tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-59570255025556224402024-03-04T21:41:32.066-08:00[headdesk]AMGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18255114747901269995noreply@blogger.comBlogger16125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5957025502555622440.post-30470376173199199982013-03-24T11:10:00.000-07:002013-03-24T11:10:20.155-07:00Communication as an antidote to fearSince I last wrote, I've changed jobs and moved from New York City to the Bay Area. During that time I had to do those HR computer tutorials that inform new hires of the company's code of conduct, et cetera. I'd been wanting to comment on their effectiveness (or not) in fostering positive a positive professional culture, and then I was walloped by a bunch of deadlines. Then <a href="http://www.quora.com/PyCon-Tweet-Controversy-March-2013/Was-it-appropriate-for-Adria-Richards-to-tweet-a-photo-of-two-men-at-PyCon-and-accuse-them-of-being-sexist">the whole Adria Richards thing</a> happened and it made the post that had been simmering in my brain a lot more relevant.</br>
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One of the videos I had to complete was on workplace harassment. It was so over the top that I was baffled anyone would think it might connect with an actual employee. What really struck me about it was how broadly the video described workplace harassment. Rather than encouraging people to <strong>ask</strong> a colleague about what kind of humor they do or don't like, or possibly speaking to a team member and inviting them to respectfully give any advice as to what they can do to make their team a more comfortable place, the given rule of thumb was "if you have any inkling that this might make someone slightly uncomfortable, don't say it."</br>
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Maybe instead of trying to ambiguously appeal to everyone, a more effective way of keeping people comfortable might be to encourage people not to be afraid to talk about things that bother them <strong>with each other</strong>, instead of being quietly unsure of what someone will or won't be offended by. I admit that's a difficult thing to do. A personal example: at one point I was on a project with a male project manager who was a genuinely, good, supportive PM. Occasionally he'd make harsh criticism of female clients in a specifically gendered way, though I never brought this up because I didn't want my PM to become defensive or read this as if I was calling him a sexist. Because he wasn't, he was a good person who happened to have a bad habit. But I (and other women I've spoken to) have had experiences where they are met with hostile or defensive resistance when pointing out less than considerate behavior, and it does create fear in talking about what does or doesn't make a comfortable environment for the people who happen to be in it.</br>
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So while I am not defending anyone's actions (Ms. Richards', the developers, or otherwise), I can see how it might be less scary to post criticism online than to explain to someone face-to-face how their comments are making you feel. Too bad the takeaway from the incident will almost certainly not be "next time let's just politely explain what we feel to be appropriate."AMGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18255114747901269995noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5957025502555622440.post-73766440676006570292010-12-24T13:12:00.000-08:002010-12-27T14:59:05.354-08:00The Digital Social Contract and Social MediaHave you ever read Facebook's End User License Agreement? If not, <a href="http://www.facebook.com/terms.php">you should definitely do that</a>. It's refreshingly accessible as EULAs and other legal documents go, largely in response to criticisms that their privacy settings are too byzantine to be fair to the average person. <br /><br />Aww, still don't feel like going through it? Allow me to highlight two important points:<br /><br />From Section 2., "Privacy": "You own all of the content and information you post on Facebook, and you can control how it is shared through your privacy and application settings."<br /><br />From Section 14., "Termination": "If you violate the letter or spirit of this Statement, or otherwise create risk or possible legal exposure for us, we can stop providing all or part of Facebook to you."<br /><br />So. Theoretically, I am the sole owner of my data, but access to my data can be cut off at any time if it is believed that I've violated "the spirit" of the agreement. But Delicious' Terms of Use are even better: "Delicious reserves the right to terminate your license to use Delicious at any time and for any reason..." Okay, fine. That looks obnoxious, but honestly, if they went around cancelling accounts for no good reason, they would have a bloody hard time getting people to sign on and give them more of their super valuable info. That's sort of a natural logic of any contract.<br /><br />Now, my friend <a href="http://www.pourcurator.com/">Greg</a> linked me to <a href="http://blogs.hbr.org/samuel/2010/12/yahoos-delicious-decision-leav-1.