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Look out! Space junk! Where’s Sandra Bullock???

If you saw the 2013 Sandra Bullock-George Clooney science-fiction movie Gravity, then you know about the silent but deadly damage that even a small object can do if it hits something like the Hubble telescope, a satellite, or even the International Space Station as it hurtles through space. If you didn’t see Gravity, a non-spoiler, one-word summary would be “disaster.” Given the thousands of satellites and pieces of man-made debris circling our planet, plus new, emerging threats from potentially hostile satellites, you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to know that it’s important to keep track of what’s around you up there.

It all starts with the basic physics of motion and managing the tens of thousands of data points associated with those objects, says Paul Graziani, CEO and cofounder of Analytical Graphics. The Exton, Pennsylvania-based software company develops four-dimensional software that analyzes and visualizes objects based on their physical location and their time and relative position to each other or to other known locations. AGI has leveraged its software models to build the ComSpOC – its Commercial Space Operations Center. ComSpOC is the first and only commercial Space Situational Awareness center, and since 2014 it has helped space agencies and satellite operators keep track of space objects, including satellites and spacecraft.

ComSpOC uses data from sensors that AGI owns around the globe, plus data from other organizations, to track objects in space. These sensors include optical telescopes, radar systems, and passive rf (radio frequency) sensors. “A telescope gathers reflections of sunlight that come off of objects in space,” Graziani says. “And a radar broadcasts radio signals that reflect off of those objects and then times how long it takes for those signals to get back to the antenna.”

The combination of these measurements helps pinpoint the position of each object. The optical measurements of the telescopes provide directional accuracy, while the time measurements of the radar systems provide the distance of that object from the surface of the Earth. Passive rf sensors, meanwhile, use communications antennas that receive the broadcast information from operational satellites to measure satellite position and velocity.

Read more in my story for Forbes, “How Satellites Avoid Attacks And Space Junk While Circling The Earth.”

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How transformative is DevOps? Well, it depends

DevOps is a technology discipline well-suited to cloud-native application development. When it only takes a few mouse clicks to create or manage cloud resources, why wouldn’t developers and IT operation teams work in sync to get new apps out the door and in front of user faster? The DevOps culture and tactics have done much to streamline everything from coding to software testing to application deployment.

Yet far from every organization has embraced DevOps, and not every organization that has tried DevOps has found the experience transformative. Perhaps that’s because the idea is relatively young (the term was coined around 2009), suggests Javed Mohammed, systems community manager at Oracle, or perhaps because different organization are at such different spots in DevOps’ technology adoption cycle. That idea—about where we are in the adoption of DevOps—became a central theme of a recent podcast discussion among tech experts. Following are some highlights.

Confusion about DevOps can arise because DevOps affects dev and IT teams in many ways. “It can apply to the culture piece, to the technology piece, to the process piece—and even how different teams interact, and how all of the different processes tie together,” says Nicole Forsgren, founder and CEO of DevOps Research and Assessment LLC and co-author of Accelerate: The Science of Lean Software and DevOps.

The adoption and effectiveness of DevOps within a team depends on where each team is, and where organizations are. One team might be narrowly focused on the tech used to automate software deployment to the public, while another is looking at the culture and communication needed to release new features on a weekly or even daily basis. “Everyone is at a very, very different place,” Forsgren says.

Indeed, says Forsgren, some future-thinking organizations are starting to talk about what ‘DevOps Next’ is, extending the concept of developer-led operations beyond common best practices. At the same time, in other companies, there’s no DevOps. “DevOps isn’t even on their radar,” she sighs. Many experts, including Forsgren, see that DevOps is here, is working, and is delivering real value to software teams today—and is helping businesses create and deploy better software faster and less expensively. That’s especially true when it comes to cloud-native development, or when transitioning existing workloads from the data center into the cloud.

Read more in my essay, “DevOps: Sometimes Incredibly Transformative, Sometimes Not So Much.”

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Congratulations, Carole Zeichick!

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No more mansplaining: Commandments for clergy – and all lay leaders

“Thou shalt not refer winkingly to my taking off my robe after worship as disrobing.” A powerful essay by Pastor Melissa Florer-Bixler, “10 commandments for male clergy,” highlights the challenges that female clergy endure in a patriarchal tradition — and one in which they are still seen as interlopers to church/synagogue power. And in this era of #metoo, it’s still not easy for women in any aspect of leadership, including Jewish leadership.

In my life and volunteer work, I have the honor to work with clergy. Many, but not all, are rabbis and cantors who come from the traditions of Reform Judaism. Quite a few are women. I also work with female Conservative and Reconstructionist rabbis and cantors, as well as female pastors and ministers. And of course, there are lots of male clergy from those traditions as well as the male-only Orthodox Jewish and Roman Catholic domains.

Congregations, schools, seminaries, communities, and non-profits enjoy abundant blessings when employing and engaging with female clergy. However, that doesn’t mean that women clergy are always seen as first-class members of their profession, or that they are treated with the same respect as their male counterparts.

There are too many assumptions, says Pastor Florer-Bixler, who ministers at the Raleigh Mennonite Church. Too many jokes. Too many subtle sexist put-downs. I’ve heard those myself. To be honest, there are some jokes and patronizing assumptions that I’ve made myself. While always meant kindly, my own words and attitude contributed to the problem. In her essay, Pastor Florer-Bixler writes about mansplaining, stereotypes, and the unspoken notion that religious institutions are essentially masculine:

In her recent lecture-essay “Women in Power: From Medusa to Merkel,” Mary Beard describes the pervasiveness of the cultural stereotype that power — from the halls of ancient Greece to the modern parliament — is masculine.

She cites a January 2017 article in The London Times about women front-runners for the positions of bishop of London, commissioner of the Metropolitan Police and chair of the BBC governing board. The headline read: “Women prepare for a power grab in church, police and BBC.”

Beard points out that “probably thousands upon thousands of readers didn’t bat an eyelid” at the suggestion that those seats of power were the property of men — possessions being “grabbed,” that is, taken away, by women.

Straight-forward sexism

Pastor Florer-Bixler writes about sexism, and I cringe at having seen many of these behaviors, and not speaking out.

Drawing attention to pregnancy, making sexualizing comments about “disrobing,” suggesting that a clergywoman should smile more, describing a female pastor’s voice as “shrill” — all expose the discomfort that men feel about women in “their” profession.

More than just ridiculous humiliations, these stereotypes affect the ministries and careers of women in church leadership. One colleague discovered that a pastor search committee was told that for the salary they were offering, they should expect only women to be willing to serve. The committee was livid — not at the pay gap but at the idea that they would have to consider only women.

We must do better

Pastor Florer-Bixler offers some suggestions for making systemic improvements in how we — male clergy, lay leaders, everyone — should work with female clergy. 

Men have all-male theological traditions and ministerial roles to which they can retreat. Not so female pastors.

If a woman stands up to this patriarchal tradition, she faces the accusation of intolerance. Women should not be expected to “get along” with sexist individuals, theologies, practices and institutions as if this were a price to be paid for church unity.

What is the way forward? For one, men must do better. When male pastors co-opt ideas that have come from female colleagues, they must reassign the insights. When they learn of pay gaps, they must address them.

When female clergy are outtalked or overtalked, male pastors must name the imbalance. They must read the sermons, theology and books of women. And decline to purchase books written by men who exclude women from the pulpit.

Women are addressing this as we always have: through constant negotiation between getting the job done and speaking out against what is intolerable. In the meantime, we create spaces where women can begin to speak the truth of our power to one another. For now, this is what we have.

