Category Archives: Support the Ada Initiative

Annalee Flower Horne: The Ada Initiative “helped to foster a community of women and allies [...] who support each other in speaking out”

This is a cross-post from the blog of our 100th donor, Annalee Flower Horne.

Annalee Flower Horne and Mackenzie Morgan

Last night, I became The Ada Initiative’s 100th Sustaining Donor for 2013.

The Ada Initiative is a non-profit organization dedicated to increasing the participation and status of women in open technology and culture. They do a lot of great work, including advocating for conference Anti-Harassment policies, which make tech conferences safer and more welcoming spaces for women and other minorities. They also organize AdaCamp. AdaCamp DC was a really positive experience for me, and I’m glad I had the opportunity to attend.

Many wonderful people advocate for women in open tech and culture (OT&C), but our community still has a long way to go. Mary Gardener and Valerie Aurora founded the Ada Initiative so they could treat advocacy for women in OT&C as the full-time job that it is. Those of us who value this work need to understand that while volunteer efforts are important and necessary, expecting women and our allies to do this work on a strictly volunteer basis is another way of devaluing our contributions to Open Tech and Culture. We can’t be equal participants if we’re expected to spend a good chunk of our free time–time others get to spend actually contributing to OT&C projects–fighting for our right to safe spaces and basic respect.

The Ada Initiative’s impact on my own life and career extends beyond a couple awesome days at AdaCamp. Their work to promote Anti-Harassment Policies has lead to a sea-change in how conferences think about and address harassment and assault. I’ve been attending geek conventions since I was thirteen, and I’d gotten so used to sexual harassment that I just thought of it as the price of attending cons. The two conferences I’ve attended in the past year have been the first I’ve ever been to where I was neither harassed nor assaulted [Correction: I forgot AdaCamp! That makes three conferences where I wasn't harassed]. One of them had an anti-harassment policy based on the Ada Initiative template. The other addressed their efforts to increase women’s participation in their project in several talks and sessions, including the keynote. I have no doubt that the Ada Initiative contributed to their thinking on that. The Ada Initiative’s work has made me feel safer and more welcome at conferences.

They’ve also helped to foster a community of women and allies within OT&C who support each other in speaking out about bad behavior. When a company does something sexist, or a speaker includes pornography or references to ‘explaining technology to girls’ in their talk, they’re increasingly more likely to get called out for it. Public censure is an important tool in developing an atmosphere where misogyny and harassment are not acceptable. The Ada Initiative’s advocacy inspires me, supports me, and gives me hope for the future of women in Open Technology and Culture.

The Ada Initiative is still seeking donors to sustain its work in 2013. I’m an Ada’s Anchor. Will you join me?

The Ada Initiative needs your help to continue our programs supporting women in open technology and culture. Support us by becoming an Ada’s Angel donor today!

Graydon Hoare: “I donated because I’d like to see the culture change.”

Graydon Hoare, used with permission

Q. Tell us about yourself

I’m a tools and language engineer, currently at Mozilla and working on the Rust language. I was at Red Hat before, and a few other places. I’ve worked primarily on lower-level things: compilers, crypto tools, version control systems, profilers, simulators, debuggers, diagnostic systems, etc. Not usually all that successful, but I keep myself busy. I’m Canadian: grew up in Toronto and live in Vancouver.

Q. Why did you donate to the Ada Initiative?

Because I’d like to see the culture of Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS) communities change. I’ve long found it demoralizing to watch the community fail to talk sensibly about racism, sexism, economic injustice or other forms of systemic oppression, especially its own practices. Denying that the culture has any exclusionary practices and yelling at marginalized people to “grow a thicker skin” is not ok; we can do better. So I was happy to see the Ada initiative form, and I’m hopeful that having full-time people advocating, educating and organizing for change to such broken norms might help. If they can influence things in a positive direction, I’m on their side.

I’m also interested in the larger effects FLOSS culture has on various “open culture” communities inspired by FLOSS, taking cues from it and also taking it in new directions as new people become involved, new projects open up. Wikimedia, OCW, OTW, OSM, IA, OAI, PLoS … there are a lot of pieces of our future culture watching and learning from each other, sharing techniques, knowledge and norms. That interplay is interesting and I know it’s something the Ada Initiative is trying to play a role in shaping the discourse of, I’ve talked to them a bit about this and it’s part of their long term ambition. The society I’m going to be living in over the next few decades seems likely to be heavily populated by open culture movements, and I think those have the potential to be a lot more socially progressive than they currently are, if they can do the necessary work reflecting on, talking about and correcting existing patterns of exclusion.

