“Instead, after organizing the transport of water, food and ammunition up the hill, he took a nap.” –General Warren and the Battle of Spion Kop, in Military Blunders, by Saul David

I LOL’d.

The BBC has published four “Faces of the Year” articles this week: “the men” and “the women” for the UK and international markets.

Removing gender references, here are the lists:

I love being [...]]]> The Ada Initiative is raising money for their 2012 activities. They’re primarily funded by donations, and can’t do it without us! To support their full-time work on supporting women in open technology and culture, donate now! And if you can’t donate, please do what you can to help spread the word

I love being part of an open culture. Adore it, believe in it, treasure it. But how can I work in an industry where long-standing members of our communities think I should expect to be assaulted at professional conferences?

Regularly, I ask myself “what about teaching? Or hey, maybe go into publishing?”. Or hell, just go back to Microsoft, get out of Open Source. Proprietary IT is still sexist, but my Microsoft colleagues always stayed within the bounds of decency.

I’ve been incredibly fortunate in life. I come from a wonderful family who afforded me every opportunity. I’ve worked hard, pushed forward, tried for the impossible, and had some amazing strokes of dumb luck But I haven’t, and I can’t, do it on my own.

For the last year, The Ada Initiative have had my back, and the backs of women in a cross-section of open, technical cultures. They’re the reason I haven’t quit the industry entirely, even as I’ve stepped down from my more visible roles. They’re the reason I continue to contribute in quieter ways, to smaller projects.

They are, as I said before, dedicated to a simple vision: a world in which women are equal and welcome participants in open technology, open data, and open culture. Their strategy for change is equally simple: give concrete, straight-forward advice to willing and eager audiences. They focus their effort on programs that are scalable, reusable, and effective, and they are committed to providing their work completely free of charge.

But this is a full-time job for two highly-qualified tech professionals. This isn’t a job that can be done on volunteer time. And although they’ve had seed funding from companies and major individual contributors, they need ongoing support in order to keep up the good work. It’s up to us to make sure they can stay open.

And that’s where you come in. The Ada Initiative has launched a campaign for donations to keep them running past the start of next year! If you want to support their vision, if you think women should be able to attend conferences without fear of being assaulted, if you want to help make sure that the next generation of women are welcomed into computing, you can donate at http://supportada.org/donate. And either way, don’t forget to spread the word!

Back in July, only a week or two after I’d given notice at Google, the Open Source Programs Office there published a Call for Proposals for a Doc Camp to be held in association [...]]]> Three of them, actually And, of course, in the finest traditions of Open Source, it was a (very!) collaborative effort.

Back in July, only a week or two after I’d given notice at Google, the Open Source Programs Office there published a Call for Proposals for a Doc Camp to be held in association with the Google Summer of Code program. I applied, with very little real idea of what was involved. We’d write a book in a week. Freely licensed, on some aspect of Open Source… stuff.

I misread the application form, and thought that proposals would be selected by August 5th. So, when I hadn’t heard anything by the second week of August, I assumed I was out. Not so! A week or two later, I got an email to say I’d been accepted! Google organised the hotel for me, and I booked my travel (train down from Portland, a whole new adventure, and flights back up). I knew that four projects had been accepted, and that there’d be a handful of individual contributors, but not a whole lot else.

I arrived in Mountain View on Sunday night, and met up with some of the other contributors. It was a quiet night, with an early start the next morning. Monday was spent in an unconference’y format, although we explicitly didn’t take notes during our sessions (preferring to focus on the moment than to document for posterity), and there was more structure than a typical unconference (including two pre-scheduled presentations, and some planned exercises to get us ready to create our masterpieces!) The “free agents” rotated among the various teams, and I spent some time working with the Sahana and OpenStreetMap contributors.

Tuesday morning started bright and early, with a meeting to assign the free agents to teams that they would stick with for the day. I’d been wanting to give OpenMRS some love for quite a while, and was very grateful to Anne Gentle, who let me swap with her in order to do that!

