Today is Ada Lovelace Day and bloggers all over are posting about their favorite women in technology. I pledged to do the same.
First, who is Ada Lovelace, you ask? She wrote the world’s first computer programs. How cool is that? If you want to know more, I won’t deny you!
So, we are charged with writing about tech heroines. I have been thinking about that for a while now as I planned this post. Growing up, the technology side of my techy-feely self definitely came from my father. In college, first as an engineering major and later as a science educator, I was most surrounded by men rather than women role models, especially in my preferred sciences of chemistry and physics.
So rather than focus on someone from my past, I decided that I would write about a more current group – who are heroines and sometimes sounding boards, livesavers, humorists, information sources, role models, sources of inspiration and much, much more. I wanted to give a shout out to the women who I follow on Twitter.
I am the first to admit that I was slow on the uptake with Twitter. But, I finally got it and now I have quite a group of my Tweeple – both men and women who I follow there who provide me with a great resource for learning, entertainment, feedback and more.
Today, I celebrate the female tweeps! Among them are:
Women I know and work with across the state like:
@maryn – who walks the walk and talks the walk living her live in the open social web
@andrea_s – who is not afraid to take chances and tread into this techno-world whether it feels comfortable or not
@mjmerrill – who is still getting started with this Twitter thing
@getdawn – who write Twitter haiku on the economy!
and@wrenbird28 – who is always ready to learn new stuff!
Women who I am getting to know through Twitter and with whom I feel connected already – even through one or two short tweetversations:
@soul4real – who I feel like I would really enjoy sitting down and having a beer with and talking about stuff
@allthingsnoisy – who I found through tweets at the Supercomputing 2008 conference
@cljennings – who seems like a fellow wanderer in this web world with an educator’s eye
@andrea_r – who has been SO helpful with some other blogging projects I have going on at my work
and @sherrymn – who I met at another conference. We have stayed in touch via Twitter.
And women I don’t know but admire like:
@ginatrapani – who I loved from Lifehacker and now is off on her own adventures at Smarterware
@intellagirl and @fleep – who promote Second Life in education and does so witih style and flair
There are others and I include theme in my admiration even if my memory cannot quite get them down here in my post’s electrons.
So – Thanks to Ada Lovelace for setting the stage for women in technology and thanks to my current Tweeps who help me continue in my learning about all of this stuff in the world around us!!
Hey! Thanks for the shoutout! Let’s have that beer sometime. That is if you live close. 🙂
@soul4real