Nerd Girl: The Panel’s Revenge
NOTE: comments from the panelists in this write-up are paraphrased; these are not exact quotes. Speaker names are abbreviated with their initials.

The second annual Nerd Girl Panel boasted these panelists:

· Mary Beth Raven, IBM Senior Technical Staff Member, Lotus Product Design
· Sandy Carter, Vice President, IBM Software Group Channels
· Akiba Saeedi, Program Director, Unified Communications and Collaboration, IBM Software Group
· Marie L. Scott, Director, E-mail Services, Virginia Commonwealth University
· Eileen Fitzgerald, Vice-President Product Management and Customer Delivery at GSX
· Kristen Lauria, Vice President, Marketing and Channels
· Moderator: Gabriella Davis, Turtle Partnership

Upon introducing herself, Mary Beth Raven urged attendees to follow her blog (notesdesignblog.com) to get updates and provide feedback on Project Vulcan. Marie Scott mentioned that the first Nerd Girl panel, held at Lotusphere 2009, opened the door for her to start blogging, got her the visibility she needed to be a speaker at Lotusphere this year, and gave her the opportunity to write a book on Sametime.

Gabriella Davis led off the panel discussion with a question.

GD: Nerd Girl came about from the fact the proportion of women who attend Lotusphere is tiny compared to the number of men who attend. Why do so few women move into less-technical fields (i.e., training)? Are there still reasons that restrict women from advancement in technical fields?

EF: The major restriction on women is women themselves: they have a lack of confidence in their abilities. Also, there is a perception that if an industry is male-dominated, it should stay men only.
SC: Girls start to get teased early (as early as 5^th grade) that if they like math and science they are “nerds”. Kids want to be “cool”. We have to start young with these girls to show them that you can be in to math and science and still be cool. IBM has EX.I.T.E Camps to help start the idea in younger women that it’s okay to like these subjects. Also, women rock at all the new social media technology out there. Women are better at collaboration, listening, and soliciting an idea.
AS: Very frequently she is the only woman in meetings or at customer dinners, but she has been able to leverage what would be an uncomfortable situation into unique opportunities, such as speaking at Lotusphere.
MS: How many people would like to see more women at the OGS? (This was met with audience applause – Akiba said she would pass the feedback on to IBM).
SC: 250 women attended the Super Women reception last night, and word has been handed down that next year they can hold the reception in a bigger room in the main hotel because it was such a success.

EF: In different regions and different countries, what are the barriers women have encountered?
Audience member: She is on assignment in Latin America, which is historically a male-dominated culture. They could really use some focus on getting women into technical fields. Mexico started a Super Women’s group, and one will be starting in Brazil soon. Reaching women needs to start earlier – especially at the university level.
MS: The engineering school is mostly men at her university, and she encouraged IBM to make more of a presence on campus.
Francie Tanner: She moved her family to Anguilla, which is a traditionally male-role-based culture. When she applied for a business license, she found resistance from the government, saying she was a woman trying to start a technology business – this was unheard of at the time. Women have to work harder, be more persistent, and not give up in order to achieve their goals. Francie wants to start including the local high school in her business in an attempt to attract women to the technology business. She blogs about her experience with moving her kids to a Caribbean island to encourage others to take risks and persevere (and to keep her family updated).
SC: A great challenge we should take on is when we go to another country or city, get a round table of women together; start a blog to encourage others and give advice and support on how to get started.

EF: Are there any WITI (Women in Technology International) groups in Europe?
SC: WITI is an international company. If there is not a group in your city, she can help you start one. This is not IBM-run group, but it is an IBM-sponsored group.
GD: Women are much better with the “people side” of technology, and there is a huge opportunity there as social media grows. There is huge opportunity for women who have social skills that others might not have.
MS: Women make better listeners which is key to what we do. Look at what Mary Beth Raven does with her design blog; it’s critical to be a good listener when she’s getting feedback that affects the design of the next release of Lotus Notes.
AS: Her first job was working with a Notes business partner and she was one of three or four women in the whole company. In this male-dominated company, there was apprehension in talking to customers, and there were only a few people who were customer savvy. It put her in a good position to bring a new skill set to the company; she new the importance of speaking to customers to learn what they do. She was able to make a difference as a woman because of her ability to recognize this importance and effectively bridge the gap between customer and company. She encouraged others to make an effort to collaborate across teams at your organization.