The first hour of work was focused on creating a table of contents. We based ours heavily on that of the CiviCRM book created over (several) previous Book Sprints, and were pretty much finished within the hour. Some of the other teams had a harder time, but like many of the deadlines over the course of the week, this one was set more to focus us than to limit our collaboration.

Once we had a table of contents, we split the chapters up based on interest and knowledge, and started writing. I was a bit terrified at first, knowing essentially nothing about the product, but I started out with the “Installation” chapter, and with only a small amount of TIAS, managed to build a reasonably coherent narrative. The rest of the people in the room were all heads-down in their own writing, and I am deeply indebted to the folk in the IRC channel for their help and reviews!

The book sprint took three days, and I’ll freely admit that my recollection of exactly what happened when is hazy at best. We were doing 13+hr days at Google, plus extra work in the evenings when we got back to the hotel. Everything was, of course, catered for us, and mealtimes were a welcome break but we were always keen to get just a bit more work done! It was intense, and exhausting, and exhilarating.

But by Thursday night, each group had written a book. I had worked with three teams (OpenMRS, OpenStreetMap, and KDE), both writing and editing. Every single chapter of each of those three books, I’d done at least one editing pass over.

Friday was a short day for the Doc Sprint, but I’d gotten talking to the OpenStreetMap crowd about helping out during the Grace Hopper Celebration, so I joined some of them on a trip up to San Francisco. We had a fabulous time visiting Langton Labs, and catching the opening of an exhibition at The Intersection (Here Be Dragons–get to it if you can!), but by the time we got back to Mountain View, the Mentor Summit had clearly descended That was, of course, a fabulous event in its own right, but one of the highlights was definitely getting the printed & bound copies of the books we’d worked on.

I’m exhausted, as I said, but also inspired. The Doc Sprint is clearly a well thought-out and thoroughly refined process (even if it feels very experimental as a first-timer!), and I’m incredibly proud of what we produced. It would be a respectable outcome from several weeks of work, and we managed it in barely three days. I’m looking forward to talking to other communities about the idea, and already hoping that Google will run it again next year–I know I could pull a team together to write a book about The Apache Way, and based on the requests we already get for resources on the topic, I’m confident it would be well-read!

All in all, the Doc Sprint was an amazing event. Huge thanks go to all involved: Google’s OSPO, the project teams, Adam Hyde of FLOSSmanuals and Gunner of Aspiration Tech, as well as all the other facilitators and free agents.

After I was assaulted last year, an awful lot of people pointed out that if I go into dangerous situations, I should expect bad things to happen, and that if I don’t want bad things to happen, I shouldn’t go into dangerous situations.

I [...]]]> I’m scared to go to OSCON or the Community Leadership Summit this year.

After I was assaulted last year, an awful lot of people pointed out that if I go into dangerous situations, I should expect bad things to happen, and that if I don’t want bad things to happen, I shouldn’t go into dangerous situations.

I was harassed at OSCON & CLS last year. I got a lot of grief after I wrote about my experience at ApacheCon. And I fully expect that some of the people responsible for both of those things will be at OSCON & CLS this year.

I don’t think it’s realistic to assume that I’ll be able to get through this year’s conference without being harassed again, and O’Reilly don’t seem to be willing to assure me that I’m wrong. But worse, I genuinely get the impression that if anything does go wrong, if I do get harassed, that O’Reilly don’t want to know, they don’t care, and they won’t do anything to help me, to help prevent it happening again, to help prevent it happening to someone else.

A very smart friend of mine reminded me that fear is not a good driver, and suggested that I consider whether OSCON is valuable and whether I can send a positive message by attending.

I’ve been looking forward to speaking. My slides have been rewritten from a previous version of this talk that was very well received, and I think they’re a really good deck. It’s a topic I care about, and I love being able to share my knowledge. Plus, I’m expecting a couple of potential employers to be there, as well as many friends.

And aside from that, there are so many talks I want to see, often several at once! There are people I want to catch up with, and parties I’m looking forward to. So yeah, OSCON is valuable to me.