The way forward will unquestioningly be slow, but we must be part of the solution. Let’s stop minimizing the problem or leaving it for someone else. Making a level playing field is more than men simply agreeing not to assault women, and this is not an issue for female clergy to address. Sexism is everyone’s issue. All of us must own it. And I, speaking as a male lay leader who works with many female clergy, pledge to do better.

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No more mansplaining: 10 commandments for male clergy – and all lay leaders

“Thou shalt not refer winkingly to my taking off my robe after worship as disrobing.” A powerful new essay by Pastor Melissa Florer-Bixler, “10 commandments for male clergy,” highlights the challenges that female clergy endure in a patriarchal tradition — and one in which they are still seen as interlopers to church/synagogue power.

In my life and volunteer work, I have the honor to work with many clergy. Many, but not all, are rabbis and cantors who come from the traditions of Reform Judaism. Many of them are women. I also work with female Conservative and Reconstructionist rabbis and cantors, as well as female pastors and ministers. And of course, there are lots of male clergy, from those traditions as well as the male-only Orthodox Jewish and Roman Catholic domains.

Congregations, schools, seminaries, communities, and non-profits enjoy abundant blessings when employing and engaging with female clergy. That doesn’t mean that women clergy are always seen as first-class clergy, and treated with the same respect as their male counterparts.

There are too many assumptions, writes Pastor Florer-Bixler, who ministers at the Raleigh Mennonite Church. Too many jokes. Too many subtle sexist put-downs. I’ve heard those myself. To be honest, there are some jokes and patronizing assumptions that I’ve made myself. While always meant kindly, my own words and attitude contributed to the problem.

In her essay, Pastor Florer-Bixler writes about mansplaining, stereotypes, and the unspoken notion that religious institutions are essentially masculine:

In her recent lecture-essay “Women in Power: From Medusa to Merkel,” Mary Beard describes the pervasiveness of the cultural stereotype that power — from the halls of ancient Greece to the modern parliament — is masculine.

She cites a January 2017 article in The London Times about women front-runners for the positions of bishop of London, commissioner of the Metropolitan Police and chair of the BBC governing board. The headline read: “Women prepare for a power grab in church, police and BBC.”

Beard points out that “probably thousands upon thousands of readers didn’t bat an eyelid” at the suggestion that those seats of power were the property of men — possessions being “grabbed,” that is, taken away, by women.

Straight-forward sexism

Pastor Florer-Bixler writes about sexism, and I cringe at having seen all of these behaviors, and not speaking out.

Drawing attention to pregnancy, making sexualizing comments about “disrobing,” suggesting that a clergywoman should smile more, describing a female pastor’s voice as “shrill” — all expose the discomfort that men feel about women in “their” profession.

Masculine assumptions about gender were evident in the young clergywomen’s proposed commandments:

Thou shalt invite me into budget and financial conversations instead of assuming I won’t be interested.

Thou shalt not ask or expect me to take notes in a meeting, make copies or serve coffee.

Thou shalt not assume, based on my sex, that I’m better at working with children, youth or women than you are.

Thou shalt not call me “Sweetie,” “Kiddo” or “Girl.”

More than just ridiculous humiliations, these stereotypes affect the ministries and careers of women in church leadership. One colleague discovered that a pastor search committee was told that for the salary they were offering, they should expect only women to be willing to serve. The committee was livid — not at the pay gap but at the idea that they would have to consider only women.

We must do better

Pastor Florer-Bixler offers some suggestions for making systemic improvements in how we — male clergy, lay leaders, everyone — work with female clergy. The way forward will unquestioningly be slow, but we must do what we can to be part of the solution, and not part of the problem.

Men have all-male theological traditions and ministerial roles to which they can retreat. Not so female pastors.

If a woman stands up to this patriarchal tradition, she faces the accusation of intolerance. Women should not be expected to “get along” with sexist individuals, theologies, practices and institutions as if this were a price to be paid for church unity.

What is the way forward? For one, men must do better. When male pastors co-opt ideas that have come from female colleagues, they must reassign the insights. When they learn of pay gaps, they must address them.

When female clergy are outtalked or overtalked, male pastors must name the imbalance. They must read the sermons, theology and books of women. And decline to purchase books written by men who exclude women from the pulpit.

Women are addressing this as we always have: through constant negotiation between getting the job done and speaking out against what is intolerable. In the meantime, we create spaces where women can begin to speak the truth of our power to one another. For now, this is what we have.

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Cybersecurity has a diversity problem with women — and many opportunities

MacKenzie Brown has nailed the problem — and has good ideas for the solution. As she points out in her three part blog series, “The Unicorn Extinction” (links in a moment):

  • Overall, [only] 25% of women hold occupations in technology alone.
  • Women’s Society of Cyberjutsu (WSC), a nonprofit for empowering women in cybersecurity, states that females make up 11% of the cybersecurity workforce while (ISC)2, a non-profit specializing in education and certification, reports a whopping estimation of 10%.
  • Lastly, put those current numbers against the 1 million employment opportunities predicted for 2017, with a global demand of up to 6 million by 2019.

While many would decry the system sexism and misogyny in cybersecurity, Ms. Brown sees opportunity:

…the cybersecurity industry, a market predicted to have global expenditure exceeding $1 trillion between now and 2021(4), will have plenty of demand for not only information security professionals. How can we proceed to find solutions and a fixed approach towards resolving this gender gap and optimizing this employment fluctuation? Well, we promote unicorn extinction.

The problem of a lack of technically developed and specifically qualified women in Cybersecurity is not unique to this industry alone; however the proliferation of women in tangential roles associated with our industry shows that there is a barrier to entry, whatever that barrier may be. In the next part of this series we will examine the ideas and conclusions of senior leadership and technical women in the industry in order to gain a woman’s point of view.

She continues to write about analyzing the problem from a woman’s point of view:

Innovating solutions to improve this scarcity of female representation, requires breaking “the first rule about Fight Club; don’t talk about Fight Club!” The “Unicorn Law”, this anecdote, survives by the circling routine of the “few women in Cybersecurity” invoking a conversation about the “few women in Cybersecurity” on an informal basis. Yet, driving the topic continuously and identifying the values will ensure more involvement from the entirety of the Cybersecurity community. Most importantly, the executive members of Fortune 500 companies who apply a hiring strategy which includes diversity, can begin to fill those empty chairs with passionate professionals ready to impact the future of cyber.

Within any tale of triumph, obstacles are inevitable. Therefore, a comparative analysis of successful women may be the key to balancing employment supply and demand. I had the pleasure of interviewing a group of women; all successful, eclectic in roles, backgrounds of technical proficiency, and amongst the same wavelength of empowerment. These interviews identified commonalities and distinct perspectives on the current gender gap within the technical community.

What’s the Unicorn thing?

Ms. Brown writes,

During hours of research and writing, I kept coming across a peculiar yet comically exact tokenism deemed, The Unicorn Law. I had heard this in my industry before, attributed to me, “unicorn,” which is described (even in the cybersecurity industry) as: a woman-in-tech, eventually noticed for their rarity and the assemblage toward other females within the industry. In technology and cybersecurity, this is a leading observation many come across based upon the current metrics. When applied to the predicted demand of employment openings for years to come, we can see an enormous opportunity for women.

Where’s the opportunity?

She concludes,

There may be a notable gender gap within cybersecurity, but there also lies great opportunity as well. Organizations can help narrow the gap, but there is also tremendous opportunity in women helping each other as well.

Some things that companies can do to help, include:

  • Providing continuous education, empowering and encouraging women to acquire new skill through additional training and certifications.
  • Using this development training to promote from within.
    Reaching out to communities to encourage young women from junior to high school levels to consider cyber security as a career.
  • Seek out women candidates for jobs, both independently and utilizing outsourcing recruitment if need be.
  • At events, refusing to field all male panels.
  • And most importantly, encourage the discussion about the benefits of a diverse team.

