How do you become a Women in Technology (WIT) Woman of the Year Award Honoree? Ask IBMer Neera Mathur, and she’d probably tell you there’s more to it than a passion for enterprise data solutions, which she has. There’s more to it than deep technical knowledge, business understanding, and strong communication skills, all of which she has. There’s even more to it than essential experience leading a core team of IT architects, IT specialists, business analysts, and software engineers—experience that she, of course, has. No, what Neera might say is that to achieve an honoree status like WIT Woman of the Year, you must constantly re-invent yourself and inspire the next generation. Neera might advise you to take an active role in the community, like she has, dedicating time to the self-empowerment of elementary and middle school girls to choose careers in tech. Or she might recommend leading volunteer teachers for Girls Who Code or mentoring students in the non-profit organization Cool Girls, as she has. Whatever Neera might say, we’re proud that we, at IBM, can not only say she’s one of us, but that she’s been a role model during her entire thirty-five year tenure at IBM.
Happy Friday, Bookworms! Here’s what the team at Simon & Schuster Canada is reading.
Jordyn, Sales Assistant: I just finished Loyalty in Death, by J.D. Robb (Nora Roberts’ pseudonym). This book is number 9 in the in Death series. I’m not even close to finishing because there are over 50 books in the series, and they’re still coming out! I love this series because each book is a murder mystery set in a futuristic mid-21st century New York City. The main character, Lieutenant Eve Dallas, had a rough childhood, but makes up for it by being a badass homicide cop who is prickly but efficient. It also helps that there’s a hunky love interest, but really, solving the murder mystery takes precedence in this series. It’s a lengthy series, but maybe one day I’ll manage to catch up!
Jacquelynne, Marketing Assistant: As you may all recall, I was reading Owl and the Japanese Circus a little while ago. I put that book down to start reading for one of our Conferences and forgot to pick it back up. Just recently I picked it up again, and I forgot how much I LOVED Owl, Rynn, Oricho, and (of course) Captain. With that in mind, I decided to pick up the second volume, Owl and the City of Angels. I am only a few chapters in, but Owl is just as feisty and funny as ever! I love how Kristi Charish has built a character I can so easily connect with, and secondary characters that really build and move the plot. The settings are always intriguing, and the mix of modern and historical elements are definitely a favourite of mine. Owl is truly a modern Indiana Jane, with a few nerdy qualities I can’t help but adore. If you’re a fan of supernatural, historical, and adventurous light reading, Kristi Charish’s Owl Series is for you. And now is the perfect time to start this series, because this May marks the third installment in the series: Owl and the Electric Samurai.
Holley, Publicity Assistant: I loved reading The Impossible Fortress by Jason Rekulak! It is a delightful story about young love between two young computer coders! The novel brings you into the 1980s in a coming of age story about friendship and young love. A great read for anyone, with the bonus of being able to play the game from the book online at http://www.jasonrekulak.com/game/
The top photo is a little memento mori I found in the third floor women’s restroom in my dorm building. It’s a dead moth anchored to the wall in spider’s silk. Duke is covered in spiderwebs, but somehow I almost never see any spiders at work. This makes operating in daily life easier, but also somehow, much more disquieting. Where are all these spiders? Anyway, it reminded me of the computer bug story, and since there’s still myths going around about this one, I thought I’d post the real, myth-busted account. This article is from Computerworld, and the log it refers to is pictured above.
It’s an oft-repeated tale that the grand dame of military computing, computer scientist and U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Grace Hopper, coined the terms buganddebug after an incident involving Harvard University’s Mark II calculator.
The story goes like this:
On September 9, 1945, a Harvard technical team looked at Panel F and found something unusual between points in Relay 70. It was a moth, which they promptly removed and taped in the log book. Grace Hopper added the caption “First actual case of bug being found,” and that’s the first time anyone used the word bug to describe a computer glitch. Naturally, the term debugging followed.
