by, for, and about women in science, technology, engineering, & math

Are you a woman? Are you a Geek? She’s Geeky is for you! Join us for an UNConference of amazing people, amazing discussions, great presentations.

She’s Geeky 10 – The 5th Bay Area Event January 27-29, 2012 Computer History Museum, 1401 N Shoreline Blvd., Mountain View, CA 94043 www.shesgeeky.org Follow us on Twitter.

Women attending She’s Geeky events find inspiration and gain self confidence to pursue or continue on STEM career paths because they are given the opportunity to present their work, often for the first time, discuss critical issues and build peer networks for support.

We have hosted 10 successful events in the last five years around the country, inclusive of women of all ages who self-identify as geeks. We attract women from a broad spectrum of technological specialties, professions, industries, levels of expertise, and across generations.

Instead of a pre-planned agenda, the agenda is created live the day of the event by all the geek women who attend. Join us!

Register today: http://shesgeeky10-eorg.eventbrite.com/

Interested in sponsoring this event? Contact Kas@shesgeeky.org.

• A She’s Geeky unconference is coming up at the end of October in New York City!

• Geek Feminism commenters suggest technical blogs to follow and women-friendly open-source projects to contribute to

• Via Leslie Hawthorn on Twitter, two guides for IRC for beginners! (If you don’t already know, IRC stands for Internet Relay Chat — it’s a simple chatroom technology that’s been around for a while. IRC channels are common communication methods for contributors of open-source projects and also often serve as forums where experienced users of programs or tools hang out ready to give technical help to new users. A lot of people new to IRC find it intimidating at first, but it ends up being pretty straightforward once you get used to it!)

• Jezebel rounds up the 10 most patronizing technology ads for women. Ew. Advertisers often justify stuff like this by saying that most women don’t really understand or care about the detailed technical specs of their devices, but guess what? Neither do most men! But tech ads for men still focus on devices’ power or speed, rather than their ability to store recipes.

• Tom Forrister writes about how after his gender transition to male, he finds that it’s a lot more common that he’ll be asked for technical help. I find stories like this fascinating — the differences people who gender transition experience in how they are treated before and after their transition, while still being essentially the same person with the same skills and interests, say a lot about how our society still makes so many assumptions based on gender or perceived gender (and not based on other qualities of the person). (Another telling example of stuff like this is the experience of Ben Barres — a scientist who, after his transition to male, started hearing comments like “Ben Barres gave a great seminar today, but then his work is much better than his sister’s.”)

• She’s Geeky unconference is coming up in the Bay Area!
• Also in the Bay Area, a competition for teams of high school girls programming Android and iPhone applications
• In Boston, the LibrePlanet Conference 2010 is coming up in March — RSVP now to reserve a spot!
• Check out Engineer Your Life — a website aimed at high school girls and promoting careers in engineering
• This story about research showing girls may be less interested in computer science if it’s associated with a “geeky” environment has been being passed around a lot this week. What do you think? Is this a legitimate explanation? Personally, I’ve always found geeky environments to be a plus — but then, I’m already a programmer, so my personal experience says more about how women do go into technology than why they don’t.
• Under the Microscope profiles several women who are playing important roles in the United Nations’ Climate Change Conference
• This diagram of the many species of geeks is kind of cool, but it’s also depressing how sexism in geek culture shows up even in such a playful context — one of the types of geek is “IT guy” (of course, there’s no “IT gal”), and all of the “geek heroes” are men, while several of the “geek obsessions” are women (taking their place among “stuff” like aliens, robots, and movies).
• Mark Shuttleworth is stepping down as CEO of Canonical — current COO Jane Silber will take his place
• Gawker posts a guide to the new Facebook privacy settings and an update on the old privacy settings you can no longer use
• Is Alice in Wonderland really a complex allegory about then-new types of mathematics?
• The Free Press Action Fund posts a map of where your representatives stand on Net Neutrality, and how to contact them about it
• And, it’s almost the weekend. Periodic Table of Beer!

Thanks to my twitter feed for sharing several of these links!

As always, please share your links of interest in the comments or in a blog post of your own!