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+harvardbusiness+(HBR.org)">this Harvard Business Review blog update</a> on the rumors that Yahoo is planing on pulling the plug on <a href="http://www.delicious.com/">Delicious</a>. <br /><br />Ms. Samuel is right on the mark. She writes about the transaction between Delicious and its users, referring to the relationship between two people using information stored on Delicious to communicate, saying that, <blockquote><span style="font-style:italic;">We've placed those relationships in trust,</span> along with the information about which websites we find useful enough to store, and which keywords we use to describe them. We contribute the content and relationships; Yahoo! contributes the software and servers. (Emphasis mine)</blockquote><br />Interestingly, she uses some bank terms here. Which makes sense. For the purpose of web 2.0 services, information is currency. It's an apt parallel; We place funds in trust with a bank, and they use those funds to generate more capital. We also place our information in trust with the fine folks of Google, Facebook and Yahoo so that they can generate value in the form of "free" web applications.<br /><br />As trustees of that informational currency, there is a certain obligation to maintain the value of what's been entrusted to Delicious (or Facebook, or any other online service that is paid for with informational currency). Because we have the right to close a Delicious or Facebook account at any time, I can accept the idea that they may want to stop offering the service, but a way of preserving the value which has already been generated by the information entrusted to them is highly important. Like any social or legal contract, if you prove unreliable, one one's going to want to contract with you again. So remarking that cancelling a service indicates poor customer service, it's not "personal" as Ms. Samuel suggested her comments may have been construed as-it's a poor way of doing business. Data can be backed up and access to that data can be maintained without continuing to offer the service; Yahoo should do so if these rumors turn out to have any truth to them.AMGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18255114747901269995noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5957025502555622440.post-23215459651959450602010-12-03T10:07:00.000-08:002010-12-03T10:10:51.685-08:00Empathy, Gender and the Workplace<a href="http://hugoschwyzer.net/2010/02/18/when-a-can-ought-to-mean-a-should-on-men-and-empathy/">An interesting take from philosophy professor Hugo Schwyzer on gender and empathy.</a> <br /><br />He makes a good point. And I note with interest that he touches mainly on personal relationships rather than professional links. I can't help but apply this mode of thinking to the IT world as well.<br /><br />A good deal of my discussions with men on the subjects of getting more women into computing could be summarized with the statement, "we would love to, but don't know how." I think a big part of the answer to that question lies in this line of research - guys are less empathetic. That's not to say they're jerks, but as this research points out, men don't have the same cultural perception of empathy as women. <br /><br />Sara Chipps at <a href="http://girldeveloper.com/">Girl Developer</a> made a good point at her <a href="http://www.ggdnyc.com/">Girl Geek Dinner</a> talk about a year ago that people can be passionate about software. Don't get into the discussion unless you are comfortable with that kind of intensity. And she's totally right. But I like the idea that it can, and should, work both ways. Of course you need thick skin in the professional world. But as with all things in life, a moderate balance is needed. The trick is finding the right balance between empathetic understanding and forthright directness.AMGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18255114747901269995noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5957025502555622440.post-17380411014978989722010-10-26T17:44:00.000-07:002010-10-27T16:18:05.906-07:00Back, now with audio!Hi all!<br /><br />So I have been fairly MIA since the spring, mainly because my arty side projects were in high gear and I was doing a bit of casual job hunting. Which gave way to being hired at <a href="http://www.vibrantmedia.com/">Vibrant Media</a> in May, and I have been happily and busily learning my way around the new place since then. I promise details on that later, but the long and short of it for now is: more fun, and way more challenging.<br /><br />Another fun project I've been up to more recently is the <a href="http://betterworlds.org/">Immodest Proposals discussion group</a>, put together by my friend Lee. Our most recent topic of discussion was how computers affect our attention, focus, and tendencies to procrastinate. And, he recorded the discussion! So, I give you <a href="http://betterworlds.org/post/1415079681/right-on-schedule-the-second-movement-of-the">Immodest Proposals VI: Procrastination, the Internet and the Future</a>.AMGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18255114747901269995noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5957025502555622440.post-29956934186650650142010-04-21T13:01:00.001-07:002010-04-21T13:01:14.678-07:00Quick hit: CyberSource, Visa and online commerce<span xmlns=''><p>Just got this: <a href='http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/quote?ticker=CYBS:US'>CyberSource</a><br /> <a href='http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=adp3KtjKmuUE'>bought out by Visa for $2B</a><br /> </p><p>Ordinarily a market comprised of a couple monolithic competitors really annoys me, but I do think this will ultimately be a boon to merchants. (Yet I am fascinated by Google, I know. [shrug])<br /></p><p>One of the nice things about Amex is that everything is all handled by them. Amex holds the line of credit, administers the card, and processes the transactions. Yet it's more expensive for merchants to accept. If Visa is acquiring its own processor, this could potentially make transactions a lot easier to deal with for the merchant but at a much lower cost to them. Good move, Visa (assuming of course that CyberSource share holders will go for it).</p></span>AMGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18255114747901269995noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5957025502555622440.post-31267744229353486662010-04-21T12:15:00.001-07:002010-04-21T12:17:27.565-07:00How to address a systemic mental hangup?<span xmlns=''><p><span style='font-family:Trebuchet MS'>Last week there was a <a href='http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/18/technology/18women.html?src=me&ref=technology'>really solid piece in the Sunday Times on female technological entrepreneurs.</a> I was pleased with the quality of the research, and can personally relate to a lot of the comments from women interviewed. For example: <br /></span></p><p style='margin-left: 36pt'><span style='font-family:Trebuchet MS'>"It just never dawned on me to do it [enter engineering]," she says. "You're just sitting there pecking away. I need more human interaction."<br /></span></p><p><span style='font-family:Trebuchet MS'>I've actually heard this firsthand from a former DB programmer somewhat recently. And this seems a little odd to me because the biggest reason I opted for a career in QA was the collaborative aspect. When I was handling customer accounts the human connection is very superficial, limited to a few moments at a time with someone you rarely speak with. Building websites also means building professional relationships with your team members. You're working towards a common goal, which is infinitely more satisfying to me then solving dozens of smaller scale problems for people I speak to very infrequently.<br /></span></p><p><span style='font-family:Trebuchet MS'>However it does speak for the educational disadvantage than many women have in the computer sciences. Math is not a very collaborative field, and women generally tend to opt for other fields of study as a result. This is a problem for technical innovation.<br /></span></p><p><span style='font-family:Trebuchet MS'>One of my favorite characteristics of humanity is a person's ability, by dint of human self awareness and habit of self reflection, to evolve and change with enough will and discipline. That's going to be a pretty key quality if this is a problem that the IT industry wants to solve. Ms. Miller hits the nail right on the head here when in a couple places she mentions women's lower confidence as a suspected reason for hesitance in making an entrepreneurial leap without every detail worked out (see the case of Ms. Karen Watts in the <a href='http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/18/technology/18women.html?src=me&ref=technology'>Times piece</a>), and the fact that we're discouraged from a young age from committing to math and the sciences. When I was in high school, a close male relative of mine once commented that "it's too bad you're not as good at math because you have a good grasp of physics." Owch. And I heard a lot of that growing up, not to intentionally discourage, but to shield from academic discouragement by saying that girls aren't supposed to be good at math anyway. We're not <em>bad</em> at math per se, we just like working in groups instead of sawing away at a single problem all alone.<br /></span></p><p><span style='font-family:Trebuchet MS'>But as has been successfully argued from numerous corners of industry,* fewer women in the math and sciences is still bad for innovation. So how do we encourage more women to go into them if they're "naturally" inclined in other areas? (Disclaimer: I personally think leaning too heavily on what comes "naturally" is a cop-out. See previous comments regarding self discipline and personal change.) First we need to stop telling kids that girls aren't supposed to be good at math. Not only does it encourage a feeling of helplessness and discourage the development of self-discipline, it's bloody untrue. While women obviously do tend towards activities entailing interpersonal relationships and more verbal communication, math can still be taught in a way that would be engaging to those personality types. Almost all of <a href='http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Erd%C5%91s'>Paul Erdős</a>' work was completely collaborative; he embraced the idea of "crowd sourcing" before we even had a world wide web. Especially now that so much more is understood about different cognitive and learning styles in children, taking a more cooperative and collaborative approach to teaching math in the hope of reducing the gender disparity in math heavy professions would certainly be worth investigating.