style

[COMING SOON]

In which I answer all of the questions

This blog post has been in the corners of my mind and nipping at my ankles for a while. 

Please don't linkbait this, or pick comment fights. This isn't for upvotes, or HN fame. 

Many people I meet ask me a varient on this question "I understand we want more women in technology, but why?" It's a great question, and not at all something we should be offended by. Often men are afraid to ask questions like this for fear there will be backlash, I think that fear can lead to stiffling of an important conversation.

Frankly, the internet is thriving without women building it, why should that change? 

I put together the following answer for a Quora thread, I thought it would be also advantageous to put it here, so I (and maybe you) can reference it in the future. 

I think the reason why we need more women building technology is threefold, I will outline below. 

You will notice I stay away from generalizations like "women are better at xyz," because such generalizations imply that we therefore must be worse at other things that men may be able to do better. I don't think approching the argument that way is productive. 

Diversity leads to better products and results

As illustrated in the Cornell study included below and many more to be found online, diversity improves performance, morale, and end product. More women engineers means building a better internet, and improving software that can service society as a whole. Building a better internet is why I started doing software development in the first place, I think we can all agree this is of utmost importance.

(source: http://web.mit.edu/cortiz/www/Diversity/PDFs/Jehn%20et%20al%201999.pdf)

The internet is the largest recording of human history ever built 

Right now the architecture for that platform is being built disproportionally by white and asian males. You've heard the phrase "he who writes history makes history"? We don't yet know how this will affect future generations. 

How can architecture be decidedly male? I like to refer to the anecdotal story of the Apple Store glass stairs. While visually appealing one unforeseen consequence to their design was the large groups of strange men that spend hours each day sitting under them looking up. As a women, the first time I saw them I thought "thank god I'm not wearing a skirt today." Such considerations were not taken in designing these stairs, I think it's probable, if not easily predictable, that in a few years we will see such holes in the design of the web. 

Women in 10 years need to be able to provide for themselves, and their families

Now, this reason is purely selfish on the part of women, but we all have mothers, and sisters, so I hope we can relate. 

This year there are 6 million information technology jobs in the US, up from 628,600 in 1987 then 1.34 million in 1997. Right now jobs in technology have half the unemployment rate of the rest of the workforce. There is no sign this will change anytime soon. If growth continues at the current rate, it will not be long until women will not be able to sustain themselves if not involved in a technical field. 

We have to start educating young girls about this now, or they may ultimately become the poorest demographic among us. 

(sources: http://www.gao.gov/corresp/he98159r.pdf, http://media.dice.com/report/july-2012-top-tech-talent-gaps/, http://www.bls.gov/ooh/About/Projections-Overview.htm)

I hope this has been educational for you, if this is something that you have debated. If you have any thoughts please share. 

Teaching a Man to Fish With a Computer

Last week I had the privilege of traveling to the Dominican Republic with the organization Handfuls

 of Hope. We went down to bring food, clothing, and care to some of the poorest villages about an 

hour outside of Santo Domingo. We also built a roof, and did a lot of painting (photo above is me 

after a full day's work painting).

 

The trip was an amazing experience, it was incredibly humbling how helpful and happy the 

children were at the village. We think that all our stuff provides us with happiness, but in reality it 

provides us with stress and obligation. After months planted behind my machine it was lovely to

 be able to spend my days working outside. I even did construction and help put a roof on one of 

the buildings in the village. 

The folks there live without running water, mostly (a few homes had it). They only have electricity 

for a few hours a day. I was spending some time chatting while painting a fence, and I learned 

from one of the women that put the trip together that in the school (a small school with several 

classrooms holding 10 or so students) there was a computers class that was held weekly. 

Excited, I asked if I could see it. So, I stopped by and saw 10 adults in a classroom with 1 

computer that a teacher was working with. There was a larger monitor they were all watching on 

and learning from. From what I could see, a specific program was being taught on a Windows box,

 it could have been anything, I didn't get to ask. I got to say "Hello," the experience was wonderful

 and it was great to see that even in this place, where many people don't own much more than

 their clothes, and this is their Wikipedia:

and they were being taught how to use a computer. 