Yes, it’s an oft-repeated tale, but it’s got more bugs in it than Relay 70 probably ever had.
For one thing, Harvard’s Mark II came online in summer of 1947, two years after the date attributed to this story. For another thing, you don’t use a line like “First actual case of bug being found” if the term bug isn’t already in common use. The comment doesn’t make sense in that context, except as an example of engineer humor. And although Grace Hopper often talked about the moth in the relay, she did not make the discovery or the log entry.
The core facts of the story are true – including the date of September 9 and time of 15:45 hours – but that’s not how this meaning of the word bug appeared in the dictionary. Inventors and engineers had been talking about bugs for more than a century before the moth in the relay incident. Even Thomas Edison used the word. Here’s an extract of a letter he wrote in 1878 to Theodore Puskas, as cited in The Yale Book of Quotations(2006):
‘Bugs’ – as such little faults and difficulties are called – show themselves and months of intense watching, study and labor are requisite before commercial success or failure is certainly reached.
Word nerds trace the word bug to an old term for a monster – it’s a word that has survived in obscure terms like bugaboo and bugbear and in a mangled form in the word boogeyman. Like gremlins in machinery, system bugs are malicious. Anyone who spends time trying to get all the faults out of a system knows how it feels: After a few hours of debugging, any problems that remain are hellspawn, mocking attempts to get rid of them with a devilish glee.
And that’s the real origin of the term “bug.” But we think the tale of the moth in the relay is worth retelling anyway.
Since I’m not seeing her name nearly enough on the press, let’s give the attention Katie Boumandeserves. Thanks to her, we are now possible to see the first ever image of a black hole, something that people talked 200 years ago for the first time. It’s no longer a myth. We are girls and we can be whatever we want to be. Einstein would be proud of you, Katie. Thank you!
Here you can see a huge stack of hard drives she used for Messier 87’s black hole image data.
After a week of prep and on-campus set-up, today I finally got to meet my class of Girls Who Code! Last week I wanted to tell you that they were all inspirational, tenacious, enthusiastic learners and that Day 1 went off without a hitch, but the delightfully flawed truth of our first day makes me even more hopeful for an amazing summer with this perfectly imperfect group.
20 determined, resilient, capable young women joined my class today, and it is my job and my privilege to guide them to channel that passion into coding. I’m no expert in CS, but as an undergraduate student, I like to think I am earning my expert badge in the art of learning computer science.
I loved my APCS teacher and learned a ton in that class, and I will always be grateful that I had the opportunity to be introduced to CS as a high school student. However, because of the pace and breadth of the AP curriculum and the introductory nature of the class, my teacher was always quick to swoop in with guidance and explanations. When he wouldn’t answer my questions, typically my (brilliant) best friend could. And so I went to college with only that background in computer science - the subconscious assumption that when I struggled, someone would be there to explain, correct, and walk me through the “right” thought process.
I have spent my entire freshman year fighting and rewiring that instinct to reach for assistance when I cannot immediately solve the problem myself. I have spent this year learning to learn on my own, to seek out answers individually, to design and plan and build larger programs thoughtfully, and to solve problems not by having a TA walk me through them, but by bouncing ideas off my equally confused peers.
This is what I hope to offer my girls this summer. A space and an opportunity to learn how to learn computer science; an introduction to the world of tech coupled with the affirmation that they belong there; and a love of learning, exploring, playing, failing, innovating, and creating that they can carry forward to whatever careers await them.
I saw school as an obligation until I got to college. Now, I choose to be here, and I study things I love. I’m so grateful for the opportunity to be a university student, to take several years just to focus on my education and personal growth, and to explore my passions. My girls are taking their summer to dedicate time to their education and personal growth and pursue their passions, and it doesn’t matter if they take time to get comfortable in class, or if we have to remind them to put their phones away, or even if they don’t always want to keep trying: they choose to be here, learning, and for that, they are amazing. Part of me hoped for a classroom full of eager, bright-eyed, obedient students who would follow every instruction and pursue every project at 110%. The class I met today was so, so much better: they were excited, grateful, rambunctious, tenacious, sleepy, nervous, silly, and brilliant. They were interested in things I love, and in things I know nothing about. I can’t wait to see what they can do.
