Conference 4 entries Tag Page

Today I am giving a talk about women in technology. This is something I’ve been preparing for since I first learnt Basic at age 13 on a Commodore 64. I’ve had several amazing men encourage me in this field and even in the age of feminism and women’s rights, there is still a lot of speculation and discussion around women equality in technical and scientific fields.

As one of only two women in my Graduate program at Western Oregon where I studied computer science, the idea that more women weren’t in the undergrad or graduate program boggled me. At the same time, however, I struggled with things like Java and building Server Sockets until I would vision jamming a knife under my large toenail as more enjoyable.

My Professor at one point noted, “You can get 100% of the logic on the quiz but you don’t know your ass from a hole in the ground when it comes to the syntax.”

I preferred to study PHP, which seemed to make more sense to me than Java. I pursued Python and Ruby and HTML/CSS instead of the huge, monolithic class structure of Java. Networking, routers, the IP stack; these are all things I found intuitive and interesting whereas the standard course for most computer science majors was the single hardest program for me to learn.

I figured I was not alone in this. I submitted a dissertation proposal in the winter of 2004, which was accepted at Oregon State University, and excitedly planned the research for my doctoral degree on women retention rates of undergraduates in the computer science departments and the correlation of programming languages taught.

It wasn’t what they were expecting. I called it the Oatmeal Raisin Cookie talk. I baked in a discussion about gender equality within the title “Creative Development.” I think someone in the second row rolled their eyes.

It was probably the 8th or 9th time I’ve been on stage. It’s always so hard to begin the speech you’ve been feverishly obsessing over. The last nine months, since Low asked if I’d speak, were filled of notebooks and research and outlines and more outlines. I was a proper freak stopping a TED talk or an audiobook to jot down a point I wanted to expand on or integrate in my talk. I spent more than a few meetings scribbling notes to myself in Evernote, only partially related to the meeting topic but relevant to a future conversation I would have with myself first, and an audience second.

After a few hiccups and akward moments, it began to flow. Stats, Stories, Ideas. Youtube excerpts. Comics. Scientists. I knew all the content, I just wanted to nail the delivery.

Perhaps I didn’t “nail” it, exactly.  It felt more like a piece of art hung on the wall with a sticky hook, but it was well received. I was so wrapped up in my own nerves that it wasn’t until the fourth or fifth man that approached me for advice when I realized something shifted: They were asking about their girlfriends, wives, daughters, employees. They wanted to support their female companions, they just didn’t know how.

It was a quest of mine to have the new version (vs 9.11) of this website done before I posted my slides. My plan was to integrate HTML5, CSS3 and some Major (echo: MAJOR MAJOR) Cool (echo: COOL COOL) Scripts! (echo: SCRIPTS SCRIPTS).

Instead you just get my slides. Bah.

The intent of my talk was to focus on those people who administer the websites we build. So much of our time/energy is focused on the front-end development and user strategy but how often do we go through the same process on the back-end? Our administrators often want a site that’s easy to manage, easy to update and even easier to train other people on. We use ExpressionEngine for that very reason: It gives us a flexible tool to build a site around and an easy management area for our clients to take over. And while EE is great at what it does, it can be overly robust, and thus intimidating, for some of our more inexperienced users.

I presented four real-world experiences in which I’ve utilized add-ons to make the back-end more user-friendly while solving some difficult requests. The end result is a happy client and a fantastic frame of knowledge to continue building upon for those strange requests of “Can We Just….”

I hope you enjoy the presentation in PDF format. If you’d like to see the entire workshop as well as the conference, you can purchase the DVD for sale here.