All that got me thinking, what is the most important thing to teach to adults who are seeing a 

computer for the first time? What is the fastest way to get them from illiterate to a place where 

they can be making money from the web like the rest of us? 

The internet is a perfect environment for them to thrive. The decentralization of 

commerce means that you don't have to own a storefront on Park Ave to make serious cash, or 

ideally, feed your family. There are many organizations that take homemade crafts from third world

 areas and put them online, however, what about empowering the people to do this themselves? 

I immediately did what I do and broke things down into steps. Step one: find the tools to supply

them.  The first place I looked to send help to this class was One Laptop Per Child to see if I 

could buy some laptops and send them, from their site it appears you can only donate laptops to

the areas they designate (that makes perfect sense for their organization, just doing some 

research). I could buy some netbooks and send them, but would need to come up with a strategy 

to make them provide value, especially with no clear way to get them online. As much fun as 

MS Word and Solitaire are, what could you show them that would turn them into tools that could 

help feed a village?

That brings us to the second step, and that's teaching folks how to fish. The Kahn Academy has 

an offline version of their site (I bet for this very reason), so that's a great place to start. Giving

them the ability to teach themselves the higher maths and sciences is key. In this village, it's 

extremely rare to have anything higher than a middle school education as going to HS costs 

money that they don't have. There is a lot that has to happen after that, and that's where I am lost.

 

Computing played a big role in my trip in general. Below I'm going to post some pictures of the kids

 I hung out with there (taken with my iPad). I was able to communicate with them through this 

offline app from Lonely Planet (and broken HS spanish). They loved my iPad, we played a lot of

Checkers and other games. It was a real study in how technology brings the world together.

 

In the end Girl Develop It donated money to their class to buy tools for the short term. I hope to

 go back next year to teach and by then I'd like to have a helpful strategy, I'm going to continue 

doing research on my end, but if anyone has seen anything like this out there it would be greatly 

appreciated. 

Teaching a Man to Fish With a Computer

Last week I had the privilege of traveling to the Dominican Republic with the organization Handfuls

 of Hope. We went down to bring food, clothing, and care to some of the poorest villages about an 

hour outside of Santo Domingo. We also built a roof, and did a lot of painting (photo above is me 

after a full day's work painting).

 

The trip was an amazing experience, it was incredibly humbling how helpful and happy the 

children were at the village. We think that all our stuff provides us with happiness, but in reality it 

provides us with stress and obligation. After months planted behind my machine it was lovely to

 be able to spend my days working outside. I even did construction and help put a roof on one of 

the buildings in the village. 

The folks there live without running water, mostly (a few homes had it). They only have electricity 

for a few hours a day. I was spending some time chatting while painting this fence, and I learned from one of the 

women that put the trip together that in the school (a small school with several classrooms holding

 10 or so students) there was a computers class that was held weekly. 

Excited, I asked if I could see it. So, I stopped by and saw 10 adults in a classroom with 1 

computer that a teacher was working with. There was a larger monitor they were all watching on 

and learning from. From what I could see, a specific program was being taught on a Windows box,

 it could have been anything, I didn't get to ask. I got to say "Hello," the experience was wonderful

 and it was great to see that even in this place, where many people don't own much more than

 their clothes, and this is their Wikipedia 

 they were being taught how to use a computer. 

All that got me thinking, what is the most important thing to teach to adults who are seeing a 

computer for the first time? What is the fastest way to get them from illiterate to a place where 

they can be making money from the web like the rest of us? 

The internet is a perfect environment for them to thrive. The decentralization of 

commerce means that you don't have to own a storefront on Park Ave to make serious cash, or 

ideally, feed your family. There are many organizations that take homemade crafts from third world

 areas and put them online, however, what about empowering the people to do this themselves? 

