In celebration of the first computer programmer, Ada Lovelace, Suw Charman Anderson has encouraged people to blog, Twitter and celebrate women in tech who we admire.
The aim was to get 1000 people to sign up, and at the time of writing, 1678 have pledged on the site.
So what’s my contribution?
Well, there are plenty of admirable women in technology, but picking one or two has been quite tricky. So I’ve ended with a bit of a compromise list of three, four!
The first two are both very personal choices, as they’re both friends and colleagues of mine at Bauer Media. And sadly both of them are so in-demand that their time for online profiles is limited. They’re both in marketing, rather than hardcore developers or programmers, but technology is all about successful implementation, rather than technology for technology’s sake.
But there are definite reasons for admiring them as well as liking them – I’ve worked with Charlie Watson for many years, and she has an amazing ability to combine research and insight to make intelligent decisions about how to use technology to the best effect, and then to present it all in the right way to colleagues and users so that they understand the benefits without feeling patronised in any way.
Meanwhile I’ve also recently started working with Danielle West, but gained a lot of admiration in a short space of time for the fact she not only combines integrity and plain-speaking, but always has the facts to back up whatever she is proposing.
And to balance the internal recommendations, I’d also say that my online interactions with Laura Fitton had shown there was a lot to recommend her, but her efforts in raising money for Charity: Water raised a lot of money and awareness about an important problem. It’s a great example of using new technology to try to make things better in world, including for those that don’t have access to laptops, broadband, or even clean drinking water. Technology doesn’t improve things by itself – it needs human intervention and interaction to make a difference.
Bugger – writing about Laura reminded me about a fourth person who I have a lot of time and admiration for – @amanda, who I met when she asked if she could interview me about my Twitter usage. And within a short space of time became one of the leading people behind Twestival, which became a global phenomenon in 202 cities around the world, and so far has raised $250,000 for Charity Water.
There’s definitely no shortage of fantastically admirable women in the technology sphere, and I’m sure there are quite a few more in my network which I’ve failed to mention, so apologies! And that’s not counting the admirable women who have helped and supported people like me (like my wonderful partner and my incredibly intelligent mother), so that hopefully I’ll make some kind of difference by using technology effectively.