Author: Elaine

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men, women, and the places where I’ve worked

In the time that I’ve been doing web design and development, I’ve worked in four organizations. Curiously, all of them have had primarily women employees, and the marketing departments that I’ve worked in have been overwhelmingly female. But all of them have had overwhelmingly male IT departments.

United Way: about 30 employees, when I started there marketing was two men, two women. One of the men (the dept head) moved into a different position and the other left. Both were replaced with women, and I joined them part of the time in my web design capacity. The IT “department” was one guy, who I also reported to, but didn’t get to work with as much as I would have liked.

Pierce College: a few hundred employees, maybe 10 people in marketing, two men (again, including the department head); IT was almost all men. I worked with a woman intern who started in IT but preferred working with me. I think they had a woman office manager type, maybe a few of the client support staff?

TwinStar: maybe two hundred employees, tellers & call center mostly women, upper management more heavily male. Half a dozen in marketing, two men, one of them the boss. (See another pattern?) Two IT groups, the internal one was 3-5 people, all men; the other group had four programmers, I think; one woman, plus IIRC a woman office manager.

Evergreen: a few hundred employees? A lot of women. Marketing is a dozen people, two men (a third just left)…and yes, one of those men is the boss. There’s four (?) IT groups; one is led by a woman, with some other women employees; two groups have one woman programmer each.

No conclusions here, and I wouldn’t assume any ill intent by most of the people involved, but it’s not a pattern I’m happy about.

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different higher ed environments

So yesterday I was in a bit of a Twitter conversation with Greg Dunlap (“heyrocker” on Twitter, Drupal, and elsewhere), in which he said “welcome to higher education!” My reply was “you mean welcome back,” because when I first met him I was still at Pierce, although I’m not sure if he remembered that. But that also made me think again about what’s different between Evergreen and Pierce. Obviously from the point of view of the student or the faculty, there’s a lot, but more what’s different from my position as a web developer in a Marketing group….

The most obvious difference has to do with the lack of majors or traditional academic departments. And while that’s a tricky situation from an overall marketing point of view (as I’ve said on Twitter a few times: “what even IS Evergreen?”), from a web team’s point of view, it can be easier because there isn’t the same built-in angst about “my site.” Faculty who want to do things about their specific programs on the web have WordPress and Moodle and even free rein to make their own stuff, and it really is academic, not part of our area at all. And on the other hand, that can make it difficult to highlight the really good interesting things going on when that structure doesn’t exist.

The infrastructure around the catalog is really different, too, although I’m not sure whether some of that is just a progression of technology during the five years I was at TwinStar. But I do know that Pierce was heading towards being tied into a huge statewide system. (And boy was it fugly.) And here it’s more homegrown, more flexible; some of which comes from not being part of a community college system, some of it comes from the very different nature of the curriculum, and some of it is the particular development environment. I’m much happier with this situation. Among other things, I’m not copy/pasting from Word that comes out of InDesign; instead we do what I always wanted to do at Pierce: the web (sort of) feeds something to InDesign for the print folks. I have access to properly structured data! I’m not entirely happy with how it’s set up on the website now, but I have some ideas for improvement, and I even think I’ll be able to accomplish some of them.

And I feel generally respected by the development team in a way that never felt entirely true at Pierce. Most of the time, honestly, I felt grudgingly tolerated. (With one notable exception, who happened to be an Evergreen grad. Everything circles around eventually.) I credit quite a bit of that to Susan, who’s been here a long time and built a lot of bridges…and also she reports sideways (?) to the IT area, which means there’s even a formal structure for including us in their projects.

As for my home department, it’s interested to me that we’re structured in the way that my old department was headed towards, in which the marketing (“College Relations”) functions are in the same area as the fundraising/alumni functions (“Advancement”). I have not yet made up my mind quite what I think about it. There’s definitely a stronger sense of that being a key client than there was at Pierce, although since we’re on different floors there’s a bit of separation.

It’s similar enough that my previous experience feels useful, and different enough to give me plenty to learn.

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placeholder thought about work

I really should write something about being back in higher ed in the context of the differences between Pierce and Evergreen. But first I have to think more deliberately about what those are. (This was brought to mind by a Twitter exchange prompted by a quote from a podcast.)

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gamemastering anxiety

After spending a few days in a really bad place emotionally — wracked by anxiety & despair — it really helps to have a D&D game that goes well. (Said anxiety/depression being (mostly) unrelated to the game.) I could over-analyze it and beat up on myself for not getting exactly the right combination of foes for the party: I’d intended to go back and rework some things to be more of a tailored experience for the specific strengths and weaknesses of the player characters. But on the other hand: I think I played what I did have with some flair; the main bad guy got off one of his fairly nasty spells; and maybe most importantly, people seemed to be having fun. I even consiously let a couple of players enjoy their side conversation, since they weren’t being too disruptive to the rest of the action, and the point is to have a good time, right?

That’s the essential tension that I get into with running a game: I really want to do it Just Right, and I don’t seem able to make the time or even really have the skills to meet my inner standards, and sometimes I fall into a horrible funk about it. (Knowing that C & JK have a lot of experience & high standards can add to the anxiety.) But that means that even if everybody enjoys it, then I’m not really having a good time. It’s a bit like the hostess of the dinner party who’s spent all day fussing and prepping and then can’t actually enjoy the damn party.

