The worst that could happen?

I got my flu shot yesterday. I’ve been doing that every year (with one exception) for decades, because every year for almost a century, humankind has come up against a range of viruses that we still don’t quite know how to deal with.

Yes—since the global influenza pandemic of 1918-1919, when more people were killed by the flu than by four years of total war, our scientists have been struggling to determine the best way to fight the constantly-mutating strains. So being vaccinated against them is still your best bet for treatment.

But it just does not cease to cause me amazement the extent to which people—even clearly intelligent and apparently well-educated ones—are ignorant of this killer, which annually takes out hundreds of thousands of us. Young, old, healthy, not—the flu is like Honey Badger—it don’t give a shit.

A few weeks ago I was out on the streets of Cupertino with a walking meetup. I had a Stanford Medical Center surgical nurse on my left and a young corporate lawyer-between-gigs on my right. I mentioned that I was a little behind-time in getting the vaccination this year. The lawyer boasted that he’s never had one because, “what’s the worst that could happen?...”

As he was drawing breath to describe cold symptoms, I interjected, “Death. Death is the worst thing that could happen.” And at the same moment the nurse said flatly, “You could die.”

You could tell he wasn’t convinced, so I don’t expect that the next time I see him he’ll have bothered with it. Aside from being arrogant and having a law degree, he seems nice enough, so I hope he doesn’t catch the flu. Or that, if he does, his COBRA coverage will pay for his hospitalization.

As for me, I’ll take the usual precautions—lots of hand-washing and the like. But I feel a lot better for having had the shot, and I strongly urge you to do likewise.

Diversity has its limits

A couple of days ago, for my Ada Lovelace Day post, I briefly discussed the Grace Hopper Celebration, the Anita Borg Institute and the issue of age when talking about diversity in the high tech arena.

Specifically, I mentioned that the main thrust of even the organization and event at the forefront of the drive to increase the numbers of women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) has a blind spot when it comes to including women of a certain age. A number of attendees of previous GHC conferences reported with some degree of wonder that at the much-ballyhooed recruiting expos, if you look like you have a few product launches on you, you become invisible to recruiters. And, likewise, apparently to ABI event planners, who have also ignored them when they expressed concerns about this.

It doesn’t seem to occur to anyone involved in this equation that if you’ve acquired some grey hair and wrinkles in the course of your career in tech, that means you have not only skills, but also experience—valuable experience—in your field, in designing, building, testing, marketing or supporting your product or service.

Back in the mists of time, I was hoping to be able to attend GHC this year, and I registered in the pre-conference job-seeking database. As a result, I’ve received a number of emails from all kinds of companies touting their presence at the conference and proclaiming their eagerness to meet with me and talk opportunities. Hardware, software, services; telecoms, finance, consumer goods; startups, legacies—the whole megillah.

Here’s one of the most recent ones, and it illustrates that age-is-the-best-cloak-of-invisibility principle. The consulting firm Deloitte sent this email urging me (and everyone else who registered) to meet with them during the next few days and see what they can offer me.

Pretty positive, right?

Well, not so much. You’ll notice that the price of admission to the opportunity discussion is taking a “survey”. Well, fair enough. Except:

Yes—if you look at the “survey’s” (it's a registration form, really) required fields, they clearly are expecting to speak exclusively with current students or recent grads. (The “Expected Grad Year” only goes back to 2010; that gives you an idea.)

It’s also interesting that the (required) “Position of Interest” includes three essentially entry-level categories and only one “experienced” one. Clearly no mid- or senior-level women need apply to Deloitte.

What a complete joke! But, sadly, it’s a joke that obviously pervades even the gold-standard women-in-tech conference. Deloitte’s recruiters sent this out with the expectation that they’ll be perceived as real supporters of “diversity”, when in fact they’re just perpetuating the well-established canard that tech is for Millennials only.

Also, sadly, they aren’t the only company at GHC and in the workplace who are operating under that misapprehension. Welcome to my world.

A boy, a bike, a summer's night

A couple of months ago, I noticed this memorial at the corner of El Camino Real and Henderson:

When you see something like that—even at a distance—you know that someone’s had a day much worse than you’ve ever seen, especially when there are stuffed toys involved.

It turns out that Juan Pablo Garcia Venegas was struck by a car while riding his bike on the night of 15 July, and died of his injuries later. He would have been 13 this week. I can't find any details on the accident; there's a Carl's Jr. right at that corner, and a Starbucks the next block over. I wonder if Juan and his friends were out late getting something cold to drink; or just out for a ride. His mother was the sole parent, and the community pitched in to help her give her son a funeral.

There’s video of the aftermath, but I’m not linking to it. I realized while watching it that I could well have heard the first responders going to the scene—I hear everything that comes down El Camino, and Henderson is only a few blocks away. Whenever I hear the sirens—fire engines, EMTs, police—I give thanks that help is on its way to those who need it.

Since the memorial appeared, the stuffed toys and flowers have disappeared, occasionally replaced by other votive objects. But I see the bicycle several times a week, and I’m so sorry for that family’s loss.

Age does not wither...

Whoa—it’s Ada Lovelace Day again? Already?