If you care about the subject of gender opportunity in cybersecurity, I urge you to read these three essays.

The Unicorn Extinction Series: An Introspective Analysis of Women in Cybersecurity, Part 1

The Unicorn Extinction Series: An Introspective Analysis of Women in Cybersecurity, Part 2

The Unicorn Extinction Series: An Introspective Analysis of Women in Cybersecurity, Part 3

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Female entrepreneurs are treated differently than male entrepreneurs

According to a depressing story in Harvard Business Review, venture capitalists consider female entrepreneurs to be quite different than males. The perceived difference is not good. According to the May 17, 2017, story, “We Recorded VCs’ Conversations and Analyzed How Differently They Talk About Female Entrepreneurs”:

Aside from a few exceptions, the financiers rhetorically produce stereotypical images of women as having qualities opposite to those considered important to being an entrepreneur, with VCs questioning their credibility, trustworthiness, experience, and knowledge.

This research was done in Sweden in 2009-2010, and used transcribed discussions by a diverse panel of VCs considering 125 venture applications. The story continues,

Men were characterized as having entrepreneurial potential, while the entrepreneurial potential for women was diminished. Many of the young men and women were described as being young, though youth for men was viewed as promising, while young women were considered inexperienced. Men were praised for being viewed as aggressive or arrogant, while women’s experience and excitement were tempered by discussions of their emotional shortcomings. Similarly, cautiousness was viewed very differently depending on the gender of the entrepreneur.

The results were what you would expect:

Women entrepreneurs were only awarded, on average, 25% of the applied-for amount, whereas men received, on average, 52% of what they asked for. Women were also denied financing to a greater extent than men, with close to 53% of women having their applications dismissed, compared with 38% of men.

Read the HBR paper, you’ll be unhappy with what you see. Credit for the research goes to Malin Malmstrom, professor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Luleå University of Technology; Jeaneth Johansson, professor of Accounting and Control at Halmstad University and Luleå University of Technology; and Joakim Wincent, professor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Luleå University of Technology and Hanken School of Economics.

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Things you must understand for technical and business due diligence

Technical diligence starts when a startup or company has been approved for outside capital, but needs to be inspected to insure the value of the technology is “good enough” to accept investment. The average startup has something like 1/100 odds of receiving funding once they pitch a VC firm, which is why if investment is offered the ball shouldn’t be dropped during technical diligence. Most issues in technical diligence can be prevented. Since technical diligence is part of the investigation process to receiving venture capital, any business in theory could proactively prepare for technical diligence.

So advises my friend Ellie Cachette, General Partner at CCM Capital Management, a fund-of-funds specializing in venture capital investments. In her two-part series for Inc. Magazine, Ellie shares insights — real insights — in the following areas:

  • Intellectual property and awareness
  • Scaling
  • Security
  • Documentation
  • Risk management
  • Development budget
  • Development meeting and reporting
  • Development ROI
  • Having the right development talent in place

Here are the links:

Five “Business Things” to Understand for Technical Diligence: Part One

Five “Tech Things” to Understand for Technical Diligence: Part Two

While we’re at it, here’s another great article by Ellie in Inc.:

When Your Customers Want One Thing — And Your Investors Want Another

Got a business? Want to do better? Learn from Ellie Cachette. Follow her @ecachette.

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The ongoing challenge for women in high-tech companies

In the United States, Sunday, May 14, is Mother’s Day. (Mothering Sunday was March 27 this year in the United Kingdom.) This is a good time to reflect on the status of women of all marital status and family situations in information technology. The results continue to disappoint.

According to the Unites States Department of Labor, 57.2% of all women participate in the labor force in the United States. 46.9% of the people employed in all occupations are women. So far, so good. Yet when it comes to information technology, women lag far, far behind. Based on 2014 stats:

  • Web developers – 35.2% women
  • Computer systems analysts – 34.2% women
  • Database administrators – 28.0%
  • Computer and information systems managers – 26.7%
  • Computer support specialists – 26.6%
  • Computer programmers – 21.4%
  • Software developers, applications and systems software – 19.8%
  • Network and computer systems administrators – 19.1%
  • Information security analysts – 18.1%
  • Computer network architects – 12.4%

The job area with the highest projected growth rate over the next few years will be information security analysts, says Labor. A question is, will women continue to be underrepresented in this high-paying, fast-growing field? Or will the demand for analysts provide new opportunities for women to enter into the security profession? Impossible to say, really.

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) shows that the biggest high tech companies lag behind in diversity. That’s something that anyone working in Silicon Valley can sense intuitively, in large part due to the bro culture (and brogrammer culture) there. Says the EEOC’s extensive report, “Diversity in High Tech,”

Modern manufacturing requires a computer literate worker capable of dealing with highly specialized machines and tools that require advanced skills (STEM Education Coalition).

However, other sources note that stereotyping and bias, often implicit and unconscious, has led to underutilization of the available workforce. The result is an overwhelming dominance of white men and scant participation of African Americans and other racial minorities, Hispanics, and women in STEM and high tech related occupations. The Athena Factor: Reversing the Brain Drain in Science, Engineering, and Technology, published data in 2008 showing that while the female talent pipeline in STEM was surprisingly robust, women were dropping out of the field large numbers. Other accounts emphasize the importance of stereotypes and implicit bias in limiting the perceived labor pool (see discussion below).

Moughari et al., 2012 noted that men comprise at least 70 percent of graduates in engineering, mathematics, and computer science, while women dominate in the lower paying fields. Others point out that in this is not uniformly the case in all science and math occupations and that, while underrepresented among those educated for the industry, women and minorities are more underrepresented among those actually employed in the industry. It has been shown, for example, that men are twice as likely as women to be hired for a job in mathematics when the only difference between candidates is gender.

and

Women account for relatively small percentages of degree recipients in certain STEM fields: only 18.5 percent of bachelor’s degrees in engineering went to women in 2008.

Women Heading for the Exit

The EEOC report is very discouraging in its section on Existing Tech & Related Fields:

Over time, over half of highly qualified women working in science, engineering and technology companies quit their jobs. In 2013, just 26 percent of computing jobs in the U.S. were held by women, down from 35 percent in 1990, according to a study by the American Association of University Women. Although 80 percent of U.S. women working in STEM fields say they love their work, 32 percent also say they feel stalled and are likely to quit within a year. Research by The Center for Work-Life Policy shows that 41 percent of qualified scientists, engineers and technologists are women at the lower rungs of corporate ladders but more than half quit their jobs.

This loss appears attributable to the following: 1) inhospitable work cultures; 2) isolation; 3) conflict between women’s preferred work rhythms and the “firefighting” work style generally rewarded; 4) long hours and travel schedules conflict with women’s heavy household management workload; and 5) women’s lack of advancement in the professions and corporate ladders. If corporate initiatives to stem the brain drain reduced attrition by just 25 percent, there would be 220,000 additional highly qualified female STEM workers.

Based on a survey and in-depth interviews of female scientists, the report observes:

  • Two-thirds of women report having to prove themselves over and over; their success discounted and their expertise questioned.
  • Three-fourths of Black women reported this phenomenon.
  • Thirty-four percent reported pressure to play a traditionally feminine role, including 41 percent of Asian women.
  • Fifty-three percent reported backlash from speaking their minds directly or being outspoken or decisive.
  • Women, particularly Black and Latina women, are seen as angry when they fail to conform to female stereotypes
  • Almost two thirds of women with children say their commitment and competence were questioned and opportunities decreased after having children.

