GitHub GitHub Presents • Passion Projects LIVE (Full Length Talks), 20 Jan 2014

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From YouTube: Passion Projects (Live) 10: Dana McCallum (Joining Datasets w Pastimes)

Description

The 10th episode of the Passion Projects Live series, featuring Dana McCallum. Dana is a senior engineer at Twitter, co-founder of Lambda Ladies, and a licensed commercial pilot. She was the lead engineer on Twitter's API for two years, helped create Twitter's advertiser API, and now works on social graph infrastructure. As an advocate for women in engineering and the LGBT community Dana has helped create advocacy teams at Twitter and other companies, and served as a delegate on women's issues in India with the U.S. Department of State. You can find Dana on GitHub and Twitter.

Twitter (https://twitter.com)
Lambda Ladies (http://www.lambdaladies.com)
Dana on GitHub (https://github.com/DanaDanger)
Dana on Twitter (https://twitter.com/DanaDanger)

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Passion projects:, dana mccallum.

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♪ (groovy music) ♪.

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(Julie), hello, everyone!.

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There are so many wonderful humans here, tonight. I see so many of you.. Thank you for coming to passion, projects.

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This is the first talk of 2014.

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(cheering from the audience) yeah!, we're going to have a really big year, and I'm happy all of you are here to see it, or to join us for it.. My name is julie, and I am the creator and organizer.

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Of passion projects here at github., I'm also a designer and developer here.

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From the bottom of my heart, thank you,, and I wanted to ask you to join me.

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In welcoming dana mccallum.

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(audience applauding).

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(Dana) yeah! how's, my mike? is that okay?, a little screeching? alright.

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Well, thank you, julie,, it's an incredible honor to be here.. I've been really impressed with the other talks in the series,.

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And just how professionally this whole thing has been put together.

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So,, it's really exciting to be asked to be a part of this.

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To just give you a little background on me,, I'm an engineer at twitter,.

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I've been there about four years,, so I've watched the company grow.

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From 150 people to thousands; from doing 500 tweets a second, to, I don't even know.

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How many hundreds of thousands we did on japanese new year,, but it's been.

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Completely overwhelming., when I started,, we didn't even have I.d. badges,, and now I walk into the cafeteria and I'm like,. "Who are all these people?".

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(Audience laughing) "what are you doing in my company?" (laughter from the audience) they're, all welcome., they're, all great. (dana and some of the audience laughing) so, that's been pretty exciting.. I joined as an engineer on the api.

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I was just kind of a, you know, front-line grunt, on the api.

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But then, I got moved up to the lead engineer on the api,, which was super exciting., so I did that for two years.

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And then, I moved over to help build our advertising api,.

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And I'm just now moving off of that onto our social graph, service,.

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Which is the system that keeps track of who follows? Who.

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And who's blocking, who, and so on and so forth.

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I can't promise I'll be able to fix the unfollow bug,, but I'm sure going to try. (laughter from the audience).

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So that's what I do at twitter. before I started at twitter,. I lived in indiana,, which was- oh, another hoosier, here, okay.

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(Everyone laughing).

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I used to say that I was a hoosier expat in my twitter bio, and one of my coworkers.

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From england thought that I was saying I was a hoser. (audience laughing), so he thought I was canadian for the longest time,, which is fine.

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I did a bunch of sort of random programming.. There was not a whole lot of interesting tech going on in indiana, unfortunately,, but I worked- the last job I had was at a newspaper.

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I built a lot of like random social media sites.

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I helped build a site for moms,, which is pretty great.

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Every friday, we'd descend into this like crazy flame war,.

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Between, like the super conservative,, you know, homeschool, helicopter parents,,.

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And the like pagan, earth, mother, "let, the child, do whatever,.

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They can name themselves," and so on and so forth.

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It was so great! so good for page views., (everyone laughing).

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So that was pretty great. and then,. The other other site that we built was a site for pets,, not a site for pet owners,, a site for pets.

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(Audience laughing), you would sign up as your dog, or as your cat, and then you would write.

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Messages to other animals as your dog or cat.

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(laughter from the audience) that was no so great for page views., (audience laughing), but it did produce my all time. Favorite thing ever on the internet,, which was somebody writing as their dog.. This woman was- her dog, was.

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Very excited that she'd come home, and she was like, "yay!, mom's, home!

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great!. She says 'hi' to me, and now I get treats, and she gives me kisses, and she's really mad at dad, and I hope dad stops being a jerk!" (everyone laughs) so, somewhere out there,. Someone is working out their marriage problems by roleplaying their pet on the internet.

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I also do quite a bit of work on the side for women in tech, that's,. You know,.

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Writing, talks, and traveling, and so on.. I went to india with the state department.

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It was last spring, which was freaking amazing. so,. All of this stuff-, I'm more than happy.

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To talk about all of this stuff., I'm super passionate about all of it,.

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And I would like to take questions about it in q&a., but every now and then,.

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I do get a little burnt out on being a woman in tech.

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Sometimes I just want to be an engineer,, you know?, and I feel.

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Like, even if you aren't devoting yourself to sort of the women in tech, movement,.

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If you are a woman in tech,, you still kind of have this sense that like, you're sort of representing all of womanhood, or, you know,.

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People are sort of watching you, differently, and so on., so I want to make this talk,. At least the pure talk portion of it, about tech,.

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If I may. and then, you know, at q&a, you can ask me whatever you want.

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So,, it was kind of hard to come up with a topic for this.

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It's so open-ended, and the talks before this have been about so many different things.

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I'm not really a motivational speaker,, I'm more like a demotivational speaker.

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(Laughter from the audience) like,, if I had started kickstarter,, I would have made it so that you'd pay people not to do things., (everyone, laughing), "no, please,. Please do not,! Please do not write that book.. I will pay you.

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So much money not to write that book." (audience laughing) so,, you know,, that stuff was out. but,. You know, it's right there in the title, "passion projects.". So what are the projects that I am super passionate about? Besides twitter and women in tech,.

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And so on? and there are a few projects that I've done,.

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And sort of the common theme behind all of them is that they combined.

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My interest in programming and technology with something else that was not necessarily.

