She's Geeky #4: April 18th (Northern Virginia)

Mar 29, 2009 GMT

Registration is open for She's Geeky #4, which will be held at the LMI facilities in Northern Virginia. Proposed topics will be added to the site as more people register. Visit the She's Geeky site for more information and to watch a video montage from the first She's Geeky conference, which was held in October 2007.

June 12-14 – Writing Open Source: The Conference

Mar 26, 2009 GMT

Registration is now open for a documentation-focused event, Write Open Source: The Conference, which will be held June 12-14 in Owen Sound, Canada. A cool $250(CAN) will get you into the event, covers airport shuttle, and includes delicious meals made from locally grown food. (That Emma Jane Hogbin knows how to throw a party... I mean, conference.) "Well what is Writing Open Source, and how do I convince my boss to pay for it?" you ask. Schedule: Day one: "high level" sessions by experts. Topics include: information architecture licensing commerce, revenue models and paying the mortgage learning styles and documentation to match community...

2009 WITI Hall of Fame Award-Winners Announced

Mar 25, 2009 GMT

WITI just announced the four women who will be inducted into the the WITI (Women in Technology International) Hall of Fame this June: Patricia S. Cowings, Research Psychologist, Human Systems Integration Division, NASA Ames Research Center Maxine Fassberg, Vice President, Technology and Manufacturing Group, Fab 28 Plant Manager, General Manager, Intel Israel Dr. Sharon Nunes, Vice President Big Green Innovations, IBM Corporation Dr. Carolyn Turbyfil, a Founding Member of WITI According to the announcement, tickets and tables are available for the WITI Hall of Fame Awards Ceremony, which will take place in Santa Clara, California on June 15 as part of the Women and...

In Honor of Ada

Mar 24, 2009 GMT

Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology. I can't narrow it down to one heroine. Instead, I present a list of just a few of my many tech heroines. First, I'd pick my mentor Amber Ankerholz, former editor in chief of Sys Admin magazine. Approaching technology from a journalist's perspective, Amber did an outstanding job of editing and delivering technical articles written by sys admins for sys admins. While I'm at it, I'll add all the women who contributed to Sys Admin, including Æleen Frisch and Q&A columnist Amy Rich. And all the women who contribute to Linux Pro/ Linux Magazine, including Emma Hogbin, Patricia...

College Degree Required?

Mar 24, 2009 GMT

Last night I had a conversation with a friend of mine – a freelance writer – about the state of journalism, journalists, bloggers, and "the media." Without going into too much detail, let's just say that I went off on a tangent about people saying "the media" when they mean "bloggers," and how not all bloggers qualify as journalists or members of the media and not all journalists qualify as good writers or researchers and it's all just a big mess that will eventually shake itself out (or so I've been saying for the past few years). I concluded with a "having a journalism degree doesn't automatically mean you're are better qualified to report than...

Google Summer of Code: Student applications now open

Mar 23, 2009 GMT

Last week, Google unveiled the 150 mentoring organizations selected for Google Summer of Code (GSoC) 2009, and students can begin submitting applications now. Recently, I spoke with Leslie Hawthorn, Program Manager for Google's Open Source Team, and I asked her about what's new for this year's Google Summer of Code. Leslie says that she's most excited about the Melange project, which will make it possible to host GSoC and other projects on the Google App Engine. She says that all but one member of the committer team is a former GSoC student or mentor. In addition to Melange and many returning projects – including the Asterisk Project and the Django Software Foundation – look for...

Now Serving: Open Source in Education

Mar 17, 2009 GMT

I finished grad school almost a year ago, and since then I thought a lot about what things I should cram into those tiny chunks of time that were previously filled with graduate classes. T.V. got boring much faster than I expected, so I considered opening a roller rink, I surfed the web for law schools, and I fantasized about opening a little cupcake shoppe (which I would name Cupcake Castle). None of these other side gigs would fit well with the day job, however, and I have no intentions of giving up this sweet gig. Plus, now that my kid is a pre-teen, it's my job to ruin her life and "get into her business," so I set my eyes on her school, specifically the computer lab. I...