Q. How did you decide how much to donate to the Ada Initiative?

At the suggestion of an old friend, a few years ago I started taking the question of charities seriously, and considering whether I was actually donating to charities an amount commensurate with my salary: 5%, 10% a year, you know, substantial chunks, not just pocket change. Software folks are well paid, especially for our generation. When I reflected on this — and how little I was really giving, charity-wise — I started to make a much more serious habit of supporting things that mattered to me.

The Ada Initiative needs your help to continue our programs supporting women in open technology and culture. Support us by becoming an Ada’s Angel donor today!

Jesse Ruderman: “I wanted to atone for years of That’s What She Said jokes”

Jesse Ruderman

Jesse Ruderman (@jruderman) works for Mozilla, where he finds creative ways to break Firefox. He’s our largest individual donor, giving ~~$4096~~ $5120 to the Ada Initiative, so we wanted to know more about him!

Q. Why did you donate ~~$4096~~ $5120 to the Ada Initiative?

Several fellow Mozillians I admire and trust had already decided to back The Ada Initiative, so I checked out their site. This bit in an early version of their FAQ struck a chord with me:

Open technology and culture are shaping the future of global society. If we want that society to be socially just and to serve the interests of all people, women must be involved in its creation and organization.

I hadn’t thought of this, but it’s completely right. And reading this told me a few things about the Ada Initiative:

They’re in this for precisely the right reasons, even if I’m not.
They’re great at identifying multiplier effects — something I consider important in deciding where to donate.
They have an optimism and tone that I think will be effective at making men want to help, regardless of their initial opinions on women and feminism.

I’d like to have more women in my field, for the usual selfish het-guy reasons.

I’d like to have more people in open source communities, because I want more awesome open source software to exist. Focusing on women makes sense to me for a few reasons. First, we don’t have to speculate about whether barriers to participation are real, because the barriers that disproportionately affect women (impostor syndrome, sexualized environments, etc.) add up to a very measurable effect. Second, the skewed gender ratio itself creates barriers. Third, success will be easy to see, making it easy to keep momentum.

I wanted to atone for years of That’s What She Said jokes (most of which weren’t really that funny) and any negative side effects of Pornzilla.

Q. How did you decide how much to donate to the Ada Initiative?

It seemed to make more sense than donating smaller amounts over time, especially since they were just getting off the ground. I didn’t realize this would cost me a chance to get various shirts and stickers. ;)

The Ada Initiative needs your help to continue our programs supporting women in open technology and culture. Support us by becoming an Ada’s Angel donor today!

Let’s go to 100 today: get one of 5 signed Kate Beaton prints of Ada Lovelace comic!

Update 3:24AM Thursday Oct 11 UTC: the 5 Kate Beaton prints have now been awarded. Donors at the Ada’s Angel and Ada’s Anchor levels are still eligible for our t-shirt and pendant rewards. Donate now to get yours!

We’re at 95 sustaining donors to the Ada Initiative, donors who given at least $180 to the Ada Initiative to support our work in 2013!

We’d love you to help us get to 100. In the next 24 hours, we’ll give 5 signed prints of Beaton’s “Young Ada Lovelace” comic to the next five donors at Ada’s Anchor level or above ($180 one-off donation, or a recurring donation of $16 a month).

Ada Lovelace comic by Kate Beaton, final panel

Click for full Ada Lovelace comic

Kate Beaton is a popular artist best known for her online web comic, “Hark, A Vagrant!” Kate’s comics put a funny spin on obscure historical events, fictional characters, and historical figures. Of course, our favorites are her hilarious takes on sexism in various forms: in comic books (“Sexy Batman“), on the Internet (“Lady on the Internet“), and movies (“Strong Female Characters“).

Donate now! Be one of the next 5 donors at Ada’s Anchor level or above by Thursday, 11 October, 23:30 UTC (16:30 Thursday USA Pacific time) to get a signed Kate Beaton print of Young Ada Lovelace!

After this we will resume our usual schedule of a print for every 25th donor at the Ada’s Angel level.

(If you don’t want a print, don’t wait to donate! Just let us know via email.)

Courtney Stanton: “If you don’t have women in your speaker lineup, it’s because you don’t want them there”

Courtney Stanton wearing a Magneto helmet

Courtney Stanton is well-known for her tireless work to increase women’s participation in the computer gaming industry and audience. She has worked in the industry for many years as a producer and project manager and currently lives in Boston.

