Trisha's Ramblings

New Blog Post: Being a cyclist IS a lot like being a woman.  But… 

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 l...

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 an...

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 c...

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).

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 nex...

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 w...

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 ...

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...

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....

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 ...

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 Deli...

"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 intact 1 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, engag...

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).  

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 t...

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