This at CT.

As I scanned the hallway for signs of the party, an arch of red, yellow, green and blue balloons extended a welcome. I entered the grand ballroom where fun sounds of karaoke and a sea of neon green glassware greeted me. To the left was a large screen with random words scrolling quickly: Elmers glue effect on skin; [Hebrew characters]; [Chinese characters]; pokemon cards. Scattered across the room were people forming small lines for massages, caricature drawings and tarot card readings. Ninety-five percent of those present were women. It reminded me of my college years – having attended a women’s college – and what a blast you could have putting a group of women in a room with great music. This is probably a cliché, but you really could feel the excitement and energy especially when people – whether in their 20s or 40s – crowded the dance floor for the Macarena and the electric slide. I couldn’t help but think that the songs for karaoke were not randomly selected as I listened to people sing the words to “I’m a Barbie girl” and “I’m a bitch, I’m a lover”.

Welcome to the party hosted by Women of Google at this year’s Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing in Chicago. The meetings were sponsored by the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology and the Association of Computing Machinery. Anyone doubting whether there are still social barriers for women in computing fields needs only talk to the attendees. The young women – undergraduates or just a few years out of college pursuing graduate degrees in computer science and related fields – cannot contain their excitement of and appreciation for what this meeting offers them. Unlike the vastly male-dominated conferences and classrooms that make up most of their professional experiences and that are still often hostile to women, the Grace Hopper Celebration affords them a chance to see and meet extremely successful women in their fields – corporate VPs, university deans, inventors, inspiring mentors – who are supportive of their pursuits.

I never met Anita Borg, but listening to people makes her contributions to women in technological fields obvious. As one of the hosts put it: he had never felt her presence as much as in that ballroom.

Although I am not a computer scientist, my interests are closely related to many of the issues relevant here (e.g. I study technology use where questions about gender come up quite often). I owe much of my training with technology and invaluable initial mentoring about academia to one of my college professors, Joseph O’Rourke of the Computer Science Department at Smith College. Joe’s contributions reach well past his own students. He was instrumental in the early 90s in setting up a mentoring program that matches female college computer science majors with female faculty at other schools for summer projects. I worked with Joe one summer tabulating information about the applicants. You could tell it was a popular program. Since then the project has grown manifold to fund these important experiences of even more young women. My colleague Justine Cassell hosted two students this summer on this program. One of them was able to make it back to the celebrations this weekend and talking to her at the party made the value of this experience extremely clear.

The party hosted by Google was both fun and inspiring. It is great to see important companies so supportive of women in technological fields. Among the gifts given to guests was a copy of Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing. I suspect many present will have already read it, but it is always good to have an extra copy on hand to give away. It is important to help people understand that there is nothing inherent in computing as a male field. It is the myriad of social interactions that people face from a very young age that lead girls and boys down different paths. In the end this can cost us a lot as it may channel very talented women out of fields in which their contributions may well be very significant.

Few academic institutions put anything concrete in writing when it comes to promotion and tenure review so it seems an informal discussion on a blog about the topic will be as informative as most other opportunities to consider the issues.

I have been pondering the pros and cons of co-authoring articles during one’s junior faculty years. How does a co-authorship count toward promotion and tenure? Obviously the answer is going to depend on a myriad of factors, but a discussion may still be interesting and illuminating. I realize that in some fields co-authorship is more the norm than the exception. In most lab sciences one rarely sees a sole-authored publication. But in the social sciences – the home discipline of several CT authors – it is less common. Since there are tenured faculty around here who have likely participated in promotion and tenure reviews, I would be curious to hear about their experiences. Of course, others are just as welcomed to contribute their thoughts.:)

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We have finalized our Technology and Social Behavior Speaker Series for the 2004-2005 academic year. We have quite an exciting line-up, it’s fun to be in such an interdisciplinary group.

Congratulations to Caroline Persell, Professor of Sociology at New York University, for winning the 2005 Contributions to Teaching Award from the American Sociological Association. I studied with Caroline when I spent a year in the Sociology PhD program at NYU. Even after I left the program she remained an inspiring mentor for which I’ve always been grateful. She is both a great researcher and teacher, overall a great asset the to discipline. Currently, she is the Vice President of the American Sociological Association so it is fair to say that in addition to everything else she does she also contributes to the profession at large.

I spent the last few days in Minneapolis at the Carlson School of Managements of the Univ. Minnesota participating in a great digital divide symposium. Although I have been doing research on this topic for years, I got to meet several people new to me who are working on interesting and important projects in this area. Many of them were from management and information systems/science programs, a field whose interest in the digital divide may not be obvious to some. One interesting question that came up more in the proposal to the meeting than the actual workshop was whether the existence of a digital divide is bad or, in fact, possibly good for business. This was a whole new angle on the topic, and although many would likely claim that this is not the right approach to take to the question, it is certainly an interesting one.

I’m back.. I didn’t think I’d be blogless for a whole week, but that’s what conferences, meetings and lots of train rides will do to you.

Starting from today, for the next two months, I will be reporting from New York City, more specifically, Columbia University. I have a summer fellowship with the Social Science Research Council‘s program on Information Technology, International Cooperation and Global Security which is based this year at Columbia.

Last week was the program’s summer institute which brought dozens of interesting people to the program to share their work on IT. It was a very rich meeting with people from all sorts of disciplines, which I think is necessary for making progress in our understanding of IT, its diffusion, its use, its potential consequences and social implications, etc.

There are fourteen fellows who will be here for two months, each of us working on a particular project. I will be spending my time on extending my current methodology for studying people’s online skills to an instrument that allows measuring information technology skills cross-nationally. Stay tuned for updates.