Recently, she organized a game conference, the “No Show” conference, which had 50% women speakers. She wrote up her techniques for attracting qualified women speakers to conferences, which were recently successfully reused by a programming conference, JS Conf EU to get 25% women speakers. In an era when conference organizers are increasingly criticized for all or mostly male speaker lineups, Stanton’s advice is vitally important for conference organizers to read and implement.

In this interview, Courtney gives advice for other conference organizers wanting to increase women speakers at their conferences and talks more about how 50% women speakers made “No Show” a better conference.

What motivated you to start the “No Show” game conference?

I got tired of complaining about the same problems at conferences I was going to. Sometimes it’s easier for people to understand your point if you have an example of what you’re talking about, and so No Show Conference is my example of one way to have a content-rich event for game development professionals without it being a cesspool. I kept thinking, “this stuff cannot be that difficult to fix,” so I tried doing it myself to see if I could do it better.

You wrote about how you got 50% women in the speaker line-up at “No Show.” How did the conference itself go?

The conference was amazing, but of course I’m a little bit biased. I feel like the quality of the talks actually achieved a “zero-filler” event, which was one of my goals. What’s interesting is the sort of audience you get when you have an anti-harassment policy and you’re up front about trying to do something a little bit different. I saw multiple people knitting in the crowd during talks which…is not a thing you see at game dev events. Ever. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive across the board, with the one theme being that they wished more of their friends or colleagues could make it out. I’m trying to fix that for 2013 by booking a larger, cheaper event space, which should make room for more folks and bring the ticket prices down.

The JS Conf EU programming conference got 25% women speakers using your advice. What does this mean for tech conferences in general?

I think it means that if you don’t have women in your speaker lineup, it’s because you don’t want them there…but I thought we all knew that already.

What would you say to other conferences considering using your techniques but worried about how much work it takes?

If you want to put on a conference without doing a lot of work, then you’ll have a shitty conference and the lack of diversity in your speaker lineup will be just one of the ways you advertise said shittiness. Events take work, good events take more work, and really exceptional, unique events where you’re breaking the mold are a second job. (Yes, even if your job is running events in the first place.) I understand it’s possible that some conference organizers are just holding events to make money, but assuming that they’re actually doing it to add value to the industry/community/etc, then I think on some level they know it’s necessary work. Otherwise, you end up with a narrower and narrower slice on stage (and in the audience) of who your community really is, and that way is death.

The Ada Initiative works together with conference organizers to help create more women-friendly conferences and attract women speakers. If an anti-harassment policy made your life better – as someone who attended a conference, or as a conference organizer – please consider helping us support women by donating to our on-going fundraiser (ends October 31, 2012). We literally can’t do this without your support!

The Ada Initiative in September 2012: Ada’s Angels and anti-harassment policy improvements

Help the Ada Initiative!

You can help with the Ada Initiative’s work, which is funded by our generous donors and sponsors. You can make a difference for women in open tech and culture: support us by making a donation or becoming a sponsor today!

The Ada Initiative in September: fundraising and anti-harassment policy improvements

The Ada Initiative launched a campaign in September seeking donor support to continue our policy work, launch future AdaCamps, and brand new programs supporting women in open technology and culture. We’re also pleased to announce an addendum to our sample anti-harassment policies for women-friendly discussion of sex and porn, and the forthcoming Ada’s Advice website.

To all our donors and supporters: thank you for your support in September, making all this possible!

In September’s news

Ada’s Angels campaign
Women-friendly discussion of sex and porn
Coming soon: Ada’s Advice
Mary’s illness
Thank you Selena!
Ada Initiative advisors in the news
Upcoming events for women in open technology and culture
Sponsorship opportunities

Ada’s Angels campaign

At the Ada Initiative, we have a vision: A world in which women are equal and welcome participants in open source software, open data, and open culture. We want women writing free software, women editing Wikipedia, women creating the Internet and women shaping the future of global society.

Help us make this vision a reality. We need your support: individual donors comprise the majority of the Ada Initiative’s funding. Support the Ada Initiative now and get the first ever Ada Initiative t-shirt! This limited edition shirt is available to the first 1000 donors at the Ada’s Angel level.

