Musings from the First Week

In switching jobs, I knew there would be a few things that would strike me as odd, at first. Here are a handful of musings from the first week.

"Holy crap there are women in the women's restroom"
I mean... this pretty much sums it up. I went from a workplace where maybe 1/3 of the office was women (and the last client team was me and 10 guys) to a predominantly female environment.

"Part of the executive team"
That's new.

Doulas
So if you don't know what a Doula is, you should read about it here.  I think I was first introduced to the concept at CHI a few years ago where my conference roommate had done some work in India with encouraging (basically) doulas to use technology for childbirth training and awareness in rural villages. It was a very cool project (leveraging technology as well and women empowerment and addressing health issues, stigmas, and education).

It's interesting though, because in a lot of cases, the concept of Doulas is one that is often associated with upper middle class women being hippies (being able to afford to have someone there for you through Childbirth that isn't a medical professional and often associated with "non-traditional" home births, etc. In the case of the work that Ounce of Prevention does,  the Doula serves as the one person that is for sure there for you throughout the pregnancy and childbirth - for a lot of the women, the father is not in the picture and they don't have family to rely on, so the Doula is really the one dependable and knowledgeable person they have access to.

I get a desk to decorate
Coming from the consulting world where you are either at the client site or in a "hoteling" situation at the home office, it's pretty cool to have a desk that is mine that I can set up!

Emotional Intelligence
Several of our talks the first couple of days were preparing for interviews. It's definitely cool to be in a situation where we're talking about emotional intelligence as important - in purely technical worlds EI is something that may or may not be considered depending on the company, the culture, and the position. In the case of a non-profit where even IT should be focused on some amount of relationship building, EI is pretty important. It's cool to be on that side of the interviews, as I always felt EI was one of my strengths in the "tech world". The consulting way of the interview world was "How would you feel being stuck in an airport with them for 4 hours".

People Profiles
Lack of people profiles makes joining a company really weird (without being able to look up info on people that send you emails to get a face with the name or their role).

Client Gigs
So, as a consultant, you really only believe a project is going to come through when you're on the airplane there. After 2.5 days of work (and going back tomorrow!) you better believe I'm on the airplane there.

What will take a while to get used to, though, is breaking the consulting mindset of "us" and "them". There is no more "Here's how we can help you". It's "here's what I think is best for US". I can already tell it's going to take a while to break the mental model that I'm not just there for 3-12 months and that this is more than just a client gig. I can't tell yet if that will be really exciting or if it will be panic inducing, but I know the day that it occurs to me that this is my job for the forseeable future may be an interesting one.

Serendipity, Chance, What Have You.

So... I may move this blog to Wordpress. We'll see how it goes. Wordpress has a better WYSIWYG interface and some interesting stats, in addition to being able to publicize directly for Twitter. For now, I'm too lazy (read: I have a lot going on and you're lucky to get a blog post) to configure Wordpress to be "pretty", so we'll stay here for the moment (and having historical blog posts is pretty cool).  

On Serendipity 
So one of notable trends from GHC was something to the effect of "Men tend to overestimate their accomplishments and Women tend to underestimate their accomplishments".

This was reflective in undergrad too, where the talk was always how Freshmen hit their first C or D and the men go "Well the professor sucks" and the women go "Gee, I suck" and then drop out of Engineering (coming from High school students that typically got A's".

It's worth noting here that my entire life, I've been "one of the guys" - to the extent that when I was 4 my play group was me and 4 guys. Elementary school I was Captain of the academic team... for 4 boys, and one of their fathers stuck up for me 3 years later when we had a reunion and one of them tried to take the captain seat. (There's something to be said for having sponsors/allies/mentors male or female to stick up for you, and the "female" role of captain to sort out the boys' macho tendencies). It's also worth noting that because I was used to this "boy's world" environment, when I started college - I wasn't terribly inclined to seek out the women's groups. I didn't really see it as a support group I needed. By the time I was a senior, I saw the importance of mentoring younger women. As the ranks thinned out over 4 years of Tech Consulting, it definitely became apparent that having females with differing paths through the ranks was important.