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Tech-Related, that I was super into, and by super into, I mean like,. I get.

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Super crazy in the stuff., if I get interested in something,.

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It keeps me up reading about it at night,, I drive my friends totally bat shit, crazy,.

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Because it's the only thing I talk, about, and so on, and so forth.

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My thing right now is norse myths,, but I won't bore you with that. Right. Now,.

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Except to say that you should read the wikipedia article on völva.

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It's v, o, l,, v, a,, with an umlaut., it's pretty cool. (laughter from the audience). There are these viking sorceresses that basically ran around drugging. Men.

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Anyway,, it was really cool. (audience and dana laughing) so,, the first one of these,. I tried to teach myself japanese,.

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Which was idiotic. about the only thing I remember from that endeavor.

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Is the phrase <I>wakarimasen,</I> which means, "I don't understand.".

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It's a good thing to know.. I also remember <I>moshi-moshi,</I>.

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Which is how you say: "hello" on the telephone.

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I found this whole dataset put together by this professor, in australia.

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He studies japanese, and that's all he does. and so,. He created this huge xml dataset of a japanese-to-english dictionary,.

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And kanji correspondences, and all that stuff,.

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So I put that together into this website,, which I haven't touched in, like five years,.

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And you can see the css hasn't aged very well, because some of the characters are kind of chopped-off.. I thought about fixing that.

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But I was like, "whatever." (audience laughing). When I stop being into something,, then I just don't care about it. At all.

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I don't know if you can read that,, but this is also one of my favorite japanese words.. It's <I>karōshi.</I> it means, "death from overwork." (everyone laughing), it's a real thing.!

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So when I was interviewing at twitter,, I was staying at a hotel out here,.

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And the phone rang, and I wasn't expecting any calls, and I pick it up, and I hear.

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This woman say, "<I>moshi-moshi,</I>" on the other end of the line, and I'm like, "well, that's strange. who's, going to call me speaking, japanese.

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Except for my friend joanna who sometimes calls me and says, "<I>domo hadogeidesu,</I>".

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Which is, "hello.? I am hard gay,", but that's another story.

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(Everyone laughing) anyway, someone said, "<I>moshi-moshi,</I>", then I'm like,, "I'm sorry, you've got.

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The wrong number, and then she said, "<I>moshi-moshi,</I>" again,, I'm like, "okay,. She doesn't speak english.". Most people at this point would just hang up, right,, but I'm like, "no!. I remember the other thing.

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I know how to say in japanese, which is, "<I>nihongo, ga dakimasen,</I>".

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"I, don't speak japanese," and I hung up.

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I just- I love imagining-- (everyone laughing).

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I love imagining how confused this woman, presumably from japan,, must have been.

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Calling america, getting an american on the phone who then said,.

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"I, don't speak japanese," in japanese., (audience laughing).

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So that was this project., this project taught me a lot about character. Encoding,, as you might imagine. they've screwed up a lot.

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Of databases, and a lot of ruby, code. ruby support for unicode at this time.

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Was just terrible, mostly because japanese technology professionals don't really like unicode.

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Because it kind of screwed them over,, but anyway.. So that taught me.

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A lot about that, and that was really fun to put together. and the next thing.

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I worked on, I got really into nutrition,, which is pretty exciting,. I guess.

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I wasn't into that for very long,. I didn't actually finish that app, because I realized that I, like pizza, more than living forever,, so--.

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(Audience laughing), but I found another great dataset here, this time from the u.s. department.

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Of agriculture. it's a food database, and it's,. You know, just a bunch.

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Of ascii files, and you would imagine ascii files, one record per row-.

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Per line rather., it's probably going to be tab. Delimited, right?.

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No,, the food database is carrot: delimited., (audience, laughing).

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That's true., I'm not making that up.. It's pretty ridiculous. (laughs).

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Anyway. but the thing that I am super into, and have always been super into for as long as I've been an adult basically has been aviation.

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This is the plane. I was flying ten years ago., it's a little tiny, two-seater deal,, pretty sporty though.

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It's a little pretty thing., I kind of want to make out with it.. I referred to this.

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As my mazda miata, with wings. (laughter from the audience), so that was fun.

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I had a commercial pilot's license,, which is not an airline pilot's license.

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That's a totally different thing.

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But-, where was I going with that?.

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So, I had this airplane, and I wanted to do something that tied.

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My interest in technology to aviation. and, again, there are tons and tons.

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Of great datasets out there for airspace, and airways,, where airports are,.

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Whether they've got fuel, and like just everything you could possibly imagine.

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And more is out there. this being ten years, ago, though,.

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The technology platforms at the time were a little limited, and so,.

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What I had to work with was the palm vx., who here does not know.

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What a palm pilot was? okay.! I was worried about. That, I was going to ask like,.

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"Who here is under 25?" (laughter from the audience) so, anyway.. This device had a 20 mhz processor,.

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8 mb of memory- that's combined ram and storage.. They were the same thing-.

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A tiny little grey-scale, screen, and most embarrassing, of all,.

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It had a stylus. (audience, laughing) and then, programming on the palm pilot posed some unique challenges,.

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Because you can't make what are called "long jumps,".

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Which means that,, let's say you've, got a function called "heading(),".

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It calculates your heading to a waypoint, or whatever, and that heading() function.

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Needs to call a cos() function., that's fine! As long as the cos() function is close to the heading function.

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In memory., if you then need to call your divf() and its too far, away,.

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You can't do it.. There literally are not enough bits in the assembly instruction.

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To call this a routine, to make it that far.

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And of course, the linker that palm provided was not smart enough.

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To rearrange your code for you. so, basically,, I had to hand arrange.

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How your code was arranged in memory to get anything to work, properly,.

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And, in case you're wondering why you had to call a function called "divide float,".

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It's because there was no floating point instructions in the processor, so you had to do all that stuff in software.

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So, that was fun. (laughter from the audience) (laughs) and then,. You know,. It also has no gps,, but you could get.

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A little attachment thingy- excuse, me!- that would attach to the back end,.

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So it would attach onto the back of the palm pilot, and then there's a serial port,, and then it would feed you gps data via this bizarre text, format.

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That you then had to parse, so,, pretty constrained platform,.