Women-friendly discussion of sex and porn

We expanded on our anti-harassment work in September with the first release of an addendum to the policy when sex and porn are on-topic for conferences. Discussion of pornography and sex in the context of most open technology and culture discussions is off-putting to women and LGBTQ people of any gender: Most pornography shown in this situation assumes that the audience is male and heterosexual, and sends the message that everyone who is not a heterosexual man is not the intended audience. Also, shifting people’s minds towards sex often triggers people to view women as sexual objects, in a context in which women want to be treated as humans with a shared interest.

But showing pornography and talking about sex in public are not necessarily a “women not wanted” sign. Women are using open tech/culture to create erotica by and for women, and to have open discussions about sexuality in general.

The Ada Initiative’s own anti-harassment policy therefore includes an exception for on-topic respectful discussions that have appropriate warnings. If you’d like to comment on our exception or on this topic, please do so on our blog post about on-topic discussions of sex and porn.

Coming soon: Ada’s Advice

Behind the scenes, we’ve been working on the first edition of Ada’s Advice, a collection of effective strategies for supporting women in open technology and culture. Our first release will include advice for employers, colleagues and event organizers who want to reach out to women for hiring, to participate in events, or to make shared workspaces safer for women.

Mary’s illness

Ada Initiative director of operations Mary Gardiner was unexpectedly ill in September, spending nearly a week in hospital and another week recovering. She’s back on board with the Ada Initiative now, but still trying to work up the energy to get back on her bike.

One of the things we’ve realized following Mary’s illness is that as a very small organization (1.6 full-time staff members) we are very vulnerable to illness and misadventure in our founders. Once we have a stable long-term funding base, we are hoping to be less vulnerable to loss of Valerie or Mary for a short time!

Thank you Selena!

Ada Initiative advisor Selena Deckelmann worked as our Consulting Director of Development from July until the end of September, helping us establish a long term fundraising plan. One of Selena’s key insights was how important individual donors are to the Ada Initiative. She went on to help us design the Ada’s Angel fundraising campaign around individual donors. Thank you so much Selena for your insights and plans, we’re looking forward to putting them into practice.

From September 24 onwards, Selena has moved into a full-time position for Mozilla, working on databases with the WebTools team. Congratulations Selena! Selena is continuing as a volunteer on the Ada Initiative advisory board.

Ada Initiative advisors in the news

Ada Initiative board member and advisor Rachel Chalmers keynoted the Hosting and Cloud Transformation Summit on September 19:

Billions of people have already connected to the Internet via computers and mobile devices, tapping saturated networks to connect and communicate. What happens when everyday objects start communicating as well? In this presentation, we’ll look at how this will affect IT, as well as the benefits that the ‘Internet of everything’ brings with it, and the challenge of managing the infrastructure that supports these ‘smart’ devices.

Advisor Liz Henry was announced as the keynote speaker for hacker conference Kiwicon 6, to be held in Wellington, New Zealand, 17–18 November.

Selena Deckelmann will be giving a plenary address on Education vs. Training at the Large Installation System Administration conference (LISA ’12) in San Diego in December:

System administration principles are typically not taught at universities, where “education” (concepts and frameworks) is valued over “training” (explicit instruction of tasks). It’s true that system administration courses and a couple degree programs exist—but they are the exception rather than the rule. The state of related curriculum in K–12 education is even more dire.

The belief that education and training are separate is harmful. It’s helped make computer science educators hostile to efforts to adopt system administration curriculum and a CS degree largely irrelevant when hiring web developers.

Advisor Sarah Stierch was a Guest Programme Planner for the Open Knowledge Festival in Helsinki September 17–22. She facilitated a series of lightning talks about what open technology and culture organizations are doing to engage more women and hosted a Wikipedia edit-a-thon geared towards women.

Upcoming events for women in open technology and culture

See our calendar for a full listing, and submit any additional events to share@adainitiative.org.

Sponsorship opportunities

Instant sponsorship of the Ada Initiative is available through our Venture Philanthropist sponsorship program for sponsorship amounts between $2000 and $9999 (USD) with a minimum of hassle. Other donations of $500 or more are eligible for Supporting Sponsor recognition.

Contact sponsors@adainitiative.org for larger sponsorship packages.

Alex Payne: Why I donated to the Ada Initiative

Alex Payne (who goes by al3x online) is a well-known software engineer, author, and investor. Alex was one of Twitter’s first employees, CTO of Simple, and a co-author of “Programming Scala.” Alex is also an Ada Initiative donor and the fourth person to become an Ada Initiative Seed 100 funder in 2011.

We interviewed Alex in August about why he thinks the Ada Initiative is important, his interests in open technology and culture, and why having more women in open tech/culture is vital.

