A number of noteworthy items related to women in the .NET development community crossed my radar this week and I thought I would set them down in one place.
- Channel 9 has started a series of interviews highlighting different interesting jobs held by women around Microsoft. It is called "WM_IN: women in technology". The first 3 interviews up there are of some pretty impressive women. Angela Mills has knocked my socks off every time I have met her or just had the good fortune to listen to her. Though her background is highly technical, she is now the Group Program Manager for the WCF team - which means she is in charge of [what is, in my opinion] one of the most important developer areas at Microsoft (not to mention the leader of a lot of brilliant talent!) Next was Mary Snapp, who heads of all of Microsoft's lawyers. That job probably prepares her to run a small government someday. And the most recent is Katy Hunter who has a hard-to-imagine job as Steve Ballmer's speechwriter.
- In a newsletter from ASPNETPro magazine, I learned that Michele Leroux Bustamante will be starting a monthly column called ASP.NET Under the Hood. In all of the .NET mags I read, I have never seen a regular column by a woman. What makes this great though is that Michele is no ordinary developer, but a plumber who really understands how software works as well as someone who understands the big business picture of software development. It makes for a very powerful combination of how and why. I'm looking forward to this.
- Sara Rea's book, Building Intelligent .NET Applications (about using .NET for A.I. development) was slash-dotted. It was actually Bill Ryan's rave review of the book that got slash-dotted, but that's just the same to me.
- There's a new MSDN Developer Community Champion (Microsoft's professional presenters who deliver Microsoft topics at MSDN events and other events around the u.s.) and it's a girl! Not only that, but it's a friend of mine and Vermont.NET member from right here in Burlington, Vermont, Susan Wisowaty. Susan will be covering New York and New Jersey, but we'll be sure to leverage her talents right here in Burlington!