<br /></span></p><p><br /> </p><p><span style='font-family:Trebuchet MS; font-size:9pt'>*Quoted from the link above: "Venture-backed start-ups run by women use, on average, 40 percent less capital than start-ups run by men and are increasingly involved in successful initial public offerings of stock, according to <a title='The white paper.' href='http://www.illuminate.com/whitepaper/'>a recent white paper</a> by Cindy Padnos, a venture capitalist who compiled data from 100 studies on gender and tech entrepreneurship."<br /></span></p><p><span style='color:black; font-family:Georgia'><br /> </span> </p></span>AMGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18255114747901269995noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5957025502555622440.post-54393596112907703732010-03-22T15:50:00.000-07:002010-03-22T15:53:00.163-07:00Quick note: QA as UX<a href="http://www.drdobbs.com/architecture-and-design/216401020;jsessionid=MAZJWQJ4KLMTFQE1GHPSKHWATMY32JVN">"In reality, the [tester's] expectations don't have to be valid, they just have to be in alignment with the customer's overall expectations."</a><div><br /></div><div>Found this when skimming around Borland's website. It's bringing a smile to this web app tester's face.</div><div><br /></div><div>This is a very Agile idea, and one that I think would translate very well to companies that either haven't yet or don't have the resources to commit to a more Agile development practice. If there's one Agile principle you embrace, this is one of the better ones.</div>AMGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18255114747901269995noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5957025502555622440.post-90797306357889447792010-03-17T08:05:00.001-07:002010-03-17T08:05:00.144-07:00Interactive Archiving<span xmlns=''><p>Hi all. Sorry for the lax updating, it's been busy. <a href='http://figmentproject.org/2010/'>My biggest side project</a> is starting to get into gear for the season and various other creative pursuits have been keeping me busy. (But sadly, not SxSW…deploying things today!) <br /></p><p><a href='http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/16/books/16archive.html?hpw'>The Times posted a nifty piece on digital archiving,</a> which is delighting both my technically and curatorially geeky halves. <br /></p><p>Writing down ideas is kind of weird. Kind of like money, when you put stuff on paper, it's not really the <em>idea</em> being put down, but something like a symbol for the idea. And the symbols can have varying layers of complexity. One of my <a href='http://www.alphabetsynthesis.com/'>favorite pieces of digital and interactive art</a> lets you play with this idea abstractly. Digitally storing information is like adding another degree of complexity to the symbols. Not only are the funny squiggles there, we've encoded them into ones and zeroes and committed the symbols of symbols to a very finicky storage medium.<br /></p><p>What delights me about the rising field of digital curatorship is how these curators are pioneering new ways of interpreting those symbols. As in the case of the Emory curators, they're trying to allow collection visitors/patrons to interact with an approximation of Mr. Rushdie's subjective experience of writing. (With emphasis on <em>approximation</em>.) Here visitors are getting so much more than the content of the documents, they're having an interactive experience with the information.<br /></p><p>But like a lot of cool art, it's necessarily ephemeral as a result of the media it's stored on and the technology used to interpret the symbols. (Or rather than art itself, the archive installation is a symbol of the art itself, perhaps? More like an imprint of the act of creation for the final work of art, Rushdie's novels.) While it's sad to think we'd lose the records, that almost makes it that much more interesting an experience. Like a bottle of fine wine, there's some beauty in experiencing something wonderful yet fleeting, and it's an idea you see in other areas of art. One of Eva Hesse's favorite sculptural media was latex; she would specifically treat it so that the material would degrade faster. When she died she instructed one of her assistants to destroy several pieces of her work. A resistance to permanence is also a big part of performance art (hence some controversy over the <a href='http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/965'>Marina Abramović show</a>, which features the reperformance of some of her pieces.)<br /></p><p>While this makes digital art that much more interesting for me, it's also incidentally why I refuse to pay for mp3s or other digital content without a physical disc. Data is fragile. (I love when people get all nostalgic about CDs. Yes, I still maintain a CD/DVD collection.) As Ms. Cohen points out, it depends on the storage media, and the current data storage technology is far from indestructible. But that makes computing machinery that much more interesting as an artistic medium.