Snowed under in Australia

Posted on January 10, 2012 by

Currently, I’m sitting in a coffee shop in a suburb of Sydney, scandalizing the owners by pouring my green tea into a cup of ice. They even came out and asked me questions about my iced tea, whereupon I listed all the different kinds of iced tea: rooibos, black, decaf, mango, green, etc. This makes up slightly for my embarrassment last night when I asked the server where the rest of my bento box was. (Answer: underneath the first half of the bento box.)

My task this morning is to merge the CiviCRM and PayPal databases of donors to get the addresses for sending people’s scarves, pendants, and stickers. I am doing this a week late. I am stricken with guilt but I had to finish other things before I got on the plane to Australia on Saturday. I finally sent the thank-you gifts to various people who were instrumental in starting the Ada Initiative this week, about 5 months late. I still need to hand deliver about half of them to people in San Francisco or Australia.

Next I am meeting my co-founder Mary in a few hours after the movers are done packing her house up, and we’re going into Sydney together to give an interview. Then we’re going to write several of the seven or so documents and presentations that are also a week late (or several weeks, or three months…).

The upside is that I love love love working with Mary in person. We originally planned to meet up twice a year, but we couldn’t swing it this year, so it’s been a year since we’ve met. We’re determined to make two visits happen this year. It’s like the sun coming up, working with someone else physically and in the same time zone, instead of toiling away on the Ada Initiative from my couch.

I theoretically had a week of vacation between Christmas and New Year’s Eve. It was my first week off since July, and I needed to relax badly, but instead I moved to San Francisco, which is almost but not quite entirely unlike taking vacation. I drove through Joshua Tree National Park for a teeny tiny mini-vacation.

I’ve never worked so hard so long without a break, and I can see the toll it’s taking. I make more mistakes, I’m less creative, my judgement is off, exercise is a distant fantasy. I need a real vacation, but if I take one in the next month or two, I might kill the Ada Initiative. So I keep going. I’m not at my best, but I just need to be good enough, for a little while longer.

I’m learning to appreciate what I can. My shabby-chic little Victorian-esque hotel in Chatswood has a balcony looking out on to what is to me exotic tropical jungle. I sit with my cup of tea and listen to the bizarre “oook-ook” animal noises and the “thwock” of the unknown form of sportsball taking place on the other side of the enormous eucalyptus trees. I eat enormous mangoes of some variety that never gets imported into the U.S. I wear perfume.

Inbox zero used to be a weekly occurrence for me. Now I am failing to even keep up with my work email. If all goes as planned, I’ll be able to catch up in March, maybe even February. I suspect a normal social life will have to wait until we’ve hired a part-time temp to do things like merge databases.

I’m officially on retransmit status on email: If it’s important, and I haven’t replied – go ahead and email me again. I’m on Twitter a lot, too. Things like @horse_ebooks take about the amount of time I have available for wasting time on the ‘net these days.

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A personal appeal to donate to the Ada Initiative

Posted on December 13, 2011 by

Cross-posted from Geek Feminism

Valerie Aurora

I’m writing to ask you to donate to the Ada Initiative.

A year ago, a friend of mine was groped at an open source conference. Again. I’ve personally been groped twice at conferences myself.

But what shocked me most was the reaction to her blog post about it. Hundreds of people made comments like, “Women should expect to get groped at conferences,” and “It was her fault.” Many of these people were members of the open source community. Some were even prominent leaders – that I was forced to work with directly in my job as a Linux kernel developer! I realized I’d felt alienated, unwelcome, and unsafe as a woman in open source for many years. I was furious and determined to make a difference.

So I quit my job and co-founded the Ada Initiative with Mary Gardiner. We are the only non-profit dedicated solely to increasing the participation of women in open source, Wikipedia, fan culture, and other areas of open technology and culture. Currently, women make up only 2% of the open source community, and 9% of Wikipedia editors, down from 13% a year ago. We want to change these trends.