Can I send a positive message? I’m not sure. I’ve seen the research, and I know from my own experience, that open source events and projects need more role models, and need more women as role models. And frankly, I don’t want people who’ve gone through things like I did at ApacheCon to think that it’s “ok, game over, I can’t go to industry events any more”. That’s not true; I’ve been to and enjoyed many conferences since then. But OSCON is a big event, and it’s a big message to send.

On the other hand, I really don’t want my attendance to be taken as a message of “everything is fine here”. I don’t want to be held up as a statistic, as an example of “plenty of women speaking at OSCON”.

So, on that front, I don’t know if I can send a positive message. I’m just not sure.

I don’t feel safe going to OSCON, and I want your advice.

Is this a dark alley that I should stay out of? Or is there some reason you think I’m wrong, and that I’ll be safe at OSCON?

And to those of you who’ve offered to join my posse, I’m grateful, but I was assaulted at ApacheCon in a bar with dozens of my friends, so I don’t assume that even the best posse will keep me safe.

I’ve spent the [...]]]> In other words, I’m looking for a new job. I’m currently wrapping up things in Zurich, and planning to take a few months off to volunteer with a few projects I really love. I’ll be available from the new year for sure, but am willing to negotiate for the right opportunity

I’ve spent the last few years as a writer, working in Google’s European engineering headquarters in Zurich. For most of that time, I’ve been the sole writer in that office (or even timezone!), so I’ve worked on everything from UI text to API references, from user help to operations documentation. I’ve also been continuing my work with the Apache Software Foundation, providing a new voice on their Board for the last year, and I’ve only recently passed on the mantle of their Conference Planning leadership.

I’m passionate about Open Source, community development, documentation, and communication. I’m at my best when I’m teaching people about the things I love, facilitating
individuals and groups in learning how to do things for themselves, and generally connecting people with knowledge and information. I love travel, but I definitely have a preference for working with or near other people. Distributed is fine, but I’d rather not be the only remote member of a centralized team, especially if there’s nine timezones between us!

You can find my contact details, and more information about some of the things I’ve done in the past, in my CV. Feel free to give me a call or send me an email if you’re looking for someone, or know where I might fit in. In particular, if you’re looking for a community builder, user advocate, happiness engineer, or just a great communicatrix, please get in touch!

In the end, I wrote about what happened. I expected a worried phone call from my mother, the most faithful reader of [...]]]> Last winter, I was assaulted at ApacheCon. I was shocked, upset. I had no idea how to react. The conference organisers, a team I was part of, had no idea how to react either.

In the end, I wrote about what happened. I expected a worried phone call from my mother, the most faithful reader of this blog. I hoped that I could pass out the link to trusted friends, and ask for their support without having to explain the whole story over and over.

Instead, it got picked up in the wildfire that is the internet, and I nearly took down the machine it was hosted on, a shared machine belonging to an old Irish friend.

People turned up in droves. Jerks told me I deserved it. They said I should be grateful for the attention, because I wasn’t hot enough to get a boyfriend. They thought it was my own fault for going to a technical conference, and joining in the evening activities.

And reasonable people turned up, saying they couldn’t believe that this kind of thing still happens, either the assault or the violent responses. Many of them just had no idea how to react to this.

Luckily, I have a strong group of awesome and supportive friends. One of them, Valerie Aurora, spearheaded the writing of a Conference Anti-Harassment Policy that was soon adopted by a variety of conferences and events.

Valerie wasn’t ready to stop there, and with Mary Gardiner and a team of advisors from around the worlds of open technology and culture, she established the Ada Initiative.

The Ada Initiative is dedicated to a simple vision: a world in which women are equal and welcome participants in open technology, open data, and open culture. Their strategy for change is simple: give concrete, straight-forward advice to willing and eager audiences. They focus their effort on programs that are scalable, reusable, and effective, and they are committed to providing their work completely free of charge.

Of course, it still takes money to do these things. And that’s where you come in. The Ada Initiative has just opened a limited funding round, aiming to raise the seed money required to bootstrap the legal structures that will enable them to accept larger, long-term funding.

If you want to support their vision, if you think women should be able to attend conferences without fear of being assaulted, if you want to help make sure that the next generation of women are welcomed into computing, consider contributing to the Ada Initiative Seed 100 campaign.

