Ada Lovelace Day – celebrating women in technology

Who’s Ada Lovelace and what’s this day all about?

“Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology.  Women’s contributions often go unacknowledged, their innovations seldom mentioned, their faces rarely recognised.  We want you to tell the world about these unsung heroines.”

Who was Ada?

“Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace, born in 1815, was the only child of Lord Byron.  Born Augusta Ada Byron, but now known simply as Ada Lovelace, she wrote the world’s first computer programmes for the Analytical Engine, a general-purpose machine invented by Charles Babbage.”

Why am I here?

I’m not really sure how I ended up being an ICT Development Officer, it was never planned.  I really wanted to be a forensic scientist but couldn’t face doing a chemistry degree for 3 years … so I chose maths instead.

My dad is an engineer and for as long as I can remember has been tinkering with things.  He let me loose on his soldering iron when I was pretty young and I used to help out when he was rewiring the house. 

All the tinkering left me pretty fearless when it came to playing with technology and as a result I was usually (and still am) the “accidental techie”.  My last job included 2 office moves where I had to disconnect and reconnect everything and get it working again, luckily both were successful.

Now I work with technology full time and I really enjoy helping other organisations see how it can help them to do things better or just a bit differently.

So what about today?

I wanted to take the opportunity of Ada Lovelace day to highlight some of the women who tech here at NCVO and ask them what they think about technology.

NCVO is full of women, in fact 67% of staff here are women so we do lots of techie jobs like; web editing, e-communications, ICT capacity building, creating multi media content, writing about new technologies and managing websites.

Here’s a few of the things that the women at NCVO said about technology:

• What are the technologies you use every day and how do they help you do your work?

“I use email all the time to communicate with colleagues, discuss ideas, share links. I also use twitter to keep in touch with people outside of the organisation and update on what we’re doing. I use delicious most days to save links. I am chained to my computer…”

“My computer is my key tool but my iPod helps me get through the day.  I use email and twitter to keep in touch, delicious to share information, this blog to talk about what I’m doing, the web (and bloglines) to learn new things and doodle to organise our netball matches.”

“Web to keep up to date with what’s happening via blogs, news alerts, upcoming events, partner websites etc and source information. I like Facebook in terms of using it where and when it’s appropriate but personally, I’ve been peer pressured into signing up. Since moving to London, I look at the weather forecast way too much!!!”

“Online – twitter, blogs, Facebook etc. Mostly it’s all about keeping in touch, making new contacts, getting the latest news quickly, being able to respond. All this is also a hindrance. I find it difficult to switch off from it all and to focus on one thing and it becomes obsessive and habitual!”

• How do you think developments in technology will change the way you work over the next couple of years?

“I hope it will allow us to work more flexibly, share/learn regardless of geographical location and bring us closer together – especially with the global challenges we collectively face. I think most people are already bombarded with so much information – hopefully technology will value how precious time is and allow us to opt in or out as we want. I think it will be empowering rather than overwhelming.”

“We’re already seeing it happen but I definitely think the way we work is going to change dramatically, in terms of physically where we work, who we work with and how we work with them.  As we move to doing more online we are going to have to rethink job roles to reflect these new skills.”

“I hope that I will be able to share and collaboratively gather together more sources and intelligence. I hope to be able to broaden our pools of intelligence by following trails of recommendations through blogs and twitter. I hope to be able to work more flexibly, taking advantage of WiFi to work in different environments that are more conducive to different activities (e.g. writing, or thinking, or planning, or discussing)”

“I have to say it will continue to speed things up and will mean that we will need to be able to respond more quickly, to adapt more quickly and to be very open minded about how we engage. I think we will also find that there’s a backlash against the rampant marketing online and hopefully technology will be put to good uses and be used as a force for good more than it is currently. I wonder if things will be more closely controlled? Marketing to children for example.”

• What’s your favourite piece of technology and why?

“I love a laptop with WiFi capabilities because I love the idea that work is something that is done in a range of environments, either on your own or with others, rather than being associated with a desk in a corner of an office!”

“My computer would rate pretty highly but in terms of the things that keep me going I’d have to say my phone, I can talk to my friends and family on it and listen to Radio 4 through it when I’m out and about, in a perfect world I would have an iPhone and it would do all of these things and more.  At the moment I couldn’t be without my DVD player that is letting me watch all 5 series of The Wire.”

“I am still utterly and completely in love with my iPod. I can’t bear to be away from it. Having all my music with me is amazing and liberating.”

