Gender diversity in high tech

A couple of new blog posts (1, 2) by Anil Dash have sparked a lot of discussion (see here and here, for instance) about the value of diversity–specifically in this case, gender diversity–in high tech.
This is a timely topic for me. At work, I’ve recently joined a newly-formed development team. As we were sitting in team meetings this week, I realized that there is only one woman on this team (and she is the product owner, which, in our development methodology, makes her kind of an adjunct team member).
Our other two teams at work have at least two women members (all QA and technical writers; we don’t have any female programmers), and I’ve been very pleased with the team dynamics of both those teams.
For several reasons, I’m currently slightly uncomfortable with the dynamics of the new team, and it struck me this week that one of those reasons is that it felt kind of ‘good-ol-boy’ish. After reading Anil’s posts and some discussion of them, I emailed the team lead to discuss the issue of gender diversity on the new team. We’ll see what happens.

Oh wait, here’s something mildly personal

Preface: Katie and I love to mangle the names of stores. When we lived in New Jersey, our good friend David came to visit us. After we referred to the local Shop-Rite several times by its correct name, David exclaimed: “What has New Jersey done to you? Why don’t you call it Shop-Rong?” Well, we had referred to it that way from the day we moved there; it’s just that by the time David came to visit, it has lost its novelty.
So, on to the story… We spent last Christmas in Red River, NM. We drove up there in two days, spending the night in Lubbock. We arrived in Lubbock kind of late, and we were tired. After we got the van unloaded, we set out in search of a place to eat. Within a few blocks of our hotel, we didn’t find much that interested us, so we finally just went through the drive-through at Wienerschnitzel. The food was really awful, so Samuel dubbed it Wiener-shit-zel.
We had a proud parenting moment.

Being an introvert nerd sucks sometimes

I just ran across the blog Death By Children, written by a stay-at-home dad. On his blog, that dad writes about his farting, scratching his nuts, his teenage daughter’s boobs–all hilariously, and supposedly with the sanction of his kids.
On my blog, in contrast, you get a highly edited version of my life: you find out that I’m a geek, a liberal Christian, a liberal politically. But I write nothing that could (I hope) offend anyone I know. About the most personal insight into our family life that you get is how we arrange our mantel hooks at Christmas.
I’d love to be as funny as the Death By Children dad, and I’d love to be able to write about it on my blog, but my personality type is all about control and moderation. Don’t get me wrong, I love being an introverted geek, but sometimes I’d just love to be able to throw all caution to the wind and write with passion and abandon. Oh well.