Women & Technology
I haven't been blogging recently as I have some big changes going on in my professional life. I sorta without direction at the moment (which is okay (for the moment)) and, as a result, I've been taking a short-lived break from cutting edge technology (although I plan to take some time today to install ORCAS and use VSTO workflow functionality to see what's there) while I figure out exactly what it is I want to be when I grow up. In my hiatus I was reading through the news which I never get to do and came across this MSN article about female bloggers being targeted with vicious and threatening comments. One of the author's statements is that being a woman, especially a well-respected, driven woman, in technology can open the door for this kind of hatred.
I've never seen it. Believe me, I'm quite sure there are some choice comments about my female attributes, my female personality or whatever which are made while I'm not in the room. In fact, one time, at a conference, I had been talking to three men, they walked out of the room, unaware that I followed shortly after and I overhead them making a comment about me. I decided to just embarrass them instead of ignore it and called them out on it... I saw some beet red faces in that moment.
But I've never felt or heard any disdain, doubt or really anything I would consider discrimination from the men in this field. Maybe it's the Office Development community that is more enlightened, less threatened (afterall, we've all dealt with the fact that we weren't "real programmers" until recent times)... or, maybe, I'm just too indifferent to notice (this is the case with other things in life, I simply don't pay attention and so it goes unnoticed, like one time at a female gathering I apparently didn't notice that I somehow pissed all the other women off). Often at conferences I see the "Women & Technology" forum, roundtable or lunch session... I've never attended one. I've never felt the need or reason to find the few other women in this industry and "bond" or "talk" about what it is like to be a woman in technology because, well, I guess I rarely feel like a woman in technology or, rather, that there is any distinction.
I wonder if my paycheck is less than yours? :)
Fresh technical blogging about:
- Installing Orcas
- Installing VSTO on Orcas
- VSTO Orcas features
- Sharepoint Architecture & Design (which I've decided I truly, truly love... I don't want to be a programmer anymore... I want to do design... I have been working on a large design for the past two months and I really love the process)
- Sharepoint Workflow Versioning (well, lack of versioning if you ask me)