<br /></p></span>AMGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18255114747901269995noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5957025502555622440.post-73674417076364220782010-01-25T14:13:00.001-08:002010-01-25T14:13:18.351-08:00“Fully safe”<span xmlns=''><p>Real quick: <a href='http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8463516.stm'>German government advises against using Internet Explorer</a><br /> </p><p>It's fairly droll that the "increased security setting" wouldn't make IE "fully safe." Well yes, there's no such thing as guaranteed safety online. Obviously the attack on Google was advanced or else they wouldn't be talking about throwing away a solid toehold in a serious market that they would have a hard time recovering. I think it's a safe assumption that this sort of attack isn't going to happen to the average user.<br /></p><p>Anyway, in the interest of honesty I don't use IE because it indirectly caused me to require a new harddrive when I upgraded to IE8. But I have the great misfortune of running Vista… </p></span>AMGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18255114747901269995noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5957025502555622440.post-65564382013781706322010-01-25T11:10:00.001-08:002010-01-25T11:10:54.410-08:00Victims of success?<span xmlns=""><p>I love the adage that "Stats don't lie," because it's so accurate in one manner of speaking, and so totally absurd in another. Data is data: it's how we interpret the data that's often the source of debate.<br /></p><p>In the case of <a href="http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1466/economics-marriage-rise-of-wives">last week's Pew study</a> the data has sparked a debate that this blogeuse is loving. I first read about it from <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/19/us/19marriage.html">The New York Times</a>, whose article was (fascinatingly, I think) less about the findings and more about the interpersonal element – how are we subjectively experiencing the demographic shift?<br /></p><p>Initially when reading about some interpretations of this data along the lines of this <a href="http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/24/alpha-wives-the-trend-and-the-truth/">NY Times blog piece</a> seemed irksome. Really, why terms like "Alpha" with the confrontational connotations in analyzing the situation? Obviously something a male-dominated media might do. Likewise, seeing expressions like "wearing the pants in a relationship" make me cringe, not only for the implication that any one person in a couple needs to be dominant, but that it's no longer true in a literal sense. <em>Everybody</em> wear pants anymore, people.<br /></p><p>But the reality is that money = power. It's not a particularly nice truth, but there it is. And I do like that the Pew study has started a debate that acknowledges that there is an unintentional power dynamic in a committed relationship between cohabiting couples. (I hesitate to say "marriage" because there are many common law, civil unions and other "nontraditional marriages" which would have the same qualities I'm writing about.) No matter how much two people strive to make all decisions together, when one member of the couple has the better job, there's going to be a little more influence to make life decisions like moving in favor of supporting that member's job. It's not always a question of regarding both people's wishes and coming to a decision together as much as, we need to eat. We're going to go where we can eat.<br /></p><p>So back to <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/19/us/19marriage.html">the Times piece.</a> The upshot of the piece that Mr. Roberts seems to want us to gather is that women are becoming "victims" of a male backlash from this shift. I won't disagree that there are men floating around who don't like the idea of smart women, women in power and with resources. And I've certainly experienced for myself how much it sucks to be condescended to by men who were making themselves feel better.<br /></p><p>But that's their problem, not ours. We're clearly doing well, and other peoples' insecurity is not our fault. How does that make us "victims?" </p></span>AMGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18255114747901269995noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5957025502555622440.post-66978538285683721012009-12-19T11:38:00.001-08:002009-12-19T11:38:13.688-08:00Investing in Girl Geekitude<span xmlns=''><p>Last night's dinner was entirely worth the late trip back to Brooklyn from Microsoft HQ. I was pleasantly surprised with the good advice offered by Ms. Bonnie Halper of <a href='http://www.startuponestop.com'>StartUpOneStop.com</a> and pleased (though not surprised) with how engaging Ms. Sarah Chipps of <a href='http://girldeveloper.com/'>girldeveloper.com</a> was. The attendees were interesting and conversation was delightful (hooray for finding fellow runners!)