In one sense, I have every right to be depressed. It’s not all that long ago that I was assaulted, torn into by strangers, and misguidedly told how I could have, should have prevented it. It’s even more [...]]]> (No, I am not in danger; yes, I am getting professional help. Either way, I still need friends.)

In one sense, I have every right to be depressed. It’s not all that long ago that I was assaulted, torn into by strangers, and misguidedly told how I could have, should have prevented it. It’s even more recent that Stephen and I got divorced. This week, I need to gather the paperwork for last year’s taxes. I could make a list a mile long of things that are stressing me out right now. But of course, none of that is the point. That’s not how it works.

Depression is not a logical thing. There’s no scale I can heap up with the good and the bad, and even if there were, the good would probably come out tops.

By any measure, my life is awesome. I live in a country that, while often infuriating, is stunningly beautiful. I have a job that’s the envy of friends and colleagues alike, and I have choices coming out my ears if I want a change. I’m solidly in the top 1% of rich people worldwide, and even on a more local scale, I have no debts or ongoing financial obligations–I could quite happily support myself for a year or more, even at Swiss prices. I successfully fed two lovely vegans yesterday, unexpectedly, using only the supplies I already had to hand (ok, they were pretty easygoing vegans, but still!).

I can list off a hundred people who are worse off than I am; a thousand reasons I have to be grateful. But does it change how I feel? Not one iota.

I spent today alternating between bawling crying, and curled up in bed wishing the whole world would wink out of existence. I completely failed to attend the BBQ I’d been looking forward to, because of a combination of paralysing apathy and hateful self-doubt. Promising myself fun, socialisation, probably good food, and beer, all failed to motivate me to do anything other than wish I lived in a remote Tibetan valley.

But I eventually managed to turn things around, to console myself, to climb out of that despair. And three things helped me do that.

One of them was realising that I am not the only person who feels this way; some of the most amazing people I know have arguments with the black dog on a regular basis. The next was reading someone else’s account of hitting rock bottom.

Two things stuck out from that: I’ve got to find a reason for someone to care and I call my wife and ask her to remind me why I’m worth keeping around

See, part of the problem is that when my brain wants to hurt me, it has all of the weapons. It knows where the soft spots are. It tells me no one has any reason to care about me, and because it’s in charge of the thinking, I believe it. Even when I know it’s being a lying toad, even when I can conclusively say it’s wrong and people do care, important people, people I love, it doesn’t shut up, and it’s very convincing. It tells me that all of the awesome things I do could be done just as well, and with less fuss, by someone else.

And the final thing that helped me turn today around was realising that there is help out there. There are people who care about me specifically and personally, and there are people who care about the things I’ve done, and there are people who care about me just as a plain ol’ human being.

The dog is gone home for today, but he’s not dead yet. And when he does come back, when he’s looming over me, sometimes it’s hard to remember that other people feel this way, that people care about me, and that there is help.

And so, I write this, as a reminder to myself, and as an offer, and as a request.

If you want to talk, let me know. If I can help you out, please, ask. I know it’s hard to do, but I care about you, and if I can, I’d like to help. If I can’t, phone or email the Samaritans (UK & Ireland), or phone the Samaritans (US).

And if you want to help me out, leave a comment, or send me an email. Share a cute animal picture, or a memory that makes you smile, or just tell me that you care. Chances are, I won’t want to talk about this much more, so if you’re open to talking about it, let me know, but don’t take it personally or hassle me if I don’t want to. (Mum, I love you, but I still don’t want to talk about this. Thanks.)

Comments are moderated–I generally publish any that aren’t obviously spam, but if you don’t want yours published, just say so.

Neurochemistry is a pain, but for now, mine is on my side

The whole process was mercifully simple, primarily because Stephen and I had a very simple situation: no kids, no debts, no major assets. No one needed alimony, and both of us consented to the proceedings. The Swiss divorce situation is also [...]]]> This morning, at 10:00, Justice Lieb declared Stephen and I divorced, in a Zurich court.

