Oh me, oh my – it’s Ada Lovelace Day

And I really stretched myself thin. Despite the fact that I can prepare a blog post in advance and set it to post itself at a particular time – I didn’t use that fine service. Life has been way too hectic lately.

I made a pledge to write a post about women in technology on March 24th, the day chosen for Ada Lovelace Day, and I wanted to keep that promise. I admired the initiative, and I felt it was an important thing to do. As of this writing, I have. Twice. This is my third Ada Lovelace post.

The first post was for the AccessAbility SIG of STC where I wrote about four women in (accessible) technology. Frankly, I couldn’t make up my minda dn choose just one! I wrote about three women who coincidentally are all connected to the W3C – Judy Brewer, Wendy Chisholm, and Shawn Henry – plus a fourth woman, Henny Swan, who works for Opera. I have come to know Henny through Twitter, where I know her as @iheni. I am in awe of her, and she is obviously much younger than I am. Seeing the number of young women working with technology is great. I think it means there will be more balance in the playing field in the future, showing young girls that technology is an option and not just for the boys. I want to be like Henny when I grow up – or have her job (Web Evangelist for Opera -how cool is that?) This blog post gave me a chance to make some noise about accessibility, too.

Next, I wrote in Danish on the Webgrrls blog. I didn’t dare read any of my Danish friends’ blog posts for today. I didn’t want to run the risk of copying them. It is a small country. 🙂 Of course, Webgrrls has plenty of candidates, so I ran through the membership list in my mind and hit the jackpot with a dear friend, Lene Fredborg – and all you other dear friends, you are very dear to me, too!!

Now I am here on my own little (very neglected) blog. It is late, I am tired, but I would like to bring your attention to someone I am honored to call a friend. I wish I knew a fraction of what she knows when it comes to all things Web. She is the Web Diva for the previously mentioned AccessAbility SIG, as well as for the Washington, D.C. chapter of STC. I think she eats HTML tags for breakfast! When we set up the WordPress blog for the AccessAbility SIG site, she was exploring corners of MySQL, tweaking plug-ins, and basically becoming a WordPress wiz in a very short time. I could barely keep up, but I loved the learning opportunity it gave me. That’s why it so handy to hang around smart people. It eventually rubs off! 🙂 This Web Diva is not just a wiz with the Web, she is a wiz with the accessible Web. To me, that is very, very important. Her passion for accessibility extends beyond the Web, and we have had many great conversations about assistive technology, accessibility, and whatever comes close to those areas. In addition to being a Web Diva, which must be uppercase because she really is talented, Cynthia Lockley is a very kind and lovely person. It is a privilege to know you, Cynthia.

There you have my third blog post in honor of Ada Lovelace. I hope the many blog posts around the world are an inspiration to many people.