 Thank you for having me here. So my name is Renata Vorsney and you all noticed I'm a girl In fact according to some research, it's probably the first thing you noticed about me. The second was probably my race White I'm not gonna say much about that, but I am gonna talk about the fact that I'm a girl I'm an independent consultant. I do Ruby on rail development in Seattle And I'm gonna talk to you about who's why for you So this is a common phrase that I've heard and about and I've been asked to have you ever been, you know Asked this at a conference and the answer is yes I have been asked who you hear with and this was what was implied. So what am I gonna talk to you about today? I'm gonna talk to you about why I'm talking to you And What what our problem is as I see it I'm gonna tell you some stories I've got a little data, but really I'm here to tell you some stories And I'm gonna talk to you about what we can do about it And and why you should care. Hopefully you'll get that. All right, so who am I? Here are some titles a lot of which I've had recently They are titles that are not usually on a woman CTO engineer developer entrepreneur Here are some other titles That I have My hobbies. I'm a bit of an adrenaline junkie. I've recently gotten into big mountain climbing And I'm very interested in the history of it. I think I've grabbed every book out there on Everest K2 and at a perna And I'd love to talk to you about that offline But you know, I've also tried to look into the history of women in mountaineering and I There's anecdotes here and there you hear about women out there when I'm out in the mountain I'm frequently the only one I'm frequently like with a small group of people are the only people in you know miles and miles but You know, it's I have hobbies and I do work in fields where there are not a lot of women And so what does that result it in? All right So interruption number one implies that there's an eruption number two and there's not so I was gonna have us all kind of Stand up and do something but I'm not for saving time This is gotta do this in 20 minutes. So I'm gonna book through I'm just gonna tell you what I was gonna have everybody do so I was gonna have everybody get up and have all People that were wearing glasses come over here and all people that are not wearing glasses get over here And so what I was gonna talk about is when I'm not wearing contacts and the privacy of my home I wear glasses and I've had glasses for a long time I'm blind as a bat without them and something I've found happens when you're in a room with or a sleepover or whatever with other people with glasses you somehow end up talking about it and switching glasses and Inevitably somebody goes. Oh my god. How do you see with these declaring the winner of the game? I like to call how blind are you? So this happens and what I was gonna have people do if we were all standing and separated by glasses I had a plant in the audience who is gonna go over she was wearing glasses She's gonna go over the group without glasses And I was gonna say hey, you know what she can no longer play the game There's nobody in that group that has any glasses on she can't do this So she's got to find something else in common with that group and that's gonna be a big theme I'm gonna talk to you about is commonality humans. We're social. We're very social We want to hang out with people like us with a similar background When you go into a room of people and you don't know anybody you tend to gravitate towards Those you think you're gonna get along with and you make sometimes really snap judgments about who those people are I think we did a little bit of the improv on the first day yesterday Where you know you judge people right you think about who do I have what the most in common with so when I go into a Room of developers. I have I have development experience. I have something in common with them I can make that assumption But there's usually not another girl in that room frequently so Keep this in mind commonality. I Will get back to that so I am gonna talk a little bit about some numbers and These are numbers from 2009 about the workforce in America Broken down by gender so There's actually a majority of women in our workforce today. These numbers are from 09, but it's trended So it's current there are currently more women working than men Okay, so in July of 2010 about a year ago the Atlantic Monthly published an article That was called the end of men and it talks about the changing US economy and how it's Heading towards kind of a service-oriented economy And this dominance of women being employed over men And there were some really interesting points in there one of which I'll point out I'd suggest go read the article was interesting Was that parents are seeing for their their young girls a lot more opportunity for young girls in the The workforce today and they kind of extrapolate it on that so I saw this and was like wow That's that's pretty cool. So there should be more women, you know working with me, right? No This is computer science and information technology fields. I've abbreviated it to CS field 25% women so these are kind of Extrapolated down from what they call STEM field science technology engineering and math which are gearing towards Most of them are actually 50% Better a little worse, but around that number and computers anything having to do with computers computer engineering This is the number 25% So, okay, not a lot of women So one of those things the Titles I had up there with CTO. I do a lot with the startup community all of us We're all developers we work in a CS related field. So that first number probably applies to everybody at the field We are all in Most of us are a good number of us work with startups VC funded startups the number of VC funded startups with founding women 8% Yeah, the end of men is not here Okay, so I can talk to you a lot about numbers and regale you with You know statistics and whatnot and try and make the point that way But I've seen a number of people touch on this issue a