This particular chapter of this game has one section left, which amounts to maybe a couple of weeks of play at most. And then one of the players is going to have to bow out for a while for personal reasons. So it gives me a chance to evaulate whether I’m really having a good time running the game, or if I’d rather just play for a while and let someone else take over…someone who won’t get as high-strung about it. Maybe a real break (and not just missing a few weeks because of schedules & illnesses) will let me rediscover what I enjoy about running D&D games, get excited about my setting again, etc.

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growing things everywhere

I rearranged my tiny office a bit this morning, and now I’m facing a slightly different spot on the library roof. Part of the roof is actually planted, and there’s a tiny evergreen tree in my view. But what I noticed was a spot where crud (leaves, needles, dirt) has accumulated in a spot, and the crud has a lush layer of moss growing over it, and grass is growing up through the moss.

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The Invention of Air

The Invention of Air
author: Steven Johnson
name: Elaine
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2008
rating: 5
read at: 2009/04/07
date added: 2013/01/29
shelves: biography, history, environmentalism, science, politics, favorites
review:
A lovely review of the life of a (relatively) obscure scientist/philosopher, and the times when science, politics, and religion were much more intercommunicative spheres than they are now. IOW, this guy invented soda water, founded Unitarianism, and corresponded with Franklin, Adams, and Jefferson. Plus interesting digressions into the geohistory of coal!

Johnson makes a fascinating argument for an ecosystem metaphor of human history & civilization throughout, as well, and I think it serves in moving through the different scales of change addressed in the book. At what point is history influenced by individual quirks, broad social movements, accidents of geology, etc., etc., and this allows for all those levels to be in operation at once.

Plus the thing that I find I like about all of Johnson’s work is his (innate?) sense of optimism. Something of the Enlightenment spirit seems to motivate him, and perhaps a belief in the better angels of our nature. (I saw him at SXSWi ’09 and was struck by his optimism in an area where most others are pretty damn gloomy.) In any case, for me it makes his writing a genuine pleasure to read. This book was no exception.

Posted on

The Invention of Air

The Invention of Air
author: Steven Johnson
name: Elaine
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2008
rating: 5
read at: 2009/04/07
date added: 2013/01/29
shelves: biography, history, environmentalism, science, politics, favorites
review:
A lovely review of the life of a (relatively) obscure scientist/philosopher, and the times when science, politics, and religion were much more intercommunicative spheres than they are now. IOW, this guy invented soda water, founded Unitarianism, and corresponded with Franklin, Adams, and Jefferson. Plus interesting digressions into the geohistory of coal!

Johnson makes a fascinating argument for an ecosystem metaphor of human history & civilization throughout, as well, and I think it serves in moving through the different scales of change addressed in the book. At what point is history influenced by individual quirks, broad social movements, accidents of geology, etc., etc., and this allows for all those levels to be in operation at once.

Plus the thing that I find I like about all of Johnson’s work is his (innate?) sense of optimism. Something of the Enlightenment spirit seems to motivate him, and perhaps a belief in the better angels of our nature. (I saw him at SXSWi ’09 and was struck by his optimism in an area where most others are pretty damn gloomy.) In any case, for me it makes his writing a genuine pleasure to read. This book was no exception.

Posted on

The Invention of Air

The Invention of Air
author: Steven Johnson
name: Elaine
average rating: 0.0
book published: 2008
rating: 5
read at: 2009/04/07
date added: 2013/01/29
shelves: biography, history, environmentalism, science, politics, favorites
review:
A lovely review of the life of a (relatively) obscure scientist/philosopher, and the times when science, politics, and religion were much more intercommunicative spheres than they are now. IOW, this guy invented soda water, founded Unitarianism, and corresponded with Franklin, Adams, and Jefferson. Plus interesting digressions into the geohistory of coal!

Johnson makes a fascinating argument for an ecosystem metaphor of human history & civilization throughout, as well, and I think it serves in moving through the different scales of change addressed in the book. At what point is history influenced by individual quirks, broad social movements, accidents of geology, etc., etc., and this allows for all those levels to be in operation at once.

Plus the thing that I find I like about all of Johnson’s work is his (innate?) sense of optimism. Something of the Enlightenment spirit seems to motivate him, and perhaps a belief in the better angels of our nature. (I saw him at SXSWi ’09 and was struck by his optimism in an area where most others are pretty damn gloomy.) In any case, for me it makes his writing a genuine pleasure to read. This book was no exception.

Posted on

The Invention of Air

The Invention of Air
author: Steven Johnson
name: Elaine
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2008
rating: 5
read at: 2009/04/07
date added: 2013/01/29
shelves: biography, history, environmentalism, science, politics, favorites
review:
A lovely review of the life of a (relatively) obscure scientist/philosopher, and the times when science, politics, and religion were much more intercommunicative spheres than they are now. IOW, this guy invented soda water, founded Unitarianism, and corresponded with Franklin, Adams, and Jefferson. Plus interesting digressions into the geohistory of coal!

Johnson makes a fascinating argument for an ecosystem metaphor of human history & civilization throughout, as well, and I think it serves in moving through the different scales of change addressed in the book. At what point is history influenced by individual quirks, broad social movements, accidents of geology, etc., etc., and this allows for all those levels to be in operation at once.

Plus the thing that I find I like about all of Johnson’s work is his (innate?) sense of optimism. Something of the Enlightenment spirit seems to motivate him, and perhaps a belief in the better angels of our nature. (I saw him at SXSWi ’09 and was struck by his optimism in an area where most others are pretty damn gloomy.) In any case, for me it makes his writing a genuine pleasure to read. This book was no exception.