Audience member: As a work-from-home Mom, there aren’t a lot of other professional women in my area who also have kids and work from home. Do you have any advice on creating a local community, finding balance between work and kids, and fighting the barriers of limited travel?
Francie Whitlock: Look to Twitter, Facebook, and collaboration tools within and outside of your organization to reach out to the community. She lives in the middle of nowhere and has created a huge online community to share information with everyone. She gets her needs met via the online community because she doesn’t have a professional where she lives. Online community is her support system.
Jess Stratton: She works at home with her child and heavily relies on Twitter to keep in contact – calling it “The Watercooler Effect”. To get involved locally, she’s found being a nerd is a benefit. In her neighborhood, there are other stay-at-home moms, and she runs a Mom Blog (http://momelettes.com/) to give technical tips to moms. She also meets for drinks once a month with the moms in her neighborhood to keep her social contacts alive.

Audience member: What are your experiences in networking and mentoring – have they helped you?
SC: She has multiple mentors, some are female, some are male. Also, she has mentors across different teams to get different perspectives on situations; this enable her to make well-rounded decisions. It is also important, besides having mentors, to have sponsors and a cheering section – this is a reference, not a mentor. You need a group of people who will sponsor you when a job comes up – they’ll recommend you for a job and keep an eye out for position openings that would suit you.
GD: There is a Nerd Girl Birds-of-a-Feather session about mentoring and sponsoring at 7 am on Thursday if you want further information.
AS: She has informal mentors and one formal mentor. One key thing is to look outside your division – you want someone who understands your position but someone who can give you a different perspective. Don’t be afraid to ask people to have them mentor you; feel comfortable to talk about what you do and how you do it – it establishes your credibility. Don’t be afraid to ask for salary increases, either!
EF: She moved from a large organization with a structured mentoring program to a small organization and found she relied more on the virtual support team – people she could turn to in a professional capacity now that her formal mentoring program no longer existed.
MS: Virtual networks work for people who don’t have the opportunity to establish formal relationships. There is nothing wrong with a social media mentoring program.
SC: The Harvard Business Review just published an article on the top 50 leaders (whether male or female). They all had two things common: they had a mentor and they prioritized networking.

Audience question: What do you think about females who feel they are mistreated by female supervisors?
Susan Bulloch: Firstly, she blogs on notesgoddess.net. She has almost always worked for men; right now at IBM her next three levels of management are women, and she loves it. She’s never had so much support and doesn’t perceive any cattiness or tearing down.
MBR: When coming up with a persona for Domino Designer, they created a male named “Mike”. It was brought to her attention that the two main people working with Domino Designer are women, so they changed the persona to “Michaela” and made her a very attractive avatar.

Audience question: Do you feel, depending upon your level within your company, you end up with a different experience from the males? If you’re in management, there is much more tolerance for ideas; her three female coworkers find themselves intimidated by the sea of men at work.
MS: She is one of two female directors in the whole organization. She gets dismissive looks and rolled eyes whenever she opens her mouth. She has credibility and a proven track record, but she always has to go the extra mile with ideas and always has to meet deadlines when men are held to different rules. It may be specific to the mindset of CIO, it may be cultural, but that attendee is not alone in her experience.
GD: Her job is going into huge organizations for training; she is pretty much always the only woman in the room. She has taught herself to not be afraid; she has to be confident in her abilities, has to own the room from the second she walks into it, and can’t worry about offending people. If she falters, it’s seen as weakness and she loses authority. She is aware that people think she might not be nice, but she has a job to do.
EF: The more you go to management level, the more important networking and informal connections are important.
SC: At all levels, this exists. We need to call people on it. You won’t always get the right response -- she doesn’t do it in public -- but don’t be afraid to ask!
KL: Women have to do a better job of communicating upward and reaching across the organization.