If you agree with Alex’s opinions, will you join him in becoming an Ada Initiative supporter today? We literally can’t do our work without your donations!

Why do you think the Ada Initiative is relevant today?

There have been organizations that have worked on behalf of women in technology for some time. What’s particularly relevant about the Ada Initiative is their focus on women in open technology and culture. The last decade-plus has seen the open approach become increasingly dominant in startups, enterprises, and even non-profits and academia. Getting more people involved in creating an open world is a timely and crucial endeavor.

What are your key open technology and culture communities or projects? What do you enjoy about it?

I have a strong interest in the design and implementation of programming languages. Thankfully, languages have largely become open source projects over the past few years, and now it’s easy to participate in their development, or just observe from afar. I’m particularly interested in the Scala and Clojure communities, in part because they’re both languages with strong but fairly divergent designs and philosophies. Watching them co-evolve is educational, as the debates that inform their future directions tend to be passionate and detailed.

What benefits do you see as a result of having more women in open technology and culture?

The overarching benefit is that open technology and culture are becoming representative of the broader population in a way that more closely mirrors the world that’s benefited by that technology and culture. As producers and consumers of technology and culture reach a kind of demographic parity, I think we’ll see solutions to problems that less diverse groups of producers are more likely to overlook.

What’s the most awesome outcome of a more diverse and equitable community?

Having a balance and plurality of perspectives and opinions. Products, services, and projects of all sorts are richer for being produced by teams that are not homogeneous. As above, I think that a diverse and equitable community will yield solutions to oft-overlooked problems, and that the form of those solutions will embody an attention to detail across multiple facets.

When you need inspiration, or need to inspire others, are there any particular stories from open technology and culture that you tell?

Honestly, the history of open technology is filled with as many cautionary tales as inspiring stories. I sometimes refer to various “flame-outs” or mishandlings of open projects when speaking with people about how to grow developer communities and approach customer service. When you get a diverse and enthusiastic group of people together, friction is an inevitable byproduct. A little healthy conflict is fine as long as it’s handled with grace. Where grace is lacking, communities become exclusionary, biased, and cold. Thankfully, an open world means that we can readily learn from the mistakes of our peers.

Tell us about a woman in open tech and culture that inspires you.

I’ve had the pleasure of interacting with Amber Case of Geoloqi over the past two years. Amber is a fascinating example of a person with a strong academic background who’s parlayed her big ideas into an actual working product in a relatively short period of time. She’s friendly, inclusive, driven, smart, honest, and generally an absolute inspiration.

In your view, how can allies best support women?

I’ve been lucky enough to work on teams with women since my very first programming internship, and that first job shaped my expectations and standards. A woman was one of the lead engineers on the team. She was treated with the utmost respect for her technical skill, but was otherwise just another team member. To my mind, that’s a healthy approach. Nobody made a fuss about having a talented female programmer on the team; that’s simply how it was, and how it should be in many more organizations.

Adafruit 10% discount for donors: Raspberry Pi, Arduino, Ada Lovelace badges, and more

AdaFruit, the woman-founded open hardware company, is partnering with the Ada Initiative to offer Ada Initiative donors a 10% discount on your entire order from AdaFruit.

Just a few of the many kits and badges you can get from AdaFruit:

Raspberry Pi kits and accessories
Arduino kits and accessories
Ada Lovelace skill badge

If you’ve been wanting to get into open hardware, this is a great way to start. AdaFruit’s goal is to help people learn electronics and hardware, not just sell toys. With Limor “LadyAda” Fried at the helm, AdaFruit recognizes that women and girls love building DIY electronic projects and understanding how hardware works.

Donate at least $32 to the Ada Initiative in the next 24 hours (until October 2, 2012, 19:00 UTC/noon Pacific US time) and we’ll send you the discount code via email.

Ada Initiative board member Rachel Chalmers: “Open technology saved my life”

The Ada Initiative is governed by a six person board of directors, comprised of women with expertise in open technology and culture, women’s diversity issues, and non-profit and for-profit businesses.

Today we introduce you to one of our directors, Rachel Chalmers, Vice President, Research – Infrastructure Management, The 451 Group.

Q. What interests you about open technology and culture?

Open technology saved my life. In 1993 and 1994 I was a graduate student in literature at Trinity College, Dublin. It was the first time I had ever left Australia. I was wretchedly lonely and very cold. I stayed away for a year and a half, and the Internet was my lifeline. This was when the Web itself was newfangled so I’m talking about email and Usenet, accessed from a CLI on a dumb terminal talking to a DEC VAX; and later, after I graduated, via a secret account on a Unix box belonging to some computer science students who took pity on me.