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But most of the necessary components are there,, but this amazing beast.

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Was the thing that I was going to take to deal with this nonsense.

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What the hell is this? this is an aeronautical chart of central and southern indiana.

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I don't expect anyone to be able to read anything on here,.

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First of all,, because no one is familiar with indiana geography, except for one person,, second of all,, because I'm sure,. If there are any other pilots, here,.

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I'll be surprised,, and also because this map.

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Is missing, sort of a basic feature that we all have grown accustomed.

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To find on maps,, which is the ground., there is no ground on this map.

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There is another kind of aeronautical chart-. This is the same area- that does show the ground,. There are roads,.

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And towers and lakes, and so on, and so forth.

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But this kind of map is designed for flying in bad weather,.

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And so, you're, probably in the clouds,, you can't see the ground,.

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So what's the point of putting it on a map?

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(laughter from the audience) one feature that I do want to describe here quickly. Is you see this sort of like.

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Web of black lines all over the place., those are called airways,.

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And they're, basically highways in the sky. strictly speaking,. You don't have.

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To follow those,, you can go wherever you like,, but it's beneficial to take them because they're preplanned,.

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And they know exactly which altitudes you're supposed to be on, and there's all sorts of reasons to do. That.

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so,, just like you might say, "I'm driving to san jose,, I'm taking 101.".

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If you're flying from indianapolis to bloomington,, you can say, "I'm taking 305." there's an airway called 305 that goes there. these airways.

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Are sort of arranged in spokes around navigation, beacons,.

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And so you can sort of bounce off of,. You can sort of take them.

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Sort of bounce off of the beacons as you get there,, so you can go.

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From like the 305 to like 220, and so on, and so forth,, and you can skirt.

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Around restricted, airspace, and so on,, if you do that., so let me declutter this.

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To make it a little-, let's kind of focus on just a few components: here.

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So here we have one airway-. This is 221. that little blue circle up there,.

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That's indianapolis international,, so you don't want to go there without permission, because they'll probably get mad at you. and then,. The weird pully little thing.

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Down at the bottom,, that's called an moa, or military operations. Area.

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There's like fighter jets, and artillery shells exploding, there,.

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So best to avoid that.. So this is the environment.

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That I was trying to work in, to get a palm pilot to fly me around safely.

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Without getting hit by an artillery, shell, or in trouble with indianapolis international., so how do we design this thing?.

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Well,, the most basic design might be just have an arrow, right?.

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You know where you're trying to go, just have a little screen that says,.

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"It's that way, go that way.". The problem with that is there's wind in the air,.

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And so, if you just point the nose of an airplane at the thing.

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That you are trying to go, you're, probably not going to get there in a straight line.

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you're, going to end up drifting off course, and then,. We blow up..

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I was going to make a flame transition there,, but it seems like-, (audience, laughing), there's, probably nervous fliers here, and I didn't want to like- (everyone laughing).

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So what you have to do instead, is you have to turn the plane.

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Into the wind, and you kind of fly sideways, like that.

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So,, if we've got wind coming out of the north, we've got to counteract.

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That drift by keeping the nose pointed that way.. So this is called "crabbing,".

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Because crabs go sideways, and it happens on every flight you've ever been on.

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You just haven't noticed because you've been up too high.

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Even if there's no wind on the ground,, the wind up at altitude could be like 100 miles an hour,, so it's sort of key to getting where you're trying to go.. But this factor makes it.

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So that you can't just make a thing that says, "go, that way.".

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And so, what they came up with is an instrument called.

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A horizontal situation, indicator.

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The aviation industry really loves its acronyms, and like ridiculously long words. if a plane flies into a mountain,.

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It's not a crash,, it's "controlled flight into terrain," for example.

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(Audience laughing), it's my favorite euphemism ever.

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(laughter from the audience). So this is basically just like a compass, right?. We have the compass there's a ring around that.. It shows us which direction we're going.

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And then,, if we turn the airplane,, then that compass ring will turn.

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With it, so we know which direction we're going.

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and then, that line in the middle there,. That's the airway., so there's another,.

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There's like a dial where you can dial in which airway you want to go on.

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So then it goes like, "oh.! You are to the left.

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Of the airway and you're approaching it at a 45 degree, angle.

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So this airplane is going to hit that airway and then it's going to turn,.

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And then it'll be fine. and so,. That's essentially what I built on the palm pilot., and so we have a similar situation. Here.

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We're slightly to the left of the airway, and we're approaching it from the side,.

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And then we're going to turn, and then go straight along that,.

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And then- there's all sorts of information you can provide here since we've got gps, like we know we're 19 miles away.

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From the thing we're going to,, it's probably going to take us twelves minutes to get there, we're roughly 3,500 feet,.

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And so on, and so forth., what was next? yeah, so, I mentioned the gps device gives.

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You the this, like crazy text format. this thing called the nmea,.

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Which is like the national marine- they--.

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(Audience laughing), I don't really know who they are., but they designed this standard for systems on boats.

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To talk to each other, and somehow we ended up using that for airplanes and gps devices. Too,.

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Even like raw gps chips that will send this like stupid text format,.

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To whatever other thing its attached to on the device, you've got.

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But it gives you everything you need, and it'll update you periodically,.

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And so on, and so forth,, so just parse, that, and you're good to go.

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And then, of course,, you also need to know where airports are, so,. How do we do that?.

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Oh,, sorry, I need to back up just a sec., so once we've got that,, we know where the airport is,, we know where we are,. We know which way we're pointed, at point. It's just a simple trigonometric problem,.

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Right?, it's not quite simple, because you have to project.

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A triangle onto a sphere, or a spheroid,, perfectly spherical, cow.

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No one knows what joke I'm talking: about. (laughs) (laughter from audience), but at short distances,. This is a fine approximation,, so that works out pretty well.

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And then, you can figure out exactly how far off you are,, which direction.

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You need to point to get there., so that's great.

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But how do we know where the thing is we're going? To? well, us government.

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To the rescue again. at the time,, there was a database called the digital aeronautical flight information, file,.

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Which covered the entire world., it was compiled by the military,.

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And then they gave it out for free,, which seems kind of strange,.