“My iPod. I can take on the world when I’m listening to the presets”

• Who are the women in tech/science you admire and why?

“I am ashamed to say that I don’t have that many to choose from as I don’t know that many.  But I would say that my ultimate heroes are astronauts so:

• Valentina Tereshkova – first woman in space
• Sally Ride – first American woman in space
• Judith Resnik – died in the Challenger disaster
• Helen Sharman – first British woman in space”

“One of the people I admire is Sophie Germain.  Sophie was a mathematician in the 19th century and when she started studying she had to hide the fact that she was a woman because they weren’t allowed to enroll in the university.  She made some key discoveries in the world of number theory and her work fed into the proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem.” 

“I love that [technology] allows discovery, discussion and (almost) equal access to information.”

More information about Ada Lovelace day and women in technology

• http://findingada.com
• www.pledgebank.com/AdaLovelaceDay 
• http://twitter.com/FindingAda 
• http://groups.yahoo.com/group/findingada 
• www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=47550446005
• This Guardian Tech Weekly podcast features a discussion about women in tech: www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/audio/2009/mar/10/tech-weekly-podcast-women-technology-api
• Female Social Media Guru UK Awards 2009: http://socialglue.wordpress.com/2009/03/10/female-social-media-guru-uk-awards-2009-official-line/
• Female role models in science and technology: www.pinkstinks.co.uk/role_models.php

The importance of “listening” on the web

Photo by Theory at www.flickr.com/photos/theory

[Cross posted from the Third Sector Foresight website and updated from a previous post on this blog].

For many organisations, making the best use of the most basic ICT can be a struggle, let alone starting to think about how they might use social media tools.  The reality is that with more and more information and discussions online, those that don’t engage are likely to miss out.

Government departments are already posting their new policies and initiatives online, local CVS are keeping their websites up to date with the latest funding opportunities and people are discussing the work that you do online.

Can you afford to not receive this information?  Should you be letting these conversations happen without your input?  Using information in this way is only going to increase so getting to grips with it is vital.

Getting started with social media needn’t be a big step, in fact organisations should probably start small until they get the hang of it.  Even if you’re not confident in (or even interested in) setting up a blog or joining a social networking site there is a mass of information out there that could help you to do your job more effectively.

You can broadly categorise five stages of engaging with social media, each subsequent step requiring more time per week to maintain:

• Listening
• Participating
• Generating a buzz
• Sharing content
• Building communities

Getting started with listening is easy, the initial steps are:

Set up an RSS feed reader account

The key tool behind listening is RSS, sending any new web based information straight to you, saving you time from both searching for information and only seeing what’s relevant.  To use RSS you’ll need to set up a feed reader, either something web based like Bloglines or if you use an internet browser like IE7 or Firefox, it’s already built in.

Sign up to RSS news feeds

The square orange RSS logo indicates that a website it set up to enable RSS feeds.  You might choose to get started with some key news sites like BBC, Communities and Local Government, NCVO or Third Sector Foresight.  In no time at all you will identify other sites you want to follow and you simply add them.

 

Read blogs

Blogs are free and easy to set up and allow people to talk about what they’re interested in.  If people are using blogs to talk about your area, your field of work or even your organisation, don’t you want to know about it?

The easiest way to find blogs is to start with one and then see who they link to.  If you want somewhere to start then why not try NCVO’s Public Service Delivery Network blog.

You can also search for blogs specifically within Google.

Set up key word searches

Searching for keywords can often throw up useful information on the internet, especially if your keyword is fairly unique (such as “NCVO” or “foresight”).

You can save a Google blog search to continually look for your keyword and email you with the result.

Twitter is increasingly hosting conversations that we should be listening to, you can set up your own Twitter search and even feed the results into your RSS feed reader.

Do all of these at once!

A really useful comment from Dave Briggs below pointed out the Addict-o-matic website which does a lot of this “listening” all at once.

Go to http://addictomatic.com/ and put in your keyword, it might be your organisation’s name or something about the work you do … and see the results come in.

Further information

There are loads more excellent resources to help you listen on the web and I’ve saved them at http://delicious.com/ICT_Hub/listening.  You might also want to download a copy of the “How to use new media” guide.

12 ideas for blog posts (and a couple more)

Photo by Steve Bridger used under creative commons license

I’m picking up on a blog post from Paul Bradshaw who has suggested 12 ideas for getting started with blogging.

