New DivaBlog

Carding Harrassment

The Code of Conduct debate around Open Source conferences has been much on my mind again lately. Just today somebody called my attention to this blog post about yet another attempt to fix what some see as a real problem.  I have to admit that my take is a little different, and some will find it disloyal to my gender (as I was accused back when I gave a keynote at OSCON a few years ago).  I actually like the cards the blog is talking about.  Its a clever hack and one that promises to at least create more timely communication when people feel uncomfortable, which IMHO is preferable to some of the passive-aggressive behaviors we have witnessed recently.

I've not written until now about my take on all this appropriateness chatter over the past couple of years. When it all started I happened to be the only female CTO in the top 10 most popular websites in the world and I felt my opinion on it would be artificially amplified by my position. I was troubled by what I saw as strong-arm tactics employed to force conference organizers to police attendees, and I did have a number of conversations privately with women who agreed with me and were also troubled, and also with women who completely and vehemently disagreed with me.

A little background: I have worked in the Tech industry for more than 20 years and in some pretty visible positions. It is not unusual for me to be the only woman a room full of men in meetings or at conferences, and I've seen my share of inappropriate behavior.I've also worked for several of the larger Tech companies, which means I've seen a variety of approaches to training people about these issues (most Tech companies present between 15 to 45 minutes of training on this issue during new employee orientation, and many require additional training for managers).

The watershed moment for me was when I experienced Intel's orientation. People tend to work at Intel forever, and dating amongst co-workers is really common there. They also have a melting pot of cultural expectations because they hire from all over the world. Their policy says (my paraphrase) that its every person's responsibility to set clear boundaries. Their orientation on the subject (which was the longest I've attended) included skits showing how to ask a co-worker out on a date, how to decline an unwanted advance and how to act after you've been told "No, thank you". The orientation went on to explain that if you set a clear boundary and the other person continues to harass you, then Intel's management would support you in a grievance against that person.

My eureka was to hear them explicitly say "It is up to you to clearly say "No" initially". I know at least one woman prominent in the Code of Conduct movement who felt that this was too much of a burden, that it created a hostile work environment, but I thought it was clear and brilliant.

So here's my general take: some of the women who want to see strict Codes of Conduct are really seeking to be absolved of their fundamental obligation as human beings to set clear individual boundaries. They want the organization (or the conference) to do this for them so they'll never be made to feel uncomfortable. The problem with this is that living in the world involves dealing with all kinds of people and just as fairness isn't an inalienable right, neither is interpersonal comfort. Its a messy business figuring out what other people's intentions are in the best of cases, and we owe it to our fellow humans to be as clear as we can on our end in just our normal interactions.

That said, there are certainly creeps out there, of all genders and both intentional and unintentional ones. I think its positive for people to be given tools that help them give effective feedback (such as the clever cards used at DefCon). I just hope they come with instructions for the card-bearer to hand them out AFTER exhausting more normal feedback with an offender. Otherwise I fear handing out these cards will become a proxy for normal human boundary setting and will further contribute to the death of authentic interactions between people wherever they are used.

My next vocation

So it has been announced.  Starting next week I'll have a new job.  One friend pointed out that I could put "Wiki Witch of the West" on my business cards ;-).

But seriously...I meant it when I said in the press release that the challenges ahead are both exciting and daunting.  I'm such a big fan of Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Commons, but until it got tweeted, I hadn't realized this hire would make me the only female CTO in the Top-10 websites ...must admit that spun me around for a minute...

I've been working for so long on awareness of the gender imbalance in Open Source, but I've always thought of my own career as a collaborative effort (as in, "It takes a village").  In fact, when I was interviewing at Wikimedia Foundation and described my approach to solving technical challenges, I said something like "I rely on taking in as many well-informed opinions as I can find, digesting them collectively, and reaching an essentially collaborative conclusion."  This may be my Apache roots showing.

Anyway, the announcement hit the web while I was in São Paulo, Brasil for CampusParty, so of course the local Wikimedia Brasil folks came by for a chat, and I quickly learned that there are a variety of opinions about what to do "next" from a Technology standpoint to keep the Wikimedia Community vibrant.  Very interesting discussion.  I can see that gathering the well-informed opinions is going to be an intense but educational process.

Another fascinating outcome of the announcement was the attention my personal wikipedia page received.  My page was initiated by some students in Pune, India during a talk I gave (about risk-taking in one's career) at the GNUnify conference.  I wasn't even aware they were doing it at the time, and they wrote it with next to no citations.  There ensued a lively Wikipedia discussion about whether my page was "worthy", and it was decided that the page could stay largely on the merit of my long-time involvement with the Open Source Initiative...over the years the page has been modified to reflect my employment changes, but this past week it got a through going-over by the Editorial Community and one effect was that I found myself defending certain factoids about myself (by for instance searching out online references to the Chairman's Awards I won at Sun).  I completely understand why citation verification is important, and I want Wikipedia to be as authoritative as possible...but...

