March 11, 2008 at 1:05 pm

Blogging with willy

I’ve just read Sabrina Dent’s Blogging like a Boy slides on Pix.ie. And while the title of it initially irritated me a little (why do I have to blog like a boy I’m a girl!) I soon realised that she was nailing just about all the reasons that I decided to shut down my previous blog and begin the arduous process of relaunching my online identity. From here on in I pledge to blog like a girl being a boy.

I will…

1. be as opinionated online as I am offline.
2. launch the actual design of my blog really, really soon. I was sort of going with the launch early and often approach to the redev but now I’m worried about my online style. I will get rid of the cock in the header for starters though  maybe it will help me focus on a more masculine blogging approach for the moment.
3. never ever blog about my adorable, widdle kitty cat. I will not link to his personal homepage on the right hand side links. You will just have to email me to request this link.
4. only blog about Bob Dylan if it’s relevant to my niche.
5. get a niche.
6. remove my ‘listening too’ last fm widget on the right hand side which references the last 5 tracks in my itunes - which was kind of stupid anyway because do I really want everyone to know that I am going through an intensive Kenny G phase. (ha ha ha!!!! That was a joke!!!). Must also be quietly confident online - see next point. (Seriously though I don’t listen to Kenny G).
7. be quietly confident: Ellipses, which I use frequently… give the perception apparently that I can’t finish a thought… also probably due to the fact the putting opinions down in black and white forever does make me feel a bit nervous so I like to soften them a bit. Fewer ellipses in future and less use of the exclamations.
8. take part in the online community by commenting. Actually I had quite an embarrassing moment once at Reboot6 when someone shoved a microphone in my face and asked me what I should do more of in the coming year and I piped up and said very enthusiastically ‘I’m going to comment more on people’s blogs’. I think I may have giggled too. Everyone else in the room said extremely cool stuff like - ‘launch my start up’, ‘get funding’, ‘learn Ruby so I can build my idea for a great social networking site’, ‘pitch in silicon valley’… etc. Anyway so I say it again loud and proud - I will comment more on blogs!
9. attend more events. Actually I love attending events - when I hear about them. Hopefully this will be made easier by Geek Dinners and Sabrina and Elly’s brilliant, new website SASS.IE. Yay!!!
10. write a good, tight profile page outlining skills and achievements and not mention husband or my cat.

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March 6, 2008 at 12:43 pm

I’m a geek!!

I attended the first Irish Geek Girls dinner in the Odessa last week with about 40 other female ‘geeks’ and a couple of guys who tagged along for the action. A big thanks to Martha Rotter for organising it - it was a great night with lots of wine (I’ll pretend I indulged), lovely food and plenty of rich debate.

In between dinner and dessert we had a bit of non compulsory stand up and tell us why your here time and it was pretty surprising the diversity of comments that were expressed from the ladies and men present. It even got quite heated which I wasn’t expecting - there was a bit too much ‘I am woman hear me roar’ sort of thing which normally I think is fantastic but is best in smaller doses (especially when you are waiting on a nice slice of peanut and chocolate slice). I think there could have been less (though by no means none at all) debate about:

• female quotas in the work place
• the horribly low percentage of women speakers at conferences
• I’m geekier then you are because I am a programmer and you’re just a blogger
• are enough girls doing maths in school (are enough boys doing math in school?)
• it’s alright to be feminine and geeky at the same time
• hey but it’s also alright not be feminine if you don’t want to and it doesn’t make you less of a woman
• I’m a man and I think women in technology are a great idea… (gee whiz what a swell guy!)

And much more discussion about:

• fave blogs, fave social tools, are you over facebook, do you know this brill little handbag site…
• a bit of a bitch about networking rooms filled with men in suits
• what will we talk about when we get together next time?
• as Maryrose suggested should we have speakers or themes?
• could we set up some sort of networking thing?
• how should us ladies keep in touch?
• enforced mingling for us shy uns

Certainly we touched on a few of these things but they did get lost in the growls of girl power rants and in fairness to Martha I really don’t think this was her expectation either. And despite this fact I did meet some great people and I am really looking forward to the next Dublin outing when hopefully we’ve got some (not all!!) of these woman issues out of our systems and can move on to just being a bunch of cool geeks in room together chatting about what we love best…

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