Yesterday on Twitter I saw the launch of the Women on the Web conference and, although I follow Liz on Twitter and find what she says valuable I have to say, I sighed a big, annoyed sigh when she mentioned this event. I left off writing about it so I could think of a measured statement, and Dom’s fantastic post today has made me think even more about what I want to say.

I have very strong opinions on the whole ‘women in technology’ thing, but I’m going to give you my own personal experiences of working in the industry so you can see where my conclusions come from.

Does Gender Matter?

I think the digital industry is one of the most equal forums you’re ever going to find. What you do online doesn’t have to reflect your education, wealth, race or gender – it’s a completely open forum and your success is what you make it. If there’s anywhere that women can compete on an equal footing, it’s on the web. That’s not to say that this isn’t a male-dominated industry – men gravitate towards programming but I can guarantee that you’ll find a hell of a lot more female ‘marketing managers’. That’s just the way it is. From an ability point of view, it doesn’t matter if you’re male or female – there’s no glass ceiling on the web.

Sexism in the Workplace

Having said that, any industry (that’s male dominated or not) has its fair share of…for a better word…asshats. Drawing from personal experience, men talk about women a hell of a lot and if it’s in the workplace well then, you’ll just have to listen to it. “Would you do her?” “She’s a complete Gremlin” etc etc…put ten men together and they’ll be looking at page 3 models before you can say “boobs”. This Is A Fact. Yes, if you’re working in that office you have to deal with it, but at the same time, a lot of men have enough common politeness to keep the porn at home. If you’re a girl in the web industry I think you have to grow a thick skin.

I’m not saying this to have a go at men – I’m saying it because from my experience, it happens. If you’ve got a personality that can deal with it you’ll go far. If you’re going to file a lawsuit for discrimination you probably shouldn’t work in a web company.

Feeling Like A Minority

Over on Dom’s post, Celine commented that women feel like a minority at industry events. I have to disagree – women are a minority at industry events, but feeling like a minority is a different matter. I have never, ever felt uncomfortable being a woman at an industry event. It may be because I have an older brother, or because I have a lot of male friends as well as female, but I’ve never even thought about being a girl! It’s simply not an issue and I’ve never experienced discrimination. In fact, most people see it as a positive thing if you’re a girl attending these things and they’re happy to see you. If anything, women in technology have an advantage because we’re rare and exotic creatures – people want to meet us.

Women-Only Events

I was at the York Press Awards last year when they handed out a ‘women in business’ award. I just thought, “why can’t women compete on an equal footing with men?”. Don’t give a woman an award because she’s the best woman, give her an award because she’s the best business person. As I said before, digital is a great leveller and I for one don’t want to compete unless it’s against everyone.

Why should I go to a women-only event when there are so many great ‘normal’ events out there? What am I going to get out of them that I wouldn’t get elsewhere? It seems that with a women-only event you’re excluding a lot of interesting people – why don’t you all just come to the inclusive events instead? Maybe the women-only events focus on women-only issues….like what? We’re all equal in the digital industry so what are these ‘issues’? You tell me.

Conclusion

Being a girl in the digital industry isn’t always easy – you’re working mostly with men and I’m being completely honest – Not All Men Respect Girls. So what? Get that chip off your shoulder and take any negativity for what it is – immaturity on the part of the men involved that has no bearing whatsoever on your job. The vast majority of blokes are fantastic and there are as many cretins amongst women as there are amongst men – you just don’t meet as many of them in this place! Any sexism you come across is banter – not work – and I think the web is one place where women really are respected.

I think anyone, female or not, that tries to create an unequal playing field by saying that women have special issues is doing women a disservice. If some women feel more comfortable attending a gender-specific conference then fair enough, but please don’t think you’ve got a mountain to climb to succeed in this industry.

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Today over at the Google blog Ms Wojcicki (I have no idea how to spell that so I copied & pasted it) talked about Google’s commitment to make ads ‘more interesting’. Reading the post it actually became clear that’s another way of saying ‘more relevant to you’:

Today we are launching “interest-based” advertising as a beta test on our partner sites and on YouTube. These ads will associate categories of interest — say sports, gardening, cars, pets — with your browser, based on the types of sites you visit and the pages you view.

I’m sort of waiting for the backlash on this one, but I haven’t really seen any ‘oh my god, Google are watching us in the shower’ reactions. Basically, Google are taking all the data they accumulate from your browsing and showing you relevant content network ads based on your online interests. So if you keep visiting Lolcat pages (and who doesn’t?) you’ll get shown adverts for kitty food and little clothes to dress Muffin up in.

The thing is, Google are gathering all this data by default. If you’re logged into your Google account they knows what you’re searching for and what pages you’re visiting from that search page. They could use that data for all sorts of things – working out what pages to put at the top of the results for example, and choosing what adverts to show a user is just one possibility. I for one don’t mind – if it means I see more adverts for shoes and less adverts for weight loss and baby products (I’m looking at you Facebook!) then that’s a good thing.

According to the Google blog, users can even set their preferences (sort of like Stumbleupon I guess) so you can set your preferred adverts right from the start. The only thing you might lose through all this is that one in a million product that you didn’t know you needed until you saw it. Most of us I think won’t miss the variety.

What about advertisers? Well, this could wind up helping them too. After all, you can already pick content network websites to advertise on, so if users themselves are opting into (or out of) your adverts your market is pretty much selecting themselves. Hooray!

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First off, many thanks to Dom for organising ThinkVis and giving me a hotel room on Friday night – Drink Visibility was great fun and I got to meet lots of lovely people, including Shaun, Guy, Alastair, Joanna and many others I can’t find on the Interweb.

Nursing a hangover and with a MacMuffin breakfast sitting heavily in my stomach I made it to Think Vis itself – it was great to see everyone from Northern Bloggers again and finally meet Simon and Steven who I’ve known on Twitter for ages!

I’m not going to go into detail – lots of others have done fantastic write-ups, but I think my favourite talk was Peter Cooper who got all motivational and made me want to go out and do stuff!. All in all it was a great day, and I’ve left out loads of names so if I’ve met you there and haven’t mentioned it just drop me a comment with your site/twitter and I’ll add you in!

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I signed up with CreditExpert several months ago, mainly because Frog freaked me out over my credit score. I had no idea if I had one or what it was like, so I signed up to their reasonably-priced service to find out. As it turns out, my credit score was near perfect so I was pleasantly surprised – especially since Halfords turned me down for a £300 bike loan earlier in the year (wtf?). Anyhoo, the other day I noticed CreditExpert were still charging me for their service so I thought I’d log in and see what was what.

I went to their site – notice how the login button is really, really small.

Now, here I realised that in all the emails CreditExpert sent me when I signed up, my username and password weren’t mentioned. I can only assume my username was:

a) My name
b) My email address
c) A mix of the two

My password could be one of approximately half a dozen words/numbers I use to sign up to stuff, so I tried all the combinations I could think of.

Oh Noes!

Nope, not that then.

Obviously I have no idea what my password is, and since I never received it in an email I’ll have to get a new one. I clicked the “retrieve a new password” button. You’re taken to a screen where you type in your name and your email address – fantastic, email me my details please!

Foiled!

What?! You want what now? A password for my password?!

I can handle my mother’s maiden name, but what about the other box? Obviously in the sign up process I had to give some sort of answer, and type in a security question – but come on, it’s me, of course I typed in the name of an animal. But what animal? I don’t know – it was months ago! You overestimate the power of my memory CreditExpert!

Bumsticks

Damn you CreditExpert!

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