Are you a Linux user?

In the past I was, but for the last couple of years I've been exclusively on OSX, and I can do everything I need to. I'm doing a lot of experimenting with media lately -- audio and video editing especially -- and I love the Mac tools.

What is one piece of advice you'd like to get across to IT managers?

It's absurd to think of having passionate users if you don't have passionate employees. And when employees are too far removed from those most affected by their work - the end users - it's easy to not have to think about users as Real People.

At Sun, when they instituted Six Sigma, 'users/customers' became line items on a report, and user problems were DPMOs (defects per million opportunities). When people become numbers and stats instead of breathing human beings, it's no wonder we build products and documentation and support that's frustrating for people.

So here's my one piece of advice: do whatever it takes to make sure everyone has regular exposure to users. One 100-person software company I know makes every single person - including upper managers - do time on tech support or customer training.

Think about the effect that has when you're building something that you will eventually have to help someone use. But even if you can't have real customers come in or have all of your employees visit customers, a fairly inexpensive and practical tool is to videotape customers talking about their work and life, and how the product fits into their world. I've done this a lot, and employees are often shocked to learn even just the every day details about an end user's life. It stops them from seeing users as DPMO numbers.

What's one piece of advice you'd like to get across to IT staff?

Learn everything you can about 'Flow' - a required book when I first worked at Virgin - and think about ways to make it happen both in your own job, and as part of the end user's experience. Flow is considered one of the best 'states' a person can be in, and essential to having a healthy life, and as developers we are often responsible for creating - or preventing - users from spending more time in the flow state.

What are your experiences as a woman in IT?

I haven't had any negative experiences at all. Some people along the way would seem mildly surprised, but it was never anything but good for me, and that's across many jobs in two different states. Perhaps if I'd been working in enterprise IT I would have found a different environment, but the worst problem I've had is not enough female programmers to talk to on the job. But there are always women in other roles, so it's not like I couldn't find another woman to have lunch with at work, for example.

Why do you think women are still a minority in the industry, and do you think the gender imbalance will ever even out?

This is just my opinion - not based on anything else - but I believe it's that most women simply aren't interested. Period. Yes, in earlier days - even as recently as 10 years ago - computers were still seen as a "boy's thing", in school computer labs and in homes, but that's changed so dramatically. Whenever I hear someone trot out old research about how "girls are told that computers aren't for them", I ask if they've tried to pry the mouse out of a teenage girl's hand while she's on MySpace. No, there's nothing stopping girls from thinking they can do anything they choose with computers - including hack their javascript if they choose - it's starting to be a skill not that different from the way programming a VCR was in the 90's, or getting custom ringtones on their cell phone.

I think there will be less and less of a Women In Computing/IT idea, and more and more a shift to computers (and sometimes programming) as an essential skill that people will need in a wide range of fields, and women will come into it through these other side doors, and a formal "Comp Sci" degree will be more specialized and more an academic or engineering science rather than the place where programmers are trained.

I do not think the gender imbalance will even out, but it may not make so much of a difference once more people in other domains are doing work that would have traditionally been only for the computer science folks.