You can help by donating or by spreading the word about our donation drive now:

Donate now!

Help spread the word

We’re proud of what we’ve accomplished already. Since our founding in early 2011, we helped over 30 conferences and organizations adopt an anti-harassment policy, organized the first AdaCamp unconference, provided free consulting on high-profile sexist incidents, wrote and taught two workshops on supporting women in open tech/culture, and ran two surveys, among other things.

http://adainitiative.org/what-we-do/

We need your help to achieve our upcoming goals. The Ada Initiative is funded entirely by donations. Without your financial support, the Ada Initiative will have to shut down in early 2012.

http://supportada.org/donate

Your donations will fund upcoming projects like: Ada’s Advice, a comprehensive guide to resources for helping women in open tech/culture, Ada’s Careers, a career development community, and First Patch Week, where we help women create and submit their first open source patch. You can learn more about how the Ada Initiative is organized and operated on our web site and blog.

Whether or not you can donate yourself, you can help us by spreading the word about our fundraising drive. Please tell your friends about our important work. Email, blog, add our donation button to your web site, and tweet. You don’t have to stand on the sidelines any longer. You can help women in open technology and culture, starting today.

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Three shocking reasons to donate to the Ada Initiative

Posted on December 6, 2011 by

I was at a Girl Geek Dinner last week, talking to a recruiter about the Ada Initiative and our new fundraising drive:

“So the thing that made me quit my job and start the Ada Initiative was when a friend of mine got groped at an open source conference-”

“NO! Shut up! That didn’t happen!” she says, utterly shocked.

“Yes, it did, it’s documented all over the Internet-”

“NO! I can’t believe it! Are you serious?”

“Yes, I’ve been groped twice at an open source conference myself-”

“Oh my god! Really?” At this point she seemed to start believing me and I was able to get in one or two sentences in between expressions of shock and dismay.

She went on to tell me how in college her boyfriend went to CMU, which is the university that achieved 42% female enrollment in their undergraduate computer science program (and later wrote a famous book about how they achieved that, Unlocking the Clubhouse). In her experience, women were always welcome and respected in computing, and the realization that it wasn’t like that everywhere was a complete surprise to her.

I’m so used to living with these facts that I often forget how shocking they are to people who don’t know about the dark side of open technology and culture. The cultural phenomenon that has the most potential to overcome all the old prejudices and oppression is doing worse than the mainstream “closed” versions in many cases – e.g., 2% vs. 20-30% women in open source software vs. closed source software. I don’t know the numbers for “closed source” encyclopedias, but only 9% of Wikipedia editors are female.

We’re working hard to change that. We believe that unless women are involved in designing and creating the Internet, it won’t serve women’s needs. Right now, there are 994 pages in the Wikipedia category “Female pornographic film actors” and only 58 pages in “Women computer scientists” – at the same time that many pages about important female computer scientists have been deleted for “non-notability.”

You can help change this by donating to the Ada Initiative today. If you can’t donate yourself, please consider telling your friends about the Ada Initiative donation drive.

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Ada Lovelace Day: Sandra K. Johnson

Posted on October 7, 2011 by

There are two ways to answer the question, “Why are there so few famous women scientists and technologists?” One is to point out the obstacles women faced (and still face). For example, Lise Meitner, co-discoverer of nuclear fission, wasn’t allowed to go to graduate school, had to work for free for many years, and was blatantly excluded from the Nobel prize for discovering fission. This was absolutely typical treatment for women at the time – and for quite some time afterwards. Caltech didn’t admit women until 1970!

The second way to answer is to point out all the women who did and are doing important work in science in technology despite these obstacles, and not getting very much credit for it. On Ada Lovelace Day, we raise the profile of women in science and technology by blogging about less well-known women and including memorable stories and details, so that you’ll remember them the next time someone claims “There are no women in $FIELD.”

Dr. Sandra K. Johnson: Parallel processing expert and first African-American woman electrical engineering PhD in the U.S.