<br /></p><p>Something that struck me even before signing up for the dinner though, which was then reinforced at the event, was how Microsoft and .NET heavy the speakers were. Which of course makes sense – the event was sponsored in part by Microsoft and the event was hosted at their offices. That's quite smart of Microsoft. They're investing in a segment of the development market that might not necessarily be as exposed to the up-and-coming technology in development that they would look for in their hiring practices, and then pushing their own products. As I can attest, it is intimidating going to tech events that you know are going to be an all-boys club. Case in point, the Microsoft Evangelist who gave a talk on Silverlight, <a href='http://blogs.msdn.com/peterlau/about.aspx'>Mr. Peter Laudati</a>, commented right off the bat that though accustomed to speaking before large groups, they were generally always men with a few women. Last night it was the opposite: all women with a handful of men. <br /></p><p>From a strictly business standpoint, Microsoft is getting the one up on competitors who aren't investing in the development of the female half of the talent pool. They helped facilitate a great set of panelists and created some good networking opportunities. By doing that, they had the opportunity to seriously push their own technology. And boy, did they. Laudati's title couldn't have been more apt, (I'll admit, I was impressed with his Bing maps demo, and I am a fiend for Google) and Chipps' background is straight up .NET (she hilariously Photoshopped "C++ for Baby Geniuses" over a book being read by her in a childhood photograph).<br /></p><p>What amused me about Laudati's talk was how he seemed slightly nervous about the fact that he was speaking for an all-women group. He spent a good two minutes I would estimate commenting on how problematic it is that there are so few women in the room at most of his talks. I was thinking to myself, "Well, duh. You're preaching to the choir on that. But what about the cool stuff I can develop with your product?" It brings to mind a <a href='http://girldeveloper.com/waxing-dev/shut-up-and-build-something/'>similar point Chipps made</a> in her blog not long ago that talk is essentially cheap. People aren't going to respect you as a developer unless you're doing cool things. So stop talking and go do cool things.<br /></p><p>I wished I could have made this point to Mr. Laudati (whose talk ran 15 minutes overtime. I felt terrible for the speaker from <a href='http://hakia.com/'>hakia.com</a>) so I might have had more time to hear about Silverlight, which I knew a bit about but was very intrigued to hear more. At one point near the beginning he commented that "this is all very technical" and I thought to myself, "Yeah! Because we're all techies! We <strong>like</strong> technical!" I wanted to hear about exciting new development technology, and felt a bit gypped that time was wasted wibbling about a problem everyone in the room was aware of. The problem is why we were in the room in the first place. <br /></p><p>So to add something to Ms. Chipps' comment, "shut up and build something." But if you're going to talk, make it worthwhile!</p></span>AMGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18255114747901269995noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5957025502555622440.post-86461743857490395552009-12-12T05:47:00.000-08:002009-12-12T05:54:51.758-08:00Life without QA...<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwiTgMAMk4juzniEONoneExwYqOVELT1pbOEL0D1ShB5v7g1tdguf8pG4oj0QfQKsx3IjK1TWLq2qyGpQqNAFDNo8kxhH7ypURxzd_DMDjjujZ3ZETqO7vRXFmWR9FzDoW-o0lZ3QfU5x7/s1600-h/MSN_sansQA.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 274px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwiTgMAMk4juzniEONoneExwYqOVELT1pbOEL0D1ShB5v7g1tdguf8pG4oj0QfQKsx3IjK1TWLq2qyGpQqNAFDNo8kxhH7ypURxzd_DMDjjujZ3ZETqO7vRXFmWR9FzDoW-o0lZ3QfU5x7/s320/MSN_sansQA.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5414347398124054514" /></a><p class="MsoNormal">…and you get this. The MSN startup window when I signed in last night. [twitch]</p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><p class="MsoNormal">Which (because of its Microsoft sponsorship) reminds me, the <a href="http://www.ggdnyc.com/?page_id=14">next New York Girl Geek Dinner</a> is next week. I’m particularly looking forward to hearing <a href="http://girldeveloper.com/">Girl Developer.</a> This will be my first GGDNYC event; I’ve been impressed with the diverse selection of speakers that past events have boasted. Definitely looking forward to it.</p><p></p>AMGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18255114747901269995noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5957025502555622440.post-24818670338848243132009-12-04T13:14:00.001-08:002009-12-04T13:14:34.891-08:00Finding projects on Facebook?<span xmlns=''><p>On Wednesday <a href='http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/02/is-your-facebook-personality-genuine/?WT.mc_id=fb_nyt864&WT.mc_ev=click'>The New York Times health blog mentioned</a> a University of Texas study on the accuracy of people's Facebook personas to real life. I love that a serious study is being conducted regarding Facebook usage, and think it sometimes gets short shrift when people talk about online networking.<br /></p><p>The U of Texas study suggests that, perhaps surprisingly, people's genuine personality traits can be accurately deduced from the persona they present via their Facebook profile. I would suspect though that a natural effect of finding participants who have sufficient Facebook activity to give a personality assessment is that the sample would skew toward extroverts. But, assuming the study's conclusions are accurate, it also has implications from a networking perspective.