Breaking down borders in video games.
Pledge for Ada Lovelace Day 2010
A painting depicting Ada Lovelace, the world's first computer programmer. She's a white woman with brown hair swept up. She wears a white dress.
The lack of women in the videogame industry, especially in technical oriented careers, has been a longstanding problem. We rarely hear about the achievements of women in the games industry with anywhere near as much regularity as we hear about men’s achievements. In 2009, Suw Charman-Anderson launched Ada Lovelace Day to recognise the achievements of women in technology and science:
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.
Who was Ada Lovelace? According to Wikipedia:
Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (10 December 1815 – 27 November 1852), born Augusta Ada Byron, was an English writer chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage’s early mechanical general-purpose computer, the analytical engine. Her notes on the engine include what is recognized as the first algorithm intended to be processed by a machine; as such she is often regarded as the world’s first computer programmer.
Ada Lovelace Day 2009 was a wild success. The goal was to have 1 000 blog about a woman in technology they admire, nearly 2 000 people participated, and tons of readers around the globe learned more about these unsung women. Now it’s time to think about Ada Lovelace Day 2010. This year, the goal is 3072 posts to be published on March 24, 2010.
I participated in last year’s Ada Lovelace Day by writing about Paulina Bozek, who was the Executive Producer and the Game Director of the SingStar franchise of games. This year, I have a couple of ideas for who I want to write about, but I haven’t made a final decision. If you’re interested, start thinking about a heroine in tech or science that you admire, and pledge to write a post! Otherwise, stay tuned for March, when you’ll get to read more about many great women in technology, when the posts will be listed on this handy dandy page.
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Thank for this info. It’s a great idea and I will think about it for the next 24th march… (maybe you should post a reminder on Border House one or two weeks before the 24th, I’m sure it will encourage people to be a part of it).
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Thank you for the suggestion.