We found this little robot in our inbox this morning and thought he was too cute not to share. Kudos to Eventbrite for their good taste in marketing art.
Got your hard hat?
Great message! Love that this poster (which was designed by a guy) portrays a woman scientist!
My, how times have changed
This infographic by KISSmetrics captures key elements of web design from the early 1990s to the present. It provides an interesting retrospective on when particular languages and techniques came into being, particularly for those of us who have only recently tuned into the field.
Wanted: A few nerdy women
As we get the ball rolling in Boston and continue to grow in Philadelphia, we’re looking for instructors who love geeking out on web development as much as we do.
If you have the knowledge and the confidence to lead a group of smart, determined women on any of the following topics, we should talk!
- HTML / CSS
- JavaScript / jQuery
- PHP / MySQL
- Ajax
- Photoshop
- Git
- WordPress
- Drupal
- Graphic Design
- Business (as it pertains to the web, ‘course :-)
Many of the courses already have curriculum created, so your job is just to come in and teach it. For an example of our material, check out the notes from our first class in the HTML/CSS series. Other topics have not been run yet, and you’ll have the opportunity to help us develop that material (compensation will be higher).
Class commitments are usually a couple hours, one night a week or occasionally a half an afternoon on a weekend.
If this sounds like fun to you, send us some information about yourself and your background to instructors@webstartwomen.com.
And, if you don’t fit the description above, but you know a woman who does, please let her know! The more talented, awesome instructors we can find, the more classes we can run, and the quicker more women can start coding their ideas into reality. :-)
Technology and human memory
Research by psychologist Betsy Sparrow and her colleagues, recently published in Science, has been causing quite a stir about how technology, specifically internet search engines, might be changing our relation to information.
The basic finding is that when people were faced with difficult trivia questions, internet-related concepts, such as the word “Google,” were more salient. In a subsequent experiment, people who expected information to be continuously available tended to remember where information was stored, rather than the information itself.
Very interesting stuff. Yet this freaks people out a little bit. Should it?
As Alva Noë articulates in his commentary, these findings should not be taken as evidence that internet search engines and other forms of technology are “ruining” human memory. (By the way, detrimental effects of technology have been a concern throughout history.)
Rather, this research, like much other work in cognitive science, helps us understand how our mental machinery works. Though it often feels like we do, we don’t actually store all that much of the world “in our heads.” We don’t have to, because the world itself is right there, its own best model. Creating and storing a mental representation of it would be inefficient.
The sparseness of mental representation seems particularly relevant to UI/UX designers.
Bryn Mawr College alumna, Julia Ferraioli, was recently featured as Geek of the Week on GeekWire.com. She was also mentioned in this excellent article on the importance of creating educational environments where women not only go into STEM fields, but thrive and excel in them. From the article:
“When we ask our STEM majors what it is about Bryn Mawr that encourages them to pursue these male-dominated fields we consistently hear two things – being exposed to role models among our faculty, alumnae, and their fellow students, and the positive effect of being in a classroom in which they aren’t the lone woman.” ~Closing the Gap
The early bird gets a cheaper ticket
If you’ve been thinking about participating in Startup Weekend Delaware, now is the time to decide. Today is the early bird registration deadline. Use the code “WebStartWomen” when you register and get $20 off.
Not ready to get your ticket yet? Not sure whether the experience would be valuable? Don’t listen to us, listen to Yijen Liu, a product manager for mobile apps at Amazon:
Our next class!
Do you have ideas swirling around in your head but have a hard time getting them from your head -> Photoshop -> the web? If yes, you’ll probably get a lot out of our Photoshop for Web Developers class on July 25th.
Gender and design: it’s not just about pink and blue (or at least it shouldn’t be)
A great article from Jessica Ivins at Happy Cog about the role gender should (and shouldn’t) play in design. She points to several examples that really illustrate her point. Our favorite of the gender-specific flops she mentions is the Dodge La Femme. I thought all women wanted umbrellas that matched their cars. Such a shock that that model didn’t take off. ;-)
Good stuff.