So, there's now. I just took a position as IT Manager (more notes on that, and the transition, to follow). In my own experience, I always considered that I had a path I was following, but I had a willingness to jump through an open door when it presented itself to me, and waver from that path when such an opportunity would show up. That being said, I had to work really hard to get to the point that doors would open... but the actual opening of doors always seemed like "the right place at the right time" or somewhat serendipitous. I think this is the big difference - when it comes down to it, the Resume Titles are somewhat lucky, serendipitous, or somewhat by chance... but the content under the title is my own hard work, and the content under the last job was my own hard work that made it possible for me to be qualified for the next piece of work. So that's the long explanation, but the short answer would be "I was lucky" or "Serendipity" even though the root cause was probably "I worked hard" or "I'm a badass". Most guys would tend towards "I worked hard".

An exploration of my new job, and how I ended up there:
- I made connections from my previous job (successful networking)
- I was passionate about non-profit work
- I happened to reach out to contacts from previous job at a time where they were looking to hire, and a job was presented that would not have shown up in my job search (looking for the ambiguous "science diversity STEM outreach" job, and instead ended in "Totally leveraging your skill set non profit awesomeness"
- Family history of early childhood education involvement that made it especially intriguing
- I was successful at my previous job. Nay, I rocked out at my previous job.

That being said, rocking out at my job alone would not have led me to the place I am now - there's a huge amount of "right place, right time, right phone call, right person, overall serendipity" that went in to this. I feel like that's what tends to be the female experience - while you might be a rockstar and have been a badass at your previous job, it tends to be some amount of Serendipity (I'll say it's more than Chance) that leads to landing that awesome gig. Guys would tend to focus on that "I was a badass/awesome at my job" aspect where as the girls would say "while I worked hard, it wouldn't have happened if not for X random happenstance".

"A ship in port is safe; but that is not what ships are built for. Sail out to sea and do new things."

Title quote from Grace Hopper.


First things first, a couple of mandatory videos. Seriously, go watch these:
1. Sheryl Sandberg's Keynote. Quite a bit different than her TED talk, though part of that is encompassed in the talk. It's a bit long (45 minutes) but absolutely worth it! Sheryl had some great advice and some funny comments - very inspiring to hear.

2. a)Grace Hopper Interview on David Letterman
b) If you've ever heard this quote, it was Grace Hopper! "It's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission."
c) Longer video on Grace Hopper.

Seriously, read up on her. She's an inspiring lady, and it's pretty cool that she was involved in Technology before it was even an issue how many women were in technology or not because there just weren't that many people in technology. She also coined the term "Bug" after finding a moth in a vacuum tube.

Grace Hopper Celebration for Women in Computing happened last week in Portland and it was awesome. It was very interesting to be in a room filled with 3,000 women (and a handful of gents) that were all interested in technology or wanted to celebrate women in computing. As I was explaining to some non-tech buddies later that week, it's a very weird but not in an unsettling sort of way to be surrounded by that many women with whom you have "more than vaginas in common." Just that feeling that you can walk up to anyone and have some sort of discussion with them and it doesn't need to be about shoes (or your lack of knowledge of shoes). I expect this to be drastically different than I will feel Monday when I launch in to a female dominated workplace. That will be a NEW experience for me.


On Feeling Like a Fraud
One of the things Sheryl talked about in her keynote was feeling like a fraud, and how it's a very personal experience for her. I think the most interesting thing for me was finding out that this feeling is basically a shared experience for women in technology. I often sign up for something (classes, new responsibility, new jobs) and at some point after agreeing to do it FREAK OUT that I am not qualified or am going to fail or have no right to be in X situation. I usually get over this feeling and do it anyway (enough confidence to sign up and hate backing away from things...). I've felt this way at least since High School about a lot of Opportunities I've taken on but it was... reassuring probably isn't the right word... but very interesting to learn that It's not just me that feels this way.