The EEOC report adds that in tech, only 20.44% of executives, senior officials and managers are women – compared to 28.81% in all private industries in the U.S. Women certainly are succeeding in tech, and there are some high-profile women executives in the field —think Meg Whitman at HP, Marissa Mayer at Yahoo (now heading for the exit herself with a huge payout), Sheryl Sandberg at Facebook, Susan Wojcicki at YouTube, Virginia Rometty at IBM, Safra Catz at Oracle, and Ursula Burns at Xerox. That’s still a very short list. The opportunities for and presence of women in tech remain sadly underwhelming.

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Self-inflicted public relations disasters: United Airlines, Pepsi, Tanium, Uber

There are public-relations disasters… and there are self-inflicted public-relations disasters. Those are arguably the worst, and it’s been a meaningful couple of weeks for them, both in the general world and in the technology industry. In some cases, the self-inflicted crises exploded because of stupid or ham-handed initial responses.

In PR crisis management, it’s important to get the initial response right. That means:

  1. Acknowledging that something unfortunate happened
  2. Owning responsibility (in a way that doesn’t expose you to lawsuits, of course)
  3. Apologizing humbly, profusely and sincerely
  4. Promising to make amends to everyone affected by what happened
  5. Vowing to fix processes to avoid similar problems in the future

Here are some recent public relations disasters that I’d label as self-inflicted. Ouch!

United Airlines beats passengers

Two recent episodes. First, a young girl flying on an employee-travel pass wasn’t allowed to board wearing leggings. Second, a doctor was dragged out of a plane, and seriously injured, for refusing to give up his seat to make room for a United employee. Those incidents showed that gate agents were unaware of the optics of situations like this, and didn’t have the training and/or flexibility to adapt rules to avoid a public snafu.

However, the real disaster came from the poor handling of both situations by executives and their PR advisors. With the leggings situation, United’s hiding behind obscure rules and the employee-ticket status of the young passenger, didn’t help a situation where all the sympathy was with the girl. With the ejected and beaten passenger, where to begin? The CEO, Oscar Munoz, should have known that his first response was terrible, and his “confidential” email to employees, which blamed the passenger for being unruly, would be immediately leaked to the public. What a freakin’ idiot. It’s going to take some time for United to recover from these disasters.

Pepsi Cola misses the point

A commercial for a soft drink tried to reinterpret a famous Black Lives Matter protest moment in Baton Rouge. That’s where a young African-American woman, Ieshia Evans, faced off against heavily armored police officers. In Pepsi’s version of the event, a white celebrity, Kendall Jenner, faced off against attractive fake police officers, and defused a tense situation by handing a handsome young cop a can of soda. Dancing ensues. World peace is achieved. The Internet explodes with outrage.

Pepsi’s initial response is to defend the video by saying “We think that’s an important message to convey.” Oops. Later on, the company pulled the ad and apologized to everyone (including Ms. Jenner), but the damage was done, so much so that a fun meme was of White House spokesman Sean Spicer dressed up as an United Airlines pilot offering a can of Pepsi.

Tanium’s bad-boy CEO sends the wrong message

Tanium, a maker of endpoint security and management software, has fallen into the trap of owner hubris. As this story in Bloomberg explains, the top executives, including CEO Orion Hindawi, run the company more for their own benefit than for the benefit of their customers or other shareholders. For example, says Bloomberg, “One of the most unnerving aspects of life at Tanium is what’s known internally as Orion’s List. The CEO allegedly kept a close eye on which employees would soon be eligible to take sizable chunks of stock. For those he could stand to do without, Hindawi ordered the workers to be fired before they were able to acquire the shares, according to current and former employees.” As Business Insider reported, nine executives have left recently, including the president and top marketing and finance officers.

And then there’s the power-trip aspect, says Bloomberg. “The company’s successes didn’t do much to lift morale. Orion berated workers in front of colleagues until they broke into tears and used all-hands meetings as a venue to taunt low-level staff, current and former employees said.” Bloomberg reports that a major VC firm, Andreessen Horowitz, made note of Orion’s managerial flaws and presented them to partners at the firm early last year, saying that Orion’s behavior risked interfering with the company’s operations if it hadn’t already. This sort of nonsense is not good for a company with a decent reputation for intellectual property. The company’s response? Crickets.

Uber drives off the clue train

I’m a happy Uber customer. When traveling, I’m quite disappointed when the service is not available, as was the case on a recent trip to Austin, where Uber and Lyft aren’t offered. However, I’m not a fan of the company’s treatment of women and of the misdeeds of its CEO. Those PR disasters have become the public face of the story, not its innovations in urban transportation and self-driving cars. When a female engineer went public with how she was mistreated and how the company’s HR department ignored the issue, the Internet went nuts — and the company responded by doing a mea culpa. Still, the message was clear: Uber is misogynistic.

And then there were several reports of public naughtiness by CEO Travis Kalanick. The best was a video of him berating an Uber driver. Yes, Kalanick apologized and said that he needs help with leadership… but more crickets in terms of real change. As Engadget wrote in mid-April, the time for Uber leadership to step down is long overdue for the good of its employees, drivers, customers and shareholders. It’s unlikely the company can withstand another self-inflicted PR disaster.

It doesn’t have to be this way

When a PR disaster happens — especially a self-inflicted one — it’s vital to get on top of the story. See the five tips at the top of this blog, and check out this story, “When It Hits the Fan,” on tips for crisis management. You can recover, but you have to do it right, and do it quickly.

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Celebrating Ada Lovelace and doubling the talent pool

626px-Ada_Lovelace_portraitDespite some recent progress, women are still woefully underrepresented in technical fields such as software development. There are many academic programs to bring girls into STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) at various stages in their education, from grade school to high school to college. Corporations are trying hard.

It’s not enough. We all need to try harder.

On Oct. 11, 2016, we will celebrate Ada Lovelace Day, honoring the first computer programmer — male or female. Augusta Ada King-Noel, Countess of Lovelace, wrote the algorithms for Charles Babbage’s difference engine in the mid-1800s.

According to the website Finding Ada, this date doesn’t represent her birthday, which is of Dec. 10. Rather, they say, “The date is arbitrary, chosen in an attempt to make the day maximally convenient for the most number of people. We have tried to avoid major public holidays, school holidays, exam season, and times of the year when people might be hibernating.” I’d like to think that the scientifically minded Ada Lovelace would find this amusing.

There are great organizations focused on promoting women in technology, such as Women in Technology International (WITI) and the Anita Borg Institute. There are cool projects, like the Wiki Edit-a-Thon sponsored by Brown University, which seeks to correct the historic (and inaccurate) underrepresentation of female scientists in Wikipedia.

Those are good efforts. They still aren’t enough.

Are women good at STEM fields, including software development? Yes. But all too often, they are gender-stereotyped into non-coding parts of the field—when they are hired at all. And certainly the hyper-competitive environment in many tech teams, and the death-march culture, is not friendly to anyone (male or female) who wants to have a life outside the startup.

Let me share the Anita Borg Institute’s 10 best practices to foster retention of women in technical roles:

  • Collect, analyze and report retention data as it pertains to women in technical roles.
  • Formally train managers in best practices, and hold them accountable for retention.
  • Embed collaboration in the corporate culture to encourage diverse ideas.
  • Offer training programs that raise awareness of and counteract microinequities and unconscious biases.
  • Provide development and visibility opportunities to women that increase technical credibility.
  • Fund and support workshops and conferences that focus on career path experiences and challenges faced by women technologists.
  • Establish mentoring programs on technical and career development.
  • Sponsor employee resource groups for mutual support and networking.
  • Institute flexible work arrangements and tools that facilitate work/life integration.
  • Enact employee-leave policies, and provide services that support work/life integration.