lot of a lot of men at conferences One great talk is Erin O'Brien who she gave a talk at Scottish Ruby comp and she's actually talking with me on a diversity panel at my Rocky Mountain Ruby in a couple weeks and She's not a developer. So I've seen talks and people address this issue who aren't female developers. So that's really why I'm here is I'm a female developer I've had these experiences. I'm in your community. I'm gonna tell you what it's like. So the next couple of slides Are anecdotes? They are all true They have all happened to me and they've all happened in the Ruby and startup community except one I put it in because it's funny and I'll tell you which one it is But so I'm gonna go through these anecdotes and I've borrowed from my favorite cartoon as a kid was Animaniacs So anybody as a kid or even as an adult who's watching Animaniacs Great. All right. So there was this segment my favorite segment. That was called good idea bad idea So I've put my anecdotes which are true into this format and Here we go All right, so we're a professional attire to work. This is the shirt available on Ruby threads. I have it I think it's great. We've seen a lot of women a swan All right, so now you think I'm exaggerating. Okay. She's talked it up for the talk the Darth Vader shirt That is the actual t-shirt worn on the first day of work by a colleague of mine. He's very first day of work Yeah, so I'm gonna skip a little bit ahead and say why should you care? He is known in my head as penis shirt man Do you really want to be known as a shirt man? You know how many hoops he had to just go through with me so that I would give him any kind of respect after this really First day of work and that's the shirt you pick Okay, also I have two shirts up there about a year later He was promoted and the week of his promotion He came in with to work with a shirt that had hardcore porn on it I did not put hardcore porn on there. I don't want Kobe to have to publish that. However Actual part of you real life pictures in color on a shirt. So I'm gonna continue on not exaggerating All right. I like getting compliment on my code if I do No, give me some feedback. That's great Bad idea Well for a comment compliment the milk on her diet. Yes, this happened. Oh, you're looking great really at work Somebody I don't really know guys. Thanks. It's work. I push code all the time You know, you want to talk to me about that or my ideas on there? I think that's good in a professional environment The the point I'm gonna make about all of this is kind of professionalism and having that level of professionalism when we're in the office interacting with each other at the bar Even at a conference kind of your own your own career on the line there professionalism the office Bad idea for a third degree about our new boyfriend Yeah, I got a new boyfriend and that was like half an hour conversation like well, I put an end to it But I was like really you're gonna grow me on this like I barely get feedback about the code I push you don't know what I do every day and and this is what you're gonna ask me about Also, I think there was a somebody put a thing out there saying if anybody can get a naked man into a talk at Ruby conference, so I think someone wants to be a drink Use professional language. Okay, so this one was not actually from the Ruby community in the startup world This was at a big corporation. I was consulting for But it's too funny I actually got this line in an email. Who's your sequel daddy? Use realistic test data. This is like from scaffold. I just threw it in there It works, but I did I can try the example but this I actually ran across this in code I changed it as soon as I saw it Don't do that Think about what you're you're writing. So There is a problem. It exists in our community There are some things we can do to fix it, but it's here just because you work for a small company Or you're in a really great open-source community like Ruby community It does not mean it doesn't happen here. We need to be more aware of it. So Book in why should you care? You don't want to be known as peanut shirt man I'm gonna briefly talk about we want our development teams to be smarter more innovative There's some interesting research out there that says More women on the team has a kind of group higher IQ not full women teams But having more women on the team something about social interactions I'll let you go kind of read the article and I'll refer to it because we got a book through Where diversity on the team I think innovation Really comes from having people with different backgrounds on the team different ideas different opinions from yourself some kind of You know differences you can talk about those you have more to kind of bring to the table You know either specialties in different languages Which I'll talk about Community I think these are kind of the gold standards of the OSS community and what we should strive for being inclusive Collaborative and innovative my opinion is that in that order? I think that gives us the best Innovations we can talk about that more Vulnerable alright, so we are all developers. I know personally myself when I write code I put a little piece of myself in there. I take pride in my work and Open-sourcing things putting your code out there Have other people look at it. I think all of us in that room in the room Understands that vulnerability you put it out there. You're making yourself vulnerable. We work in a vulnerable in this industry It is a creative process and when you open source and put your code out there You're making yourself vulnerable my point here is keep in mind that there's There's maybe some additional vulnerabilities and additional baggage that some of us bring to the table That aren't always there That always excuse me that aren't always as obvious as what we all experience in terms of our ability That's my point about open-source. What can you do? All right, so I snagged the slide from Paolo who I saw at Conferencia Rails this year He was talking about Java and Ruby And kind of