<br /></p><p>Interesting career and collaborative opportunities can come from some of the most unexpected places, and Facebook is helpful in keeping tabs on interesting people. I tend to use mine as a sort of über Rolodex tool in that I can keep the contact information for people I meet in one place. If one can count the profile information as a good indicator of personality, it would be possible to get a feel for how they might fit in to the culture of a potential new workplace or how they might mesh with a development team for a project you may potentially collaborate on.<br /></p><p>If used right, one might be able to reconsider the use of a Facebook page as another tool for networking. Perhaps this is part of a larger <a href='http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1640395,00.html'>Gen Y trend to be comfortable mixing the personal and the professional,</a> but I like the idea that people are taking a personal online social network seriously to study its effects, and can hope that that information will encourage people to rethink how they use them.</p></span>AMGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18255114747901269995noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5957025502555622440.post-61867851148721953522009-11-21T15:49:00.001-08:002009-11-21T15:49:19.235-08:00More on patterns in swarms<span xmlns=''><p>Shortly after my last post I wound up chatting with my good buddy <a href='http://www.nicholasfox.com/'>Nick</a> about swarm behavior. Radiolab did a fun ep on swarm intelligence their last season, totally worth <a href='http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2005/02/18'>checking out</a> if you're interested in more info (or if you're more of an aural learner).</p></span>AMGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18255114747901269995noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5957025502555622440.post-75845943449641117362009-11-19T05:04:00.001-08:002009-11-19T05:04:38.410-08:00What Do Art, Open Source, and OTB have in common?<span xmlns=''><p>Last night the <a href='http://www.meetup.com/Arts-Culture-and-Technology/'>Arts, Culture and Technology Meetup group</a> did a fabulous panel discussion on <a href='http://www.meetup.com/Arts-Culture-and-Technology/calendar/11763872/'>Creative Commons and the Arts</a>. CC has always been a fascinating idea so I was particularly keen on catching this one.<br /></p><p>I wasn't disappointed. The event opened with a brief presentation by Michael Sarff of <a href='http://www.mteww.com/'>MTAA</a> citing some examples of pieces they chose to CC license and those they didn't. He made the point that art is valuable because of its rarity, comparing a Warhol to a photo of a Warhol. Although I appreciated the point, I personally thought this was a bad example of it because Warhols aren't particularly scarce. The high sale price of a Warhol might be a better example of artist self-branding in a way that creates demand for the <strong>brand</strong> rather than the prestige of the <strong>object itself</strong>.<br /></p><p>But when you create digital art, the valuable bit isn't the object, it's the idea. Sounds a bit open-sourcey, methinks. And this is where things get interesting from an information science standpoint.<br /></p><p>The important thing here is the idea, the data, the abstract thing that really doesn't exist apart from the representative symbols that we choose for them. I use letters for my symbols, hackers use code, the gentlemen of <a href='http://www.mteww.com/'>MTAA</a> use images and video and a whole host of symbols to present their ideas. But the cool thing that CC lets all manner of creative types do is open source their ideas. Just like Google is pushing a model wherein data and not physical software is the commodity, CC – if used right – can encourage people to have control over their intellectual assets while allowing them to potentially gain value with contributions made by others.<br /></p><p>One of the philosophies behind open source is the idea that having a host of people contributing to a project's development can improve the efficiency of the end product. (Bet you didn't expect to see "efficiency" and "art" in the same blog post.) There's a theory of how multiple independent entities operating in apparent chaos can still create an optimal solution: <a href='http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swarm_intelligence'>swarm intelligence.</a> One of my favorite examples cited by the <a href='http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2007/07/swarms/miller-text'>National Geographic</a> article on the subject is off track betting. When a large number of people are putting in bets, the odds still generally seem to fall along the probable lines of the race's outcome. While art isn't (usually) striving for optimal anything, the principles of swarm theory can still apply here. Rather than seeking efficiency, other cool things can happen like <a href='http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Enemy_(group)'>Public Enemy</a>.<br /></p><p>But the important and exciting thing about CC is that it allows the idea's originator, or the benevolent dictator to use the open source term, to determine how involved they want the swarm to be. It's all about flexibility, and that's one of the things open source does best.