I’d fooled around with computers long before that, writing text adventures in CP/M Basic on an Osborne 1, but connectivity made the computer itself melt away, leaving only the conversation: text in green or amber on a phosphor display. I’m still friends with a couple of women I met on Usenet that year. (I still haven’t met one of them.) When I moved back to Australia at the end of 1994 it was my familiarity with the Net, and not my shiny new Master’s degree, that got me my first job.

None of this would have been possible without open standards and protocols and a culture of sharing technical knowledge. I could email my Dad in Australia because the Internet was deployed and accessible all over the world. I was given the resources and taught how to use them because volunteers thought that would be a good and worthwhile thing to do. I had an excellent formal education, but my informal education was even better. It felt then — it still feels — as if I had groped my way through a dark cave holding onto a rope, and come out blinking into a lighter place.

Q. What’s the greatest change for women in open technology and culture you’ve seen in the last 5 years?

I think some of the communities we work in have started to maintain state. For my first ten or twelve years in the software industry, every feminism conversation was a review of Feminism 101. Whether it was Larry Summers pulling out the gender essentialism in 2005, Telsa Gwynne shutting down her blog (that I loved) in 2006, or Kathy Sierra getting death threats in 2007 – the reaction was always the same, people standing around gasping like goldfish: “WHAT IS THIS UNDERCURRENT OF CONTEMPT FOR WOMEN IN OUR COMMUNITIES GREAT HEAVENS I WAS NOT AWARE.” And it always seemed to be the same activists having to explain the same basic facts over and over again.

What’s changed isn’t the frequency or intensity of incidents (if only! If anything, they’ve gotten worse.) What’s changed is the existence of the Geekfeminism Wiki’s Timeline of Incidents. The Timeline makes it much more difficult to write off individual incidents as “isolated”. It’s harder for offenders to plead historical amnesia, and it’s easier for defenders to take lessons learned from one incident and apply them to the next. I see the conversation continuing, rather than tapering off and getting reset to zero every time. And I am seeing this as far afield as the skeptical and fandom communities. New people are picking up the threads, which is great news for those of us who are interested in preventing activist burnout.

Q. What do you bring to the board of directors?

Ironically for a person with two literature degrees who has made my living by writing for twenty years, I am the board’s voice of fiscal discipline. The other board members are brilliant and influential visionaries and I feel honored to serve with them. I am the bean-counter adding up our expenses and dividing them into our remaining capital to calculate how long we will stay solvent. This reflects the many years I have spent working for a scrappy little startup while writing about hundreds of other scrappy little startups, most of which have sunk without trace. God knows I never imagined I would be a corporate executive with a cold eye for the bottom line, but it’s nice to have the opportunity to use those powers for good.

I’ve also always been one of those people who embody institutional memory. My job is putting technical innovation in historical context, for profit! My family members come to me for the contact details for other far-flung family members. This is probably why the Timeline of Incidents resonates with me so well. I’ve been lucky enough to be with TAI almost from the beginning, so I get to be the one who says “You know what? We started this for a reason. Let’s focus on that.”

We did start it for a reason: because open technology is a lifeline, and because sharing knowledge is a good and worthwhile thing to do. Because informally-acquired technical knowledge is as useful in the job market as a formal education. Because women and everyone else who isn’t male, white, straight, cisgendered and able-bodied have just as much right to that lifeline and that knowledge. That’s why we’re here.

The Ada Initiative needs your help to continue our programs supporting women in open technology and culture. Support us by becoming an Ada’s Angel donor today!

Next 10 Ada’s Angels donors: Signed Kate Beaton print of Ada Lovelace comic

Update Wed Oct 3 0700 UTC: all 10 prints are now taken.

Prints are also being given to every 25th donor at the Ada’s Angel level, so donate now to have a chance at receiving one.

Click for full Ada Lovelace comic

The next 10 Ada Initiative donors at the Ada’s Angel level will get a signed copy of Kate Beaton’s “Young Ada Lovelace” comic!

Kate Beaton has graciously agreed to sign 25 prints of “Young Ada Lovelace” for Ada Initiative donors. The next 10 donors at the Ada’s Angel level will receive a signed print! After that, we’ll go back to the regular schedule of every 25th Ada’s Angel donor.

(If you don’t want a print, don’t wait to donate! Just let us know via email.)