different tools for the job Two things he did well one thing in general he did through his talk was he talked about an Aeronautical engineer and developer and referred to both as she and her using the female pronouns Which stood out to me as a woman. It spoke to me. I talked to him a bit about it afterwards It seemed like he was really practicing what he preached He was aware of an issue and he got he made himself and maybe some people in the audience a little uncomfortable by doing that But it was an acknowledgement and kind of a reach out which I appreciated and think generalist You know if I told you all Go read seven programming languages in seven weeks do a little or laying programming It'll make you a better programmer. You probably wouldn't argue with me If I told you go read a feminist blog, which I will later or You know Invite the woman on your team if there is one to pair with you or even a business analyst If she's the only woman in your office to come and write a cucumber test with you It'll make you a better programmer. You might argue with me. Why the same thing? Think outside the box a bit. All right, so one thing stop apologizing You know, there's Sorry type It's all right move on learn from it, you know, I I threw a Minneswan t-shirt not everybody knows what that means But you know what you go to your computer, you know, everybody's talking about oh minneswan minneswan Okay, so you go you Google it secretly you pretend and then you go Google it secretly and you find out You know if I tell you hey, you know what you said something sexist or offensive to me Do you go Google it? Do you go ask me later? Do you figure out what the what the issue was? Think about that next time All right, so break down barriers mentor Encourage and teach Do a rails bridge if there's a woman on your team work with her encourage her If there's some kind of minority in your workplace that you can reach out to do it Just make the effort Rails bridge is an excellent program to get more women into computer science You do not have to be a woman to teach at it or to TA or to have that mentorship Just do it. You'll learn something. It's a great way Improving your own skills is to reach out and and take that initiative All right, so my my two big points were commonality think about the things that you have in common with Who you work with and maybe some of the things that you don't have in common find out more about them learn and realize that You know not everybody's the same as you and just be aware And that vulnerability is that we all have I think we work in a vulnerable industry I think what we do makes us vulnerable and Remember that kind of extra baggage that we have when we interact in certain certain instances either male female or Black white or poor rich There's a lot of that that we Can't acknowledge we can't talk about it kind of you know everything's honky-dory. It's not think about it In second All right, so I wanted to throw these up. That's an excellent suggestion Mrs. Triggs But one of them perhaps one of the men here would like to make it. This still happens be aware Funny cartoon. It's unfortunately true You tend to be the stereotype the the the one in the room representing everyone I am kind of put myself out there and speaking for all women which I might get yelled at I might not We'll see but you know just remember that this exists and you sometimes make sap judgments about a whole community that you shouldn't Get uncomfortable. Let's see. This was my awful bullet point fly. That was really just did I say everything I wanted to say? Be less blind Skip ahead my resources The very first one I have up there is actually an article about race He mentions gender in there, but it was I thought a really excellent article that I would say us all of you go read And it was don't be colorblind. Don't be genderblind Nobody else in the room is we all see it. We all noticed it. You know, I'm a woman. I Can't hide that from you Acknowledge it be aware and stop saying, you know, oh, I treat everybody the same. We are different think about that So geek feminist and we wiki there's a resources for allies I would suggest about take a look if anything I've said is resonated with you Go take a look. Just see what people are saying. You don't have to join the conversation You don't have enough to acknowledge you can clear your browser history and never acknowledge that you went there But go check it out. See see what the conversation is about see if there's something that resonates with you You'll learn something I guarantee Women write about this all the time. We share these things on dev chicks with each other and sometimes we don't bring them to the broader community and You it's like putting the onus on on men in the room to go look. Well, I'm putting the onus on you Go look it's out there. We talk about these things You could probably you may even find something that you've done on there and be like, whoa That's not what I meant, but you never had that opportunity to have the conversation. So go look And there's lots of statistics about this. I studied economics in college along with computer science And physics so I do a lot of a lot of non women type things And I'm always interested in data and statistics There's lots out there that hinted the problem and Tim really wanted to say something from the web Thank you Tim. I thank you Brighter Planet is a cloud-based computation platform So we provide an API for developers to build Complex scientific calculations into their applications pretty easily one big client. We have is Mastercard International and they have a partnership with us where Users of corporate cards who charge things like flights and hotel rooms onto their corporate card all those pieces of data go into a big database and we go in and using all those details calculate the Environmental impact of all those different activities and put that information back in the database So the users of these corporate cards can use that information for making energy efficiency adjustments and corporate reporting