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It’s Ada Lovelace Day and I’ve signed the pledge to create a blog post drawing attention to women excelling in technology following in the footsteps of Ada (the first programmer), so here are some women who excel in technology and inspire me:
Carolyn helps people learn online with the Nova Scotia Community College. Based in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, she’s passionate and works harder than anyone I know as a teacher, a designer, a programmer, and a manager. Carolyn told me why I should blog and started doing it before I did. She’s also active in Second Life and occasionally tweets too. Without her there would be a lot fewer people doing cool things online. We collaborated before and bounce ideas off each other often and my favourite project was making our three children together. That’s an ongoing project that’s going quite well.
m-c is an Montréal-based artist who I first found out about through a podcast and blog called Vu d’ici / Seen from here where she was one of the very earlier podcasters playing interesting music that expanded what I listen to (and made me want to create my own podcast too). She creates and inspires using the web and makes real, physical pieces of art and always has interesting things to say and show on her blog (and through her tweets). m-c is a driving force behind Creacamp which is happening quite soon.
Gia is a highly talented UK-based American ex-pat geek who manages to combine a great attitude, drive and intelligence to popularise science and films. I first found out about her through her work on the web site to promote Danny Boyle’s film Sunshine and I still point my students at that site when I talk about the possibilities of promoting a film on the web. Following her blog and Twitter feed is entertaining as she combines the personal, professional, and scientific together that lets you learn and laugh as she brings endless enthusiasm and curiosity to whatever she’s interested in.
Lisa is a multitalented musician, XML afficiando, and all around political / technical / artistic activist on the left coast of the USA who always seems to be on the cutting edge of interesting and exciting things. It’s difficult to even piece together the wide range of things she’s done in the past few months. Years ago I found her through the videos of The Daily Show and other politically interesting things that she posted and found out that she was also heavily involved in technology, XML, Creative Commons and music. I really don’t know how she does it all and finds the time as I’d be happy to do 1/10th of what she does. Her latest exciting project has her serving as the Digital Librarian for Timothy Leary’s archives. You can keep up with her through her blog or her active tweets.
Katie is an all-around great dame, who writes and blogs and tweets from Los Angeles, California. I met Ms. Schwartz (electronically) through her blunt, hilarious, personal and wonderful Twittering. She shoots from the hip and has a gift for writing and inventing perfect and new words and always makes me laugh out loud even though I’ve mainly only had contact with her via chunks of text of 140 characters or less. Those tiny gems led me to her blog and other writing which unsurprisingly revealed that she’d done stand-up comedy. I think that she may also be Jewish and a feminist. A Blackberry-toting writer who uses technology to connect and write, she gets things done with a wide range of projects including a filmed theatre production - Three Dames With A Clue, and the inspirational blog Dear Thyroid. Whether it’s an essay or a tiny text message, I always am glad to hear from her.
