Dori Smith contacted me recently about appearing in a panel she is putting together for the SXSW Interactive Conference in March, 2006. The panel topic is about the issue of the comparative invisibility of women in the web design field.
If it didn’t take 15 minutes to read aloud, I’d like to read The Great Silent Grandmother Gathering to the people attending the panel. Not because the book has anything at all to do with web design. It doesn’t. Because the book has a lot to do with the way women think and accomplish things. In this children’s story, a couple of grandmothers standing silently in a park say they are saving the world. Soon other women are standing silently in parks to save the world. Their silence creates change that leads to hope and a better world.
I think a lot of women who run web design companies, write web design books, and host helpful web sites are like these silent grandmothers. They are doing what they are doing without any ado or noise, but the result is change for the better.
Alas, I won’t be reading it aloud at SXSW. But I urge you to check it out anyway and see what it has to say about women’s ways of doing.