Solution Grove

Stop Cyber Bullying Day [www.pbs.org]

I am posting in support of Kathy Sierra. I have the privilege to hear her speak at the .LRN conference in Boston last fall. She gave wonderful, inspirational, insightful and educational talk I feel she is acting with great courage to post about what is happening to her.

It is frustrating to have no ability help beyond a post in support. Working in a male-dominated field such as open source is challenging. As a woman working closely with highly male dominated open source project I've been very pleased to see growing number of strong new female contributors to the project. I definitely notice the ratio and I do feel that when working within the setting of my open source project, whether online or a face-to-face, I am very conscious of how I act, dress, what kind of jokes I make, compared to contexts that have a more balanced gender ratio. However, I never would have dreamed of this level of harassment of an IT blogger.