women Archives - Page 20 of 29

Meet Glenda Sims on Ada Lovelace Day

Glenda Sims is a whirlwind of accomplishment in information technology, web education, museum accessibility, web accessibility and web standards. She’s someone who makes things change and gets things done, and the worthy honoree of attention on Ada Lovelance Day.

Ada Lovelace Dayis an international day of blogging (videologging, podcasting, comic drawing etc.) to draw attention to the achievements of women in technology and science.

Take a visual tour through Glenda’s life, from her childhood in Texas to her current position as Senior Systems Analyst in Information Technology Services at the University of Texas at Austin.

Her blog is Oz: the blog of glenda sims (the goodwitch) and she’s @goodwitch on Twitter. The rest of her information is listed at Flavors/goodwitch.

Before we get into the professional activities that made her an Ada Lovelace topic, let Glenda tell you a bit about her personal life.

I’m happily married (20+ years) to the love of my life, Scott. We have two of the most wonderful children on the planet (both boys). I am a native Texan. Born in Houston. Bachelor’s Degrees in Psychology and Business Management from the University of Texas at Austin. Began my career as a human resources professional at UT Austin. Had an opportunity to become a programmer (for Human Resources) so I could automated the tasks that could be done by computers, allowing employees to use their brains for more useful tasks.

I love to read. I’m really into kid-lit and discovering new authors with my youngest son. Last year we had a blast reading almost all of the book son the Texas Blue Bonnet Reading List.

One of my favorite things to do as a kid was to making jumping origami frogs…and yes…I still love to make them.

At UT-Austin, Glenda works on Team Web and help supports the central web site for the University. She is the self-appointed web standards and accessibility advocate at UT. Her work on campus includes museum technology, usability, accessibility and universal design. She’s currently leading the project to redesign UT’s mobile web site.

She works with Knowbility, an accessibility training and advocacy organization based in Austin, Texas. She’s been an accessibility consultant, judge and trainer with Knowbility since 2001. She said,

My dear friends at Knowbility are a huge part of who I am today. Sharron Rush, John Slatin, Jim Thatcher, Jim Allan and the whole accessibility crew in Austin have filled me with the burning desire to make sure that the web is available to everyone, regardless of their disabilities. Knowbility is like family to me.

I know Glenda best through her work with Web Standards Project, the InterAct curriculum, and OWEA (Open Web Education Alliance)—all projects I’m involved with myself. She’s an influential and dynamic leader in these projects and is moving mountains to bring change to web education. I asked her how she got into this area.

My journey into Web Standards started in December 2000 when I asked if I could become the web accessibility expert for UT. I was quickly introduced to Dr. John Slatin, an international accessibility expert and faculty member on our campus. John and I were an incredible force on campus. We shared new techniques, brainstormed creative solutions, developed training classes, policies and guidelines for campus and ran accessibility competitions for our webmasters. We weren’t merely satisfied with teaching the “how” of accessibility…we wanted to build a culture of universal design on campus and created accessibility evangelists. My years working with John were priceless.

John introduced me to Sharron Rush and Knowbility in early 2001. We become the 3 Accessibility Amigos.

In SXSWi 2005, I was preparing to speak on an accessibility panel with James Craig, Ian Lloyd and Derek Featherstone. As we worked on our game plan for the panel, I was introduced to a whole new crew of web and accessibility advocates from the Web Standards Project. As I sat and listened to the vision and plans of the WaSP members I felt deeply inspired to take my work to the next level. Up until 2005 I was focused on making things accessible here in Austin. After SXSW this year I realized that I wanted to act globally as well as locally. I set a personal and private goal for myself. I wanted to become a WaSP.

In 2006 I had an opportunity to volunteer to work on a project that Molly was kick-starting called the WaSP International Liaison Group (ILG). Steph Troeth and I were asked to co-lead this project. I had the honor to work for more than 2 years on this project with an incredible group of web professionals who spent countless volunteer hours spreading the message (and the techniques) for ensuring an open web.

Glenda delights in telling the story of how InterAct and the now-forming Open Web Education Alliance came into being at SXSW in Austin. Here’s how she describes it.

At SXSWi 2008 I met the energetic Aarron Walter at the Red Eye Fly. Aarron had this idea that what the web really needed was a web education curriculum framework. His vision to build this framework as a way for educators, industry professionals and students to build and sustain a living curriculum gave me goosebumps. Within 24 hours of my conversation with Aarron, I was approached by Chris Mills who was already working on a similar and complimentary project (the Opera Web Standards Curriculum). Then Leslie Jensen-Inman and I were having a conversation where she was focused on solving the challenges of teaching the web and preparing students for real-world expectations.

I shook my head and said…”this is the magic of SXSW”…and realized I had to get these three people together. The next round of conversations took place in the middle of a bowling alley (at Geeks Love Bowling) and continued throughout the conference. The result of these conversations (and the hard work of many dedicated individuals can be seen at interact.webstandards.org.

Every time I talk to these people, whether it is in person, Skype or email, I’m filled with energy and excitement of what we can accomplish when we pull together.