Dr. Sandra K. Johnson (also known as Sandra Johnson Baylor) got interested in electrical engineering through an invitation to go to a high school summer camp program at Southern University, a historically black university in Baton Rouge. At the time, she thought engineering was all about “driving a train” but she decided she’d go anyway and get out of town for the summer. She loved engineering camp and went back to Southern to get her bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, and ultimately went on to become the first African-American woman to get a PhD in electrical engineering in the United States.

While working as a researcher at IBM’s T. J. Watson Research Lab, Dr. Johnson worked on the prototype of the SP2 processor for IBM’s “Deep Blue” chess machine, as well as a variety of topics in the extraordinarily difficult field of highly parallel computing, including memory and IO behavior of parallel programs, cache coherence protocols, scalable shared-memory systems, and the Vesta Parallel File System. (If you’re looking for her publications, many of her papers are published under the name S. J. Baylor.) She held a number of high-ranking positions at IBM, including Linux Performance Architect, and managing the Linux Performance team.

Ironically, Dr. Johnson is currently working as an IBM business development executive in the United Arab Emirates, a relatively progressive country next door to Saudi Arabia, where she is not allowed to drive, among other highly discriminatory laws against women.Often when people claim we have already achieved legal gender equality (in their own country, of course), they forget that science, technology, and business are global activities, and career advancement often depends on working in several different countries. [Correction: The original said women weren't allowed to drive in UAE, which was me confusing Saudi Arabia with UAE.]

Sandra Johnson’s books are representative of her career: She was editor in chief of Linux Performance Tuning, author of Inspirational Nuggets, which encourages people to reach their full potential, as well as co-author with her brother of Gregory: Life of a Lupus Warrior, about her brother’s fight with lupus (Sandra was subsequently diagnosed with a non-life threatening form of lupus). Dr. Johnson is a combination of intellectual powerhouse and kind mentor. She’s on her way to the top, and she wants to bring other women (and especially women of color) along with her.

I was lucky enough to meet Dr. Johnson at the Grace Hopper women in computing conference in 2010, and I was deeply impressed. She was not only intelligent and competent, but incredibly supportive of other women. Dr. Johnson on how to become an IEEE fellow (or get any other award): It’s not magic, you have to tell your friends and mentors, “I want to be an IEEE fellow,” and then get someone to take responsibility for bugging your friends to write letters to nominate you. Don’t feel bad about asking for recognition, that’s just how it works.

Sandra Johnson is also a public speaker, with booking information on her web site. I highly recommend her as a speaker. She’s clear, informative, and inspirational in a practical and realistic way. If you get a chance to see her speak, jump at it! Personally, I hope I get to meet Dr. Johnson again.

So, next time someone says there aren’t any women in electrical engineering or processor design, you can pipe up with, “Oh, I can’t believe you haven’t heard of Dr. Sandra Johnson! She did all kinds of work on parallel processors and cache coherency for highly parallel systems and, oh yeah, the Vespa parallel file system too. She even worked on the prototype for IBM’s Deep Blue! Did you know she was also the first African-American woman to get a PhD in electrical engineering in the U.S.? Right now she’s working in the Middle East, can you believe that irony? If you ever get the chance to see her speak, take it!”

Happy Ada Lovelace Day!

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Sady Doyle on the connection between mansplaining and street harassment

Posted on September 2, 2011 by

So Sady Doyle writes for the choir – people who are already fairly self-aware and well-educated feminists – and I don’t generally recommend reading her writing unless you’re well beyond Feminism 101. But her last post included a great explanation of the how mansplaining and street harassment are two facets of the same behavior:

The point of listening to women and feminists is to listen to women and feminists. Because if you listen to them, you might start to understand certain basic points, such as: Women do not automatically have to accept you as an expert, particularly not when the subject under discussion (sexism!) is something you’ve never experienced first-hand. Women do not have to make you “comfortable” and “welcome” in every single conversation. Women do not automatically have to grant you a space in their discussions, on their blogs, or in their lives. Women do not have to permit you to enter their political movements, their self-created spaces, their personal space, their bodies, or anything else that belongs to them; you, as a man, are not entitled to women’s attention, praise, affection, respect, or company, just because you want it. And when a woman says “no,” you respect that this particular woman said “no,” and you stop. You don’t make excuses, you don’t explain why you should be able to get what you want, you don’t throw a tantrum, you don’t call that woman names: You just stop what you are doing. Because she said “no.”