One factoid erasure that really surprised me was the fact that I have long been a follower of Indian guru Meher Baba.  It was surprising because it is such a personal detail and because it was deleted not only from my page, but my name automatically also disappeared from another Wikipedia page listing followers.  For the record, I've been following Meher Baba for more than half my life (since 1979), and the pursuit has brought a lot richness and self-understanding to my life.  Hopefully this citation will re-establish the fact officially (can one self-verify?  I'm sure the Community will let me know).

I was delighted to read coverage of the announcement from Sean Michael Kerner that recalled the Great Knitting Incident of 2007.  That I knit in public is another factoid that I'd like to see included on my Wikipedia page at some point (and I've already written about it at length here).  If you're interested in learning to knit to test out whether it helps you concentrate...there are tons of wonderful online resources to help you now.  It's a great thinking tool in my experience.

Anyway...Rest assured I'm in rapid learning mode about all things Wikimedia now.  I've cruised through lots of recent management communications (kindly sent along by Erik Möller) so I can be reasonably productive as soon as I get back to San Francisco.  I really appreciate the ton of well-wishing messages and new followers the announcement engendered, and I'm so looking forward to serving the Wikimedia Community.  Thanks everybody.

Facebook Needs Me!!!

I'm in Oxford, UK today for BarCampApacheOxford and this morning when I logged in to Facebook, I got the following appeal for participation "...so that it can be used by people all over the world..."  Great, I'm game.  What do I have to do?

Friends on the Road

This post is about how comforting it is to have friends along with you on the road.  This is a picture I snapped last Sunday of my friends Jason and Chava playing at Café de Beligique.  Jason and I figured out that we've known each other 2/3 of his life (a little more than half of mine).  This past week he and Chava stayed with me for a few days to save hotel room costs while they were in Amsterdam.  I was a bit worried about what it would be like to share a room with two other folks, but it was *lovely* to have them along.  We visited some old friends one night in Utrecht.  Another night we just hung out and played music in the hotel bar downstairs.  Normally I don't have so much fun on the road, but this trip was a rare exception.  Thanks, kids!

You Say You Want A Revolution?

Today we were finally able to announce my change in employment.  For the past month I've been working for a new company called REvolution Computing!  REvolution produces a very performant version of the language R, which is gaining a lot of attention with some of the alpha geeks I know and love.  They also produce packages using R that do some amazing things.  I'll be helping them to get the word out and helping them expand the community of folks using R.  I'm especially looking to highlight novel uses of Predictive Analytics

REvolution is based in New Haven, Connecticut, but I'm working out of San Francisco (except of course for when I'm on a plane somewhere or other).

Hulahoop supplies don't fit so well in a Miata

Really funny day trying to bring home 400' of PVE tubing for making hulahoops...No wonder so many people drive SUVs. Miatas are not cargo vehicles.

Back in the saddle (again)

Okay, okay...so it's been a long long time since I blogged. Some of you know that the little health issue I blogged about last time (wow, last November) ended up being a few months of required rest. So I was basically under a doctor's orders NOT to blog (or go to meetings, or take calls, or travel at all...you get the idea)...

But the good news is that I'm (mostly) back in the saddle now. Allowed to work again (finally). And this is very good news because, as anyone who knows me will tell you, I love to work. I'm going to try not to work so much that it hurts me in future, however. But I will return to blogging. Those of you who know that I helped Sun start blogs.sun.com , and I believe in the value of blogging (SPAM comments notwithstanding).

I want to thank my family, my very good friends, my health consultants and Intel for being very patient with me as I've been in recovery. I couldn't have asked for more support. Curiously, a number of prominent Open Source advocates have contacted me for advice lately because they are showing greater or lesser signs of burnout, so I'm not feeling like the only one. I'm thankful that I got this wakeup call at a time when I could listen and I'm hopeful that others will learn from my experience.

I've learned that it can really hurt a body to travel the way I was traveling (and maybe to live the way I was living...It's been said before, but 24x7 access to the community may be a problem. I've learned that I'm not 20 years old anymore and that I need to pace myself for the long haul instead of working like there's no tomorrow.

If you're curious, I'm happy to type more about what my symptoms were and what therapies I pursued (am pursuing, because some of them are "lifestyle changes")...but I'll wait to read comments before I launch into all of that. Better to type about the inaugural Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit, where I am hanging out with Allison Randall, Zaheda Bhorat and a couple hundred of my "closest friends" today (see next post).

BTW, Have to take a moment to add to the many congrats to Sun and especially to the OpenJDK Team for finally pushing Java (the language) out under GPLv2. I was at JavaONE, but as it was a month ago I wasn't supposed to be there working and certainly not blogging. Still, I'm really pleased to see another Open Source Java joining GNU Classpath/Kaffee and Apache Harmony. Its about time!