Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg describes the dearth of women in high-level leadership positions in corporations, non-profits and government, and offers three pieces of advice on how to keep women in the workplace, help them rise to the top, and change those numbers. Her awesome TED talk is a must-see for parents, college students, and women already at work. It's only 15 minutes—watch it.
Increasing female leadership isn't just about evening out the numbers or equal rights. Layar co-founder Claire Boonstra argues competitive companies and sustainable governments today demand it. She writes:
Paul Ford's fabulous essay, The Web Is a Customer Service Medium, on the fundamental question of the web: "Create a service experience around what you publish and sell. Whatever 'customer service' means when it comes to books and authors, figure it out and do it. Do it in partnership with your readers. Turn your readers into members. Not visitors, not subscribers; you want members. And then don't just consult them, but give them tools to consult amongst themselves. These things are cheap and easy now if you hire one or two smart people instead of a large consultancy. Define what the boundaries are in your community and punish transgressors without fear of losing a sale. Then, if your product is good, you'll sell things."
Lose weight. Save money. Start exercising. Rather than make arbitrary and predictable New Year's resolutions this January 1st, it can be more useful to look back at 2010, think about what lessons you learned from real-world experiences, and resolve to take those with you into 2011. I loved how Felicia Day did this in her year-end blog post, Five Things of 2010. (Read it: #2 and #5 especially spoke to me.) Posts like that make me truly miss personal blogging, and inspire me to do more of it—so that's exactly what I'm going to do here.
2010 was a great year for me and my family, and there are a few things I will take away from the last 12 months as we all start in on 2011. In no particular order:
First, know that I fundamentally agree with Alex and Mark: the closed nature of the iPad turns me off, and I wouldn't give one to my kid if I were encouraging her to learn about how computers work. But, Apple's rightly betting that most people don't want to know about the inner workings of a computer,* and regardless of the fact that Apple runs the App Store with an iron fist, dedicated hackers have still figured out ways to run whatever software they want on the iPhone/iPod touch. They'll do the same with the iPad, and this led me to muse that the open versus closed debate, which has geeks like me in a tizzy, may be 99% a philosophical discussion. Because while we're all ranting about how closed the iPad will be, the jailbreak community is planning competitions to see who can crack it first. The sun isn't setting on tinkerers; their desire to crack things open intensifies when faced with something that's closed by design. The challenge is part of the appeal.
I get asked a lot about being a woman in technology and its various niches--social media, open source, entrepreneurship, blogging. Interviewers want to know whether or not things are getting better for women, why there aren't more women here or there, what women should or shouldn't be doing, and what the future holds for those of us in tech who happen to have the XX chromosome. When I get these questions, I never know what to say. Being a woman doesn't make me an expert on gender. I can only draw from my own subjective experiences during what's been a very charmed career. But folks keep asking. So, here's my official line on the topic, which I sent off to an interviewer just this week.
One of the smartest people I've ever met, Maciej Cegłowski, says you shouldn't self-host web-based software like WordPress or Fever or eventually, Google Wave, because it requires you to "devote half your life to learning and understanding [server] administration." Go with a hosted service or generate flat HTML files of your blog posts that you upload to your server automatically instead, he says. While Maciej's argument may apply to some (ok, most?) folks, I disagree: When it comes to a project you care passionately about, doing it yourself is much more educational and satisfying (and won't take half your life). Sure, most people should just buy instead of build, but they'll never get something that's exactly what they want and unlike any other.
During their session at OSCON, Google programmers Ben Collins-Sussman and Brian Fitzpatrick say that it's coders who can collaborate with others, not lone ranger geniuses, who are best at what they do.
At some point along the road I must've become one of these zealous open source nutters, because a debate about the GNU General Public License got stuck in my craw this weekend. The GPL is my license of choice. When you license software under the GPL, you're saying it's free for everyone to use, modify, and redistribute as long as everyone makes their modifications free to use, modify and redistribute under the GPL as well. Developer Daniel Jalkut argues that this "share alike" requirement stifles GPL-licensed code adoption by developers who don't want to (or can't) GPL their work. Jalkut writes:
GPL communities are open and embracing of other GPL developers, but generally off-putting to liberal-license and closed-license developers. [...] Many GPL developers take comfort in the fact that their hard work can’t be quietly taken and incorporated into a commercial product, without any payback of time or money to the original project. But you’re piloting an open source project, and the first step of building a community is to get people in the door. [...] If you operate from the presumption that great developers love to build great projects, the first step in any successful open source project is to get as many great developers in the door as possible.
