It is Ada Lovelace Day today, and to support the women in technology, bloggers all over the world are celebrating the female side of tech. What do I mean? You may not know it from the throngs of hairy guys at tech events, but not only are there women in tech, they have done a lot to make YOUR life easier. Let’s review a couple current ladies of technology that have been rocking my world.
First of all, no mention of modern geek tech can even begin without another Ladyada, aka Limor Fried. As the proprietor of Adafruit, she has done a lot to make physical computing with Arduino and other cool hardware a lot more accessible for novices, as well as helping out pros when they are stuck. As as engineer and MIT alumni, she is a great leader in the electronics community. We could not have made the progress we have on the flying_robot project, without her great hardware and helpful blogging.
Another female developer I know is Andrea O.K. Wright. Andrea is a very serious Rubyist, and did a really great talk on Ruby in gaming that I attended a while back. She was even kind enough to remember to send me a couple links to some of the tech she had mentioned in the presentation.
We smelly guys have to be be a bit more welcoming to the women of tech. Why? Not even for any of the standard reasons related to social progressivism. Simply enough, we all need all the help we can get, and not encouraging women to explore their interests in technology, is like losing 50% of the potential advancement we could be collectively making.
‘Nuff Said!