If you’re a girl/woman in tech or interested in CS, reach out to me! I would love to use this platform to help the next generation of young women discover CS. Girls Who Code’s summer program is phenomenal, but the truth is, you don’t need to be part of a 7 week intensive in order to get started in CS, or become a girl who codes. You just need a lot of determination, a bit of willingness to fail, and a little silliness, to make something great.
Whitney Wolfe at Tinder headquarters before leaving her job this April. (Ashley Terrill)
Earlier this month, Whitey Wolfe, cofounder of Tinder, filed a lawsuit against Tinder and its majority owner IAC/InterActive Corp on charges of sexual harassment and discrimination.
Tinder is a smartphone dating app that shows users a brief profile of a potential partner. Users swipe right or left depending on their opinion of the profile. If interested, they can message and meet in person. The app, commonly used for casual sex and hookups, is wildly popular in the US and globally, sparking Twitter accounts like Tinderfession.
Wolfe’sallegationsare plenty: Mateen took away her title as co-founder because it ‘makes the company seem like a joke’ and 'devalues’ it, CEO Sean Rad dismissed her complaints as 'annoying’ and 'dramatic,’ and Mateen called her 'whore’ at a company event.
Wolfe was an instrumental part of the company’s success: She came up with the name Tinder and orchestrated a marketing plan that took the user count from a few hundred users to 1,500. “I credit you 100% with the growth of Tinder,” said Joe Munoz, who developed the app, to Wolfe, “and I think that sending you around the US to visit sororities was absolutely the best investment we could possibly have made on the marketing side.”
According to the lawsuit, Wolfe was designated as co-founder at an internal company meeting in November 2012, around the time Mateen joined the company. However, “when Tinder-related articles appeared in more traditional business outlets, Wolfe’s name was often nowhere to be seen. When she would ask why only her name of the five founders was absent they would tell her 'you’re a girl.’”
Rad sent a memo to employees and suspended Mateen. “However, as many of you know, Whitney’s legal complaint is full of factual inaccuracies and omission,” he says. “We did not discriminate against Whitney because of her age or gender, and her complaint paints an inaccurate picture of my actions and what went on here.”
Whether or not her allegations are true, sexism in tech fields is hard to deny. Twitter had no women among its top officials until the fall of 2013. Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg recalled a conversation she heard between two men in the industry: “The other said he, too, would hire more young women but his wife fears he would sleep with them and, he confessed, he probably would,” reported the LA Times. According to Catalyst, only 5.7 percent of employed women in the US work in the computer industry.
Having women in high-level positions at tech companies helps not only women, but the company as a whole. “Diversity benefits research, development and innovation, the heartbeat of Silicon valley. It also increases profit, something Twitter sorely needs,” reported the New York Times.
Granted, there aren’t many women in tech to go around. “There is definitely a supply-side problem,” said Adam Messinger, Twitter’s chief technology officer. Added Rick Devine, chief executive at TalentSky, “The issue isn’t the intention, the issue is just the paucity of candidates.”
Some refuse to believe that. Kelly M. Dermody, an attorney, said “despite the tremendous success of a few women in tech, the sad truth is that it is an industry plagued by gender stereotyping and bias.”
Was Wolfe’s story one of an office romance gone wrong, or a symptom of a sexist company and field as a whole? “In the meantime, please bear this in mind: where lawsuits are concerned, both sides of the story are rarely told at once.” said TechCrunch. “We’ve heard quite a bit from Wolfe, but Tinder and IAC haven’t had a chance to formally respond in court with their side of the story.”
