And so Day 2 comes to a close. One of the biggest problems with this conference is that at any given time I will want to attend 2–3 simultaneous sessions. Fortunately, the open spaces format allows anyone at anytime to float (I think the term is “be a butterfly” or “be a bumble bee”). I did this in a few sessions to maximize the amount of sessions I could attend.
We started out at Ruby’s Diner for breakfast. I arrived at the event to see people looking at the schedule wall. It’s really amazing to watch a conference self-organize like this.
Our facilitator, “Doc” List, did an excellent job of setting the ground rules and clearing up a few scheduling hiccups and quickly we broke out into sessions.
What’s with all the white guys?
The first one I went to was: “What’s with all the white guys? (Diversity)” convened by Scott Hanselman. We talked more about women in computing and why there is such a low ratio of men:women. Some argued that it was genetics, some argued that it was cultural or parental. We also talked about how Computer Science curriculums have highly technical weed-out courses at very freshmen levels. I think this breeds a group of smart people, but also tends to attract people with limited social maturity. This can either make it not fit for most women (if I am going to make some generalizations) or possibly make it a difficult environment for women. I think it’s also good to note that in software, there is very much a “people” aspect that a very large percentage of CS majors would not qualify for. (MIS may be the answer to this, but at UH, some joked that MIS was for “CS Dropouts”).
Scott talked about he has spoken at high schools to break down the technology behind MP3’s, for example. Most of the audience wouldn’t care, but there would be that 2 or 3 people that would take interest and that can make a difference. The 2 women that were in the room were encouraged to try that out.
I was happy to note that our female attendance this year rose 400% (to 4 women). Hopefully this number will change in future events. I think it’s important for our community to be accepting and diverse.
After the session ended, we gathered in the main room again to chat for 10 minutes or so before the next session began. There were some really cool conversations going on around just about every corner.
To Mock or Not to Mock
The next session I attended was about mocking. It was a pretty good fish-bowl session and a lot of good conversation was had. Towards the end it spun downhill due to some harsh arguments and I think this was the most “unprofessional” of all the sessions. Overall though, I got some good information about how some people manage pain with mocks and whether or not Auto Mocking Container is a design smell.
I will finish up the rest of the day in a later post, because I have to get ready to go to brunch!