In early 2009, John Allsopp was hosting Web Directions North in Denver. John has heard about the InterAct Curriculum and brought many members of the InterAct team together to host a Ed Directions Day in Denver. The synergy that occurred in Denver was off the charts. What happens when you add equal parts of WaSP/InterAct members + Passionate Educators + Web Industry Visionaries + Brilliant W3C Minds? You get the magic we call the Open Web Education Alliance.

A completely different facet of Glenda’s personality is her love for art museums. She said,

I’m deeply and madly in love with art museums. And there is nothing I enjoy more than making museums and their collections accessible. I have had the great honor of working on a number of projects with the Blanton Museum of Art. My favorite project was developing an interactive handheld tour (iTour) for a research project. The research question: Does having access to rich multimedia (on a handheld device) enhance or detract from the experience of exploring a work of art inside a museum gallery. Our research paper is published. The iTour project lead to a string of exciting adventures with Anne Manning, Dan Updegrove and Eric Guaglione.

If you attended SXSW Interactive this year, I hope you ran into Glenda there. She was on a Web Education Rocks panel with the WaSP team. She says,

I have the great fortune of living in Austin where the amazing SXSW Interactive Conference occurs every year. What is SXSWi? It is like spring break for geeks…where geeks come to be with their own and dream beyond the edges of the horizon…and then…filled with some magically SXSW energy…actually turn those dreams into reality. SXSW is nothing short of magical.

She works to make the web accessible and she works to train the future professionals of the web. So, what does she look for in a web page?

There are two types of sites I love: 1)Super useful and usable sites 2)Immersive sites that make me think in an entirely new way.

One of my favorite “super useful” sites is Basecamp. If Basecamp were alive I would want to marry it.

One of my favorite “see things differently sites” is SFMoMA’s Art Scope.

I don’t think I look at websites like normal humans. I tend to turn websites inside, outside, upside down. I’m a big believer in the principles of creating a delightful user experience for the end user.

That is a fitting last comment from Glenda Sims. A big thank you to Glenda for her help and cooperation.

Women at SXSWi

Where are the women in tech? They are at SXSWi.

The South by Southwest Interactive Conference (SXSWi) ongoing in Austin the last few days is famous for several reasons. It’s a gathering place for techies of every stripe, but the techies I want to bring to your attention today are the women. A hallmark characteristic of SXSWi is its equal treatment of women.

There were four keynote speakers. Two were women: danah boyd and Valerie Casey. They talked about privacy and publicity and about the role the interactive community can play in sustainability. Two brilliant and inspiring women giving the important keynote talks this year.

There were some BlogHer faces you might recognize. One panel on 8 Ways to Deal with Bastards featured Karen Walrond, and Catherine Connors (herbadmother) and Susan Wagner were in the audience, as was I.

I randomly ran into fascinating women all the time. I sat down at a table to check my schedule and started chatting with this woman.

She works for Oxfam International and had all sorts of interesting things to say about the work and campaigns that Oxfam is involved with. When I asked her if she knew about Beth Kanter from BlogHer, she was full of praise.

In the Trade Show, there was one tiny booth with no bling and no hoopla. It was a space for Women Techies United and featured information about women2.0, She’s Geeky, Women Who Tech, Girls in Tech, devChix, LinuxChix, NCWIT, Astia, Digital Sistas and the Anita Borg Institute.

This group of Women Techies United threw a small get together during the conference. Some of the action at that event is shown in the accompanying slide show. Each women took the opportunity to tell who she was, what she was interested in, give contact information. The talk veered toward who was willing to speak at those conferences where there is less dedication to making sure women are on the program than you see at SXSW. From there the conversation branched out into all sorts of other interests shared by women.

One of the most informative and helpful panels I attended (and there are plenty of those) was on Black Blogging Rockstars and featured two women, DeDe Sutton and Gina McCauley. I happened to sit next to Skye Kilaen at this panel, who was working on doing tech support for the BlogHer Ad Network while we waited for the panel to start. Just one of many people who snatched moments away from the action at SXSW to do their normal work.

There were many other women at SXSWi, I’ve hardly scratched the surface. I took a lot more photos than these and posted them in a SXSW 2010 set on Flickr or in the previous few days of slideshows. I tried to capture a feeling of what it’s like to attend SXSW with these photos. You may see some familiar faces in the crowds.

Cross posted at BlogHer.

Backchannel thoughts

Women and the backchannel on This is Rachel Andrew talks about the backchannel comments directed at female presenters at the recent 200th Boagworld podcast. A couple of good ideas were proposed to deal with the issues raised.

The chatroom on the Boagworld show was essentially a backchannel, and similar issues have happened in conference backchannels in recent months, I believe this is something that needs to be addressed in two ways. Firstly, the community need to be ready to stamp on this kind of behaviour as soon as it is seen. If you are in a channel that starts to go down this line make sure you are not contributing to it, and speak up against it. Can you help to turn the general mood to something more positive? Or offer constructive criticism? I’m certainly not suggesting we shouldn’t be able to disagree with a female speaker! Quite the opposite, we should be dealing with everyone in exactly the same way, I’m not a fan of positive discrimination either.