</p></span>AMGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18255114747901269995noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5957025502555622440.post-74333664462062829552009-11-07T17:58:00.000-08:002009-11-07T18:09:22.715-08:00Meet AmandaHi there. If you had asked me six years ago what the most likely topic would be for today's incarnation of blog, technology would be the last thing I would have told you. In retrospect it shouldn't really, considering my first exposure to web development was screwing around with the layouts on my earliest blogs from circa 1999.<br /><br />Through a series of confluent events pushing me in that direction (as well as taking an unusual opportunity when I saw it) I’ve wound up on a vastly different career path than that which I had originally set out on, an art historian and freelance curator. I now work in quality assurance for an art-related website analyzing risks, creating test plans and cases and making sure they get implemented.<br /><br />Speaking as someone who has been told for years that “girls aren’t good at math” and “it’s too bad you’re not strong in math,” it’s doubly fulfilling to find a job so empirical in nature, and do well in it. While it's initially scary to depart familiar professional territory, at the end of the day I’m finding it infinitely more fulfilling to learn new things, especially things I've had a layperson’s interest in since time out of mind, than to continue in a field which required the same kind of thinking that I’d been doing since the beginning of college.<br /><br />As an aspiring curator and art historian/critic, I was constantly thinking about content and context in the larger cultural gestalt. I learned to think in the realm of the abstract while communicating those ideas with reference to specific works of art and writings. I learned to work with, and learned to love working with, words and language.<br /><br />As a QA analyst with tech support and testing experience, I’ve honed my ability to think systematically and empirically. I pride myself on naturally analyzing the elements of a given system to isolate possible causes and consequences of the interactions of those elements. Though my applied experience has been primarily from an end user, black box oriented approach, I’m continually taking joy in discovering new tools and new ways of testing and determining potential problem areas in a given system that I’m responsible for QAing. A couple of mathematically inclined friends of mine have said before (independent of each other) that, in a nutshell, the joy of math is the joy of the “click,” the excitement of figuring it out. This precise quality is what continually draws me into my work.<br /><br />But there are other “clicks” associated with my new field. The “click” that yes, skill sets not traditionally associated with IT can be very useful to application in a web development environment, like good writing and verbal communication. And perhaps that because of those qualities I might offer even more value as a QA analyst. I don’t think like a coder, I think like a customer. And perhaps best of all, I excel at verbally communicating technical ideas in easily human-readable English (and on occasion, French)- rare qualities in the IT world.<br /><br />All of which keeps bringing to mind Dee Dee Myers’ Why Women Should Rule the World. I suspect the title was chosen more by a focus group than her personally, because her premise is not that gender privilege should not be reversed or that men and women are the same, but rather that the working world has much to gain by utilizing the different set of inherent skills and thought processes that women offer with the purpose of diversifying their resources. It’s much the same line of thinking that landed me in IT. I’m sure this isn’t close to coincidental in light of the relatively low ratio of women to men in IT.<br /><br />IT does need more women. We are, if Louanne Brizendine and others are to be believed, better communicators and more empathetic ones. I’ve found this quality to be particularly helpful in QA. Considering it’s my job to find people’s mistakes and make sure they are aware of them, empathy and delicate yet honest communication is an asset. (Perhaps this explains why 2/3 of my QA team is comprised of women?)<br /><br />Which leads to another interesting question: what roles in IT are male dominated, in an already male dominated field? Why is this? Are the roles themselves gendered or is there something more closely related to the enculturation of men versus women that subtly impel us towards those roles? For that matter, and this is a question that many have asked and could still remain unanswered satisfactorily after many volumes have been written on it, but why are there so few women in IT anyway?<br /><br />I have my own experiences and thoughts on the matter, and unsurprisingly, I’m keen on researching it. And of course, I’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences on the subject. So stay tuned for my notes on women making it in IT in the greatest city in the world. And of course my comments and observances on such topics as web development; QA methodologies, practices and tools; database technology; open source and intellectual property issues; and the ultimate point of it all- human communication.AMGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18255114747901269995noreply@blogger.com0