I immediately did what I do and broke things down into steps. Step one: find the tools to supply

them.  The first place I looked to send help to this class was One Laptop Per Child to see if I 

could buy some laptops and send them, from their site it appears you can only donate laptops to

the areas they designate (that makes perfect sense for their organization, just doing some 

research). I could buy some netbooks and send them, but would need to come up with a strategy 

to make them provide value, especially with no clear way to get them online. As much fun as 

MS Word and Solitaire are, what could you show them that would turn them into tools that could 

help feed a village?

That brings us to the second step, and that's teaching folks how to fish. The Kahn Academy has 

an offline version of their site (I bet for this very reason), so that's a great place to start. Giving

them the ability to teach themselves the higher maths and sciences is key. In this village, it's 

extremely rare to have anything higher than a middle school education as going to HS costs 

money that they don't have. There is a lot that has to happen after that, and that's where I am lost.

 

Computing played a big role in my trip in general. Below I'm going to post some pictures of the kids

 I hung out with there (taken with my iPad). I was able to communicate with them through this 

offline app from Lonely Planet (and broken HS spanish). They loved my iPad, we played a lot of

Checkers and other games. It was a real study in how technology brings the world together.

 

In the end Girl Develop It donated money to their class to buy tools for the short term. I hope to

 go back next year to teach and by then I'd like to have a helpful strategy, I'm going to continue 

doing research on my end, but if anyone has seen anything like this out there it would be greatly 

appreciated. 

On Fashion and Developer Conferences

 

If you have met me in person you know that I tend to wear traditionally girly clothing. Dresses, skirts, sweaters, headbands and the like. 

I have, like, four Zuckerburg costumes. Jeans, sneakers, teeshirt, sometimes hoodies. I never wore them unless I was going to a developer conference or a user group somewhere, that's what I bought them for. I never consciously thought "Sara you are changing who you are in order to fit in," however, that was essentially what I was doing. 

Once I realized what I had been doing I had conflicting emotions. On one hand I wanted to stay true to myself, on the other a girl in a dress at a software conference was going to stick out like a sore thumb. 

Part of getting older for me has been getting more comfortable in my own skin. Part of maturing as a software developer has done the same for me. Sometime around the middle of last year I felt confident enough to start wearing my normal gear to developer events? 

What changed about my experience? Absolutely nothing. No one treated me differently, or made me feel uncomfortable. I've had outstanding conference experiences since. It was all in my head, and I wanted to write about it in case it's in yours too. 

 

 

My Fluentconf Talk and a GMail keyboard shortcut Extension

 

Fluentconf was great for quite a few reasons, the first being that I love SF, the second being that I had such an amazing time with the people there. It's rare that you get to be around so many people like yourself, and to break off with people you admire and get a concentrated amount of great mentorship is such a great recharger. Super happy for the experience.

I was sad about the fact that I learned from Rebecca Murphey the keynotes were for sale. That's a diservice to the community. Developers get sent to these conferences by their employers to learn more. If the things they are learning are expensive advertisements masked as organic learning opportunities we are swindling them. 

However, besides that, the conference organizers are awesome folks, and the conference in general was well done. Peter Cooper and Brady Forrest were lovely, and it was great to meet them in person. I was on the selection committee, and it was great being able to help choose the talks at the conference, super grateful for the experience. 

I did a talk about browser extensions in GMail. I used Thomas Fuchs' library for keyboard shortcuts keymaster, and I mapped them to some GMail shortcuts. I was able to make an extension that allowed me to email a group, sort my inbox, and highlight certain messages just by hitting a key. I hope you find it useful. https://github.com/SaraJo/SpaceXGMail, intructions on how to personalize it are in the README. Otherwise you can just keep my settings and become very close with my family and coworkers. 

After my talk, I spoke with a gentleman named @wshaver who wanted to make an extension to make Github code repos full screen. He did it! It's here: https://github.com/ws-emberex/GitHubWider, check it!

Also, for your pleasure, I made sure to optimize the slide/cat ratio in this deck.

