers - Lorna Mitchell
• The history of Leeds: what every geek should know - Matt Edgar

… a big thanks to all our speakers! if you’re interested in speaking at a future GeekUp Leeds, do get in touch!

Do tell us if you’re coming

Details:

• When: 6:00 PM Wednesday 18th February, 2009 (Talks start at 7:00PM)
• Where: The Lounge, St. Johns House, Merrion St, Leeds LS2 8JE
• Photo of the the Lounge
• GeekUp web site
• 20:20 presentation format

Head over to the Courthouse in Otley on Thurs 12th Feb for “a fast and furious fun evening of science talks”. Each speaker gets 20 slides with 20 seconds a slide (total 6 minutes 40 seconds) to expound their theme, followed by a brief question and answer session, before the speakers circulate and are available to chat to everyone

We have 3 exciting speakers lined up for you:
* ‘The weekend effect’ - Professor Piers Forster from Leeds University, an expert on climate change
* ‘Dark matter and dark energy’ - Physicist David Jenkins, York University
* ‘Is innovation “Hip” ‘ - Todd Stewart, Senior Lecturer in Medical Engineering at Leeds University and an expert on joint replacement

The event kicks off at 7:30pm and there will be a bar!

Tickets available from Otley Courthouse in person, online from http://www.otleycourthouse.org.uk (note you have to pay a £2 transaction fee) and on the door, price £4/£3 concession.

The Courthouse is a fully accessible building, with free evening parking in car park next to the venue.

Otley Courthouse, Courthouse Street, Otley, Leeds, England LS21 3AN

This month after all the festive cheer, we’re back to our regular format of beer and 20:20s. We have two talks lined up:

• “How to PR yourself - online and offline” - Richard Hamer
• “How many geeks does it take to paint the matrix?: my personal experience of creativity and computing” - Helen Harrop

… and a big thanks to Helen for stepping in at the last minute!

Do tell us if you’re coming

Details:

• When: 6:00 PM Wednesday 21st January, 2009 (Talks start at 7:00PM)
• Where: The Lounge, St. Johns House, Merrion St, Leeds LS2 8JE
• Photo of the the Lounge
• GeekUp web site
• 20:20 presentation format

• I once worked a whole summer in a battery chicken farm in Shropshire, my job was to pass very ill chickens, by their legs, upside down, 5 in each hand, down a human chain to a van, to be taken to be slaughtered. I haven’t eaten chicken since (and Hugh’s Chicken Run was nothing compared to what actually goes on).
• Most people in my family are giants in comparison to my mere 5ft 6 existance, apart from my nan who is 5ft 3. Some of my friends call my Dad the BFG (although he doesn’t know this, I don’t think, but I’m sure he won’t mind because it stands for “Big Friendly Giant”) and my Dad calls me shorty (as does Rob now).
• I like cheese, lots. My favorite snack is called “cheese on a plate” which is sliced Cheshire or Wensleydale arranged on a plate and microwaved for 2 minutes, served with tomato ketchup and 2 slices of white bread.
• We, like Lorna & her chap, live in a 100+ year old house over 4 floors with 4 bedrooms. We’ve lived there for 8+ years now and in that time the house has been re-wired, new heating installed, new kitchen, new bathroom, new plaster, new flooring, complete redecoration. Now it’s roughly about time to start again or move, which we tried last year but failed 2 days before the move (having sold the sofas and packed everything up).
• I went to a Catholic all girls school (also like Lorna, damnit). I am now naturally quite weary of girls & Catholicism but wondering if I like techie stuff more because of the girls only bit. Most techie girls I have met went to a girls school (really).
• I’m from a family of hauliers, and when Rob and I got married last year, I got driven to the venue by my Dad in a Bassett’s truck.
• I’m from a town called Stone in Staffordshire and now live in a town called Otley in West Yorkshire. I noticed recently that the town I live in now is pretty much demographically the same as the one I moved from but 100 miles north.

