From bbair at cse.ohio-state.edu Wed Jun 4 09:10:28 2008 From: bbair at cse.ohio-state.edu (Bettina Bair) Date: Wed Jun 4 09:10:46 2008 Subject: [OCWIC] ACMW's CIS Newsletter v01.01 - Celebrate, Inform & Support In-Reply-To: <5d1a6f030806040604m5fa97b52m342f18cbc6115e39@mail.gmail.com> References: <5d1a6f030806040604m5fa97b52m342f18cbc6115e39@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <5d1a6f030806040610kcb7216fn2cc9d91ef170694c@mail.gmail.com> *Welcome* By Elaine Weyuker, co-Chair Welcome to the inaugural issue of the ACM-W newsletter. Our goal is to highlight opportunities for women in computing of all ages and career stages. Each issue will describe some of the exciting projects ACM-W and other organizations offer, provide interviews of some of the leading women in the field, hear stories from women computing professionals throughout the world about important issues they face and projects they are initiating, and celebrate the accomplishments of some of the remarkable women in our field. Download the complete newsletter now: http://women.acm.org/newsletter_v01.01.pdf Here are some of the stories that you will find in this first issue: *Spotlight on* *Fran Allen*, first woman recipient of the Turing Award. Fran talks about young technology (Facebook and Wikipedia), and her advice for young women starting out in computing today. A look at *our Communities* *Tracy Camp* and *Liz Jessup* co-chaired the latest regional celebration, in Colorado. And in student chapters, the *Ohio State* Chapter's new president, *Stacey Laugel*, has lots of ideas. *Ambassador Blog* *Dr. Suriya* is helping build a Virtual Science Learning Centre for female high school students ** *Project Spotlight* *Valerie Barr* discusses ACMW student Scholarships for conferences *Awards & Recognition* *Susan Landau*, *Annemieke Craig *and *Shafi Goldwasser* are all officially awesome. ALSO, *Dates & Deadlines* and *Fun Features*! *From the editor, Bettina Bair...* This is the maiden issue of ACMW's CIS Newsletter: to Celebrate, Inform & Support. Like this one, each issue will highlight some of the thrilling projects, exciting accomplishments and remarkable women that are a part of our community. (You are a part of this community!) We hope that you will find inspiration here. But we also hope that you will *feel inspired to contribute here*. Please send me your thoughts, your comments and most of all, *your stories*. Email to: "Bettina Bair" ----------------- [the ACMW newsletter announcement may (should) be distributed freely to all of your lists and groups.] -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.cse.ohio-state.edu/pipermail/ocwic/attachments/20080604/5d456a2e/attachment.html From bbair at cse.ohio-state.edu Tue Jun 10 14:26:48 2008 From: bbair at cse.ohio-state.edu (Bettina Bair) Date: Tue Jun 10 14:27:10 2008 Subject: [OCWIC] Fwd: [ACM-BULLETIN] Today's Topic: ACM-W Newsletter Inaugural Issue Now Available In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <5d1a6f030806101126q138aadf1ib88d3e50aa74853f@mail.gmail.com> fyi. The first issue also has a short story about OSU's ACMW chapter, written by the new student chapter president, Stacey Laugel. :-) Bettina ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: ACMBulletin Date: Tue, Jun 10, 2008 at 12:02 PM Subject: [ACM-BULLETIN] Today's Topic: ACM-W Newsletter Inaugural Issue Now Available To: acm-bulletin@acm.org *ACM Bulletin Service* *Today's Topic: ACM-W Newsletter Inaugural Issue Now Available* June 10, 2008 ------------------------------ ACM-W, the ACM Committee on Women in Computing, has recently posted the inaugural issue of the "ACM-W CIS newsletter: Celebrate, Inform, Support" on their website . The first edition features a Spotlight on Fran Allen, the first woman recipient of the ACM A.M. Turing Award. Other content includes the latest updates on regional celebrations, student chapters, and ambassadors. Items on the ACM-W Student Scholarships for conferences project, and a celebration of the accomplishments of some of ACM-W's members, are also included. Direct link: http://women.acm.org/newsletter_v01.01.pdf Each issue of the ACM-W CIS newsletter will highlight opportunities for women in computing of all ages and career stages, and will include pieces on topics such as news about exciting projects, interviews with women leaders, reports from student chapters and stories from around the world. Please note that a subscription to the ACM-W CIS newsletter is not included as part of the ACM Bulletin service. To subscribe to the ACM-W CIS newsletter, send an email to acmw-cis-newsletter-sub@acm.org, and you will also be asked to send an email confirmation. Newsletter editor, Bettina Bair, welcomes your thoughts, comments, and story ideas for future issues via email to acmw-cis-editor@acm.org. *About ACM-W* ACM-W is the ACM committee on Women in Computing. It celebrates, informs and supports women in computing, and works with the ACM-W community of computer scientists, educators, employers and policy makers to improve working and learning environments for women. ------------------------------ The ACM Bulletin Service provides ACM members with email notification of important association news and activities. Should you wish to be excluded from future issues of the acm-bulletin, please enter your email address bair.41@OSU.EDU at http://www.acm.org/acm_bulletin and we'll remove you. Association for Computing Machinery Advancing Computing as a Science and Profession (c) 2008 ACM, Inc. All rights reserved. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.cse.ohio-state.edu/pipermail/ocwic/attachments/20080610/6b6a8423/attachment-0001.html From bbair at cse.ohio-state.edu Mon Jun 16 13:07:04 2008 From: bbair at cse.ohio-state.edu (Bettina Bair) Date: Mon Jun 16 13:07:12 2008 Subject: [OCWIC] Do Women Write Better Code? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <5d1a6f030806161007p624a44cfn2a8ebd1e5180a6af@mail.gmail.com> http://blogs.wsj.com/biztech/2008/06/06/men-write-code-from-mars-women-write-more-helpful-code-from-venus/ June 6, 2008 Men Write Code from Mars, Women Write More Helpful Code from Venus We all know men hate to ask for directions. Apparently they loathe putting directions in computer code, too. [image: venus_art_160_20080605204217.jpg] She would have been one heck of a coder Emma McGrattan, the senior vice-president of engineering for computer-database company Ingres?and one of Silicon Valley's highest-ranking female programmers?insists that men and women write code differently. Women are more touchy-feely and considerate of those who will use the code later, she says. They'll intersperse their code?those strings of instructions that result in nifty applications and programs?with helpful comments and directions, explaining why they wrote the lines the way they did and exactly how they did it. The code becomes a type of "roadmap" for others who might want to alter it or add to it later, says McGrattan, a native of Ireland who has been with Ingres since 1992. Men, on the other hand, have no such pretenses. Often, "they try to show how clever they are by writing very cryptic code," she tells the Business Technology Blog. "They try to obfuscate things in the code," and don't leave clear directions for people using it later. McGrattan boasts that 70% to 80% of the time, she can look at a chunk of computer code and tell if it was written by a man or a woman. In an effort to make Ingres's computer code more user-friendly and gender-neutral, McGrattan helped institute new coding standards at the company. They require programmers to include a detailed set of comments before each block of code explaining what the piece of code does and why; developers also must supply a detailed history of any changes they have made to the code. The rules apply to both Ingres employees and members of the open-source community who contribute code to Ingres's products. There's a big need to fix testosterone-fueled code at Ingres because only about 20% of the engineers are women, McGrattan says. (Most of them are in jobs involving quality assurance or adapting the product to a new locale, she says, and not the "heavy lifting" of writing code.) She's on a mission to get more women interested in computer-programming careers. But "it's proving very challenging," she says. *-Rebecca Buckman* -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... 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