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c4l'rs Obviously mentoring is a great idea, but it implies a pairing of skilled/less-skilled folks and therefore makes me a bit uneasy in our current context (although no one has said this) because it seems to imply that if we bring up the skills of women they will be treated equally. In fact, we have ample proof that this is not the case. Therefore, I want to promote a concept beyond mentoring: promoting. Also known as: giving credit where credit is due. Make sure that we equally acknowledge and celebrate the technical achievements of women. We already have women doing great geeky stuff, but it's kind of like Mitt Romney's "binder full of women" -- they aren't visible. Sounds easy, right? I think we'll all find that it's harder than it sounds, but we should be making a conscious effort. Let me give a personal anecdote. I was doing some consulting for a large organization, and we got to the point that we needed an XML schema for our metadata. The organization had an uber-geek, and so the task was given to him. After a considerable while (about 2 months) we started pushing for this schema, and finally met with uber-geek who said some strange things about some theory of XML, and essentially we intuited that he didn't know XML schema, was taking a strange path in terms of learning it, and it was clear we wouldn't be getting our schema from him. I went home and wrote the schema (thank you O'Reilly!). Now, you might think that I would have earned geek points for that. But I didn't. In fact, no mention was ever made of the fact that I, rather than uber-geek, wrote the schema. I suspect this would have been an embarrassment to all who looked up to uber-geek, being "bested" by a girl. I don't know how this would have gone were I carrying a Y chromosome, but my guess is that the outcome would have been different, that a sub-uber guy would have been given some credit (while still saving face for uber-geek). This type of scenario plays out many, many times a day. I'm sure it doesn't only happen to women, but it happens to women regularly enough (think about the pay differential that we still live with) that it's quite discouraging. So I see it as my duty, and hope some will join me, to make sure that women's efforts are recognized, publicized, and, if necessary, made "in-your-face" until women in tech achieve the visibility they deserve. kc -- Karen Coyle [log in to unmask] http://kcoyle.net ph: 1-510-540-7596 m: 1-510-435-8234 skype: kcoylenet