Does your organization have a solid representation of women in technical jobs (not only in technical departments)? Are those women given equal pay for equal work? Are women provided with solid opportunities for professional growth and career advancement? Are you following any of the above best practices?

If so, that’s great news. I’d love to hear about it and help tell your story.

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Despairing of the “brogrammer” world, thanks to GamerGate

gamergateIt’s hard being a female programmer or software engineer. Of course, it’s hard for anyone to be a techie, male or female. You have to master a lot of arcane knowledge, and keep up with new developments. You have to be innately curious and inventive. You have to be driven, you have to be patient, and you have to be able to work swiftly and accurately.

Far too often, you have to work in a toxic culture. Whether in person or online, newbies get hazed and harassed. Men are verbally abused, certainly, in many software engineering organizations — there’s no room in many techie hangouts for wimps. However, women are almost always abused worse, and while men can learn to fight back, women are harassed in ways that are truly sickening.

Men are insulted and called names. Women receive death threats.

I’ve written about the challenges facing women in technology many times over the past decades. One recent column was “Fight back against the ugly ‘brogrammer’ trend,” written in May 2012. Yet I am continually astonished (in a bad way) by how terribly women are treated.

A recent example is what’s being called GamerGate. That where a number of prominent women gamers – including some game developers—have been attacked online. Several women have reported receiving very explicit threats, which have included disclosures of their home addresses. At least two women, game developer Zoe Quinn and media critic Anita Sarkeesian, have apparently fled their homes.

For background on this appalling situation, see Nick Wingfield’s story in the New York Times, “Feminist Critics of Video Games Facing Threats in ‘GamerGate’ Campaign.”

What can we do? Other than say, “This isn’t right,” it’s hard to be sure. I don’t know if anyone I know is involved in these sorts of threats. I am unsure if any readers here are involved in creating this culture of misogyny and fear. But I do know that in the broad world, anti-bullying, anti-hazing and anti-harassment programs apparently don’t work, or certainly don’t work for long.

Indeed, GamerGate has become a distraction. The discussion of GamerGate itself (which thrives on Twitter on with the hashtag #GamerGate) has seemingly overridden the bigger discussion about how women engineers, or women in the technology industry, are treated.

Christopher Grant, editor-in-chief of the gaming news/reviews site Polygon, has written a strong article about GamerGate, in which he writes,

Video games are capital “C” Culture now. There won’t be less attention, only more. There won’t be less scrutiny. There certainly won’t be less diversity, in the fiction of games themselves or in the demographics of their players. What we’re in control of is how we respond to that expansion, as journalists, as developers, as consumers. Step one has to be a complete rejection of the tools of harassment and fear — we can’t even begin to talk about the interesting stuff while people are literally scared for their lives. There can be no dialogue with a leaderless organization that both condemns and condones this behavior, depending on who’s using the hashtag.

GamerGate is evil. Perhaps harassment of women in the gaming industry is worse than in other technical fields. However, we should know, men and women alike, that despite the good work of groups like Women in Technology International and the Anita Borg Institute, the tech world is frequently hostile to women and tries to drive them out of the industry.

Alas, I wish I knew what to do.

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Big Data Divinations – Your business partner’s book about Big Data

Big Data Divination Pam BakerYou’ve gotta read “Data Divination: Big Data Strategies,” Pam Baker’s new book about Big Data.

Actually, let me change my recommendation. If you are a techie and you are looking for suggestions on how to configure your Hadoop installation or optimize the storage throughput in your NAS array, this isn’t the book for you. Rather, this is the book for your business-side manager or partner, who is looking to understand not only what Big Data is, but really really learn how to apply data analysis to business problems.

One of the challenges with Big Data is simply understanding it. The phrase is extremely broad and quite nebulous. Yet behind the overhyping of Big Data, there are genuine use cases that demonstrate that looking at your business’ data in a new way can transform your business. It is real, and it is true.

Bake is the editor of the “Fierce Big Data” website. She deconstructs the concept by dispensing with the jargon and the, well, overly smug Big Data worship that one finds in a lot of literature and pushed out by the vendors. With a breezy style that reflects her background as a technology journalist, Baker uses clear examples and lots of interviews to make her points.

What will you learn? To start with, “Data Divination” teaches you how to ask good questions. After all, if you don’t ask, you won’t learn anything from all that data and all those reports. Whether it’s predictive analytics or trend spotting or real-time analysis, she helps you understand which data is valuable and which isn’t. That’s why this book is best for the executive and business-side managers, who are the ultimate beneficiaries of your enterprise’s Big Data investments.

This book goes beyond other books on the subject, which could generally be summarized either as too fluffy and cheerleading, or as myopically focused on implementation details of specific Big Data architectures. For example, there is a lengthy chapter on the privacy implications of data gathering and data analysis, the sort of chapter that a journalist would write, but an engineer wouldn’t even think about.

Once you’ve finished with the basics, Baker jumps into several fascinating use cases: in healthcare, in the security industry, in government and law enforcement, in small business, in agriculture, in transportation, in energy, in retail, in manufacturing, and so on. Those are the most interesting parts of the book, and each use had takeaways that could apply to any industry. Baker is to be commended for digging into the noteworthy challenges that Big Data attempts to help businesses overcome.

It’s a good book. Read it. And tell your business partner, CIO or even CEO to read it too.

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Do you want to be a billionaire?

Would you like billion-dollar-billa billion dollars? Software companies, both startups and established firms, are selling like hotcakes. Some are selling for millions of U.S. dollars. Some are selling for billions. While the bulk of the sales price often goes back to venture financiers, a sale can be sweet for equity-holding employees, and even for non-equity employees who get a bonus. Hurray for stock options!

A million U.S. dollars is a lot of money. A billion dollars is a mind-blowing quantity of money, at least for me. A billion dollars is how much money Sun Microsystems paid to buy MySQL in 2008. Nineteen billion dollars is how much money Facebook is spending to buy the WhatsApp messaging platform in 2014 (see “With social media, it’s about making and spending lots of money”).

I’m going to share some analysis from Berkery Noyes, an investment bank that tracks mergers and acquisitions in the software industry. Here’s info excerpted from their Q1 2014 Software Industry Trends Report:

Software transaction volume declined four percent over the past three months, from 435 to 419. However, this represented a 14 percent increase compared to Q1 2013. Deal value gained 72 percent, from $22.6 billion in Q4 2013 to $38.8 billion in Q1 2014. This rise in aggregate value was attributable in large part to Facebook’s acquisition of Whatsapp [sic], a cross-platform mobile messaging application, for $16 billion. The top ten largest transactions accounted for 61 percent of the industry’s total value in Q1 2014, compared to 55 percent in Q4 2013 and 38 percent Q1 2013.

The Niche Software segment, which consists of software that is targeted to specific vertical markets, underwent a ten percent volume increase in Q1 2014. In terms of growth areas within the segment, deal volume pertaining to the Healthcare IT market increased 31 percent. Meanwhile, the largest Niche Software transaction during Q1 2014 was Thoma Bravo’s acquisition of Travelclick [sic], which provides cloud-based hotel management software, for $930 million.

According to Berkery Noyes, the niche software market was the largest of four segments defined by the bank’s analysts. You can read about the transactions in the business, consumer and infrastructure software segments in their report.

Why would someone acquire a software company? Sometimes it’s because of the customer base or the strength of a brand name. Sometimes it’s to eliminate a competitor. Sometimes it’s to grab intellectual property (like source code or patents). And sometimes it’s to lock up some specific talent. That’s particularly true of very small software companies that are doing innovative work and have rock-star developers.