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But, you know,, they don't anymore,. So I guess that's not very strange..

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I don't know. unfortunately, that data is not available anymore,, but you can get.

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The coded instrument, flight procedures,.

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Which, you know- another aviationism-, it's just aviation data,, but that costs.

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A little bit of money from the faa.

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So that's pretty great..

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So what other- "learnings" is not a word, neither-! That's a thing you do with food-.

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Okay, lessons-, that's a word. okay- so,, you know,. What can we learn.

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From all of this stuff, from my experience, here?, if you want to work with datasets,, the us government has tons of it,.

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They're just out there, as way know now collecting all kinds of data,.

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On all kinds of things-- (everyone laughing), some of it they give away-, probably not your phone calls,.

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But, you know,, that's for the best,, I guess.. It's all housed on-. You can go.

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To data.gov, and they've collected all of the various datasets that they're making from carrot-delimited food databases to-, there's a ufo sightings database.

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One of my coworkers correlated the ufo sightings database.

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With the drug convictions database (everyone laughing), that was pretty awesome- all kinds of stuff.

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The other thing is that these kinds of projects, they can simultaneously level up your tech, skills, and your skills.

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In whatever your other interest happens to be. you know,, I mean,.

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Every aviator has to learn some basic navigation skills,.

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But, you know,. This project really took it to the next level for me,.

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And really made me think about exactly how all the math works, and all that stuff, and then, on top of that,, I had to work.

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Within the constraints of this incredibly restricted, system,.

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Which, in a strange, way, sort of prepared me for some of the work that I do.

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At twitter,, which is the next point. you know,, I encourage people to work.

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In environments that they're not familiar with., if you are a web, developer, make a desktop app, if you're a web designer, you know,.

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Do some design- that's not for the web, and so on. and you can be pretty surprised.

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What you learn. the work that I did on the navigation system,.

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It's similar to working at scale in the sense that you really have to get the most.

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Out of every little tiny bit that you're working with.

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You've got to get the most out of the cpu,. You've got to get the most out of your memory., you know,. Obviously the difference with working at scale.

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Is that you've got tons and tons of machines, but the demand is also very high. so,, but the end result as far as what you have to do.

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As a programmer is very similar. so,, that's my talk.

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I'm @danadanger, and if you want to see the code for that system,, it's up on my github account, danadanger/skynav .

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It's all written in c and for an ancient operating system that doesn't exist, but it might be interesting if you're- (everyone laughing), if you'd like to see how the navigation works in particular.. So thanks for listening, and I'll see you at q&a.

C

(Audience applauding).

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♪ (groovy music) ♪.

B

That was- can we give another round of applause for dana?

B

(audience applauding) your such an amazing person!, (audience applauding).

B

I personally have been, a really big fan of dana's, like just through the community, and on twitter stalking, her every word,.

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You know, that kind of thing,, which is totally normal, right?.

B

But I'm really- we're really honored to have you so thank you., yeah.. So normally, one of the first questions I ask is,: did you have an "aha-moment".

B

With programming or computers,, even when you were little, like,, what was your "oh shit? Moment?" yeah., my "oh shit, moment," gosh,, it's all kind of a blur at this point.

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Because I started programming when I was like eight or nine., I guess.

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I'm a paul graham-approved, programmer., (julie and audience laughing).

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(Julie) shoutout! now I'm in trouble. (laughs), but the thing that I always really wanted to do.

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Was build a role playing game,, which I still haven't done.

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So maybe when I take some time to get some time off, I'll do that.

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But I just got really into programming for programming's sake, and then I decided- like when I was a teenager,.

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I thought I wanted to be a professor.. My dad is a professor, so that always seemed really cool. so, yeah.

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(Julie), did you go to school for programming, then? no,? I did not go to school-. I went to arizona state for like a week--, (julie and audience laughing).

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As one does. and I would like to say that my decision to leave was like very thoughtful.

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And deliberate,, but I was 18. nothing that an 18-year-old does is thoughtful,.

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I give a lot of talks to highshoolers and that's always like a point of awkwardness between me and the teachers who are hosting me. they're like,.

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"Oh,, where did you go to school?", I'm like, "I didn't, and I got bad grades in high school,, so tadah!".

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(Audience laughing) (giggles) here I am! love me!.

B

Yep. okay, so,: you are fairly well known in the open source, community,.

B

What was the first open source project you contributed to?. Do you remember?.

B

Or favorite open source project?. But if you do say bootstrap,.

B

I will have to play you off the stage. (dana) oh, hell, no! no,. I do not write.

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Javascript, okay. (julie and dana laughing) gosh!, I think- honestly,. I think the first one I contributed to.

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Was-, I don't even remember what its called anymore. it's a software load balancer.

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I think it's just called balance,, I don't remember., but I didn't-, I needed a different strategy for allocating connections to hosts, and it didn't support the one.

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That I wanted,, so I added it and that was that.

C

(julie) cool!, that's pretty cool.. I actually haven't done a whole lot of open source contributions,.

C

Which kind of bums me out,, you know, more just for a lack of time.

C

Than anything else. (julie) yeah.

B

So, you're, obviously a woman of so many talents,, so many things.

B

You're, a licensed pilot, as you went through in your talk, a little bit,.

B

But you also study like crazy foreign languages like celtic and-, unless you're just trolling the internet,, like I'm pretty sure you do those things.

B

(Laughs) are there any other hobbies that you have right, now,.

B

Or you're interested in right, now?.

C

Not so much right, now. I'm trying to get back into playing bass.

C

I played bass in marching band in high school,. If you can imagine that.

C

I did not actually march.. I just had an amp with a car battery,.

C

(Julie and audience laughing) and they just like stuck me on the sidelines, and then I played bass. so anyway, I'm trying to get into that.

C

Because that's really fun., I was making chain mail for a while. that was- (laughs).

C

That's really boring., it's the most boring thing: I've ever done., you're just knitting with metal., it's awful.

C

(Audience laughing).

B

How did you pick that up,, like what inspired you-?

B

Were you reading chaucer? like what do you--, (dana and audience laughing).

C

I think- oh gosh!, somebody sent me.

C

A link to this woman's website.