The whole process was mercifully simple, primarily because Stephen and I had a very simple situation: no kids, no debts, no major assets. No one needed alimony, and both of us consented to the proceedings. The Swiss divorce situation is also very carefully set up to prefer a “no fault” divorce if at all possible.

Because of the language barrier, the complexity of almost any interaction with the courts, and our mutual desire to ensure that the divorce would hold water later, we did engage a lawyer. Stephan Buchli was fantastic – he spoke excellent English, was kind and friendly, was willing to do the legwork on some papers we needed from various branches of the Swiss bureaucracy (but also advised us that it wasn’t too hard to do ourselves if we wanted to spare the cost), and had no problem with the minor complications that did in our otherwise simple case.

Those complications were twofold: first, we hadn’t been in Switzerland long enough to have accumulated all of the requested paperwork to prove that we were each financially independent, and not requiring of maintenance. This was solved by sending Stephan all the paperwork that we could easily muster, and him passing it on to the judge, with an explanation, ahead of our court date. The second complication was that, since we hadn’t been married (or in Switzerland) long enough to have accumulated significant pension benefits during the marriage, we wanted to opt out of the normal requirement that pension funds accumulated during the marriage be split equally. This was primarily to avoid paperwork and hassle, although technically Swiss law requires that the accumulated pension benefits be split. Stephan added the necessary bits to our Scheidungsprotokoll (divorce agreement), and again, explained the situation in advance to the judge.

Once we turned up at the court, the whole thing took about half an hour. The judge introduced herself, the stenographer, and her assistant, as well as introducing the interpreter and reminding her of her obligation to provide a true and accurate interpretation. Somewhat scarily for me, the judge spoke Swiss German throughout, although in the end I was able to handle it just fine, she didn’t seem to have any problem with me answering in High German, and I only needed the interpreter once, when I was on the spot and fell back to English.

First, with both Stephen and I present, the judge asked me to confirm various relevant details: my name, date of birth, address; the fact that I had signed the Protokoll, that I still wanted a divorce, and that I was doing this with due consideration and of my own free will. She went through various details of the divorce agreement one by one, too. The only stumbling block arose when she read out the date of marriage as 15th November 2007, which I corrected to 14th. She double-checked that she had understood my correction, and accepted it, acknowledging that I knew better than she

Then, she asked Stephen to confirm all the same details. Of course, he confirmed the date of marriage as 15th November, at which things got confused. I mentioned that I had the marriage certificate with me, and the judge came over to look at it. I dropped back to English and explained to the interpreter that we had been legally married on 14th November but had celebrated a religious service on the 15th. The judge seemed happy enough with that, and I think having the marriage cert helped.

Once that was all sorted out, she asked Stephen to leave the room, and reconfirmed that I had considered things carefully and wasn’t under any compulsion. It was barely a minute before I was sent to switch places with Steve, and I assume he was asked the same things About 2/3 of the way through that time, I wondered what was taking so much longer for him, until I realised everything was being interpreted, which obviously slows things down.

Stephen and the interpreter came out together, while the judge considered the case. After several minutes, the stenographer called us back in, and the judge pronounced the divorce. She explained the judgement, went through the Protokoll once more, as well as the various other parts of the pronouncement (covering costs etc). Finally, she explained that each of us had ten days during which to change our minds and appeal the judgement, after which the judgement would become legally binding. She offered each of us, one after the other, the opportunity to waive that period, which we each did. Finally, she declared the divorce binding immediately.

There are still a few bits of paperwork to tidy up, and bills to pay, but all of the hard stuff is done. Switzerland used to require a two-month waiting period, followed by confirmation that the couple still wanted to divorce, but that’s no longer the case. We should have the final decree within a couple of weeks.

I haven’t worked out yet how I feel: relieved, exhausted, saddened, freed. Chastened that I didn’t listen, and grateful for what I had. Looking forward to the future, whatever it may bring, although somewhat dreading the paperwork surrounding reversion to my maiden name. And honestly? Kind of proud at how well I managed half an hour of legal proceedings in Swiss German

The good came first. The ApacheCon lightning talks were, as usual, hilarious. The talented Paul Fremantle brought out his tinwhistle and I danced an only-slightly off-time hornpipe. Bertrand revealed the secrets of the members@ mailing list with a speaking chorus. A [...]]]> I had a hell of a time last night – in good and bad ways.