“I’m currently writing a chapter on blogging for a book on online journalism.  It includes 12 typical blog post types to kickstart ideas.  Here are the examples I came up with…”

 

It can be useful for first time bloggers to hear what other people are doing, this is the original list of ideas (plus a couple of suggested tweaks):

1. Respond to something else on the web
2. Suggest an idea
3. Interview someone
4. Blog an event
5. Ask a question
6. Pick a fight (and respond constructively of course)
7. Reflect on something
8. Do something visual
9. Review something
10. Make a list
11. Write a how to
12. Let someone else post
13. Add glossaries or jargon busters
14. Find, analyse and explain data
15. Hold a themed photo contest and produce a slideshow with commentary

Some of these are easier than others but I’m going to give them a go anyway.  Will keep you posted.

A day at the Social Media Exchange – 3

I’m at the third masterclass of the day and it’s not even lunchtime!

Dave Briggs is running this session on “WordPress for good”

WordPress is an open source blogging platform -

• open source means that it’s “free as in beer and free as in speech”
• it produces rss feeds as a standard – helps people to keep in touch with what you are saying
• WordPress has in built commenting facility and loads of other cool tools

Before setting up your WordPress account, you need to decide if you want it to be .com or .org? – .com is a bit limited in what it can do and how it can be personalised

Some examples of typically bloggy type blogs

• http://wp4g.wordpress.com
• http://davepress.net
• http://blogs.dfid.gov.uk – Department for International Development, blogging about their experiences
• http://matthewtaylorsblog.com

And some not quite bloggy blogs

• http://socialmediaexchange.org.uk
• http://lowcarboncommunities.net
• www.walesoffice.gov.uk
• www.number10.gov.uk

What else can you do with WordPress?

• You can categorise your posts as “news” or by project to make it more like a regular website.
• Plug ins add cool stuff to WordPress blogs.
• WordPress can be easily themed around corporate colours, type faces etc.

http://www.wordpressforgood.com has some useful resources for setting up your WordPress blog.

… so, lunch! …

A day at the Social Media Exchange – 1

I’m spending the day at the Social Media Exchange, an opportunity for people to come together and learn more about social media tools and how they’re being used in the sector.

The day is packed full of practical sessions, the first one i’m going to is from Kate Fox from the Mersey Basin Campaign (MBC), looking at how they use blogging, pod casts and other tools to engage people (both locally and internationally) with their campaign.

The MBC’s early approach to new media was much the same as other people in that they heard about blogging and decided they wanted to give it a go.  It wasn’t until Kate arrived as the new media manager that they started to look at what they wanted to achieve and then matched the available technologies to that.

MBC started their journey with blogging, using the blogger.com platform.

Some of the useful snippets that came from Kate’s session …

• To encourage people to blog who have never done it before, get them to pretend they’re writing a postcard to a friend
• Once they started the blog they made sure it linked to others using through the blog search engine Technorati
• It’s important to take time to comment on other people’s blogs – it lets them know you’re there and drives traffic to your site
• Use other blogs to get your posts out to a new audience, they may get picked up by local news agencies
• Regular posts to blogs keeps people interested and coming back
• MBC eventually replaced their staff newsletter with a blog, forcing people to use the blog and familiarising them with the blogging format
• The success of the event focussed blog prompted MBC to create a more general blog – hosted on typepad.com for a cost of £7 a month

What worked well for Mersey Basin Campaign?

• Blogging worked really well when it was linked to a specific awareness raising campaign
• One example was the adventures of sammy the salmon, celebrating the fact that salmon had returned to the Mersey for the first time since the industrial revolution
• Contributors in particular felt to write in the persona of Sammy the Salmon
• When Samantha the Salmon (Sammy’s sister) went missing on an international journey, she turned up again at www.travellingfishy.com – the further adventures of Sammy!
• MBC started using their blog for consulting with people on issues that affected the mersey and then used comments from the blog to feed in to formal consultation responses

Next up for MBC was using audio

• MBC was involved with www.riverthatchangedtheworld.com, a project featured audio content from local people
• The audio has been showcased at local museums, on BBC Merseyside and it also led to further interviews and exposure

Tips for creating audio content

• choose the right interviewee
• plan your interview – give people a copy of the questions
• take stock of your surroundings – are there any background noises?
• get people to answer questions in complete sentences
• double check that the recording has worked!
• keep hold of your raw audio
• get your podcasts transcribed so that everyone can benefit from it
• why not issue talking  press releases? – ready made content that can be used on local radio

… right, off to another session …