what are we doing today, brain?

Last week a book was launched called “Tech girls are chic, not just geek“. I haven’t had a chance to read it yet but a friend of mine was one of the authors and it looks really good:

Tech girls are chic, not just geek is a fun new book showing that it takes all types of people to work in Information Technology (IT). Our 16 ‘tech girls’ are women working in a range of technology jobs across Australia. They are a bunch of fun and funky women who find working with technology challenging and interesting, and they are far from fitting the stereotypical ‘geek’ image portrayed by the media. They use their technical and/or non-technical skills (usually a combination of both) to have a successful career in IT.

I think this is very much on the right path of showing different jobs (tech and non-tech), and then getting the books out to schools to help inform girls and hopefully help them not self-select out of ICT jobs to start.

Great job Rebecca! I look forward to reading the book They also got some coverage from Computerworld.

One of the really nice parts of this project is that the book is on sale, and every copy purchased pays for another copy to be donated to a school on top of the 5000 they’ve already pledged to schools. So buy one to help get it out to girls in schools

So today (March the 8th) is International Womens Day, so the Sydney Linuxchix decided to have a hackfest/movie night. It was a fun event with about a dozen women popping in throughout the day, a few short talks about pet projects, some hacking (when our internet wasn’t fluctuating) and then dinner and Office Space, just for a laugh It was a fun and relaxed day.

I’ve spoken to thousands of school kids over the last few years trying to encourage young girls to consider IT as a career choice. Along the way it has become obvious that Gen Y doesn’t really care about IT as a valid career choice generally, not just girls. I’ve come to a few conclusions that I thought might be of interest.

I think there are two parts to the women in IT/FOSS debate specifically:

1) Women already in IT/FOSS
2) Getting more women into FOSS

The former ends up being a matter of support for those that need/like it, and for those that don’t it doesn’t matter. The second issue isn’t one that many women already in FOSS/IT can answer because most of us are not representative of the majority of women due to the interesting filtering mechanism of society and school that for various reasons turns many little girls off IT and therefore off FOSS (in some countries anyway, there are several countries where this isn’t the case).

I do a lot of stuff in category 2, as I’m trying to understand why young people generally are turned off IT and thus FOSS, and I’ve come to the following conclusions:

• Job perception - IT is seen as being anti-social, boring, and something that only “nerdy” boys get into. I always stand in front of these kids and proudly declare I am a geek (which I define as a person who does cool stuff with tech) which blows their minds. A young, extrovert female who loves travelling and trying to help make a better world. I talk to them about the variety of jobs available and about how IT is always changing and fun to get into, which is information they simply aren’t getting from school at the moment. We could all take a little bit of time to talk to schools in our local areas to help the careers advisors, teacher and parents to know more about why IT is an important option for kids to consider
• Role models - there aren’t many female IT role models actively influencing the choices of young women. This also gives young men that come into the industry incorrect assumptions about women in IT, so women being visible is really important for young people in general. Getting more young women and men working in IT out there as role models is important in getting more young people interested in IT across the board
• Active turn-offs - teachers and parents actively tell kids to not go into IT, as they think there aren’t any jobs. I’m not kidding. I think this has even more of an impact on girls as they are more career focused earlier in their school life and thus make subject choices much earlier that takes them away from the possibility of discovering the fun and challenges of IT careers
• Social awareness - kids today are more socially aware than ever before, and they see IT as not a very socially beneficial jobset. This is where I usually bring out the OLPC and talk to them about using technology to improve the world and the lives of millions of underpriveleged people which gets them interested in IT more, and is also a great segway to getting them interested in FOSS

Hopefully that is a useful insight to some of the issues we are facing getting kids and particularly girls in IT today.

The last two weeks have been madness. I’ve been to several events, met some amazing people, travelled a little and had a birthday somewhere in between.

Firstly, I already mentioned the education.au conference, which has now put up all its talks and recordings, the most interesting of which include Robert Cailliau (one of the pioneers of the internet), Leigh Blackall, and Geetha Narayanan (an inspiring Indian woman talking about technology assisting disadvantaged communities). I met some great people and really enjoyed the speakers.

