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I did something positive today that I wanted to share with y'all.
Lately I've been very active in a lot of subtly-feminist pursuits, one of them being encouraging young women to pursue careers in technology (because misery loves company, right? Just kidding). At the request of one of the company evangelists, I signed up with another woman from Big G to do a presentation at Expand Your Horizons, a series of workshops introducing young women to careers in math, science, and technology.
It took us a while to come up with a subject, but we decided to talk about instant messaging, how it works, and what IM clients of the future would be like. Of the three groups we presented these workshops to, only one group really stood out as participating. The others had a few outspoken young women in them, but I was disappointed that so many of them let the 45 minutes pass by without asking what they were truly curious about. Overall we got good reviews for presentation (I'm a standup comic when under the gun, apparently), but a small percentage left their workshops with questions unanswered. That was a little disappointing. Why didn't they speak up? Did we intimidate them? I scratch my head when I think of it.
My coworker and I did answer the questions asked of us with everything we had, though. There weren't many big ones, but the big ones were HUGE. We nailed them. They were about things like network security, spyware, and open source to create their own IM network with. I heard a common theme when brainstorming the IM of the future: Wearable, private, IM clients. Jewelry and sunglasses were the first on the list with every group.
We don't know if we made an impact or not. I was happy to be there and try to get some ideas flowing. Seeing so many young women with a genuine interest in typically male-dominated fields was inspiring. And fun!
Lately I've been very active in a lot of subtly-feminist pursuits, one of them being encouraging young women to pursue careers in technology (because misery loves company, right? Just kidding). At the request of one of the company evangelists, I signed up with another woman from Big G to do a presentation at Expand Your Horizons, a series of workshops introducing young women to careers in math, science, and technology.
It took us a while to come up with a subject, but we decided to talk about instant messaging, how it works, and what IM clients of the future would be like. Of the three groups we presented these workshops to, only one group really stood out as participating. The others had a few outspoken young women in them, but I was disappointed that so many of them let the 45 minutes pass by without asking what they were truly curious about. Overall we got good reviews for presentation (I'm a standup comic when under the gun, apparently), but a small percentage left their workshops with questions unanswered. That was a little disappointing. Why didn't they speak up? Did we intimidate them? I scratch my head when I think of it.
My coworker and I did answer the questions asked of us with everything we had, though. There weren't many big ones, but the big ones were HUGE. We nailed them. They were about things like network security, spyware, and open source to create their own IM network with. I heard a common theme when brainstorming the IM of the future: Wearable, private, IM clients. Jewelry and sunglasses were the first on the list with every group.
We don't know if we made an impact or not. I was happy to be there and try to get some ideas flowing. Seeing so many young women with a genuine interest in typically male-dominated fields was inspiring. And fun!
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