trendpreneur

OK, OK, so I already tweeted this, but it’s interesting. Hillary Mason set up intelligent email autoresponders to deal with repetitive email enquiries and politely nag people for replies. It’s good stuff, and something I’ve never really got around to doing myself, for a couple of reasons (besides the obvious); I use Gmail, and to be honest, no two emails I send are the same.

(It’s an interesting overlap with Project India, by the way… I don’t know why I’m so excited about this year’s Group Projects. Either because they’re kind of real, or because I miss academia. Or both?)

The downsides of using Gmail haven’t really affected me personally, but thinking about it, I would like to be able to actually access my raw email to set up better, NLP-based filters. I have a lot of email filters, and a lot of labels, and a system that just about works (thanks to superstars and multiple inboxes). But, you know, it could be better, and despite IMAP access it doesn’t quite flow; if I wanted to process mail, I’d have to access it all on a random box, and then what? I can’t apply Gmail labels or superstars or mark as read, can I? I guess what I really want is to operate on both the protocol/content and the interface itself, and that’s asking a wee bit too much. Oh well. Time to hack on a communication platform that I can play with…

(credit to Craig, who linked me the video, and will complain if I don’t acknowledge his genius.)

A too-long-for-Twitter thought.

Tech conferences often don’t have many, if any, female speakers. This is an ‘issue’ whether we like it or not.

Why? Because inevitably someone will make a fuss. Usually the feminist sitting in the third row who lovingly flies the ‘female geek’ flag everywhere she goes. (Look, I think we’ve all been through that phase. It’s the pride-in-being-a-minority transition from realising-I’m-different to not-caring). The last thing an event organiser wants is to be The One Who Discriminated Against Women, Oh Look, There Aren’t Any Speaking At His* Conference.

So how do we ‘fix’ this?

Option 1. Go out of your way to find and invite female speakers, offering them bribes and extras to come along, paying for their flights when you don’t pay for male speakers, etc.
Option 1a. …stopping when you have a token female to keep the feminists happy.

Option 2. Make a reasonable attempt to make female speakers aware of the event by circulating the CFP among female tech networks as well as the usual channels, and hope some come forward.
Option 2a. …With an emphasis on the fact you would like female speakers at the event.
Option 2b. …With the CFP committee evaluating talk proposals without knowledge of the proposer’s gender.

Option 3. Hire a few models, put them in Thinkgeek t-shirts, and hope nobody notices.

Option 2 may lead to an unbalanced awareness of the event among various channels, but (to me at least) it’s the obvious winner. As I was pointing out re: some startup events going on around this time of year, if people don’t know about it, they won’t come. The ‘usual channels’ may end up being very male-dominated, just due to the skew in your tech field of choice; this conversation started around a Ruby event, and I honestly do not know a single female Ruby developer. If Option 2 results in no female proposals, so be it. There may be no proposals from Welsh people, but who’s complaining about that?

I’d also recommend against 2a (positive discrimination can of worms) or, if 2a is invoked for higher publicity/circulation among female networks (”we don’t have any women speaking so far, and it’s a disgrace!”), you really want to invoke 2b as well. Nobody wants to be put somewhere just because they’re an X. (And hey, being Welsh hasn’t got me on a single stage so far; who do I complain to?)

So there you go. Women at conferences? Don’t break your back. Awareness and open arms, and less of the “we need women, you get a free pass, flights, 5 star hotel and complimentary hair styling and manicure on the day” — this should keep everyone happy. Couple of extra things: If you’ve got a mixed line up of speakers, and draw panellists from previous speakers, make sure it’s representative (as long as it’s relevant) — MSM09 backchat was grumpy that with two excellent female speakers, the panels were all-male. Secondly, check your audience balance. If no women attend, maybe that’s why no women spoke…

(* Is this an issue with female-run events? I don’t know. Events I’ve attended where I’ve known the organiser have unilaterally been male-run, but often with a bit of female help, such as Mike Butcher organising TechCrunch Europe events but with Petra behind the scenes doing all the hard work ;) Still, my guess is that an obviously female-run event wouldn’t fear being accused of being sexist, so this entire issue is avoided.)

Growing up, my family finances revolved around cheques. Routinely, we’d go food shopping three days before payday and hand over a bit of paper promising that, once the cheque cleared, we’d actually have the money to pay for the things we were taking home. My mother used to call this “robbing Peter to pay Paul”, borrowing from our future selves to enable us to eat today. This led to a vicious cycle; on payday, all the money would be pre-spent, leaving us with nothing for another two weeks until the next cheque could be written.

Of course, credit cards started becoming available to even those of dubious financial standing, and chequebooks somehow fell by the wayside. Why pay in full for something three days early when you could pay it off bit by bit over months or years? Hardly “robbing Peter to pay Paul”, more “giving Paul a PlayStation and making Peter put in overtime to keep up with the interest”.

Laid out bluntly, the maxim “don’t spend what you don’t have” is incredibly simple. Yet it’s also incredibly hard to keep to, or so it seems. I’ve fallen prey to it in the worst possible way — expecting birthday money, for example, I’d spend my existing cash in advance to get an immediate kick, then once the money arrived, spend that as well because it was my birthday. It’s pretty easy to do, especially if you’re not that connected to your personal finances and avoid looking at your online bank statements.

So, why don’t I do that any more? What’s made me realise I did it in the first place? Actually, it was teasing from people close to me who were familiar with my spending pattern and a little worried about it. I’m not the sort of person who announces my bank balance to friends at the drop of a hat, but they’d picked up on my money mismanagement from offhand comments and new purchases. If someone close to you seems to follow this pattern, it’s seriously useful to pick them up on it, though obviously calling an intervention on someone you don’t know too well is a bit much.

