March 24th was the international day for blogging about women in technology. Thousands of people have posted a story about one woman in computing who they admire. Here we go! I thought about posting, but never thought that someone will post about me!

My friend and colleague Anne has thought about me, when thinking of her Ada. So amazing and encouraging, indeed! I did not think that I could inspire someone in this. I do not even consider myself as a woman in computing...

Today is the day. I signed a pledge, together with almost 2000 other people, that on the 24th of March (today), will post a story about a woman geek I admire. I have a big choice of women to post about, which makes my task rather difficult, but tonight I will do it.

Celebrating the achivements of women in computing is a great initiative, and creates more visibility on the web and within communities about women who have contributed to innovation in computer science.

There are hundreds of blog posts already available, who speak up and give another example of a great woman geek. Herewith are some of the places where these links are, for when I have time, I want to go and read them all:

Here is the Ada Lovelace Day Pledge, which I also signed some time ago.

And here is the Ada Lovelace Day Collection, where everyone who published a story, registers her/his story and link.

And, there is a blog called Finding Ada, which collects all the stories who don't have their own blog.

I was thinking of writing about Angie Byron, who I admire a lot, but I saw someone already did. So, I will most probably choose one of the other 12 great women in free and open source software who I have recently interviewed for my masters' thesis.

So, watch out for my story tonight...

Following the next Debian-Women sexist discussion, related to the importance of women in computer science, Michael Norwick pasted a list of remarkable women in computer science. I knew many of them, but I liked to have them together. Thanks Michael!

Ada Byron King, Countess of Lovelace (1815-1852). born Augusta Ada Byron, was the only legitimate child of Lord Byron. She is widely known in modern times simply as Ada Lovelace. She is mainly known for having written a description of Charles Babbage's early mechanical general-purpose computer, the analytical engine. She is today appreciated as the "first programmer" since she was writing programs — that is, manipulating symbols according to rules—for a machine that Babbage had not yet built. She also foresaw the capability of computers to go beyond mere calculating or number-crunching while others, including Babbage himself, focused only on these capabilities.