Audience comment: It’s difficult for females to find their voice, especially if they are used to being part of a team. She learned that people start noticing her when she changed from saying “I participated in …” to “I led …”
MS: When she got back from Lotusphere last year, she was very excited about getting involved. She had never done anything like speaking or writing, and she was so self-critical, but she just decided to go with it. People started responding to her blog, and she found her voice and started feeling comfortable to share her knowledge. Her blog led to the opportunity to speak at Lotusphere 2010 and the opportunity to write a book about Sametime. There are not that many women bloggers on Planet Lotus; there is a lot you have to share, it doesn’t take much to get up and going on Planet Lotus.
MBR: Even newbies would make interesting bloggers. She would follow a newbie blog to understand her user community better. You have more to say than you think!
KL: She has formal mentors and mental mentors (a list of people that look at situations differently from her) – she relies on those people to provide different perspectives.

Audience question: As we meet here, there is a joke on Twitter about the Nerd Girl panel. How do you walk the fine line of keeping a sense of humor and being oversensitive?
GD: She had two three-hour conversations about the very existence of Nerd Girl since coming to Lotusphere this year that were great. If it’s not an open discussion, she could care less what they think. You’ll never to get them to admit they’re wrong.
EF: No matter what, you’re always going to get this situation. You get admins v. developers, too; there is always conflict. Don’t let it get you down; take it in the spirit it was meant.
KL: If she senses someone is reacting very emotionally to a situation, she’ll pull them aside and let them react. Once they are done, she’ll proceed with the business discussion.
SC: Listen to what matters to the person making the comments. When she started the Super Women’s group, she got a lot of execs saying “why?”, so she pulled together a bunch of results into a business case for women. When she showed them numbers and facts, she greeted with support. She gave the people that were asking what would impress them most: numbers to back up her actions. She told them, “You can make fun of it, but the bottom line is that it’s going to help IBM”.

Audience comment: She was uncertain how being the only woman in a group of men would work. She found that sticking with her own integrity, she was able to really find herself and get respect from her male coworkers.
KL: You cannot be successful if you’re not true to yourself.
SC: She once managed a team of all men. Every week for a year, she customized a quote for each member of her male team and sent it out to the team. After two weeks, one member of the team said “I have to give you some advice: this is so girly! Stop it or you’ll never survive”. Sandy thought, “You know what? I’m a girl!”, so she continued to do send out the quotes. She ran into the man years later, and he said “I missed you being my manager … I miss those quotes”, and his wife commented that he saved her quotes in a jar, and he still pulled them out and looks at them for the past few years. Sandy had a choice: be who you are (“girly”), or who they want you to be (someone who does the “guy thing”).
AS: The first manager she had at Lotus managed 12 people with the same job, both men and women on the team. Everyone did the job differently, and her manager told them repeatedly that even though someone does a task differently, everyone brings a skill to the table, the collective whole is the strength of the team. It’s the combination of what you do that matters.

Bob Balaban comment: Regarding the business about joking: men are lying when they say it’s a joke; it’s passive-aggressive. Personally he finds it offensive, and offered a challenge that unless you call people on it, it won’t stop. Please call people on it.
MS: Women have a tendency to back down. Hold your ground. If you know what you know, stand firm.
EF: You don’t have to be “one of the guys” to fit in. Be yourself, be comfortable with the level you’re at. Be comfortable with who you are. Stand your ground and stand up for yourself.
MBR: She gave a call to action: how get involved in your local user group. If there’s not one in your area, start one, invite women speakers, encourage other women to attend.
EF: Any Europeans should look to ILUG.

Gabriella then closed out the session thanking audience members for coming, Susan Bulloch for pulling the panel together, and to the panel members themselves. She noted that two IBM VPs sat on the panel which goes to show how important this topic is.