C

She makes chain mail jewellery,, which is totally awesome, and I was like, "oh, I can do that.. Surely she hasn't invested tons.

C

Of her time and energy into perfecting this craft,, I can.

C

Just-- right. do it overnight.

D

Yeah., how white male of you, you know, like-.

B

(Audience laughing and applauding).

B

Way to nail- well like, take that back, like, for us.

B

(Audience laughing) women in chain mail,, that's my new--.

C

(Audience laughing) that's going to be me, and one other person.

C

E

(Julie), do you need a website?, I'm available., I can--.

B

Okay, yeah, no, great.

B

okay, so,. My next thing was literally tell us about flying,, but you told us.

B

So much about that already,. So my next question is: when are you going to space?.

C

Oh god!, so there- (laughs). This is my favorite thing, ever., so axe bodyspray-. I don't know.

C

If you all- yeah, any story that starts with axe, bodyspray either ends.

C

In hilarity or sadness. (audience laughing), so they ran this promotion where they were going-.

C

I don't even know if it was just a sweepstakes, or you had to like write- no,. You do not have to write essays for axe body. Spray.

C

What am I saying? (dana and audience laughing), but they were going to send somebody into space on one of those like suborbital flights,. You know,, like the space ship one,.

C

Or whatever. it wasn't space ship one,, but it was the same deal,.

C

And it was this: like super gendered thing., they were like, "be, the first bro in space!".

C

(Audience laughing), it's like,, "hey man!"--, (julie), "get, smirnoff iced in space!", yeah, exactly! have the first natty light in space!, (julie and audience laughing) and so,. I was like, "wouldn't, it be fucking hilarious,. If axe body spray had to send.

C

The first transwoman ever into space?", so I tried to do that,.

C

But obviously I didn't win.

B

You're missing your headband, and your- you've got to like have.

B

The style-- no, I know.

E

To win that bro--.

B

Yeah-- contest. yeah-- obviously. yeah. so,. Where have you flown, like? Where have you personally-.

B

Like what are your flight paths that you've taken?.

C

Most of the flying that I did was in indiana.. That's where I learned how to do it.. I haven't done a whole lot of flying out here, personally.

C

Because twitter is a big time, commitment,.

C

And flying out here is actually a giant pain in the ass because you have to go to like palo, alto, or somewhere down in the peninsula,.

C

So, you know,. It takes like an hour to even get to the airport,.

C

And then you've got this totally insane airspace to deal with once you get up there,. So it's just,, you know,.

C

It's really sort of nerve-racking and not very enjoyable for me,.

C

So I'm hoping to do more of that,, you know, in the coming year,.

C

And so on., but I flew to michigan,, I flew- illinois, lots of little tiny airports.

C

For like,, they call it the hundred dollar hamburger,.

C

You just fly to some random, tiny airport, and there's like a dinner there,.

C

And you eat food, and you get fat, and then you go back.

C

I think the longest flight I did was to south carolina from indiana. that was really cool.. You need to have like a long flight.

C

To qualify for your commercial license,, so that is what I did that for.

C

Cool. that counts as a long flight? that was about 300 miles,. I think.-- oh. how nice!.

B

It's got to be over 250.

C

If I remember cool!.

B

Correctly. oh, and I flew on a lake.. I flew a seaplane.

C

That was really fun.

B

That's awesome!: that's really cool. so,. How do you think about-.

B

When you want to learn a new skill,, even if it's a new programming language-, I know you got really into like scala. Like last year-, I know, again,.

B

Stalking her on the internet-, how do you-- so weird! decide what you want to learn next, or how do you prioritize?.

C

Most of the stuff- well,, most of the languages that I've really mastered.

C

Have been languages that I've learned on the job.

C

I think every single job I've gone into,. I've had to use a language.

C

That I either had never heard of, or had heard of, but never really used,.

C

Or if I had used it,, I hadn't used it to an extent that would, you know,.

C

Make me a professional. so,. I learned ruby and rails on the job.

C

At the moms and pets websites.

C

I learned scala at twitter, and so it's-. The thing.

C

That keeps me going is learning new things,.

C

And so, you know,, I could conceivably still be writing ruby on rails.

C

If I wanted to. there's still a lot of ruby at twitter,, despite rumors to the contrary. but, you know,, I did that for four years,.

C

And I just wanted to try something new.

B

So you've been at twitter for almost four years: now, right?.

B

How did twitter find you?? I know you kind of glossed over this in your talk,.

B

But how did-- yeah! twitter.

C

Found me on github,, so thank you. (laughs).

C

So, the contribution that I made to that software load balancer turned out.

C

Not to actually do what I wanted to in the end, anyway.

C

So I just wrote my own, and I just got this random email totally out of the blue.

C

From marcel molina,, who was- well still is an engineer at twitter,.

C

And was at the time., I guess he had been trawling, github.

C

For engineers., I don't really,, you know-, I don't know what the back story-- (julie) as one does.

A

As one does,, maybe for dates,, I don't know.

C

(Julie and audience laughing), no!, (dana and audience laughing).

C

(Julie) "must write c++" yeah!, oh. no! (julie). That's what my ok cupid says.

B

Deal breaker. deal breaker!.

C

Anyway. so,, he saw the load balancer that I had written and he thought it was-.

C

He liked the way it was written, and it was in ruby,, so it demonstrated.

C

Some skill in a language that we were using at the time.

C

I had like the shitiest day that day, and then I got home, and I was like,.

C

"I hate everything!, I'm going to take a nap., so I took a nap, and then I woke up.. It's like 8:00 pm, and I open my laptop,.

C

And there's this email, twitter engineering, and I'm like, "you assholes!, I hate- (laughs). Why are you playing this joke on me?.

C

(Laughs) but no, it was for real.

B

So how do think they keep you? like,? I mean, four years into twitter,.

B

I mean, you don't have to go into details if you don't want to,, but like,.

B

What are some of the things that you like about working at twitter, or have loved?.

C

I love that it's completely insane., it's sort of-. I don't want to say.

C

It's like an "anything goes" workplace, but its the most relaxed, and I still-.

