Just In Time: Ada Lovelace Day
This post is considerably less structured than usual because I’ve got myself a deadline - and I’m going to meet it. (This means that I won’t supra-edit or include all the usual links, and if something looks interesting, you’ll have to look it up yourself. My apologies, but time is of the essence!)
Today is Ada Lovelace Day, brought to my attention by Audrey Eschright. (Thanks, Audrey!) I have pledged (along with almost 2000 others) to blog about women excelling in technology.
The thing is, I’m supposed to write about one person, and I’m inspired by so many - real and fictional, truth be told.
When I swear I can’t handle one more class that seems like it’s over my head, I think about the women I’ve met who amaze me, like Val Aurora. (I met Val Aurora face to face last year, and couldn’t even string a sentence together. That woman is *amazing* and I hope to someday talk with her - coherently - about the excitement I feel about all things tech.) Or the women of Code’n'Splode who just show up and talk about whatever geekery they’re coding this month. The two women EE professors I’ve had in four years of study but who demonstrate that It Can Be Done just by being there. The woman I pass on the street who’s fixing her own bike or car. The random student in the lab that I see explaining her work to the guys because she’s done the work and they haven’t.
When I can’t find the energy to finish my code, I think of characters in books I’ve read, or movies I’ve seen. Instant inspiration comes in the form of Samantha Carter (Stargate: SG-1) and Ripley (Aliens) in movies; from Kirsten King (Sue Beck’s "The Growing") to Ellie Arroway (Carl Sagan’s "Contact") and Gaby Plauget (John Varley’s "Titan/Wizard/Daemon", and who may not have been a tech but was one hell of a hacker) in books; and every woman who has used or fixed a computer, gadget, car or spaceship in every decent (or crappy) techy television series in the last twenty years.
When I’m banging my head against the wall, trying to figure out transistor currents, I think of Lady Ada, aka Limor Fried, and everything she’s accomplished, from the Masters of Eng. degree from MIT to "Citizen Engineer", not to mention Adafruit Industries, and I’m filled with a healthy dose of envy that happens to come with a smile, because if she can do it, I can do it.
If one of us can achieve something, it means we’re all capable, right?
This was the whole point of dotFiveOne from day one: to provide that kind of inspiration all the time. Not as a "special feature" like O’Reilly’s "Women In Tech" or Intel’s "Innovative Women". And I’m not slamming those ventures - they’re needed, they’re welcome and they are much appreciated.
But I don’t want to be a special feature. I’m a geeky woman every day of my life, and I want some part of my world to acknowledge that. And here on dotFiveOne, I write about every woman I can find who’s doing something related to technology or science or science fiction - something that inspires me to keep going with my own work. All of these women - and I’ve been doing this for almost a year so there are quite a few - *all* of them inspire me on some level.
So, here’s to Ada Lovelace Day. And thank you to geeky women everywhere. You have all helped me more than I can say. We frakkin’ rock.
Related posts:
- Finding Ada: The Lovelace Adventures
- Open Source Bridge Presentation: “Faking It Til I Make It”
- Landmark Year for Female IEEE Fellows
- Virginia DeBolt Interviews Shelley Powers
- Women Who Code Drink Beer!
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