Ada Lovelace Day: Jacinta Richardson
Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging to celebrate the achievements of women in technology and science. Since I am involved with the Perl community it seemed natural for me to begin there when trying to decide who to write about. I found it quite difficult to pick one woman. At times we bemoan the small number of women in the community but every one that I have met has been impressive in some way.
Last year I met Jacinta Richardson at YAPC::EU. I had heard of Jacinta’s work. I knew that she had been awarded a White Camel award, I knew that she was a successful Perl trainer, and I knew that she wrote Perl Tips. Last year I got to see that she is also a great conference speaker, and to see first hand why she was given a White Camel. Not only is she technically brilliant but she also has a desire to bring out the potential in other people. She really wants to see improvement in the Perl community and is willing to work hard to see that happen.
Even though I have only known her for a short time Jacinta’s impact on the Perl community has affected me. Without Jacinta’s support and encouragement I would never have been a keynote speaker at OSDC Australia last year. Being given that opportunity is making it easier for me to prepare for this year’s conference season. Thank you, Jacinta. I look forward to seeing your future achievements.
March 24th, 2010 at 7:04 am
This is the first blog post I am reading today. It is Wednesday and more importantly it is Ada Lovelace Day.
I am somewhat blank on what to write, I was thinking about writing about hackers and hacking and the evaluation of individuals based on merits rather than age, nationality, race and gender – an important trait of the open source community and Internet in general, which we should emphasize more.
But perhaps it is better to write something along the lines of what you wrote, pick a female in tech and write a presentation of her – after all there are quite a few to pick from, perhaps not in number, but in merits and they all stand out.
My only worry is that I would not be able to give such a precise and nice presentation as you did of Jacinta Richardson.
Happy Ada Lovelace Day,
jonasbn
March 24th, 2010 at 8:06 am
[…] the house, I sat down at the computer. Going over the list of recent tweets, I fell over the first blog post on Ada Lovelace by Karen […]
March 24th, 2010 at 9:01 am
Jonas, I also found it difficult to start my blog post. I think mainly because I’m used to writing about whatever comes to my mind and not about a subject that someone else has decided on.
I was going to say that I’m sure that you will find inspiration for your post, and it seems that I’m right as I have just read your post.
Thank you for your kind words.