Jalkut's right about one thing: Great developers do love to build great projects. He may be right about another: Some developers may have to pass on using GPL code because they're not willing or able to share-alike their changes to it. But the one really attractive part of using the GPL that he's missing is this: Great developers love to build projects that more people will use. The GPL is my software license of choice because "share and share alike" spreads the impact of my work. What motivates great individual developers isn't always money, it's ego.
In an attempt to nail down what psychological aspects factor into "the successful life," researchers have been following 268 Harvard students from the 1940s until now, conducting extensive physical and psychological tests each year.
In a lengthy but fascinating piece, The Atlantic reports on what's known as the Grant Study and its current lead, Dr. George Vaillant. These days Vaillant's speeches about the study's findings focus on the effect of positive emotions on well-being. It's no surprise that love, compassion, gratitude, hope, trust, faith, and forgiveness make us happier people who live longer and healthier lives. Still, negative emotions, like anger, sadness, and distrust can be more attractive psychologically in the short term. Vaillant explains:
Positive emotions make us more vulnerable than negative ones. One reason is that they’re future-oriented. Fear and sadness have immediate payoffs—protecting us from attack or attracting resources at times of distress. Gratitude and joy, over time, will yield better health and deeper connections—but in the short term actually put us at risk. That’s because, while negative emotions tend to be insulating, positive emotions expose us to the common elements of rejection and heartbreak.
That, he explains, is a running tally of how he’s spending his time, and whether he’s sticking to a big goal he set for himself years ago: to spend 50 percent of his workdays on creative pursuits like research and writing books, 30 percent on teaching-related activities, and 20 percent on all the other things he has to do.
Collins is a whole lot more diligent about tracking his progress than I've ever been, though.
Seems a foregone conclusion that Google's the best search engine on the web, but at this point, there's not that much of a gap between the second-place engine, Yahoo, and the big G. This morning over at Lifehacker I confessed that amidst all my Gmail, Google Voice, Android, Google Docs, and GCal usage, I pointed my web search keyword at Yahoo to break Google's monopoly on my personal data. Resistance isn't futile!
When you love technology, it's natural to lust after the latest gadgets and gear available on the market, even if what you've got already does everything you need. But if you decide not to give in and get that iPhone 3G or netbook, you can feel like you've fallen behind, like you're being cheap, like you're missing out. Truth is, passing on buying the newest model is a decision to brag about.
So I'm thrilled that my pal Anil Dash launched a new site this Earth Day called Last Year's Model, where technophiles can take pride in sticking with the gear they already own, even if it's been around for a year or two (or seven). While I'm guilty of running on the gadget consumer treadmill myself (Android phone and Kindle, anyone?), I'm happy that I've passed on the latest MacBook, a netbook, the Wii, and the iPhone 3G. Join me, will you? Tweet or blog a testimonial to the trusty gadget you passed on upgrading and include the #lastyears hash tag to get included on the site. See Anil's full announcement for more on Last Year's Model.
Lose weight. Save money. Start exercising. Rather than make arbitrary and predictable New Year's resolutions this January 1st, it can be more useful to look back at 2010, think about what lessons you learned from real-world experiences, and resolve to take those with you into 2011. I loved how Felicia Day did this in her year-end blog post, 
At some point along the road I must've become one of these zealous open source nutters, because a 
In an attempt to nail down what psychological aspects factor into "the successful life," researchers have been following 268 Harvard students from the 1940s until now, conducting extensive physical and psychological tests each year. 
When you love technology, it's natural to lust after the latest gadgets and gear available on the market, even if what you've got already does everything you need. But if you decide not to give in and get that iPhone 3G or netbook, you can feel like you've fallen behind, like you're being cheap, like you're missing out. Truth is, passing on buying the newest model is a decision to brag about.
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