Anniversaries

Posted May 23, 2007 at 10:35 PM | Tagged as: Bryn Mawr, Duran Duran, Meeeeeeee, People I Love | Comments Off

I’m celebrating four anniversaries:

1. Today was the fourth anniversary of Kevin and me getting married. We’ve had our ups and downs, but all in all, it was a pretty good idea. After all, it’s nice being married to your best friend. (Thanks for putting up with me, mister.) Well, that’s all changed!

2. This month marks the tenth anniversary of my graduation from Bryn Mawr College and I get to celebrate next week by heading back to campus for Reunion. For two days I’ll get to catch up with classmates that helped shape four very important years of my life — somehow two days just doesn’t seem like enough time, but at least we get to stay in Denbigh. (Thanks to all of my friends, but especially to Melissa, who befriended me early on and has been there for me ever since.)

3. I bought tickets to see Duran Duran next month in NYC. The date is just a few days off from the twentieth anniversary of my first Duran show — June 22, 1987, when they played the Philadelphia Spectrum on the Strange Behaviour tour. My mom went with me in ‘87 and she’s going with me now. In fact, there were only a few shows we didn’t attend together. (Thanks, Mom, for putting up with my obsession.)

4. This year marks the thirtieth anniversary friendship with my pal, Alana. We only lived on the same street for about seven years, but no distance (in miles or time) has been able to separate us. Next to my mom, she’s the person who knows me best and has made sure that I’ve always stayed true to myself. I hope I’ve been able to do the same for her. (Thanks, ‘lana.)

   

Note: I listed these anniversaries in chronological order, but if I had to list them in order of significance, they’d be reversed. Really.

How not to recruit talent

Posted May 23, 2007 at 10:30 AM | Tagged as: Business, Just Sayin, Work | Just 1 Comment

Robert Scoble alerted readers to Jeff Barr’s post about Google recruiting. I had to laugh out loud here, because I’ve also been subject to some strange Google recruiting crap myself.

Most recently, I got an e-mail from a Google recruiter (who clearly did look at my Web site, because she commented on the pink-ness of my blog) with regards to a technical solutions engineer position. The first thing that struck me as odd is that, if you actually read my resume, you’ll learn that I’ve been in management positions for a while… so why would I be interested in an engineering position? The next oddity was the requirement that I complete a self-evaluation before discussions could proceed. Uh-huh. No thanks.

Of course, when I got that e-mail I was laughing pretty hard, because in the many years I’ve attended the Grace Hopper Celebration I’ve talked to Google folks many times about job opportunities there — and was basically told again and again that “Google doesn’t recruit Web developers because that’s not important to [their] business”. Whatever.

I have some friends that have gone to Google, but honestly, the more I learn about them, the more suspicious I am of them. I feel like they’re one giant social engineering experiment, and we’re all their guinea pigs.

Younger Women at the Top

Posted May 10, 2007 at 11:21 AM | Tagged as: Business, Women! | Comments Off

According to the Dartmouth Tuck School of Business and Loyola University, as reported in the April 2007 issue of the Harvard Business Review, women who make it into senior management roles in Fortune 1,000 companies get there faster than men.

Though nearly half of Fortune 1,000 firms still have no female executive officers, those that do seem to be aggressively hiring and promoting them into the top ranks. As the chart shows, a much larger percentage of Fortune 1,000 women have made it to executive officer positions in their thirties, forties, and fifties than have men their age. What’s more, these women achieved their executive positions at a younger average age than the men did (46.7 versus 51.1) and have less tenure on average than men in their current positions (2.6 years versus 3.5 years).

Check out the chart, too: Younger Women at the Top.

Désolée

Posted May 6, 2007 at 1:48 PM | Tagged as: Current Events, Places I Love, Politics, Women! | Comments Off

Despite the fact that all recent evidence pointed to this outcome, I’m still sad to see that Ségolène Royal was not elected as the new French president. I was glad to hear that about 85% of the French people voted, though — that’s huge!

I didn’t follow the election all that closely — though I probably paid more attention than the average American. My French isn’t all that great anymore, but from what I was reading about Mme. Royal’s position and what I thought I understood, I thought she had some great ideas in her 100-point plan.

I wonder what will happen to France as a country with Nicolas Sarkozy at its helm. His plans for changing France have been called “American” and “racist” by some — and for France, that really scares me. I don’t mind him fighting for things like over 35-hour work weeks (because I never could quite understand how anything ever got done in France when there were so few work hours), but it seems to me that he does come across in much the same way that Dubya does — hard-headed and unwilling to change his views in the face of opposition. He’s known for his bad temper. I think he’s kinda scary.

I also can’t help but wonder how this may affect Hillary Clinton as she contends for the Democratic presidential nomination. I’m not yet sure who I’m for in that run-off, but I certainly have a keen eye watching what goes on with her, just to see how she’s treated by the media and how she handles herself. I heard that, in the last French presidential debate, Royal was on the offensive — which Sarkozy called out as being un-presidential. A thinly veiled sexist attack that we’re to see more of in the U.S.? We’ll see soon enough…

Check out the new ABI site!

Posted May 3, 2007 at 1:14 AM | Tagged as: GHC, Technology, Web Stuff, Women! | Comments Off

The new Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology site went live earlier today. Please check it out and let me know what you think!

The production of this site has been one of my labors of love over the past year and I’m so honored that the Institute, whose mission is near and dear to my heart, chose KimmieCorp to create their new Web presence. But I didn’t work alone:

• Phoebe Espiritu did all of the UI and Visual Design work, and without her efforts, this site wouldn’t look anywhere near as elegant and engaging as it does.
• Erica Rios, ABI’s Internet Project Manager, deserves huge kudos for persuading ABI to undergo this redesign, and for working so diligently to see it through.
• Eric Mason and Deborah Alexander, the ABI Communications team, were also key in giving design direction and in posting content.

Thanks to everyone above for their great work, plus to everyone else at ABI (including their volunteers) for their trust and cooperation!

Folks, here’s a public service reminder: There are plenty of other non-profit and volunteer organizations out there that need help and advice when it comes to creating a functional, usable, accessible and stylish Web site… so find one that you’re committed to and get to work! The organization will have a site that communicates their message in a compelling manner, and you’ll have work that you can be proud of. It’s great when doing good is a win-win.