Here’s where we appeal to that “lived experience” thing. Because: Have you ever had a guy come up to you — on the street, in a bar, whatever — and just straight-up say, “hey, I wanna talk to you?” Happens all the time, right? Happens to women, all the time. But have you ever just straight-up said, “no?” Not “no, I have a boyfriend,” or “no, I’m busy,” or “no, I have to race to save the city from the Joker’s diabolical machinations, for I am the Batman,” or any other excuse: Just the word “no,” by itself?

Yeah. So you know what happens next, after you say “no.” The guy always keeps talking. He tries wheedling, or begging, sometimes. But if you say “no” firmly enough, or often enough that he gets the point, the dude just starts yelling. He tells you that you’re not that hot. He tells you what a bitch you are. (“You bitch, I have a Rolls Royce,” was my favorite of these.) Sometimes he follows you down the street, yelling at you; sometimes, he follows you in his car. These dudes are always so fucking certain that they’re entitled to your time and attention that they will harass you until you give it, or at least until you’re scared and sorry for not giving it. You do not have the right not to interact, as far as these guys are concerned.

So many women wrote, “Wow, thank you for articulating it that way,” that I wanted to share it with a wider audience (all 3 of you).

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“Snowed in” in Tucson

Posted on August 30, 2011 by

It’s been over a week of 105+ Fahrenheit temperatures here in Tucson, which is hot enough that I can’t ride my bicycle or do anything outside really between 10am and 9pm (my limit turns out to be about 101F). I had a strangely familiar but wildly out-of-place feeling driving to “work” a few days ago: cabin fever, which until now I’ve only experienced when I was snowed in. At the same time, I find myself reminiscing unbidden – nay, outright fantasizing – about snowstorms and the times I’ve been coldest in the past.

I watched “Nanook of the North” (a.k.a. the “first documentary”) and was captivated by the concept of warming your hands on your cheeks until you could use them again. I began hungrily plotting when I could try that next. (A San Francisco Bay cruise in October? No, October is lovely and warm in SF.)

At the same time, part of me is living (mentally speaking) on the oceans of 18th century colonial Europe. I’m reading “The Influence of Sea Power upon History: 1660 – 1783,” which sounds incredibly dull, and yet I can hardly put it down. I use the term “read” loosely, since I know that without drawing lots of diagrams (or perhaps recreating the battles in 3-D animations according to the various different accounts) I don’t actually understand the battles in any real sense.

I was initially at a loss to understand why I enjoy this book so much, but had to admit that when I read this book, I escape from Tucson, 105F and about as interesting as a dried-up stick, into a world of green-blue oceans and half-dismasted sailing ships and doomed yet gallant old commanders and even the weevily biscuits of Gibraltar, and that it appeals to me for much the same reason as “Pirates.” “Pirates” is an awful YA historical fiction novel by Celia Rees, set in the middle of the same time period that “The Influence of Sea Power” covers, about two young girls who become pirates. The plot is creepy and insulting, but the historical background kept me going (that and my desire to have something to talk about with my nieces).

One final story of the mental aberration the weather has driven me to: today I cooked a pizza in the big oven (not the toaster oven). Yes, I deliberately created a further sub-climate within my 75F apartment of 450F and cooked food in it. I know I did it in order to pretend that it was cold outside. (It was pretty good, Trader Joe’s whole wheat crust and assorted TJ’s sourced toppings.) Now I’m going to curl up on the couch with “The Influence of Sea Power,” a blanket, and an ice pack.

