Tag: phpwomen

I am a female speaker, and a software developer, which puts me in a fairly small minority at the events I usually attend (I'm a PHP consultant based in the UK, to give you an idea of what kind of events those are). Recently I've been asked my opinion more than once on the issue of women speakers being in a minority at technical events, and I've also been the "token" women speaker at a technical event.

The worst thing you can do is find some random, underqualified person who represents the demographic you want to include, and put them on the stage. Although gender is often the issue we hear most about, the same applies to anyone who isn't a young, white male; it's just that gender is easier to see and talk about than either age, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or anything else, and also since I'm a young, white female, it's the only aspect I can comment on.Women are in such a minority that they are, almost by definition, representative (see http://xkcd.com/385). Anyone who sees your randomly-selected woman speak will simply go away thinking that women aren't really good at speaking.

Last month, while in Amsterdam to host the Dutch PHP Conference 2010, I was absolutely stunned (as in, completely speechless - that's pretty rare for me) to have my PHPWomen friends pull me aside and present me with something:

The inscription reads:

Lorna Mitchell

In recognition of your extraordinary efforts

PHPWomen …

I'm subscribed to a number of women-in-tech mailing lists because, well, I'm a woman in tech. Every few months or so a thread will come round about a technical conference with no female speakers. The issues around this are many, lengthy, and not something I want to write about here …

I'm halfway delighted and halfway cringing to announce that the phpwomen calendar is now on sale. This was a project organised by my friend and colleague Johanna Cherry, who saw an opportunity at php|tek 2009 to photograph the majority of the core PHPWomen members all in one place and …

A few weeks ago, phpwomen.org put out an announcement about merchandise. When we first started the group (almost 3 years ago, believe it or not) we printed t-shirts and gave them out at conferences. Once the various founder members and a few benefactors had paid for a set of …

PHPWomen have announced a new competition on their website - to complete a sentence "I am a phpwomen member because..." in a post on their forums to win a prize! Already people are posting and the prize is a certificate to spend at php|architect's site. Pop over to the forums …

I'm very excited to be able to say that I was published in php|architect, in December's issue. I had the /etc column, where I wrote a bit about phpwomen.org and what we're up to these days. As I've wanted to write for them for ages, I was very …

I was recently interviewed by Cassandra Clark from Sun about PHPWomen - they've put the interview live now and you can find it at http://blogs.sun.com/SDNChannel/entry/introduction_to_phpwomen_org

I'm currently in California, at ZendCon. I'm having way too much fun to blog but there is a writeup on the phpwomen site of my experiences so far. I've met some great people, and its long days but I'm learning a lot! I've (been) volunteered for an uncon session later …

So, at the Dutch PHP Conference, they were making a video and they interviewed me. The video is at http://www.bachelor-ict.nl/dpc and it is also featured in this article on DevZone which is exciting! The video is mostly about the PHPWomen organisation, rather than my talk but …

There's an article competition running over at phpwomen.org where thre are two Zend Studio for Eclipse licenses to give away to the best short articles submitted in the Best Practices forum before the end of July. See the announcement for more details.

On Friday was this year's PHP Conference in London and I must say it was a roaring success. The whole conference had completely gone up a gear from last year (the only other time I've attended) with a larger venue, choice of tracks, more attendees and better food.

I was …

I don't spend a lot of time hanging around with geeks in the real world. I spend a lot of time hanging around with them in virtual spaces and some of the people I have met there are my closest friends. Offline meets are ... quite different. Lots of geeks are …

I heard last week that the PHPLondon conference is completely sold out - I had a funny feeling it might be :) I will be there, this Friday 29th February and looking forward to a great event. I'll be at the pre- and post-conference socials, if you are an online acquaintance please …

On Feburary 29th the PHP London 2008 conference will take place in London. Things have been very busy for the guys organising, there have been a few tweaks to the schedule but its looking like things are coming together nicely. I'm all set and have booked tickets and a hotel …

Its exciting times at PHPWomen.org. There is the new addition of a "Donate" button, for anyone who would like to contribute to our cause. As if we aren't reason enough, the adorable Cal Evans from Devzone has given us 10 elePHPants (remember he sent me one?) to give to …