 

Deployment Dance Party

Today was the end of the first iteration for the new product team here at Levo League. We think it's super important to thank, not only the developers, but also the people building the business that makes this team necessary. 

We all got together as a company (champagne optional) and for the first time held a Deployment Dance Party. We had so much fun we created a public repo on GitHub for you to hold your own. You can see it here, it supports Heroku and Capistrano currently, but it's just as easy to add your own commands. Pick a dance mix, and kick off your deployment toasting your success and sweet dance moves. 

It was a fun party, we hope to keep improving the script with each one. 

Your move, brogrammers. 

 

Happy to Announce I've Accepted a Role with the Levo League

The last thing I wanted was a job. I've been independent for almost 5 years and I've loved the freedom of working with startups and taking small projects here and there while building things on my own. It has been super rewarding. 

I started working with the Levo League a few months ago as an independent. Helping them to integrate their existing platforms. The thing that improved immediately upon working with them was my wardrobe, these ladies set a high bar. Another thing I noticed is that I loved working in their offices. I usually work at home, or from New Work City, however, I kept coming in and working right next to them.

They have an amazing team: all strong, accomplished, hilarious women who truly love what they are working on. Amanda Pouchot and Caroline Ghosn are a joy to be around, they respect the development process, and they both have a great vision. 

I was helping them interview other developers for the CTO position, and that's when it happened. I had a funny feeling, and after some internal searching I realized I was truly sad at the thought of not working with them any more. They had jokingly talked about hiring me early on, and I jokingly told them I never wanted a job again. When they gave me first refusal before they offered the job to someone else I was overwhelmed with the thought that there couldn't be a better place for me. So, I accepted. 

We agreed that projects like Girl Develop It, and Vasilia are important to me and should stay that way. We discussed how important open source is to the ecosystem of the internet, and anything we build that can be abstracted out will be open sourced. We are currently working with amazing developers, designers, and user experience experts to create an intuitive, responsive platform. 

I'm so excited to explore this opportunity with the Levo League. Not only do they have exciting technical challenges, but they are doing something I really believe in. They really are all so passionate about creating an environment for women where they can come for help, advice, and mentorship regarding their careers. It's a logical step after the things I have done with Girl Develop It. 

The Levo League investors are women that I consider to be my role models, like Gina Bianchini and Sheryl Sandberg. I'm excited to have the privilege to work on something they can be proud of. 

 

 

How to Win Founders and Influence Business

This is a blog post that ended up getting published in Fast Company!

Read Here

Enjoy. See you at Fluent JS and NDC!

Now, a Super Easy Way to Participate in the 1/18 SOPA Protest

Hey all, I wrote about the 1/18 blackout protest for SOPA/PIPA and why I'm participating here. Now there is a super easy way for you to participate, even if you aren't a developer. 

 

Drop the following code in between your two <HEAD></HEAD> tags on your site, your users will be redirected to the blackout page that describes what you are doing and why. Then, when the protest is over, simply remove the added code. 

 

<script>

       window.location = "http://protestsopa.org";

</script>

 

The protest is starting at 12am on 1/18, and lasts 24 hours. If you have any questions, let me know!

 

They Can't Take Our Internets

 

There are few things in this world I would get beaten in the streets for. You never see a people really stand up to their government without seeing people getting beaten in the streets (we saw some of that late last year). The internet is one of those things. 

 

I'm not going to tell you what's so cool about this internet thing, but I will tell you what's not so cool: people trying to take it freedoms away from it. SOPA and PIPA have been all over the nets lately, but we know about them because we care about these things. It's time to show the people who don't live on hacker news what they have to be worried about. 

 

I'm taking down all my personal sites on 1/18 along with sites like Reddit and ICanHasCheezburger. I will be replacing the index with this. I hope you will consider joining me, you can add your site to the github here: https://github.com/SaraJo/SOPA-PIPA-Protest-Page, or reach out to me (via comment or email) and I will add it for you. 

 

Let's save the internet!