Those “acqui-hires” are often lucrative for the handful of employees. They get great jobs, hiring bonuses and, if they have equity, a share of the purchase price. But not always. I was distressed to read about an acquisition where, according to one employee, “Amy”:

Under the terms of Google’s offer, Amy’s startup received enough money to pay back its original investors, plus about $10,000 in cash for each employee. Amy’s CEO was hired as a mid-level manager, and her engineering colleagues were given offers from Google that came with $250,000 salaries and significant signing bonuses. She was left jobless, with only $10,000 and a bunch of worthless stock.

The implication in the story, “The Secret Shame of an Unacquired Tech Worker,” is that this is sexist: The four male employees were hired by Google, and the one female employee was not.

We don’t know the real story here, and frankly, we probably never will. Still, stories like this ring true because of the brogrammer culture in Silicon Valley, and in the tech industry.

Let’s end with a bit of good news in that regard. According to market research firm Evans Data Corp.:

The number of females in software development has increased by 87% since first being measured in 2001, according to Evans Data’s recently released Developer Marketing 2014 survey.  In 2014, 19.3% of software developers are women, or approximately three and a half million female software developers worldwide.  While today’s number is strong compared to 2001, it is even stronger compared to the years of 2003 to 2009 when the percent of female developers dipped into the single digit range.

We are making progress.

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Read about Carla Schroder’s nerd life – and it’s a good life

Carla-Schroder“I tried working for some tech companies like Microsoft, Tektronix, IBM, and Intel. What a fiasco. I can’t count how many young men with way less experience and skills than me snagged the good fun hands-on tech jobs, while I got stuck doing some kind of crap customer service job. I still remember this guy who got hired as a desktop technician. He was in his 30s, but in bad health, always red and sweaty and breathing hard. It took him forever to do the simplest task, like connecting a monitor or printer. He didn’t know much and was usually wrong, but he kept his job. I busted my butt to show I was serious and already had a good skill set, and would work my tail off to excel, and they couldn’t see past that I wasn’t male. So I got the message, mentally told them to eff off and stuck with freelancing.”

So writes Carla Schroder in her blog post, “My Nerd Life: Too Loud, Too Funny, Too Smart, Too Fat” on linux.com. Her story is an important one for female techies – and all techies. Read it.

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You won’t believe what they are saying about tech women

'Rosetta (Young Girl Sitting Thinking Seated on Ground sculptures/statu' by Jenny Wynne JonesTechnology is a rewarding career track. It also can be an incredibly hostile career track, especially for the females of the species.

Here are 13 links to what they’re saying about women in tech – plus a bonus off-topic one.

 If you’re a woman – you’ve gotta read this. If you’re not a woman – you’re gotta read this too.

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Amazing women in tech? Just say “Yes”

1486079_10201603140415088_346126634_oWe need all the technical talent we can get. Whether we are talking developers, architects, network staff, IT admins, managers, hardware, software or firmware, the more women in technology, the better. For everyone – for companies, for customers, for women and for men.

I have recently started working with an organization called WITI – that’s Women in Technology International. (My nickname is now “WITI Alan.”)

WITI is a membership organization. Women who join get access to amazing resources for networking, professional development, career opportunities and more. Companies who join as corporate sponsors can take advantage of WITI’s incredible solutions for empowering women’s networks, including employee training and retention services, live events and more.

My role with WITI is going to be to help women in technology tell their stories. We kicked this off at January’s International Consumer Electronics show in Las Vegas, and we’ll be continuing this at numerous events in 2014 – including the WITI Annual Summit, coming to Santa Clara from June 1-3, 2014. (You can see me here at the WITI booth at CES with Michele Weisblatt.)

If you are a woman in technology, or if you know women in technology, or you understand the value of increasing the number of women in technology, please support the super-important work being done by WITI.

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Possible progress with female software engineers

woodblocksIt looks like the tech industry is hiring more women. Maybe. Maybe not. The statistics are hard to interpret. Also, it’s unclear if the newly hired women are performing technical or other jobs.

I’m looking at a blog from the New York Times, “An Uptick in the Hiring of Women for Tech Jobs,” which correctly says that:

There are signs that tech companies are hiring more women, but women still appear to make up far less than half of all new hires in the industry.

In the year ending in September, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the net change in the number of employees in the computer industry was 60,000. The net change in the number of female employees was 36,000 — or 60 percent of the net change, according to the bureau’s data.

Yet it does not necessarily mean that the tech industry hired more women than men. The bureau’s figure is a net change, meaning the numbers reflect new employees and those who left. More men than women probably left their jobs — because there are so many more men working in the tech industry. For example, it is possible that 100,000 men left their jobs, and 124,000 men were hired, while 10,000 women left their jobs and 46,000 were hired.

If we want more women software engineers, let’s encourage girls to think like engineers. That means encouraging play that incorporates both design and construction — and in a tactile way, not only through tablet apps.

When I was young, my father chopped 2x4s and dowels into various sized blocks. Some square, some round, some rectangular, some triangles. No paint, no stain, just some sanding — and the imagination is unlocked.

Today, in addition to wood blocks, construction blocks like Lego, Duplo or Megablox are what I’d give a young child, girl or boy. Bright colors are great. If there are “boy colors” like red or blue, and “girl colors” like pink and purple, I’d buy equal quantities of both and mix them together, to provide the widest possible color palette. I would buy lots of big buckets of plain old blocks, not kits where you follow directions and assemble a specific toy. That’s great for buying furniture at Ikea – but not at inspiring creativity and hands-on imagination.

There’s a video floating around YouTube, “GoldieBlox, Rube Goldberg, & Beastie Boys “Princess Machine” (a concert for little girls).”

What do you think: Step in the right direction, a marketing ploy, or both?

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Looking for girls who code

I know many female IT professionals. In some parts of the tech field, there are lots of women. In others — including software development — females are fairly rare.

Is this a problem? If so, why? Those are legitimate questions. Do companies have compelling reasons to recruit more female developers? Do universities have compelling reasons to seek more female computer science students – or more female computer science faculty and researchers? Do open source projects and other peer-driven collaborative ventures have compelling reasons to welcome female contributors?

I say yes to all the above. The reasons are difficult to articulate, but it’s clear to me that a programming culture that pushes women away is cutting off access to half the pool of available talent. I also believe (at a gut level) that gender-balanced departments and teams are more collaborative, more creative, and more welcoming to those females who work there – and to many men as well.

 This is a problem of culture, not one of intelligence, talent, drive or initiative. The macho attitude pervading many coding shops creates a hostile attitude for many women. Not just hostile. Sometimes the project teams are quite literally abusive in ways both subtle and overt.

In that sort of toxic environment, everyone, men and women alike, are justified in finding someplace more welcoming to work or study or contribute. When women chose a different department, a different company, a different career, a different academic major, or a different online community, everyone loses.

What are the solutions? I truly don’t know. I don’t believe that books like Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s “Lean In” have the answer. Similarly, I don’t believe that Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer can serve as a reasonable role model for female rank-and-file programmers.

The life of a huge company’s CEO or top executive is worlds away, no matter the gender, from the workers in the cubicles. Yes, it’s fun and informative to learn from standout performers like Sandberg, Mayer, Carol Bartz, Meg Whitman, Ursula Burns or Virginia Rometty. However, their example does not clearly illustrate a career path that other women can follow, any more than the typical male programmer can advance by copying Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison or Mark Zuckerburg.

Let me point out a few resources.

