Coding Ladies

I'm loving reading the blogs of different women developers like Julia Lerman and DataGridGirl aka Marcie Robillard. They were both at a "Women in Technology Luncheon" at the TechEd Conference. They're also attending Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference (PDC) this week in LA.

Listen to what Julia says about being able to hang out in the room with other women coders:

"I sat right up front of course. I looked around to see hundreds of women filling up the tables. I just wanted to go to every single table and say "wow! are you a programmer? I am too. That's so cool!" but I restrained myself.

The meeting started off with Tamara suggesting that while we ate, we do a networking exercise. Each woman at the table shared the best piece of business advice that they have received with their other lunch companions. What a great idea that was. Sitting at my table were a woman who has been a technical trade magazine editor for many years, a woman who was in I.T. (first infrastructure person I think I ever met that was a woman) and another woman who heads up the web team at a huge corporation. Most tables had about 6 at each - but you know how people are about sitting up front! So that was a good mix when adding in myself, an independent contractor who is a coder. I thought the best thing I heard at my table was "take care of your boss". But I had an odd perspective on that advice since I work for myself. It actually made me think about the fact that I haven't been taking care of myself lately - so it was actually good advice for me because I really do need to think about that!

After lunch we shared some of our lessons with the room. The most memorable one I recall was actually from Sara Williams (who is full of these great quips) - "Praise publicly, criticize privately".

And Julia mentions her friend Marcie is in the room. When you follow the link, you end up at DataGridGirl's blog where she makes a funny reference to her recent wedding anniversary. Being a total geek girl sounds fun: "September 20th, Eli and I celebrated our one-year wedding anniversary. What's it like being married to another .NET programmer? I think it's a great joy---some couples finish each other's sentences, we get to finish each other's code. "