Ada Lovelace Day Today
March 24, 2009 at 3:50 pm
Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology.
The post below is a bit negative and unsupportive of the cause. If you’d like to read someone else’s thoughts who really gets it, then click on over here to Ireland’s Favourite Grannymar!
Ada Lovelace was the founder of modern computing, along with Charles Babbage. She was the only daughter of the poet, Lord Byron, and was born on 10 December 1815. A month after she was born, her mother moved back to her parents home. It seems that the great Lord Byron was disappointed that his ‘glorious boy’ was a girl. It’s a pity that he didn’t know that the sex of his child is all his own doing and not the fault of the mother.
Lovelace met and corresponded with Charles Babbage and during a nine-month period in 1842–43, Lovelace translated Italian mathematician Luigi Menabrea’s memoir on Babbage’s newest proposed machine, the Analytical Engine. With the article, she appended a set of notes. The notes are longer than the memoir itself and include in complete detail a method for calculating Bernoulli numbers with the Engine, recognised by historians as the world’s first computer programme.
She died at the age of 36, was famous as a traveler in the Middle East and some have claimed her to have been a bit of a party-er with a reputation for drinking, gambling and scandal. I think I’d really like to have been her friend.
Ada Lovelace Day Today
Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology. Wanting to play my part, I was all set to write about women who excel in technology, but I ran into problems. I think my definition of technology is too limiting. I was trying to think of women who have come up with things that have set the world on fire in terms of hard core tech – code-crunching stuff. Not designers. Not bloggers. Or digital evangelistas. Or super project managers. Or amazing all-rounders. Thinkers. Creators. Innovators. I can list a whole lot of them for Ireland alone, but I can’t come up with a single Female Technologist – in the definition I have in my head of it.
Bill Gates. Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Steve Jobs.
Michael Dell. Jeff Bezos. Jerry Yang.
These are all men. Men who have created technology that has changed lives.
What are there no women there?
Why wasn’t Google started up by two girl maths geniuses out on a college campus? There’s no denying that girls are outperforming boys in schools. So why is it that they are not as visible as they should be? Is it because the girl maths geniuses are out doing other things and have more balanced lives? Is it because society breeds women to not have the combination of talent and ballsy-ness that is required of successful entrepreneurs?
I’ve said it once and I”ll say it again – I don’t understand how so few women work in the web.
It’s an area that lends itself to all types of skills and offers a high degree of flexibility. It offers careers for those who are design oriented, writers, programmers, problem solvers. Maybe it’s because it’s not seen by young women to be sexy? If you’re a great organiser, maybe it’s more exciting to work in Events than the Web. If you’re a writer, you might aspire to being a journalist or a PR press release writer and get to go to lots of new product launches… than being someone who writes for the web. I don’t know. If you have answers, please share them with me.
In the meantime, I’d like to share three things with you:
- This year, the leaders of the G20 countries are making a plan to fix the economic crisis. We20 is a new social networking site that helps you meet, in groups of up to 20 people, to make your own plan. Something most definitely for the women. Because we all know that when we want to make something happenm, you get a woman on the case! Now’s your chance to change the world here.
- Tonight a splinter group of the Girl Geek Dinners are meeting for drinks in the Long Stone pub in Dublin. If you’re knocking about town around 7pm and you fancy meeting some like minded souls, get on down!
- Girl Geek Day is happening this Saturday in Dublin. It’s the first time it’s happening and it looks like it’s going to be great. Kind of like Barcamps in style, but only for girl geeks – get down with the sisters, support, give a demo, do something. And of course, enjoy!
Tags: Ada Lovelace Day, girl geek day dublin, We20
Comments (9 responses)
Fair play for managing to write a post for Ada Lovelace day. I’d been trying to think of something to say, but like you, kept getting bogged down wondering why there are so few women in the field. Just wondering if you’ve had any negative comments about the Girl Geek Dinners from men? I’m a little tired of hearing ‘oh THOSE dinners. Yes well I’m not sure I agree with women having events on their own. I don’t quite get the point’ (from both men and women).
What about Marissa Mayer? would she not fit the bill? responsible for developing and releasing products that change lives?
@michelle – Interestingly and perhaps typically, the only negative comment I’ve ever heard was from someone who attended both Dublin Girl Geek Dinners herself and yet made some remarks about them being ‘male bashing sessions’ – when clearly they are not.
@stewart – Spot on! She’s the head of product development at Google. Super cool. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marissa_Mayer
Maybe it’s a Northern thing then, but I’ve had to explain the reasoning behind GGDs a few times, when I’m not even sure of why they’re happening or why I’m there beyond it’s great to get together and talk tech. Here’s a Guy blog on GGD and women in technology…I half wrote a post in response, but somehow lacked the energy to get through it.
http://www.thehodge.co.uk/random-musings/rants/women-in-technology-events.php
@michelle – Hhm, sifting through yer man’s negativity about the whole thing, I did manage to pick up a positive action statement:
Go into schools and say “hands up who uses myspace (or facebook)” who wants to make there own? in a few lessons they can be posting and receiving from databases and the creativity will bloom…
Why not? I’m going to propose that GGD create a group who make themselves available to go into schools – and show the girls (and boys) just how cool and chic a girl geek can be.
Nice one! Expect more thought out musings on it the day after tomorrow.
Thanks for the link Maryrose.
Enjoy this evening and have one for me. I hope Girl Geek day goes well.
Great idea – you should meet up with the unis about this – I was chatting to a lecturer friend of mine at the weekend, and he said they’re organising groups to go into schools up here in the North to promote people to go into engineering (which includes software engineering) – might be more effective for them to go in with a group of GG in the business than just (mostly male) academics!
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http://thenextwomen.com/2009/03/24/thenextwomen-launches-female-heroes-database/
Database of female Internet heroes compiled by The Next Women team.
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