C

I don't know, I've been there. Four years, and I still haven't, found a good way to articulate this, but it's sort of simultaneously relaxed and intense,.

C

Like,, it's relaxed in all the right, ways, and intense in all the right. Ways.

C

people are really intense. About, you know, wanting to be good engineers, and to build.

C

Good systems, that do good things for the world,.

C

And they're relaxed about pretty much everything else.

C

You know,, I don't know., it just feels, like my people, there.

C

And then, you know,, the food doesn't hurt. (julie and audience laughing).

B

(Julie) big fan of snacks as well, personally.

D

Oh,, the cheese!.

B

(Julie), the cheese!

B

so,. Do you work with any other women on the team you're on now?.

C

Yeah., I'm sort of in between teams,, like I alluded to., so the ads api team,.

C

I worked with sarah brown who's really awesome.

C

She joined around the same time that I did, and was doing frontend. Development.. She made the jump to scala around the same time. I did,.

C

I think. so she's pretty great, and my new team-.

C

I'm going to be working with sharon, lee who's- she's, going to be my boss.

C

I used to be her boss at twitter,, so the tables have turned--.

C

(Julie and audience laughing), I'm not really sure to whose benefit. but- yeah, she's, you know,.

C

She's fantastic.

B

What do you think it's- I mean, this is such a loaded, question,.

B

But you talked on your tweet from the other day that you posted at the beginning of your talk that said, "welcome to tech. when you're a woman in tech,. You have.

B

Two jobs,, and that is your regular job, and also being a woman in tech.".

B

What do think it- like, for you, what it's like to work with? Mostly men?? I don't think.

C

About it, a whole lot, and you know,, because I am a transwoman,, I have the history of being raised. Male,.

C

And so there's I think, you know,. It would be ridiculous to say that that doesn't influence.

C

The way that I interact with men. so,, you know, most of the time,.

C

It's not really something that's on my mind, and especially at twitter. It's like-, you know,. We don't really have like-.

C

(Julie), it's not like <I>the wolf of wall, street.</I> right., exactly., yeah., (audience laughing), one time,, somebody put up a flier on the men's room,, but not the women's room, and we fixed that,. So that's--.

C

(Audience laughing).

C

Yeah, that's kind of-- hot drama!,.

B

Yeah, wow! really hot! although,, I will say I did have one time where I sat down in the cafeteria,.

C

And this guy,, an engineer who I hadn't, met yet sat down across from me, and introduced himself,.

C

And he said, "so,. Are you in sales or marketing?", (audience groaning).

D

I was like, "oh,, mother, fucker!".

A

(Audience laughing and applauding).

B

(Julie) he no longer works at twitter. (dana) right!, (audience laughing) he's dead, now.

C

(Everyone laughing).

B

So that's a great transition, into-- (everyone laughing).

B

(Laughs) I wanted to ask you,: we could talk a little bit about lambda ladies,.

B

And what inspired you to start a community for women who want to get involved.

B

In functional programming, and also, may be, you could just gloss over what functional programming is for all the younger people.

B

In the audience who aren't familiar with it.

C

Sure. functional programming is programming for nerds.

C

I know you already think of programmers as nerds,, but within the set of nerds.

C

There are even nerdier people.

C

it's a way of-, so traditionally,.

C

The way that one thinks of programming is like a list of commands.

C

you're issuing orders to the computer,, you know, and no matter what kind.

C

Of programming language you're using ultimately,, that's! What's going to happen, you know, on the machine code, level.

C

But functional programming is more declarative,.

C

And is more descriptive. instead of saying like, "do this thing,", you say-.

C

You're, literally just writing, mathematical functions,, and so you say like, "when. You give this input to this function,.

C

It produces this result, and it's all about not mutating.

C

Any state-- and I totally blanked on the second thing I was going to say.

C

About that but- anyway., it's super hot right, now.

C

Super hot!, I read a lot of medium posts.

B

About it. so,, what got you involved in that?? What inspired you.

B

To build a community specifically for women who, like functional programming?,.

B

So,, I can't remember which of the five of us got in touch first,.

C

But the sort of co-founders of the group, kelsey gilmore-innis, susan potter,.

C

Rachel reese,- and I only know her by her twitter handle, codemiller.

C

I'm a horrible person. how embarrassing!

C

anyway. we originally- we had gotten together because we wanted to do a presentation at grace. Hopper.

C

About functional programming, and we called ourselves.

C

"The lambda ladies.". That proposal got rejected unfortunately,.

C

But we were like, "why, don't we just start a thing called "lambda ladies?".

C

And then we thought, like, "okay, we're going to start this google group, and get like ten people, or whatever,, but we're like- we're up to over 100. Now.

C

Already, and it was,, it was just astonishing how much pent up demand there was for this kind of community.

B

That's really cool. finder people is basically like one of those things.

B

So, another that dana does that, maybe you didn't mention in your introduction- was that she actually works with the state department-. The state department, here,.

B

But working with india on women's issues., I just wanted to talk a little bit.

B

About your work there and how you manage that kind of stuff will all of the work you do.

B

In the open source and programming communities.

C

Yeah. wow,, so let's talk about imposter syndrome for a second. (laughs). I don't know how many of you have heard.

C

Of katy stanton. she's, our vp of international market development.-.

C

And she used to be at the state department, and at google before that,, so absolutely astonishing, woman, she's, really great.

C

So, but one of her state department, colleagues, emailed her,.

C

I guess about a year ago, asking if she wanted to help out.

C

With a clinton global initiative proposal, they were putting together for getting.

C

More women into tech in india, and a couple other countries.

C

And, you know, katy, couldn't do this,, and so she sent it to me for some reason,.

C

And two other people, and the other women were like, "no way!" and I was like,.

C

"Yes!, of course, I'll do that,", because I don't read things before I agree to do: them., (everyone, laughing), that's kind of how I ended up. Here.

C

(everyone laughing).

A

(Dana), I'm kidding!.

C

(Julie) trapped, you!.

B

Now I know whenever I want something from you to just send you an email with a blank subject and you'll, say "yes" before you actually realize.

C

What you're committing to. totally. yeah. so, anyway., so the commitment was.

C

To go to india for four days with about a dozen other women.