 

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Fight back against the ugly ‘brogrammer’ trend

I don’t like the trend toward ‘brogrammers’ – that is, a very chauvinistic, juvenile attitude that seems to be creating a male-centric, female-exclusionary culture in software development departments – and across IT. It’s time to put an end to the put-downs, pin-ups, constant sports in-jokes and warfare metaphors, management by belittlement, and insulting locker-room attitude.

When I was a student studying math and computer science, nearly all of my fellow students, and nearly all of the faculty, were male. Although my idol was Admiral Grace Hopper, there were few Grace Hoppers in our profession to serve as role models for young women — or men.

Change came slowly. In the 1980s, nearly all writers of technical articles in computer magazines were male. Nearly all readers were mail. Nearly all attendees of technology conferences were male; the females at the show were almost exclusively marketers or booth babes.

Much has changed in the past few decades. For example, while the demographic research shows that most SD Times readers are male, the percentage of female readers is rising. The same is true of the technical conferences that our company produces. While female faces are still a minority, that is becoming less true every year, thanks in part to organizations like the Anita Borg Foundation.

That’s a good thing. A very good thing. Our fast-growing, demanding profession needs all the brainpower we can get. Women, we need you. Having female programmers on your team doesn’t mean that you need to buy pink mice and purple IDEs. It means that you have more top-notch architects, coders and testers, and you will create better software faster.

That’s why the so-called brogrammer trend is so infuriating. Why don’t managers and executives understand?

A few days ago, a female techie friend wrote to me in anger about a new website called Hot Tech Today which features short technology stories allegedly written by attractive young women posing in bikinis.

Disgusting.

We are better than this. We must be better than this.

Let’s put our resources into changing the brogrammer culture. Let’s make our profession not only safe for females, but also inviting and friendly. That means ditching the inappropriate language, curbing the stupid jokes, stopping the subtle put-downs of the women in your organization, and having a zero-tolerance rule to anyone who creates a hostile work environment for anyone, regardless of gender, race, national origin or anything.

Brogrammers. Just say no.

For more on this nasty trend, see:

• The Rise of the Brogrammer, by SD Times’ Victoria Reitano

• Oh Hai Sexism, by Charles Arthur

• In tech, some bemoan the rise of the ‘brogrammer’ culture, by Doug Gross

• In war for talent, ‘brogrammers’ will be losers, by Gina Trapani

Developer gender double standard

In the workplace, male software developers are treated as developers first, men second. However, female software developers are too often treated as women first, developers second.

This is a problem that affects every one of us, whether you’re a man or a woman, whether you report to a man or a woman, or whether you manage men only, women only, or a team of both genders.

What shall we do about this?

The women in our profession — whether programmer or tester, developer or admin, senior manager or new graduate — face this every day. Comments about their bodies or attire, either to their face or behind their back. Double standards in professional advancement, opportunities to take on new projects, business travel, and of course, pay.

Not all of the problems are created by men. I’m told that women are often pretty hard on women techies, too. It reminds me of a conversation between two Dilbert characters, Alice the engineer and Tina the tech writer:

Tina: One day I hope we can be judged by our accomplishments and not our gender.

Alice: I got my 14th patent today. I’m on my way to a lunch banquet in my honor.

Tina: And you wore *that*?

Is any of this new? Of course not. Women in “traditionally male” jobs have been disadvantaged forever. But that doesn’t mean that we have to overlook the issue, or worse, perpetuate it through our own actions.

These comments today are inspired by a blog post by Tech Republic’s Toni Bowers: “Sure she’s a good tech blogger, but what does she look like?” Thank you, Toni, for the blog!

I’ll also point you to a recent SD Times Guest View, “Sexist and Offensive,” by Lori MacVittie, an engineer with F5 Networks.

Share your thoughts: Tell me what you think.

Z Trek Copyright (c) Alan Zeichick
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Testosterone-fueled software development

A business-technology blogger for the Wall Street Journal, Rebecca Buckman, posits that there’s an innate difference in coding style between male and female programmers.

In her June 6 posting, “Men Write Code from Mars, Women Write More Helpful Code from Venus,” Buckman leads by throwing out another gender stereotype. This broad brushstroke, presented as unassailable fact, undermines her conclusion’s credibility right off the bat.

“We all know men hate to ask for directions. Apparently they loathe putting directions in computer code, too,” Buckman writes.

Buckman based her broad characterization of male and female programmers on the comments of one female software executive in Silicon Valley, Ingres’ Emma McGratten.

McGratten’s point, as amplified by Buckman, is that smart women write beautifully clear software to communicate better with their colleagues, while stupid men write cryptic code to show off how clever they think they are. Yay, women. Boo, men.

That’s why McGratten believes there’s a “big need to fix testosterone-fueled code at Ingres because only about 20% of the engineers are women.”

What a load of nonsense. I expect better from the WSJ.

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Beauty sells, whether it’s medicine or magazines

If you’ve been to the doctor recently, you’ve probably shared the waiting room with one or more pharmaceutical sales representatives. Almost without exception, they’re beautiful young women and men, immaculately groomed and expensively dressed.

I read in the NY Times that Big Pharm likes to recruit from college cheerleaders (see “Gimme an Rx! Cheerleaders Pep Up Drug Sales“). Certainly the girls and boys hanging out in waiting rooms look both perky and athletically trim enough to be cheerleaders.

Why would the drug companies focus on people like that as sales representatives? One would surmise it’s because that strategy pays off.

Thus, see this article in Folio, which asks, “Are you good-looking enough to sell magazine ads?” According to Josh Gordon’s story, 17 percent of a pharm site’s survey respondents say that looks matter more than anything else.

I wonder if it applies to the media business too. If so… it’s a good thing I’m not in ad sales!

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Rent-a-model for Interop?

In case you’re wondering where booth bunnies come from, here’s an e-mail I received from “Barbie” at The Élan Agency.

It came because we’re exhibiting at the Interop (not “Interopt”) conference at the end of April in Las Vegas. Have fun checking out their model search engine: They have men, women and children, all available for your trade-show extravaganza!

Greetings:

The Élan Agency is a top of the line model and talent agency in Las Vegas and – first – want to welcome you to our city, in advance. We would also like to offer the agency’s services to your company while here in Las Vegas. We have some of the most beautiful and professional narrators and models for your trade show needs. We have spokespersons, demonstrators; we even have entertainers and guest speakers for the entire company’s enlightenment, as well as a complete event planning department. We can schedule shows, meals, even your airline tickets.

Please let us know if there is any way we can assist you at Interopt Las Vegas 2008, and have some fun while you’re here.

Thank you,

Barbie

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No operating system just for the little ladies

I echo the comments by Tina Gasperson, in her post, “Linux distro for women? Thanks, but no thanks.” It reminds me of the tool kits for women you see in all the department stores, with pink-handled screwdrivers “just for her.”

What, my wife can’t use our Craftsman screwdrivers or Black & Decker drills? We’re supposed to have two sets of tools, one for me and our son, one for my wife? Are we supposed to buy some Craftswoman tools, or get her gear from Pink & Decker? How condescending.

Software, including operating systems, should be written for people. Not for men, not for women, not for girls, not for boys. People.

I never knew that the Red Hat and SUSE were “for boys,” and that my wife is supposed to run a different server operating system than the males in the household.

How stupid is that?

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Beauty IS the Geek

“Beauty IS the Geek” is Marlo Brooke’s term, not mine. Ms. Brooke is the CEO of a company called Avatar Partners, which does supply chain consulting – RFID, that sort of thing.

