Earlier this week, I posted Women in Tech: Can You Help Find a Few Good Men? In that post, I suggested that perhaps we should offer praise to the men and events in tech that treat women as equals and with respect instead of pointing the finger of blame at the men and events in tech who treat women as unworthy or only for sexual objectification or exploitation.
I offered to start a new site and manage it once it was running to keep track of the outpouring of praise that I envisioned. After all, I knew it could be done because I could offer names and events where women were given equal opportunity to be tech stars.
Well. Days have passed. And there’s been no outpouring of praise or offers to submit praise. One commenter here, Ashe Dryden, said she’d be willing to pass along stories from her conference travels. One Twitter friend, @cdharrison, said he knew a praiseworthy tech dude and would be willing to write about him. That’s the grand total of people who are willing to praise the men and events in tech.
Okay, I exaggerated with that last sentence. I’m sure there are more than two people who could find something good to say about something or someone. But I didn’t hear from them. That convinces me that a new site dedicated to pointing out the good guys and the women-friendly events isn’t feasible.
Here’s what I suggest as an alternative. I create a category here on this blog called something like “Good Guys in Tech” (feel free to offer a better category name). If someone sends me a paragraph or two, tweets me an image from an event, or in some way lets me know about the dude or the happening that is worth praise, I’ll post it here and put it in that blog category.
Could I have some feedback on this, please? Will there be participation?
As an Agile project manager, the majority of the developers that I work with are male. All with varying levels & flavours of their experience with Agile as it relates to a company or project. The team I was managing for this particular company were considered to be some of the most senior developers responsible for the foundation of the platform. Each with their own beliefs, attitudes and goals . My challenge was about demonstrating how Agile could benefit a skeptical group of developers. To do that I needed support. Luckily, Peter Seewald was able to help translate between myself & the developers. He helped explain to the group the reason behind using points to track work, the need to enter time spent on a particular task & he also showed enthusiasm for our daily scrums. I believe that the support of a male developer made my job & in the end the whole team a success.
Jackie, thank you so much for your comment. And a big +1 to Peter Seewald!