She's Geeky: A Technology Conference for Women will be taking place between 29 and 31 January, 2010 in Mountain View, California (US). Held in the Computer History Museum, She's Geeky promises to be an awsome event.

Among the proposed sessions can be found many interesting ideas: from technical skills, to management and transfer of knowledge, networking and philosophy around women and technology, children and computers, and the future.

Here are my favourites mixes:

• Linux, command-line, GIMP, programming, public speaking
• Ruby programming, Rails, ways to get more women into programming, teaching programming to kids
• Arduino!

The Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology has announced the release of a new study related to Women in Technology professions: Obstacles and Solutions for Underrepresented Minorities in Technology. It is a study about the barriers and obstacles of women's advancement in high-technology professions. Author: Caroline Simard, Ph.D., is Director of Research and Executive Programs at the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology.

Gender and ethnic diversity are very important. Ultimately we can only do well if we have the best ideas in place. If everybody thinks the same way, you’re not going to get the best ideas — you’re going to get the same ideas.

• Obstacles and Solutions for Underrepresented Minorities in Technology
• Climbing the Technical Ladder: Obstacles and Solutions for Mid-Level Women in Technology
• Climbing the Technical Ladder: Obstacles and Solutions for Mid-Level Women in Technology Executive Summary

Source : Anita Borg Institute

I found an interesting example of stereotyping technology between genders in Judy Wajcman ’s book "Technofeminism". In her explanation, the typewriter keyboard remains the primary interface for connection to cyberspace. In historical context, typewriter keyboards and all the relative words were associated with the feminine:

1. typewriter (machine)
2. typist (occupation)
3. typing (skill)

Typewriters were used in sewing machine factories, in piano, and in embroidery in 1870s. These were all feminine tools. "Hundred years before it is natural for men to be seated in front of the keyboard typing , and the practice of typing to lose its sex...."

Photo taken from Wikipedia

By preparing my presentation for the computer science class in "IT and society", I got to some interesting fact. The English language on the Internet. In fact, what I wanted to underline was that among other factors who discourage women from entering the computer science field, is the fact most of the common computer languages are written in English. In Linux, if you don't speak English, it is difficult to remember all the commands of the shell.... we often need to guess them, with some small tips from the memory.

Wikipedia proposes a number of interesting articles and facts on the topic. Enlighs in computer science is one, and the other is Global Internet Usage. The first one provides examples of computer languages, written in other-than-English languages (how cool!), and the second one shows the top 10 world used languages. English is dominant on the Internet, but its rate diminishes each year, to become from 37% (in 2004) to 29% (in 2008). On the contrary, Chinese on the Internet gets more and more popular, by raising from 14% in 2004 to 20% in 2008.

By speaking 5 languages, I had long time difficulties defining my website's language. The old one had 3 languages, where I would write in whatever one I feel for the day. This definitely did not work out, because I managed to have 3 types of readers, so for more than one group to be able to read, I was stuck translating my posts all the time. Now I thought English will be my language, for more people to read it. However, whenever I quote an already ready text, of for my cook-book in general, I use French or Bulgarian. This does not relieve my identity troubles, but at least does not imply me more work. Regular writing is difficult enough.

If it would be just writing an thesis, it would be too easy. Just in a week time at the country, I managed to write a whole chapter, and read about 600 pages (with notes). And then, I will need about 3 weeks off in order to write a paper for the JoCI, and to make a presentation at a colleague, who is doing for the first time a course in "Computer science and society" at the Technical University. I will need to prepare for a 5 weeks missing from home, a wrap-up for my thesis for the end of August....

Dans le cadre du cours "Informatique et société", donnée par M.Robert Dupuis aux étudiants en informatique. Le cours cherche à insister sur la responsabilité professionnelle des finissants-finissantes en informatique. Ma présentation, d'une durée de 30-45 min, portera sur la place des femmes en TI actuellement.

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.