How to stop this unfortunate habit? It’s kind of easy, really: own up to your finances and therefore own your finances. Once you know you’re doing it, stop spending money you don’t have yet, or simply money you don’t have.

Keep your balance.
Know how much you’ve got in your accounts and when that number is going to change — set up Mint or Kublax, log on to your internet banking every day (force yourself for a while and it stops becoming scary; at that point, you can stop logging on daily, but still keep checking regularly).

Plan, but don’t spend.
When you have a windfall coming in, plan what you are going to buy, but don’t buy it. This has the added tried-and-tested advantage of giving you time to reflect on the decision, make the best possible purchase and even change your mind. Imagine yourself owning the item. Are you really happier?

Know where it’s going.
Using Mint, a spreadsheet or the back of an envelope, figure out what your finances generally look like, so you can work out when you have spare cash to spend — and when you don’t. Spending the remainder of your current account balance the day before your rent’s due? That’s money you don’t have. Finance automation is a great help — my income is pretty sporadic, so I squirrelled away my upcoming quarter’s rent and bills into a separate account, making my current account far more reflective of the actual money I had.

Cut up the credit card.
Seriously, they have their uses, but my life’s become so much better (financially speaking) since I stopped using my credit card. If you insist on keeping yours, be super, super aware of what goes in and out, how much that interest is really costing you, and pay it back before you buy new things. Far easier said than done, which is why ditching it worked for me.

Forget the numbers.
Finally, if you’re like me, you have an unfortunate habit of remembering your card numbers, making payments online far too easy. Stop yourself buying things by forgetting your card numbers (or rather, getting a new card and not learning it in the first place), unlinking your bank account from PayPal (no more impulse eBay shopping) and the like. Having to physically look at the card really makes you remember you’re spending money.

This post was originally going to be about more than money, as we “rob Peter to pay Paul” in more aspects of our lives than just the financial. Ever pigged out on food, skipped a day of exercise, procastinated on a deadline or pulled a sickie at work? We’re constantly living in the now, leaving our future selves to pick up the bill, and that’s before we even start to think about the state we’re leaving the planet in for our future generations…

Pretty much what it says in the headline. The Digital Missions are a useful way for UK companies to attend high-profile events like SXSW Interactive without the massive costs involved (although we turned down the recent NYC Digital Mission because of the costs being too high for the return we would get). Today’s the last day to apply if you want a UKTI-facilitated trip to the hottest “new meeja” event of the year, and it’s worth a stab if you qualify.

A couple of caveats though. I hadn’t realised that SXSW Interactive overlaps with GDC (I may be totally mistaken, but this isn’t usually the case, is it?), which causes an interesting problem for any gaming companies out there. In the past we’ve seen innovation in gaming showcased and inspired by both events, but this year… ouch. A quick Google tells me they have clashed in the past, but not recently, which makes me wonder why it’s happening again. I have a horrible feeling GDC will lose.

Secondly, and this is a personal opinion fuelled by first-hand experience covering and attending trade shows; being showcased in a country-specific booth isn’t always to your best advantage. It depends on what you’re doing, how attention-grabbing it can be, and how accessible other options are to you; for us, for example, we wouldn’t have any other reasonable options! But for a company trying to attain equal footing with the world’s up-and-coming, being tucked away with a Union Flag waving limply in the air conditioned breeze is not going to get you attention. The press loves stories, and being “yet another British company” isn’t a story. Stand on your own feet and stand out. The best British startups doing well in America don’t focus on where they’re from, they focus on what they’re doing well.

On the other hand, schemes like this make these events totally accessible to those who may not otherwise be able to go, which is great. Just don’t rely on them as a crutch, and if you want to take the world by storm, do it!

I could talk about this subject all day, really, but don’t worry; I won’t.

“Of Geeks and Girls” is an interesting article. Its main argument — and this is part of scientific research, not just soapboxing — is that it’s not necessarily the low proportions of fellow women that keep girls out of computer science. It’s the environment, the image, and the general “girls not welcome here” feeling that one gets when sitting in a place surrounded by Star Wars posters, Red Bull cans and that lingering odour of nerdy undergraduates who haven’t discovered showers yet.

I find the argument around this fascinating for two reasons. Firstly, because it’s being hotly contested by men: “We don’t keep women out! We’re inclusive and nice!” Are you really? (And here’s where, as with any post on this topic, the generalisations start to appear. Sorry.) Just because you painted the walls of your computer lab pink doesn’t mean you’re inclusive. Do you value a geeky girl who may appreciate different things (books, Blythes, craft, cosplay, independent cinema, Nintendo, anime, WoW, name your thing), or is it only science fiction, Linux kernel hacking and Android development that count? Do you make the same assumptions about a female you meet in a computer lab as you do a male? Or do you assume that if a girl puts her hand up for a TA that she’s stuck, and if a guy does, he’s pointing out an error in the assignment?

Anyway, as a female person who’s been in and around academic computer science for the last decade or so, I find it infinitely amusing that people care more about their own opinions than mine; people have corrected me on my own experiences, saying their “friends” (who they greatly “respect”, of course!) found it different, and so I must be mistaken..!

The second reason is because it’s something far more actionable than many of the other societal factors often pointed to as the reason for female underrepresentation. Want to start appealing to women? Stop appealing to geeks and start just appealing to everyone. (This is why many of the ‘wider audience’ videogames are taking off — they’re totally agnostic. Doesn’t everyone want to be a rock star, to get fit, or to become Prince of the Cosmos?)

Of course, the flipside is that by de-geekifying computer science, you actually lose geek cred and possibly antagonise the female geeks (as we all identify strongly with the geek stereotype, and we certainly don’t want to project the image that no girls like Star Wars action figures, etc). Tricky, no? How can we get the best of both worlds?