The Canericans

It's been a minute since the last post; part one of...one, apparently. This pandemic has been a drain on any type of creativity that I used to have. So much has happened, so much changed, yet it feels like we have just been living on repeat since March 2020. I keep waiting for the 'end' of the pandemic so we can get back to 'normal' and then I realize that it will never happen.  Normal is defined as "conforming to a standard; usual, typical, or expected." I am not sure we'll get back to that. Every time I open the news I am astounded at the mass idiocy of the world around me. It's never something expected, never usual in the way I remember. Everything seems non-standard these days, so have we broken normal? Are there just too many perspectives and ideologies to really maintain a group sense of 'normal' anymore? So where to go from here then? I keep hearing from a lot of people that we have to create a new normal. I don't think we have t...

Introduction I have been working in technology since 2001. I thought about spending time here creating a credible, favorable account of my love of games, math and science and how I came to be a proverbial "Woman in Tech". Then I realized that the inclination to do so stems from my underlying fears about fitting in. How ironic, let's move on. Motivation In my 20's I organized and partook in various female focused technology groups. In the past decade I have focused more on myself and my own career, leaving much of the research and engagement in these groups behind. Recently I was asked to contribute some ideas on the specific matter of increasing female headcount in a mostly male tech team. My first reaction was one of fear to look further than my own experiences. I am a high empathy individual who avoids conflict in general, and I knew that researching this topic would require that I: look beyond what I was comfortable with, be pulled in to other more compl...