I found it! The theme song to the childrens educational program in the 70’s – The Big Blue Marble (also refer to my previous entry) .

This used to be a favourite of mine back home in sunny Malaysia, when I was just a wee lass. Walski will know this one too.

And again, I just loveYouTube. Perhaps thats the greatest thing about technology these days – information NOW! Instant gratification is what we all want.

Then there was Endgame 2006. I was there, representing one of the 4 girls (made up 10%). I must say it was great to be a minority amongst a bunch of such well mannered geeky fellas. Maybe male geeks are really cool after all? Here’s a group that did not alienate the girls. Well done fellas, it was good to get handed jumpers, kind words of concern to make sure we were alright, couches vacated when we entered the room….etc. We need more of you fellas out there!

Is that you Conrad?

Deek’s comment on my previous entry deserves a separate post here, cos its so goddamn true :

• One factor that hasn’t been mentioned yet, and which I have experienced, is men’s attitude towards females in a male dominated industry. Having to constantly prove oneself to everyone one meets gets very exhausting. And you constantly have to be on your toes. A minor slip up gets credited to being a female instead of it just being an oversight etc. And then there are people in the industry (and outside) constantly telling you to quit and find your place elsewhere. It’s the simple day-to-day things that make it hard. Like seniors not wanting to field your inquiries, or all the men sitting at lunch and not making way for the woman etc… Taken together, it makes for a very frustrating and stressful work env.
  

Maybe we should just let men be in IT, they seem best suited? Just like how we let men be firemen, like how we let men be soldiers, like how we let men be……okay okay there are women soldiers too but far fewer then men of course.

Do we care that less and less women are in IT? The US Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that the three top occupations with the fastest growth are :

• computer scientists
• computer engineers
• systems analysts

So unless women wanna be left out and take on jobs in lesser growing industries, they’d better start doing something about this.

How do we encourage women to get into IT?

Some of the suggestions have been :

• stop stereotyping women in IT as geeks
• provide more female IT role models?
• change the education system to allow for better ways for girls to learn IT?
• get video game designers to create more female type games? Quote “According to the research group IDC, 70 per cent of players of games written for consoles — such as Xbox and PlayStation2 — are male.”
• Or perhaps we need to stand up and speak out. Simply talking about women in IT, and raising awareness is a good thing as was suggested by shessuchageek.

After three weeks in the Garden of Eden, God came to visit Eve.

“So, how is everything going?” enquired God.

“It is all so beautiful, God,” she replied. “The sunrises and

sunsets are breathtaking, the smells, the sights, everything is

wonderful, but I have just one problem. It is these breasts you have

given me. The middle one pushes the other two out and I am constantly

knocking them with my arms, catching them on branches and snagging them

on bushes. They are a real pain,” reported Eve. And Eve went on to tell

God that since many other parts of her body came in pairs, such as her

limbs, eyes, ears, etc……. she felt that having only two breasts might

leave her body more “symmetrically balanced,” as she put it.

“That is a fair point,” replied God, “But it was my first shot at

this, you know. I gave the animals six breasts, so I figured that you

needed only half of those, but I see that you are right. I will fix it

up right away.” And God reached down, removed the middle breast and

tossed it into the bushes.

Three weeks passed and God once again visited Eve in the Garden of

Eden.

“Well, Eve, how is my favorite creation?”

“Just fantastic,” she replied, “But for one oversight on your part.

You see, all the animals are paired off. The ewe has a ram and the cow

has her bull. All the animals have a mate except me. I feel so alone.”

God thought for a moment and said, “You know, Eve, you are right.

How could I have overlooked this? You do need a mate and I will

immediately create a man from a part of you. Now let’s see…………

where did I put that useless tit?”

There were 4 definitions of geek from dictionary.com. Here’s one of them :

geek /gik/ Pronunciation Key – Show Spelled Pronunciation[geek] Pronunciation Key – Show IPA Pronunciation

–noun Slang.

1.	a carnival performer who performs sensationally morbid or disgusting acts, as biting off the head of a live chicken.

2.	a peculiar or offensive person, esp. one who is perceived to be overly intellectual.

3.	an expert in computers (a term of pride as self-reference, but often considered offensive when used by outsiders.)

---

[Origin: 1915–20; prob. var. of geck (mainly Scots) fool < D or LG gek]

Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.0.1)
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.

