Liz is one of the founders of Misbehaving.net, among other things. Subtitle: “How diversifying your team can expand your market.”

There’s a flawed premise behind most efforts to sell to women: Women aren’t involved in the development of the product. E.g., early voice recognition systems were calibrated to men’s voices. And video conference systems were designed to focus on whoever is talking, so now women can’t be seen and can’t be heard. Seatbelts and airbags were designed for men, and women and children are killed by them.

Who has been really successful in making products that survived the dot-com bust? Anil suggested that it wasn’t coincidental that the two major blogging products (Blogger.com, Movable Type) had significant influence by women (Meg Hourihan and Mena Trott) during their development. Other examples: Dokomo, The Sims, eBay, Microsoft Wollop, Microsoft Research. (Purple Moon, Liz says, failed because it tried to make products only for girls, and thus didn’t get the balance right.)

Liz noticed that there are whole bunch of women who work for O’Reilly. “I think that may have a lot to do with why their product line has been so successful.”

“If you can build a place that women love, the guys will show up. the reeverse is not true.” Tom Melchior.

By changing the requirements, you can diversify your workplace. Liz recommends Unlocking the Club House. She says that prior experience is a poor predictor of success in a job. Far more important is commitment. Don’t just look for hardcore programmers. Look for people who really care about your product.

[Unattributed remarks came from people who’s names I didn’t get]

Q: When women ask me if they should go into technical fields, I say absolutely not. Once you’re 35, it’s almost impossible to be employed any more. It has more to do with being old than being female.

A: (David Sifnoraty) Those employers are idiots.

A: (Anil) Sounds like saying all the good jobs are going to India. You have to fight for your career.

A: Programming is actually a very appealing job, with flexible hours, work from home, etc.

A: (Meg) I loved my computer but I had no interest in taking computer courses. I would have been interested in a couse in building stuff by doing, not in “Advanced C++.”

Liz says that there is a developing area of academic study that’s much more focused on project-based learning, human-computer-interface classes, etc.

Marc Canter: And there’s a disproprotionate number of women in marketing and pr.

Q: (Cory Doctorow) How do we get there?

A: (Liz) Re-think the qualifications for jobs. Look for ways for people to move across the borders.

Meg: When you hire one woman, it gets easier to hire more. Women geeks know other women geeks.

A: And have women interview your candidates.

A: And make your requirements in things that men programmers often are bad at, such as good social skills, writing skills.

Q: (Tom) “Softening” the requirements sounds patronizing.

A: (Liz) I don’t mean making them easier. I mean focusing on different things.

(Anil) Making the requirements stricter can help. E.g., saying you won’t hire dysfunctional communicators really weeds ’em out.

(Lily) People tend to hire people like themselves. You have to work at trying to balance your teams.

(Judith) If you’re in a large organization, look within it.

(Me) When men are alone, we tend to be complete pigs.

(Marc) I agree.

There are “shoutocracies.” I don’t know how to respond.

(Liz) We do a terrible job of highlighting the women who are out there.

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