So alls that is left for me to do now is to annoytag a few people. I pick: Nige, Josie, Richard, Jag, Heva, Paul & Ross

So the rules are:

• Link your original tagger(s), and list these rules on your blog.
• Share seven facts about yourself in the post - some random, some wierd.
• Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
• Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs and/or Twitter.

Here’s some background: a couple of weeks ago, I decided it would be quite cool to make a cardboard Christmas tree out of a very large cardboard box we had left over after buying a new mattress for our bed. The idea appealed for a few reasons:

• we had a big box and it seemed a waste to take it to the tip
• going out to fetch a real tree also seemed wasteful: a waste of petrol, time and also not forgetting it being a total waste of tree
• I couldn’t face hoovering up pine needles daily
• Richard Garside & I have a related ongoing project called “Cardboard Laptop Stand” (watch this space) so making cardboard versions of things tends to seep into my mind quite readily

It took about 3 hours to make the tree, and I felt super victorious after it’s construction was complete.
Stuff you need to make your own:

• a very large cardboard box
• a very sharp Stanley / craft knife and cutting board
• a metal edged ruler
• a diagram of the shape of your tree
• a pen
• lots of floor space
• hair grips to secure your decorations, although they mostly stay on on their own

As I was making the tree, I took photos of each step and uploaded them to Flickr, with annotations - essentially forming step-by-step instructions on how to build your very own Cardboard Christmas Tree

• Flickr set showing how to build your own Cardboard Christmas Tree

This month is mostly about beer but we’re also going to have a “Makes” show and tell i.e. bring along something you’ve made to chat about - techy or non-techy, food or non-foody

Some examples: A website you’ve built, a woolly hat you’ve knitted, an iPhone app you’ve made, chillis you’ve grown, an Arduino powered greenhouse watering system you’ve built, a cake you’ve baked, a ruby gem you’ve written, photograph’s you’ve taken…

Do tell us if you’re coming

Details:

• When: 6:00 PM Wednesday 17th December, 2008 (Talks start at 7:00PM)
• Where: The Lounge, St. Johns House, Merrion St, Leeds LS2 8JE
• Photo of the the Lounge
• GeekUp web site
• 20:20 presentation format

Your friendly host for the evening will be Mr Tim Waters (aka Chippy) who will be facilitating a Geeky Quiz (QuizUp?)! There will be 3 rounds with 30 questions in total:

Round 1. General geekness
Round 2. Techy questions
Round 3. Internet memes

There’s been rumor of 20:20 presentations from The Hodge on “Search Like A Superstar” and Helen Harrop on “Creativity and Computing” if she can make it…

Which still means we’re looking for volunteers for presentations as they are not confirmed! Please get in touch if you’re interested in talking!

Rob and I unfortunately can’t make it as we’ve both committed to help out at the 20 x 20 Science Cafe at the Otley Science Festival where Rob will be predicting the Future of the Internet!!!!!

Big thanks to Tim for taking on GeekUp this month, I’m gutted to be missing the quiz!

Do tell us if you’re coming

Details:

• When: 6:00 PM Wednesday 19th November, 2008 (Talks start at 7:00PM)
• Where: The Lounge, St. Johns House, Merrion St, Leeds LS2 8JE
• Photo of the the Lounge
• GeekUp web site
• 20:20 presentation format

It’s that GeekUp time again so wander down to the Lounge on Wednesday night for your monthly dose of geeky beery fun. This month we have two 20:20 presentations lined up:

• Rahoul Baruah (aka Baz) on “Telling Stories with RSpec”
• Jonathan Powell (aka Squiggle) on “No Nonsense Development”

Do tell us if you’re coming

Details:

• When: 6:00 PM Wednesday 15th October, 2008 (Talks start at 7:00PM)
• Where: The Lounge, St. Johns House, Merrion St, Leeds LS2 8JE
• Photo of the the Lounge
• GeekUp web site
• 20:20 presentation format