[Stream of Consciousness Notes from Vancouver League of Drupalers November 2007]

Featured topic: Gender in technology discussion led by Lauren Bacon of Raised Eyebrow

• working in web design a little over 10 years
• back then no school, no Drupal
• Raised Eyebrow founded february 2000
• Writing handbook for woman entrepreneurs, "The Boss of You"
• Women's incomes are lower
• Domestic responsibilities are higher e.g. children, Mom and Dad
• Women want technology to make lives simpler
• e.g. in healthcare, auto design
• e.g. airbags developed by male research teams but 3/4 of airbag related deaths are female
• example of blind spot that prevents something from being usable by the whole community
• popular perception in Western countries is that sexes are equal but tech sector has a long way to go in numbers
• in tech sector, women are typically account manager, marketing, client management but not hands on work like development and interface work
• we still have unconscious stereotypes, let's not design for ourselves all the time
• e.g. in this room don't have so many grey hair
• be aware of our biases
• e.g. we are all young in this room
• at Raised Eyebrow, try to get around biases by taking on certain kinds of work, e.g. accessibility
• e.g. did one for SPARC BC site had to work for wide range of users, high contrast, large font
• working on Section 15 (Charter about accessibility and equality for all people) website, devoting to user research
• asking people who fit user profile and asking them what they wanted
• labourious not for every project but you learn lessons for all projects
• sometimes you can't trust your instincts
• class and geographic issues
• e.g. some people use dialup, some have older computers
• to be inclusive:
• 1. reach out, branch out, talk to people
• 2. invite constructive criticism, be ready to be wrong
• 3. get over our own embarrassment at our own culture, it's ok to be a little insular, nothing wrong with admitting our own weaknesses
• 4. question everything
• Q: 2/3 of all facebook users are women. What did Facebook do right? A: women are even more social then men, being able to keep up with people since women are the connectors and social hubs in the family
• Q: what about Drupal? A: most clients are non profits and lots of stuff are women! It's the most usable and the most popular. Love to see edit tab i.e. seamless integration with content
• Webchick's women in drupal presentation - 72% in proprietary male, 98% male in open source which brings up point of aggression and the fact that tooting your own horn is frowned upon.
• Solutions: overcome bias, i.e. don't perceive women to be over aggressive, woman feel confident to appear appear confident
• a turnoff for women is the lack of 40 hour work weeks in IT
• demos wowhealth.ca's (not one of Raised Eyebrow's) large navigation arrows that she would not put in herself but are useful for those who don't know web conventions

Rick Vugteveen of Image X Media demoing some sites:

• FreshBrain.org - educating about tech stuff that isn't taught in high school, sponsored by sun microsystems so lots of hardware: four servers plus media servers, used actions and workflows to enable moderation i.e. 'for review' state, used flatforum (look for advanced forum recipe on drupal.org), used aggregation module to make nodes, legal module for making sure people read disclaimers and/or TOC
• Fantasy Sports Matrix - fantasysportsmatrix.com - social networking site for sports fans it has interesting use of javascript tabs and lots of features

Announcements:

• openwebvancouver.ca - Open web conference at VCC April 14-15, 2008