In the Our Living Languange section it also stated that :

Our word geek is now chiefly associated with contemporary student and computer slang, as in computer geek. In fact, geek is first attested in 1876 with the meaning “fool,” and it later also came to mean “a performer engaging in bizarre acts like biting the head off a live chicken.” Perhaps the use of geek to describe a circus sideshow has contributed to its current popularity. The circus was a much more significant source of entertainment in the United States in the 19th and early 20th centuries than it is now, and large numbers of traveling circuses left a cultural legacy in various unexpected ways. Superman and other comic book superheroes owe much of their look to circus acrobats, who were similarly costumed in capes and tights. We also owe the word ballyhoo to the circus; its ultimate origin is unknown, but in the late 1800s it referred to a flamboyant free musical performance conducted outside a circus with the goal of luring customers to buy tickets to the shows inside. Other words and expressions with circus origins include bandwagon (coined by P.T. Barnum in 1855) and Siamese twin.

Then the definiton of computer geek was :

computer geek jargon
(Or “turbo nerd”, “turbo geek”) One who eats (computer) bugs for a living. One who fulfils all the dreariest negative stereotypes about hackers: an asocial, malodourous, pasty-faced monomaniac with all the personality of a cheese grater. The term cannot be used by outsiders without implied insult to all hackers; compare black-on-black usage of “nigger”. A computer geek may be either a fundamentally clueless individual or a proto-hacker in larval stage.
See also Alpha Geek, propeller head, clustergeeking, geek out, wannabee, terminal junkie, spod, weenie.
[The Jargon File]
(1997-06-26)

The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing, © 1993-2006 Denis Howe

So who’s a geek? Let’s hear it!

STIRR Sydney, a meeting for web Startup entrepreneurs to meet and mingle, was held on Wednesday night.

I couldn’t make it, bummer, but I hear it was a great night.

There was about 20% female attendance, in the 80 odd super high tech crowd, which was GREAT! But hey, we need to get more of us out there. We’d be able to hold our own chatting web, wiki, Java, what not.

Next one for sure, keep checking this site, I will keep tab of the next ones and post dates well in advance.

Walski69’s comment on my last post deserves a separate mention. He said :

• Being a geek is cool
  

In the last few years geek boys have suddenly shot to stardom. They are a looked upon as being so geeky that they are now all of a sudden “cool”! Its starting to be obvious that they are getting the girls. Geek boys pay attention to detail, in their work, and in relationships. Thanks to the likes of Peter Jackson and his making of the JRR Tolkien trilogy, its now super cool to read fantasy books, to watch science fiction.

I once mentioned to some guy that I loved BSG. The response, “oh wow, thats unsual for a girl!” That was the end of that chat-up!

Tlonista’s article about geek girls really hits the nail on its head :

• Geek girls like me and my friends aren’t even on the radar — despite how much of this is written by women! Somehow it never occurs to them to advise those nerd boys to look for someone who shares their passions in the first place.

So to be repesented as Screen Goddesses in a calendar, I think is just wrong. While the calendar meant well, and only had the best interest of IT girls at heart, I think the calendar just did not represent IT girls as they should be represented.

We need to be recognised as who we are.

In the same way as geek boys, us geek girls are “cool” too, if not more so.

And then there’s the other end of the spectrum – lets try to show the world that IT girls are ….hmmm…. are… well, lets just say non geeky. A team of female web specialists in Australia got together and came up with The Screen Goddess IT Calendar 2006-2007. It launched in August this year. Its purpose :

• Smash through the perception of the geeky technologist
• Generate media sensation to put a spotlight in the industry and increase national interest and awareness
• Raise awareness of the diversity of Women in IT
• Raise money for non profit groups that run initiatives to encourage females to take up technology studies and to enter technology careers
• Promote organisations and companies involved in and supporting IT, through sponsorship/promotional opportunities on each page of the calendar.

I have mixed feelings about this one. Which market are we trying to target here… women? men? others? Should it be viewed as a work of art and be appreciated as that, or should I feel degraded that IT girls are pictured as sex objects? Is this really going to encourage more women to be in IT?

And then the ultimate question – do I feel the urge to rush out the door and purchase one of these? And where would I hang it?

Lets just pretend that the world takes on a conscious decision to train girls to be more “male-like”, just so they are more IT savvy- make them adapt, start them really young. And then lets just assume that perhaps IT is an industry that really was created by men for only the male brain to cope with. You honestly need to be a bloke to handle it.

Fast forward a few hundred years ( I think that’s all it takes, maybe less even) – what will we end up with?

I watched an episode of Battlestar Galactica last night, and for those of you who follow the series, you would have noticed that its a world where women and men dress the same, they share the same locker rooms, they share the showers, they have mixed boxing matches, they fly Vipers and kick-ass just as the men do. And of course with that, they also drink, burp and swear as much as the men do!

There was a little of that in Ally MacBeal, a law firm where the female and male lawyers share the powder room rest room.

Tell me now, how many of you find that appealing?