C

From tech companies,, all kinds of companies like microsoft,.

C

And cisco-, maybe not cisco-, but, sort of established.

C

Like intel, microsoft,, so on, and so forth.

C

And when I got the sheet for this-, the state department schedules things.

C

Down to the minute. they are like,, "you are going to pee between 9:04.

C

And 9:08, and then you're going to your next meeting at 9:12,.

C

And so they have this huge packet that they send you before. You do anything,.

C

And so I get the information for the trip, and I'm looking through all the bio-.

C

I had to write a one-page bio as well. that was insane,, so I'm looking.

C

At all these bios and its all like, "vice, president of so-and-so,",.

C

And, you know, "c-suite level executive.", and here I am like, "software engineer.".

C

So (laughs) I emailed katy. it literally said,.

C

"What, the fuck have I gotten myself: into?" (julie and audience laughing) "I'm totally outclassed here.", but she was like, "whatever., no you're not., it's cool., just go.".

C

So I just went and it turned out to be like super awesome,.

C

And I had lots of,, you know, learned lots of things. There, met with tons of people,.

C

You know, government- parliament, representatives,.

C

You know, ngos that are doing work there for women in tech, and so on, and so forth.

C

So it was a very powerful experience, and the proposal got accepted,.

C

So that program is gearing up to get underway right, now.

C

(Julie), so we kind of hit you by surprise,, but if some of the women here wanted.

B

To get involved in programs like that, or even creating something like lambda ladies,, what's your best advice for them?.

C

It's sort of weird how this network of different ngos and the state department works..

C

So a lot of the stuff that I do that involves the state department.

C

Is through this group called the international institute of education,.

C

And they run all kinds of different programs.

C

On behalf of the state department,, one of which is called tech, women,.

C

Which is a mentoring program for women from the middle east, and north africa.

C

These women apply to come to the states, and have like a one-month stint.

C

At a tech, company, and then,, there are professional mentors,.

C

And cultural mentors that apply from those companies, and then they get to mentor these women and so on and so forth.. So that's a really good way to get involved in it, and usually-. So you do that for a month.

C

And you come up with a project for them to work on, and you know,.

C

Hang out with them., they always want to go skydiving.. I don't know what that's about. (audience laughing) and then they find out that we don't give them health, insurance, and they're like, "oh., maybe not.. That's not such a great idea.".

C

But that's a really good way to get involved with that stuff, and then, a couple months after you do that mentoring, project,! You don't have.

C

To,, but you have the option to visit one of the countries that's represented.

C

In the group.- so I mentored a woman from morocco, [salim makessi], in october,.

C

And it's coincidental that we just happen to be going to morocco for the travel portion of this,. But it's going to be pretty great to go, see where she's from.

B

That's awesome., so we have some time to take a few questions from the audience.

B

Does anyone have anything they want to ask dana? okay, there you go, yeah.

A

(Man), where do you see the technology industry going in the next ten years, based on what it's doing, now?.

B

The question was, "where: do you see the technology industry going in the next ten years?" where's that magic 8-ball.

B

That we have around here?.

C

I have no idea.

C

more cat, pictures? (audience laughing).

C

(Man) I'm satisfied with that. yeah. sorry,. If I knew that,, I wouldn't be working for somebody.

C

(Everyone laughing).

C

(Man), where would you like to see it??

C

Where would I like to see it? "where would see like to see it? Go?" is the question.

C

You know, from an impact perspective, I, well-, so one of the things.

C

That, I think, gets glossed over a bit when we talk about women in tech.

C

Is there are also enormous racial disparities.

C

In tech.- and I think that that's something that's- there are programs.

C

That are working on this, like black girls, code, and so on,, but I don't think they're quite getting.

C

The attention that they deserve yet.

C

and so that's something that I would really like to see more of happen, and then,, you know, the conflict, that's been brewing.

C

Between the tech, industry, and the other citizens.

C

Of san francisco,, that's got to-. We've got to come to a solution on that.

C

We can't just keep yelling at each other, and expect for something good.

C

To come out of that.

A

Another question?.

A

(Guy) [inaudible].

E

(Julie) that was fine.. I mean, there's this, like amazing, quote: that's like,.

B

"You put more women at the table, because it makes the table a better table.".

B

I don't know if that actually like-- (guy) [inaudible], I mean,, I see things changing., I don't know-- yeah.. So there.

C

Are a couple of problems? Here. one is that the number of women in tech has actually declined quite a bit since the 80's.

C

it used to be 35 percent-. This is in computer science, majors.

C

It used to be like 35, percent, and now its down to like 12.

C

So, you know, as far as like getting women at the table,.

C

We've got to fix that before-. Otherwise, there aren't going to be any women to put at the table. and then, the women that are in the industry, they're, not.

C

In positions of leadership., you know,, we still have a really big leadership, problem.. So that's something that needs to change as well. also,. I also want to say,.

C

It's sort of-, I don't want to say it's a pet peeve of mine,, but I've gotten a little jaded on the idea that like, "oh,. We should bring women.

C

To the table because they have unique perspectives, and so on." well, yes,, that's true,. You should also bring women to the table because they're people., it's like,, no one is saying,.

C

"The good thing about having the men at the table is that they have male perspectives.", it's like,, "no they're, just there.

C

They just happen to be the people who are working on these problems," right?.

B

Yeah. I mean, it's interesting, because-, so I recently read.

B

This article about how people have basically ignored feminism on the entire continent of africa,, I mean there are countries where 64 percent of rwanda's parliament is now female, and they did enforce.

B

Some kind of quota- like that's more towards like the perspective,, but I mean,.

B

It's pushed beyond that, and there's a huge feminist movement going on there.

B

Right now,, so there's something about this industry that makes us think.

B

That our problems are very like unique, and that they aren't being addressed.

B

In other industries, or other cultures, or other countries,, and I think,.

B

If we started paying more attention to how other people are tackling.

B

These issues,, I think, we'd, get there a lot faster.. I think tech has a lot.

B

Of growing up to do., I think that's my bit,, my bit for tonight. yes?.

B

(Guy), do you think part of the problem is that we take a very specific group,.

F

And we're like, "today, this group, we're going to like bring them up,".