Today, Avatar’s PR agency, RMS Public Relations, sent out a pitch – including the photograph on this posting. The subject line, “Story idea: Beauty IS the Geek,” astounded me. The agency’s account executive wrote,

Alan, I thought you might be interested in a story about Marlo Brooke, CEO of Avatar Partners, who breaks the mold in a male-dominated technology industry. In this case BEAUTY IS THE GEEK! (Picture attached)

This is the most obnoxious attempt to get tech coverage based on executive sex appeal since 1998. That’s when Katrina Garnett plastered ads for her company, CrossWorlds Software – with a juicy picture of herself in a slinky little black dress – all over technology and fashion magazines.

A decade ago, Ms. Garnett made a whole bunch of lonely programmers’ days. Is that really the type of trail-blazing attention that a woman tech-industry entrepreneur believes she must seek out? Today, is Avatar Partners so desperate for publicity that their public relations agency must tout the physical attributes of the company’s female CEO? Pathetic.

Ms. Brooke has a pretty face, but that young lady has some serious self-esteem issues. This is not the healthiest way to get customers and the press interested in her company.

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Should you talk to men and women differently?

I received this pitch today from Event Management Services, a self-described “publicity firm.” Frankly, it’s too amusing not to share with everyone. This is a verbatim cut-and-paste, with phone number and e-mail addresses removed.

Note that the the e-mail pitch itself was a rich HTML file with lots of colors, bolding, italicizing, centered text, larger text, underlining etc., which I don’t feel like replicating completely.

This is clearly a company that buys mailing lists — they sent it to many addresses at our company, including our info@ and letter@ addresses. The subject line was, “Should You Talk to Women Differently About Your Product?” What do you think about this pitch? -A

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Should You Talk to Men and Women Differently About Your Product?

You probably chat with both men and women just about every day, right? But are they hearing you in exactly the same way?

And when it comes to the selling of your products or services, would it pay to speak to them… well… differently?

That’s what marketing experts, like author Martha Barletta, believe. Owing to the way we’re made up, the way we’re raised, men and women can process information very differently. For example…

“Consistent with men’s inclination to simplify and strip away extraneous detail, they believe in starting with the main point and supplying specific detail only if the listener asks for it,” Barletta observed in her bestseller, Marketing to Women.” Conversely…“To women, the details are the good part: what he said, why she answered as she did, and what was the significance of that event. Women want the full story.”

There’s probably more truth in Barletta’s observations than we care to admit. And if your product specifically targets men or women—and you’re out there doing TV or talk radio interviews—it’s a good idea to pay attention to how you talk to them.

Consider, for example…

“Report Talk Versus Rapport Talk”

Along the lines of the above “outline versus detail-rich” way of speaking I mentioned, women place great value, according to Barletta, in personalizing conversation. Men apparently don’t.

“When male and female students in a communications class were asked to bring in an audiotape of a ‘really good conversation,’ one young man brought in a lunch conversation with a fellow classmate that included lots of animated discussion of a project they were working on together. The women students were puzzled because there wasn’t a personal word on the whole tape. You call that a conversation?”

Barletta labeled the way men speak “report talk,” while women use “rapport talk.”

Use This in Your Next Interview

Assuming that’s actually the case, how could you use this in media interviews or even your marketing? Well, if you’re targeting women, you might try telling more stories of how people respond to your product or service or how a person’s life was improved by it. You might also tell your own story, particularly if it was challenging, moving or heartwarming.

Conversely, if you’re targeting men, you might focus on the “nuts and bolts” of your product. How things work, why they work and their future usage—things like that.

And what if you’re speaking to both men and women? Just blend the two approaches. Personalize your information and give out the nuts and bolts in your own particular style.

I’m Marsha Friedman, CEO of Event Management Services, one of the country’s only Publicity and Advertising firms that offer a “media guarantee”. There’s a lot more on this subject of talking to men and women differently that I will share with you in future emails. For now, let me leave you with this: The difference between men and women extends to the way we hear things…and you should be prepared to address that.

If we can help you obtain national media exposure for your products or services, call me or Steve Friedman today. Find out why New York Times bestselling author Earl Mindell said, “Event Management is the best in the business.”

Best,

Marsha Friedman, President
Event Management Services

P.S. I mentioned the value of personalizing things for women? Barletta wrote, “To women, personal ties are a good thing—in fact the best thing.” Maybe you could use that tidbit in your next interview, too.

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Turing Award for Grace Hopper: The ACM responds

On March 1, a blog reader responded to the news about the 2006 ACM A.M. Turing Award — which recognized Fran Allen as the first female recipient of this honor — asking a pointed question:

I guess the Lady Admiral who wrote Fortran wasn’t very important… So I won’t bother to even name her. After all, she only worked for the U.S. Government and not a large conglomerate like IBM…

I asked the Association for Computing Machinery if the Turing Award committee had a response to this question. Here’s what they told me this morning.

“Good morning Alan, and thanks for your patience. We appreciate your interest in ACM’s Turing Award, and the issue it raises about women and technology. So let me explain how the process works.

“ACM’s A.M. Turing Award recipient is selected by a committee of prominent computer scientists and engineers. The selection process is confidential, and no single person knows the history of all the deliberations over the years.

“ACM has recognized Grace Hopper with the Grace Murray Hopper Award which originated in 1971. It is presented to the outstanding young computer professional of the year. In addition, ACM is a co-sponsor of the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing which is now an annual event. It is designed to bring the research and career interests of women in computing to the forefront.

“As the demand for talented computing professionals grows, it is increasingly imperative that women and other underrepresented groups be encouraged to pursue this career path. The recognition provided by ACM’s Turing Award this year has already raised awareness of the achievements of women in the field. We hope this news will motivate girls and women to see the growing opportunities for exciting careers, and to get the recognition they have earned as critical contributors to technology and innovation.”

While I’m delighted that the ACM focuses on the issues of women and technology (which it does in a very prominent way), and that Adm. Hopper was given many other honors, it’s a shame that she was not given their highest honor.

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Congratulations, Fran Allen!

The 2006 recipient of the ACM Turing Award is Frances E. Allen, a retired researcher from IBM. To quote from the ACM’s announcement,

Allen, an IBM Fellow Emerita at the T.J. Watson Research Center, made fundamental contributions to the theory and practice of program optimization, which translates the users’ problem-solving language statements into more efficient sequences of computer instructions. Her contributions also greatly extended earlier work in automatic program parallelization, which enables programs to use multiple processors simultaneously in order to obtain faster results. These techniques have made it possible to achieve high performance from computers while programming them in languages suitable to applications. They have contributed to advances in the use of high performance computers for solving problems such as weather forecasting, DNA matching, and national security functions.

You can learn a lot more about Ms. Allen (pictured) at the IBM Archives. It’s noteworthy that Ms. Allen is the first woman to be honored with the ACM Turing Award, and has indeed been heaped with many professional “firsts,” including being the first woman named an IBM Fellow.

Ms. Allen even has an IBM award named after her, the “Frances E. Allen Women in Technology Mentoring Award,” of which she was the first recipient. She also received the first Anita Borg Award for Technical Leadership in 2004. Technologically, her groundbreaking work was in compiler optimization and in cryptography.

Ms. Allen retired from IBM in 2002.

The ACM Turing Award has been presented since 1966, and according to the ACM, it’s “given to an individual selected for contributions of a technical nature made to the computing community. The contributions should be of lasting and major technical importance to the computer field.” I

t’s a shame that it’s taken 40 years to recognize the first woman for the most prestigious award in computing, but historically there have been few women at the highest levels of our profession. Not only was Fran Allen the right person to win the ACM Turing Award, but perhaps this honor will inspire more young women to enter the fields of computer science and software engineering. Their talents, like Allen’s, are both needed and appreciated.