Well, so it is. Ada Lovelace Day being the time to consider women who’ve made stellar contributions to the advancement of society via one of the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) disciplines. In the past I’ve brought to your attention the mother of modern computers, Grace Hopper (whose Celebration is taking place in Houston this week); Nobel Laureate (in Physiology/Medicine) Rosalyn Sussman; Hedy Lamarr (if you’re reading this on a mobile device, you can thank her for developing the frequency hopping system on which mobile communications are based); and two engineers who contributed to the Allied victory in World War II: Joan Struthers Curran, whose work on little aluminum bits called “chaff” helped to foil Nazi radar and divert attention from the D-Day landings; and Beatrice Shilling, who solved the problem of British fighter planes cutting out mid-dogfight due to carburetors that weren’t designed to support the kinds of maneuvers necessary to take on the Luftwaffe.

I belong to a couple of groups sponsored by the Anita Borg Institute, which puts on the Grace Hopper Celebration, a conference devoted to women in STEM. You’ll recall that the GHC last year made headlines because Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella forgot that Twitter exists and gave a ballroom full of technically savvy women with mobile devices and Wi-Fi connections career advice centered on the notion that not asking for raises is some kind of XX-chromosome superpower.

(There was also the plenary panel of four executives of tech companies—all male—that consisted of the quartet talking amongst themselves and taking no questions from another room full of women with connectivity and social media accounts.)

GHC is about as good as it gets for women in STEM, so I hope the programs this week are more on point than last year’s. And one of the issues that I’ve seen emerging in discussions over the past few weeks is that of the invisibility of women of a certain age in tech. There were several threads in which a number of women over 35 who attended previous GHCs said that the recruiters—who attend en masse to try to attract female engineers to make their companies not look so much like frat houses—almost literally did not see them. They looked right past you if you appeared to be more than five years out of college.

And, they added, when they brought up this ridiculous situation to the ABI people, they were met with thunderous silence.

So my subject for Ada Lovelace Day 2015 is Barbara Beskind, whose dream had always been to be an inventor, but had to wait seven decades before she could fulfill it.

When Beskind was planning for college, engineering departments didn’t admit women, so she went into domestic engineering (AKA home economics) and went on to have two careers (one in the Army, then in private practice) as an occupational therapist. During those 60 years, she designed and patented various devices to help patients achieve and maintain balance.

Then a couple of years ago she watched a 60 Minutes segment with the CEO of IDEO, one of the true paradigm-shifting organizations of the Valley They Call Silicon. You may not recognize the name, but IDEO is the design consulting outfit that brought us the mouse. You know:

Among other things.

Beskind, who was ready to retire (for the second time) thought, “Hey, I’d like to work there,” so she reached out to them and they agreed that she had a lot to contribute. So for the past two years, she’s been working in just about the most innovative, bleeding-edge tech-designing field, bringing her deep understanding of the needs of aging people to the creation of a whole range of products.

Think about it—the vast preponderance of the devices and apps you find in both the enterprise and consumer markets are thought up and implemented by Millennials, people whose vision is sharp, for whom joint pain is theoretical and who have no notion of mortality. Designing for stiff fingers, failing eyes and slower movements is not in their native vocabulary. Beskind introduces those elements to them.

What I love about Beskind is that she’s living her dream of being in tech, without having come up through tech. She’s a non-engineer making extremely valuable contributions, and she is recognized by the innovation elite for those contributions. She’s a shining example for non-techies.

She’s also a role model for those of us who are not 20-somethings, who are the Brahmins of the Valley They Call Silicon. She’s kicking major design ass at age 90. We all can’t be Barbara Beskind, but if there are any true thought leaders around here, they should be taking on board the lesson that technology innovation benefits from diversity in background and age, as well as in other areas.

Gratitude Monday: Hotel accommodation

While I was in D.C. last week, I stayed at a “historic” inn. I was only able to get a room there for the two nights because of their contract with the organization I was interviewing with. Apparently they have a three-night minimum stay during their “high” season, so when I checked online their sits showed no availability. Only after I called their group sales office was I able to book a room.

When I arrived, around 1930 on Wednesday, the room they had for me was obviously for handicapped guests. Bars all around the bathroom walls, and a roll-in, no-barrier shower were the major indicators.

Shower-only was not my preference, but when I asked for a room with a bath tub, the one they showed me was dark, poky and littered with a previous guest’s rubbish. It technically had a tub, but—like the room—it was tiny, and frankly I didn’t even want my feet to touch it, much less my butt. So I asked for the first room back, and was grateful to have something with enough light that I could actually put on my makeup.

(I have a feeling that if I’d booked for three nights, my choice of available rooms would have been wider, but there you go.)

The shower was problematic—the adjustable shower head only ranged from shooting water way over my head to hitting me square in the face; its spray only went horizontally, and I couldn’t change the angle. Also, no place to hold soap; are you meant to put that on the floor? In your lap? Not use it at all? And the temperature barely made it to tepid; I don’t know if that’s a restriction for the disabled or common to the entire hotel, but I like a hot shower.

The room itself was large, albeit with only one actual chair, at the desk. And I had to hop up onto the bed, so I don’t know how someone confined to a wheelchair would have managed without a launching system. But they’d have enjoyed it when they got there, what with the wonderful squishy mattress topping thingie and the 1000-thread count sheets.

But it got me thinking. I have a couple of friends with Multiple Sclerosis, and the extent to which that bastard has constricted their worlds like a cosmic python makes me weep. For two nights, I gave up a very few amenities that I am free to indulge in because my mobility is not restricted by anything worse than stiff joints and sore muscles, and I experienced what my friends would consider a real treat—a first-class hotel room that accommodated their reality.

So I give thanks for the Americans with Disabilities Act that mandates such accommodations in hotels, for the way this place executed on that mandate and for the opportunity to have my perspective recalibrated. All of these are good reasons for my gratitude today.