Secondly I think there are technical solutions to some of this. If you have a live chat or backchannel, people should not be able to post anonymously, or behind nicknames that do not link back to a real person. As a thought perhaps we could have a system where everyone has to sign in with Facebook Connect? Facebook is about real names, real people. Would yesterday’s commenters have been happy for their comments to go out next to their photo, real name and the company they work for? In a conference situation the organisers usually have all those details, so a system can be created that ensured that comments only go out on a live channel that are identified to individuals. There are some people who will quite happily stand behind unpleasant comments but I would suggest they are far fewer than those who switch personalities when they can hide behind an anonymous nickname.

I think her second idea would create much more success than the first. Everyone already knows they need to behave. The chances of getting them to actually behave are greater when there’s full transparency about who is acting like a juvenile jerk.

The reference to “similar issues” in the quote above refers to a backchannel event that gave danah boyd problems. Since I’m very excited about the fact that she is one of the keynoters at the upcoming SXSW Interactive conference and am really looking forward to her talk, I’ve been wondering about how that will go. Audiences at SXSW have been known to disrupt a keynote in the past using the backchannel. In one case the backchannel ire was directed at a woman. However, men have been on the receiving end of bad mouthing from the backchannel, too.

Twitter lists of Women in Tech

I saw this post on Twiangulate at TechCrunch. Looking at Erick
Schonfeld list of who in tech he triangulates with, it occurred to me that he’s only listening to men in tech.

If the men in tech are only listening to the men in tech, it’s no wonder they can’t find any women in tech when they want to host a conference and need some diversity in the speaker’s roster.

Several people offered up their lists of women in tech (or people in tech) on Twitter. There are women worth listening to on these lists. Check them out.

If you have a good Twitter list with women in tech, please drop it in the comments. Thanks.

Catch me tomorrow on BlogTalkRadio

Tomorrow at 1PM Eastern is the date for the Fem 2.0 Wake Up Campaign on work/life blog radio series program where I’ll be representing the elder blogger community. The program I’m involved in is “Work/Life and Older Americans: Taking Care of Oneself & Others.” The discussion airs at Talk Shoe. Luckily, I’ll be the moderator and will be asking the questions rather than providing expertise on the topic of caregiving.

There are several ways to participate. At Talk Shoe (with a small download readied in advance) you can join in with chat. The Twitter hashtags to get comments and questions noticed are #fem2 and #worklife. Fem2.0 is on Facebook, where you can follow information about the radio programs in the series.

Others taking part in this discussion include host Kim Gandy, Deborah Halpern, Communications Director of National Family Caregivers Association, and Deborah Russell, Director of Workplace Issues of AARP.

The Fem 2.0 series of ten programs covers work life issues from every direction. Check the list of all the programs. The people involved are top notch and the discussions promise to be worth checking out. Take a look.

Fem2.0’s campaign, Wake Up, This Is the Reality!, aims to change the way our society talks about work, to shift the story away from privileged “balance” and corporate perspectives to one that reflects the reality on the ground for millions of Americans and American families. We need this shift if we want policy makers to know how tough it is out here and move them to act on legislation around such issues as paid sick days, healthcare, child and elder care, equal pay, etc.

To achieve this shift, we must be many and we must be LOUD.

If you have some insight to offer on the topic of work/life and older Americans you can participate in the blog radio event at Talk Shoe where you can submit comments and questions. After the blog radio programs in the series are finished, there will be a blog carnival where posts from individual blogs can be submitted to Fem 2.0 for the carnival.

Useful Links: Microformats, HTML5 Mess, gender issues, accessibility conference, CSS spirites, Twitter in class

Microformats Workshop is the slides by Emily Lewis from the Workshop Summits event. Outstanding presentation, excellent slides.

SitePoint Podcast #44: HTML5 is a (Beautiful) Mess is a discussion about HTML5 and related issues among Sitepoint’s Kevin Yank, Opera Software’s Bruce Lawson, author Ian Lloyd, and Kyle Weems of the CSSquirrel web comic.

whose voice do you hear? gender issues and success from apophenia is a response to Clay Shirky’s Rant About Women. Read the rant and all the comments before you read what apophenia said.

California Web Accessibility Conference in February is a Knowbility event. That means it will provide you with the best possible accessibility training available anywhere.

CSS Sprites is an online app that will take your images and generate a sprite and the code to make it work. Nice time saver.

Using Twitter to Facilitate Classroom Discussion is about a history class. How could it be used in a web dev or web design class?

Useful Links: Making money, tweethearts, woman domesticated

Your dream is under attack from Copyblogger talks about making money online. It relates what I talked about in this post: The Value of an Affiliate Link.

Are women running the Twitterverse? It’s men’s names we see on the “people you need to follow” lists. But Vanity Fair says America’s Tweethearts are really the big news.

Woman Domesticated at the Onion is, well, a piece from the Onion. But compare the photo in Vanity Fair with the photo in the Onion. Once the ladies get their own trench coats, they aren’t ever going to return.