Ada Lovelace Day

I'm dusting off the blog for Ada Lovelace Day - fulfilling my pledge to join bloggers around the world in appreciation of women who excel in technology.

As a woman who has enjoyed a loooong career in technology, I'm taking this moment to say thank you to all the women I've worked with over the years. I can't think of a single one who isn't exemplary. In the crazy-quilt tapestry of my technical career, the women I've worked with have all been exceptional, few and far between, the sparkle in the fabric.

Before I get to these fabulous women, one short detour to thank two men who are responsible for my own membership in the community of women in technology...

I count the beginning of my career as my 1981 internship with IBM, in Poughkeepsie, New York. My courses in mechanical drafting (the pencil and T-square kind) landed me an internship with the Mechanical Design Automation group, which set standards for mechanical design work done within IBM. The move to Computer Aided Design (CAD) was underway, and I set about learning to produce isometric views of widgets on a 2D drafting package called CADAM, produced by Lockheed. I also learned to write documentation using the tag language GML (a precursor to SGML and XML), blithely unaware of the future of these fun tools and toys I was tinkering with.

No women worked with me during my internship, and to be honest I didn't really notice. My future as a woman in technology was cemented one morning when I was happily typing some GML tagged documentation at the green screen in front of me. A senior staff member walked up behind me and asked if I would enter (type) a large stack of paper documentation into the system for him. Even after all these years I distinctly remember furrowing my brow for a moment, then I smiled and took the paper from him.

Later that day I stopped by my manager's office and stammered a request to ask him a question. He asked me what was on my mind, and I told him that I'd been asked to do some typing... and I wasn't sure if that was the type of assignment I should be working on. I can't remember exactly what I said after that, but I know it involved a reference to my Dad and that he didn't send me to IBM to type for people...

The senior staff member was summoned to the office, given a lecture about handing off typing to the college intern, and the stack of paper disappeared. I can still remember my mixed feelings of shock and awe at the outcome. I will never forget Dick Merrill for that moment in my early career - it gave me the tiny seed of the ego I would need to continue my career in technology for the coming decades. It goes without saying that I will never forget Dad as well, for the inspiration to speak up (and for building me a little drafting table when I was young).

My internship came to a close, and I was determined to finish my degree as quickly as possible and go right back to IBM. I landed in Sterling Forest, New York, as a mainframe product programmer for IBM's computer integrated manufacturing products. I was the only woman programmer in my department for the first few years of my career, but I remember looking up to Helene, who managed another development team in our area, and Pat, who was a senior programmer in yet another department. Oh, and Beverly, our 'code librarian'... in those days the librarian was an actual person who administered the source code control system. Once we submitted our batch compiler jobs and verified everything was working as designed, we dutifully handed our listings over to Beverly for filing.

The military discipline of product development at IBM gave me a solid grounding in software engineering. IBM also put me through nearly 560 hours of classroom training on programming, system internals, and team development that I still think of as 'the basics' to this day. But, in the early 90's IBM offered to buy out employees who were willing to depart, and I was young and footloose enough to take the money and run.

My path from IBM led to the 'shrink wrap' PC software industry, and I joined MapInfo Corporation in 1992 just prior to the IPO of the company. Again, although they were few and far between, I was in the company of some extraordinary women - Kim, Sharon, Marilyn, Elizabeth-

The burst of tech IPOs led me straight into the tech bubble in the mid 90's, when I moved to Boston with my husband and joined the technology wing of a management consulting company, Renaissance Solutions. Companies like Renaissance and Boston Consulting Group were changing the way that software was delivered to corporate America. Rapid prototyping, iterative development, 'agile'... aggressive, sometimes visionary. Bringing together young Harvard MBA's and bright technical types (like me!) made for a whirlwind learning experience with Fortune 500 companies (Lucent, Monsanto, AT&T...) as our classrooms. I still keep in touch with Patty-

And, after awhile, I hung out my own shingle as 'Paul Software, Inc.' and enjoyed my Boston consulting circles and adventures in the tech bubble.

The end of the tech bubble led me to Microsoft; I joined the Microsoft's Financial Services Group as a senior consultant at the turn of the century. Given I'd made the switch from mainframe programming to shrink wrap PC products and Windows development at Renaissance, going to work for Microsoft was the ultimate career move for me. Again, the women were few and far between but all extraordinary in so many ways - powerful, capable, brilliant. Tracy, Patti, Natalie, and my dear friend and former manager, Kimberly.

But wait, there's more (goodness, I've been doing this a long time). Travel weary, I departed Microsoft in 2004 to pursue my first operational IT role, responsible for the business applications at a local reinsurance company, Scottish Re. I was also responsible, for the first time, for managing and mentoring some phenomenal younger women in technology. And, for the first time after over 20 years in my field I saw the benefits of working with a truly diverse team of both men and women in IT. Heather, Melandee, Tonya, Emily, Joyce, Abigale, Catherine, Jasmina, Shri, Paula...

I learned so much from them all.

Scottish Re was something of a bellwether for the current economy, with M&A activity orchestrated by Bear Stearns, and substantial investments in securities based on subprime loans. I departed as the stock tanked, inspired to go back to school for my MBA to make sense of it all, and to become more than 'just an IT person'. I've been in night school since then, and am on track to graduate at the close of this year.

Going back to school has been a fantastic (ok, grueling) experience. It's amazing to see the young, and not so young, women in my finance and economics courses wielding Black-Scholes option pricing and statistical analysis tools in classes where women are finally not so few and far between. I'd like to thank all these women, too, because they're evidence that Ada Lovelace and all the extraordinary women who participate in technology have helped make it less extraordinary for women to apply themselves in any field.

Good grief, I'm only halfway through my career!

After giving roughly a decade to mainframe programming, and more to Microsoft platforms, we're now the proud owners of a Mac mini. I've set my sights on iPhone development (although my husband has now beat me to the punch by writing his first application for our sons' Nintendo DS handhelds). I just want to make sure I'm not 'just another MBA'.

And, heaven help me, I think my son wants to be a video game developer. When the time comes, I'll ask him to take a look at my alma mater, the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, where they have a terrific game development curriculum taught by the talented Dr. Tiffany Barnes.

Thank you, to all these women who have been such extraordinary inspirations, colleagues and friends-