Ada Lovelace Day

Ada Lovelace, born Augusta Ada King in 1815, was the world's first  computer programmer. She wrote symbols for Charles Babbage's "mehcanical general-purpose computing machine" - also called the Analytical Engine - during 1842-1843.  

I am writing this blog entry for delivering an Ada Lovelave pledge "I will publish a blog post on Tuesday 24th March about a woman in technology whom I admire but only if 1,000 other people will do the same."

From the pledge: Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology. Women's contributions often go unacknowledged, their innovations seldom mentioned, their faces rarely recognised. We want you to tell the world about these unsung heroines. Whatever she does, whether she is a sysadmin or a tech entrepreneur, a programmer or a designer, developing software or hardware, a tech journalist or a tech consultant, we want to celebrate her achievements.

The pledge itself has now resulted 632 blog entries on women in technology. They can all be seen as a list, or on a Yahoo map. That's pretty neat.

A woman in technology who has influenced me most is Sari Baldauf, the former member of Nokia board and head of Nokia Networks. When coming to work for Nokia Networks in 2000, I paticipated in a internal event where she encouraged everyone in Nokia Networks to step outside of their comfort zones, and always, always pursue the difficult and uncomfortable.

I have tried to follow this advise as best as could. Funnily enough, trying to look for the uncomfortable and difficult has actually led me to comfortable and easy. Try it, I recommend.

 

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