It was refreshing to hear a white man talk about diversity last week in a keynote address given by Dave Thomas at RubyConf 2010. Just one part of his keynote focused on diversity, specifically on gender diversity. This is was in stark contrast to the second day’s keynote by David Hansson (aka dhh), the engineer who created the initial Rails implementation and still leads the core team. David Hansson’s keynote was quite different. While both talks dove into technical details at times, Dave Hansson’s talk aimed to shock or titillate the audience, whereas Dave Thomas aimed to inspire. David Hansson seemed lazy by resorting to analogies of recreational drug use and airport body searches. It is much harder to inspire people. David Hansson has done lot of great work with Rails, but I think he could be more ambitious. I think he could do something awesome if he got outside of his comfort zone. There are more subtle and powerful forms of liberty than those he referred to in his talk.

Dave Thomas cited US labor statistics of women making up 47% of the workforce. Of people working in computing or mathematics, there are only 25% women. (For those who don’t know, it is a strange fact that today about half of math majors in the US are women, but only 14% of the CS majors are women. Over the past 20 years the percentage of women studying math has steadily increased, while the percentage of women studying CS has fallen, after peaking at around 45% in the mid-80s.)

Dave also pointed out that the conference had 5.6% women, which is actually a positive stat given that the number women in open source is typically lower. (EU report found 1.5% Women in FLOSS.) I’d like to think Ruby is changing the open source stats, but maybe it is a reflection of Ruby’s adoption in larger companies. I don’t know.

On my request, Dave posted complete slides which cover these and other topics.

I was honored that Dave reached out to talk to me while preparing for his keynote. We had a good conversation then and subsequently at the conference. I find it heartening that gender diversity in computer science is no longer just a women’s issue. Before Dave even talked to me, he had decided to call this section of his talk “inspire someone.” He ended it by quoting me, challenging the audience to “inspire someone who is not like you.” Imagine If each of us found one women who wanted to be a software developer and taught her how. The problem would just evaporate.

In summary, here’s a few steps you can do:

  • teach a woman (or girl) to code
  • teach someone who has a different skin color, educational background or speaks a different native language than you
  • write about what you know
  • speak about what you know
  • get outside of your comfort zone
  • hire an intern
  • if you teach or organize for-pay events, advertise at least one scholarship spot to increase diversity in your community
  • volunteer at a school
  • seek to inspire someone not like you

“Pioneering happens when you don’t have to do it perfect, you just need to survive…and remember it is supposed to be fun” — Dave Thomas

At RubyConf this year, we hosted a Kids Track.  One of the activities was to make web adventure games.

If you want to make a Pie game, go to the pie-bakery. If you have questions about creating games with pie or suggestions for improvements, you can sign up to this google group and post questions or ideas via the web or email.

Check out the games that the kids made this week:

I also gave a talk at the conference about the making of Pie. Here are the slides from the talk:

Here are github repos:
# this lets you do local pie development, generates a Sinatra-based webapp
http://github.com/blazingcloud/pie
gem install pie

https://github.com/blazingcloud/pie-bakery
http://pie-bakery.heroku.com # hosted IDE (build in Rails)

http://github.com/blazingcloud/mobile-pie # uses Rhomobile to create an app for any SmartPhone platform (tested on iPhone and Android)
rake run:iphone
rake run:android

We just created a pie-cooks google group for people who are working on creating/improving Pie.

Pivotal Tracker project:
https://www.pivotaltracker.com/projects/115060

Thanks to the support of the RubyConf organizers and a core group of dedicated engineers we are putting on a parallel track at RubyConf with activities for kids.  The kids signup already went out on the conference list, but I’m posting more details for everyone here and in case some parents missed the initial call for participation!

Kids 10 and up whose parents are comfortable with them being responsible for themselves can attend on their own. Younger kids must be accompanied by a grown-up who is welcome to learn to code or just hang out and have fun.

Details of activities subject to change based on the inspiration of the volunteers and ideas from the kids.  Kids should have had breakfast and bring lunch money — the group will go out to eat or head down to the hotel restaurant since catered lunches are crazy expensive at the hotel.

Schedule

  • 10:30am start (after the keynotes / lightning talks and so kids don’t have to wake up early!)
  • Activity 1
  • noon – 1:30 lunch
  • Activity 2
  • 3pm snack
  • 3-6pm open game play: board games, puzzles, xBox and Wii
  • 6pm show & tell open house

Planned Activities

  • Pixel Loops (aka Distributed Ruby Processing) – this is a group activity where kids can send commands for drawing lines and shapes and they will all show up on the big screen
  • Interactive Graphics projects – we’ll split into small groups to create dynamic patterns with shapes and color (check out this example – hint roll over the pattern with your mouse to change it)
  • Web adventure games with Pie, here is a simple example
  • Building circuits with flashing lights and other physical effects that can be controlled by the computer.  We’ll have some kits already put together, but older kids can learn to solder partnered with a grown-up.

The organizing team:

Thanks to our sponsors:

weathfront

If you would like to join our list of fabulous sponsors please email me: sarah (at) ultrasaurus (dot) com or you can send a personal donation through RailsBridge.