F

Rather than thinking about just bringing people to the table,, because I wonder.

F

If we think about how effective are we going to be at equality.

F

In general,, if we continue to go group by group by group.

F

"First we're going to do women, and then we're going to do minorities, and then-". We have incredible disparities. also,. We have like poverty,.

F

And we're going to have like education, and all these things., you think it is,.

F

Maybe, from a technical perspective, more efficient to go one by one,.

F

Or to just say, like, "our goal is to bring more smart people.

C

To the table,", whoever they are?

C

(dana) yeah., I've actually got a piece coming out on monday,.

C

Which is that,, you know,, when we talk about women in tech,, we're talking.

C

About- we're talking, women as a group intersect with all of these other groups,.

C

Right?, when you talk about racial minorities, or class, or sexuality,, gender identity, and so on,, and so forth,.

C

And I don't, you know, this kind of goes back to what I was saying. Earlier.

C

I personally don't see that sort of heterogeneity being taken into account.

C

In a lot of the sort of women in tech, solutions.

C

I mean like, take <I>lean in,</I> for example., it's like, "yes!. Let's help upper class women.

C

Who went to ivy-league? Schools have careers by,, you know,, reinforcing.

C

All of the existing structures in the workplace!" great! sounds awesome. not really for me.

C

So, yeah., I would agree with you.

C

That, you know- second wave feminism-.

C

One of the big things about second wave feminism was that the first wave didn't really care.

C

About women of color, didn't address any of their interests,. It was really just like-.

C

Women's rights at that time were upper class white. Women's rights,.

C

And one of the whole points of the second wave of feminism.

C

Was to address that., so I feel like we run the risk of repeating that mistake.

B

Okay,, I'm going to take two more questions.

B

Too many men have been raising their hands.. I've got to balance this out right, now., this lovely lady right at the front.

A

What's your question? (lady), what do you think are some of the biggest blockers to entry,.

D

Or forms of discrimination of female engineers, entering,.

D

Or wanting to enter a male space, and how can other female engineers help.

D

Women overcome that?.

C

(Dana) I mean, one of the biggest blockers is there's almost a marketing problem.

C

In a way. like the way that tech careers are described.

C

Tend to be more appealing to men, and boys than they do to women and girls,.

C

And there was a study,, maybe four or five years ago.

C

By a marketing consulting firm that looked into this, and they looked into the specific ways-, the specific language that was being used.

C

To describe tech careers to college-bound highschoolers,.

C

And they found that if they focused on sort of different aspects of careers,.

C

In tech,, then, they could not totally reverse.

C

Girls' disinterest in getting into tech,, but it made a significant difference,.

C

So that's a big part of the problem, I think., I don't know.

C

It's tempting to say that there is just a pipeline problem,, but I don't think.

C

It's that simple.. I really think its about the way that tech careers are positioned.

C

In society, and how we describe them.

B

(Julie) you!, I can see you from here,, but I can't quite--.

B

(Woman in the back) [inaudible] excited to ask a question.

E

About your presentation., your [inaudible] acumen,, one question I have is.

E

At the time,, were there other alternatives for you to [inaudible], or did you make.

E

That for yourself, because there was literally no alternative, [inaudible]?.

C

(Dana) there were some alternatives. garmin,, you know,. They make gps units.

C

For cars and so on. they also make units for airplanes,, but that's no fun. (laughs).

C

(Dana and audience laughing).

A

(Julie) one more question,, maybe? yeah!.

B

(Woman), how do you balance your two jobs-.

E

The technical job and women in tech job?. How do you find that balance?.

B

The question is, "how: do you find the balance between your two jobs,.

B

One of which your normal job-, your programming, job, and also being a woman in tech?.

C

I have to admit I'm not very good. At that., like I said,, I kind of have a habit.

C

Of saying "yes" to everything. and I think- gosh!.

C

I can't even remember if I gave a talk in november or not.

C

(audience laughing). I did something in november., (audience, laughing) and then,. I swore, "the rest of the year,, I'm not doing anything,".

C

And then two days later,, I get three emails from people, and I'm like, "oh yeah! I'll totally write that article. I'll totally do this other thing for you," and like, "what is wrong with me?".

C

So, I just, you know,, got to learn to say "no.".

B

(Julie) one thing-, the second part of your question, actually,.

B

About what other female engineers can do, advocate for other women,.

B

And also, just positive reinforcement, like,. I've noticed even in some.

B

Of the female programmers here that I've sought out specifically,.

B

And gone and had coffee, with, and said, "hey!, I think you're really awesome!".

B

"You should work at github!" and I remember a few of them. Saying, "I'm not good enough to work there.", but I don't feel.

B

Like I hear that a lot from men,, I think I hear that much more from women,.

B

So I make it a point to tell the women who I know who are kickass.

B

That they are- they're kickass and that they deserve everything.

B

That any man in this industry, has. so advocate for them, and reinforce.

B

Positive things about them.

C

And also, advocating for women within your organization.

C

I think is really big.. I hammer on this point. Every time I get.

C

To talk to people, because all this talk about mentorship,, which is fine-.

C

It's fine to have mentors, but it's way more important, I think, to have an advocate at your company.

C

So katy stanton,, who I talked about earlier, she's,, you know-. These are all sort of-. These can be informal, arrangements.

C

Some companies have really formalized sort of like ritualized ways.

C

Of arranging this but,, you know, katy stanton, just believed.

C

That I could do this thing in india,, and so she said, "do. You want to do this?" and it was fine. and then, my boss for a long time,, raffi krikorian,. He believed in me,.

C

And his- mentorship is like-, so mentorship is like an activity.

C

That's directed at you. advocacy is an activity that is directed at everyone else., and I think we really need to have.

C

B

Yeah. keep opening doors for the women after you.

C

It's ironic. open the door for women.-- open the door. (audience laughing).

B

(Julie) help them open the door for themselves.

B

(dana) hold it for them!.

C

(Julie) yes! (dana) make a grand flourish! (julie) yeah! curtsy! no.

A

Thank you guys so much for joining us for passion projects..

A

I think dana's sticking, around. (audience applauding).

A

♪ (groovy music) ♪.