Then I went to the Go Girls event in Melbourne where I gave 6 talks over two days to about 2000 schoolgirls about why IT and FOSS are such great career options. There were some amazing students there who were more socially and environmentally aware than I was at that age. We had 14 yr olds challenging the Coles home shopping initiative as it might “worsen the obesity problem in Australia”, and others questioning the impact of technology on the environment. I had some delightful girls talk to me after my talks wanting to be programmers, games developers, sys admins, and more! I also got to meet some inspiring people including Jane Treadwell, the Victoria Government CIO who was very FOSS saavy and interesting I had a great time and am planning on doing a similar event in Sydney but looking at entire schools (girls, boys, broader age brackets and teachers) and how we can help in looking at IT careers. Anyone interested in this please contact me

Warning, major pink ahead! (Not my fault!)

Yesterday was the first TechGirls event, which is strongly based on the success of events like Go Girls, Gidgits and other events linked from the TechGirls website. We had ~250 girls in the Central Coast with some great speakers, and awesome demo zones. I was looking after a room of girls and ran a Linux gaming demo zone with hardware generously donated by Craige for the day, thanks! The girls loved the games (particularly Super Tux) and I had one girl who came specifically to see Linux come over really excited to see Linux there and keen to get more involved. Awesome stuff!

Every attendee got an Ubuntu CD, and there was information about usergroups, the Australian Development Gateway, FOSS and more on display, as well as the few remaining SFD tshirts, which were all XXXL sized, but still very appreciated

We are looking to run the first such event in Sydney (of such size) mid next year for about 2000-3000 girls. Anyone interesting in helping out or sponsoring, please get in contact with me The current website will be updated with a report soon.

I’ve been speaking about FOSS at a lot of non-FOSS conferences recently, including the Go Girls event in Perth, a few school events, some NGO conferences and to some Universities around NSW. I’ll also soon be speaking at another couple of events aimed at school kids, Software Freedom Day in Sydney and strangely enough at a “telecentre” conference. Apparently a conference about the deployment of telecentres around Australia, a great place to talk about FOSS for sustainable networks

Anyway, I was very pleased to find out that my talk was rated the “most awesome” at the 2006 Go Girls event, as judged by about 2300 school girls. Rock on! Perhaps we’ll have a few more young people getting into FOSS from Perth

If every person in the Australian community did just one outreach project a year, even if it was just installing OpenOffice for someone, then imagine where we can be just a few years from now. In Australia, I estimate we have around 5000 people in our FOSS community (LUGs, developers, sysadmins, advocates, etc). 5000 people influencing 5000 people who in turn talk to their friends about it…. We could probably reach most of Australia in about 5 years if we tried

Mr Laurie said rural women, like their urban counterparts, needed simple pleasures such as going out for coffee and playing tennis together.

Wow, now I know what I’m missing in my life. Obviously not enough coffee and tennis time with the girls! Tee hee hee!

Comment made by the President of the NSW Farmers Association. Thanks Tongmaster for pointing this out. I love it when people demostrate their biases through what they probably think is a perfectly reasonable comment

Earlier this week I spoke at this years e-girls event, a Zonta initiative. It was a lot of fun, and I looked after an awesome group of Yr 10 girls from all around the Armidale region. I spke to them about Linux, networking, community, my experiences in ICT and why ICT jobs are so fun Many thanks to Cherry for organising yet another fantastic event! The girls made logos using gimp and I have to say, my favourite is the butterfly one below

On this topic, I’m in a team putting together a large event for Sydney girls about ICT. We’ll be running the Sydney one next June, and one in the Central Coast this Sept/Oct. Contact me if you want to participate or have any cool ideas for it I have a basic website up which is in the process of development and the organisers’ email is there. Many thanks to Linuxchix Brazil for letting us use Marie, the Linuxchix Brazil mascot!

So over the last few days I have presented about the wide world of IT and in particular FOSS to about 1200 out of ~2400 young women at school. The event was called Go girl, go for IT which admittedly is a bit of a silly name, but the event itself was incredible. Loads of great speakers, heaps of very smart, confident and rocking young women, prizes, a beautiful Ducati motorbike (for show only ) and much more. I think some stats out of this will be great and very interesting.

Every one of these attendees took home a copy of The Open CD, kindly donated by Kevin Russell from Opensource WA which is a great Government project with a demo centre of loads of FOSS as well as doing mini-projects like buses kitted out with computers to help people in rural and remote WA. Every one of these women learnt something about FOSS and why we have all been drawn to the penguin, and hopefully more of them will participate in FOSS andfind out for themselves how wonderful and diverse a world it is

Rock on geek girls, and welcome to the community!