The good came first. The ApacheCon lightning talks were, as usual, hilarious. The talented Paul Fremantle brought out his tinwhistle and I danced an only-slightly off-time hornpipe. Bertrand revealed the secrets of the members@ mailing list with a speaking chorus. A crazy person with a graphing calculator and a psychedelic three-ring binder gatecrashed and spoke about no-one’s sure what. Ross, Paul and I did an “Ask Me!” talk. Leo, Rich, Shane filled their five minutes in traditional and hilarious and moving fashions. Jean-Frederic had us saying Hello World in more languages than I could count. We laughed as we counted hesitations, repetitions and deviations. It was great.

The party moved up to my room. We had beer, and beer pong, and altogether too many people crammed in. It was more egalitarian than I remember last year’s being – lots of new people, lots of people who weren’t part of the old Apache guard. A charming Southern gentleman with the most awesome belt I’ve ever seen (Carl, where did you get that!?), an excited Berliner who picked me up and whirled me around and somehow managed to avoid having me kick anyone in the head. I lay across the bed, sat on laps, generally tried to squish in to any available space and get time to talk to all the fabulous people thronging the place.

At some point, it was too late and too loud to reasonably continue. Everyone cleared out (Nick, you are a *god*, for spending the extra five minutes to clear the carnage, so that I could wake up in a room that showed no signs of what had happened the night before!), and we headed to the Irish pub next door that has become our local.

Some food, a few more beers. Squeezing everyone up so I could sit next to someone I wanted to talk to. Laughing at the events of the week, and the night.

And then I went to the loo, and as I was about to go in, Florian Leibert, who had been speaking in the Hadoop track, called me over, and asked if he could talk to me.

I’m on the board of Apache. I’m responsible for our conferences. I work on community development and mentoring. If you’re at an Apache event and you want help, information, encouragement, answers, I will always do my best to provide. So this wasn’t an unusual request, and it wasn’t one I expected to end the way it did.

He brought me in to the snug, and sat up on a stool. He grabbed me, pulled me in to him, and kissed me. I tried to push him off, and told him I wasn’t interested (I may have been less eloquent, but I don’t think I was less clear). He responded by jamming his hand into my underwear and fumbling.

I broke away, headed back to the group, and hid behind some of the bigger, burlier infra guys, while Bill sorted out all the people who’d left stuff in my room, so that I could reasonably escape. We headed back, people got their stuff, Bill stayed around, and I slept.

When Bill woke up, I pretended to still be asleep, because I couldn’t deal with speaking to anyone. I sent a mail to our planning committee to say that I’d been assaulted. Charel came to talk to me, and then I e-mailed Nick, who came up and helped me sort things out so I could get to the keynote and feel safe. Florian didn’t turn up today, and it’s probably for the best.

I had a few drinks. I was wearing a skirt of such a length that I had cycling shorts on under it to make me feel more comfortable getting up on stage and dancing. I had been flirting with a couple of other boys at the party.

It’s not the first time something like this has happened to me, at all. It’s not the first time it’s happened to me at a tech conference. But it is the first time I’ve spoken out about it in this way, because I’m tired of the sense that some idiot can ruin my day and never have to answer for it. I’m tired of the fear. I’m tired of people who think I should wear something different. I’m tired of people who think I should avoid having a beer in case my vigilance lapses for a moment. I’m tired of people who say that guys can’t read me right and I have to read them, and avoid giving the wrong impression.

But I don’t give the wrong impression, and it’s simply not true that guys can’t read me right. I don’t want to be assaulted, and the vast majority of guys read that just fine. It is not my job to avoid getting assaulted. It is everyone else’s job to avoid assaulting me. Dozens of guys succeeded at that job, across the week. In the pub, in the stairwell, on the MARTA, in my bedroom.

One guy failed, and it’s his fault.

ETA: My heartfelt thanks to the Atlanta police for their sensitivity and professionalism.