Tag: women in tech

Categories
Diversity Semantics

How Not to write about the semantic web

How not to attract new semantic web readers, especially among the women. Write the following:

I just thought that this is a smart strategy to make video tutorials about the Semantic Web more appealing to female* or otherwise not so super-tech-savvy* audiences: Just put a Lolcat in it!

Though the author wrote that she matches the “stereotype”, which I guess means women who aren’t tech and like LOLcats, by the time I followed the asterisks, I’d already passed from astonishment to loathing. FYI, I wrote the first book on RDF, babes.

A reference to females was unnecessary. Surprising, too, from the same company featuring an interview with Corinna Bath, author of the thesis, “Towards a De-Gendered Design of Information Technologies”.

Categories
Diversity Semantics

Correlation

noticed a correlation between my last two posts on the lack of women at Ajax Experience and the seeming lack of RDF or semantic web applications. Both are based on perennial questions: Where are the women in technology? Where are the semantic web applications?

Next time I’m asked either, I think I’ll answer that the women in technology are off building RDF-based semantic web applications. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

The women in technology are off building RDF-based semantic web applications. It works better than answering yes, there are women in technology but we’re still not as visible as we should be, and yes there are semantic web and RDF-based applications, but they’re still not as visible as they could be—both of which evidently don’t play well in the dominant technical culture, because the same damn questions keep getting asked, again and again.

Categories
Diversity People Technology

Being nice: To those intimidated and silenced

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I’ve been told in comments associated with a post in the O’Reilly Women in Tech series that I’ve ‘intimidated and silenced’ others, presumably because of my wicked, evil communication skills and general, overall not niceness.

Well, huh.

Do let me know if you’ve felt ‘intimidated or silenced’ by me in the past, and I’ll be sure to send you a warm glass of milk and a cookie.

Here, here’s a fluffy kitten to hold.

I am kitten hear me squeek

(image derived from photo by fieldsbh. Creative Commons)