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Help improve open source, make the world a better place, AND travel to Australia

Posted on August 2, 2011 by

The LCA 2012 Call for Papers (speakers and tutorials, really) is still open. The Linux Conference Australia audience is bright, curious, and eager to learn more. In particular, LCA attendees seem to love talks about file systems and storage, and I know there’s at least one fewer file systems-related talk than usual in the system this year!

Part of the reason I went to LCA 2007 was to fulfill a lifelong dream of seeing a giant squid in person – and it totally worked.

VAL and giant squid

One of the big secrets about a career in open source is that you get to do interesting technical work that makes the world a better place AND travel around the world without paying for (most) of it. If you think you have something even vaguely interesting to talk about, and happily would go to Australia if you could work out the travel somehow, please consider submitting a proposal and figuring out how to pay for it during the next few months. LCA wants fresh faces and new ideas, and if your topic is interesting enough, everyone can work together to find a way to make it happen.

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Ada Initiative seed funding round successful

Posted on June 28, 2011 by

The Ada Initiative’s seed funding round closed successfully – a week early! Thank you to all of our donors. I won’t go into detail here, except to say that it was utterly exhausting (especially with attending two conferences during the round) and I’m looking forward to spending more time on designing and implementing our programs. After I sleep for a couple of days.

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Updating “Lifetimes of cryptographic hash functions”

Posted on June 22, 2011 by

I wondered why my Twitter followers suddenly spiked and discovered that my old Lifetimes of cryptographic hash functions table was on Bruce Schneier’s blog this week. Some people are complaining that it hasn’t been updated since 2009, though. So, readers, which hashes and results post-2009 do you think are worth adding to the table?

I don’t have much to say about Bitcoin, but I do find it interesting that, however briefly, there exists a direct monetary incentive to break SHA-256. To my knowledge, there is no provision for changing the cryptographic hash function for Bitcoin.

Particular thanks to Don Marti and Linuxworld for commissioning the article that resulted in that chart.

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Investing some social capital

Posted on June 21, 2011 by

Over the years, I’ve tried to be an interesting person, on my web page, my blog, in person (less successfully), and so on, in part so that when I had something important to say, somebody would be listening. I have something important to say.

I co-founded the Ada Initiative because I care deeply about social justice, and in particular about women having an equal opportunity to have rewarding open source careers like mine. Open source gave me a high paying, highly respected, extremely flexible job in which I made the world a better place (and visited a good chunk of it for free, too). But I also understand how lucky I am – for example, my mother taught me how to program when I was 6 years old, and I positively enjoy defying stereotypes.

I want everyone – and in particular women – to have an opportunity to build and shape the open Internet, which is the future of human culture for our entire world (for better or worse). I want this badly enough that I worked without a salary for the last 6 months to found the Ada Initiative, and personally donated several thousand dollars as well.

Many people have asked me over the years what they can do personally to help women in open source. Now I have one answer. The Ada Initiative is accepting only 100 donations of $512 or more between June 1st and June 30th, 2011. There will be only 100 seed funders ever, and we’re not sure if or when we’ll accept personal donations again. If you want to contribute back of some of the money that you made working in open source in a way that helps even the playing field for women, this is your best chance.

Donate to the Ada Initiative now

20 years from now, when some innocent-eyed teenager asks you if it was really true back in 2011 that almost no open source programmers were women, and how anyone could think that was okay, you can say:

“Listen, kid, I helped change all that. Back in 2011 I was a seed funder of the Ada Initiative. Only 100 of them ever. And I can prove it. See this picture of Ada Lovelace on the wall? I got that when I donated to them.”

The teenager will listen respectfully and say, “Ooh! And it’s signed by Mary Gardiner and Valerie Aurora? Wow, I can’t believe you leave that out in the open where anyone could steal it!”

Well, perhaps it won’t happen exactly like that. But you’ll know you made a difference, and that’s what counts.

Donate to the Ada Initiative

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