On Apologies
One beef I had with the conference was this feeling that I got that when most people were talking about Computing they were really talking about Computer Science and Computer Engineering. Time after time women would get up to the microphone and basically apologize for being a "non-traditional Computer Scientist". I think many of these women were some of the most inspiring at the conference! I also think we need to promote their experiences widely. Aside from just getting Technical Women in front of girls, we need to get non-traditional computing folks in front of youth because that's how we'll encourage more diversity in design fields (all STEM fields). There were some alarming stats given that even though there are massive amounts of funding going in to STEM education, the least amount of funding is going in to Computer Science.

I tweeted this from the conference when people kept apologizing for not being "A Computer Science Person" (and even Sheryl saying she didn't feel like she was qualified to speak at a Celebration for Women in Computing!!!!), and I think it will need to become one of my major tenets going forward :
" My theory: computing should be looked at as a toolset. It does not need to be THE thing you do so much as a means to do what you want"

A couple quick things I left out from Yesterday's post:
- All the awesome people I got to hang out with! Sam, Sara, Jeff, Jeff's friends, Tara, Rachel, Dave, Lindsey, and Emily!
- Saw 3 different cities worth of Occupy campouts (Portland, Seattle, and Anchorage). Thought about how it would change your perception of the city if you didn't know about the nationwide movement.
- Explored 3 new cities and thought about how bizarre it would be to either grow up or try to date in those cities.

Adventures

Ok, so I've finally got some time to sit and blog. This may come out in 2 posts because it will be fairly disparate topics (I feel like GHC deserves its own post).

The last couple of weeks have been interesting (and they're still going!)

- The last two days of my client gig I've been on for the last year. Unfortunately everyone else was swamped, so it was sort of anti-climactic, but nice to finally be done with it.
- Stayed at the Super Swanky Nines Hotel of Portland, rocked out with my Starwood status (first time it really felt like being Platinum had extra sweet perks)
- Drooled over and then consumed Maple Bacon Donuts from Voodoo Donuts
- Recruiting at Grace Hopper Celebration for Women in Computing. Met some interesting ladies (I can very much see how a schoolteacher with a tech background would fit in well at Accenture, whereas other Tech companies at the conference would struggle to find a place for her)
- Started an HCI meetup at GHC via Twitter and had about 20 people show up
- Presented on "Innovation in Enterprise" for about 50 people, had great dialogue with the group and a couple of comments that it was very well received
- Saw my step brothers Neil Young Cover Band in Portland
- Brunched at Vita Cafe in Portland
- Wandered around Portland with said band and enjoyed Coffee at the original Stumptown and some crazy shopping
- Seattle Adventures with my Step brother: Caffe Presse (awesome French Cafe), a Free VIP show of We Were Promised Jet Packs at The Triple door, Oyster Happy Hour at Elliott's, Cocktail Happy Hour at Zig Zag Cafe, Dinner at Barrio, and after dinner drinks at Canon.
- Flew to ALASKA to hang out with Lindsey. Saw Moose within 5 minutes. It's apparently freakishly crazy windy for Anchorage at this time of year. Saw Andrew Bird play (awesome) and went to an open mic at Taproot.

All around Awesomeness :)

It's been too long

Hi blog. It's been too long. I apologize for that. Like a year and a half.

Well, we're going to change that.
1) I'm sitting here at Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, and there are a lot of things going through my head that need to be blogged about. I've got a lot of thoughts bouncing around about diversity and what not that need to be blogged... just not right now, between sessions.
2) I'm changing jobs, so new adventure seems like a good time to start blogging. New things I need to get involved with outside of work as well as work adventures (that tie in to women in Technology) that will probably also need to be blogged about.

So expect some uptake here. :)