Humans are only capable of making 60% of their component molecules (this is why you need vitamins), but replicate nevertheless. They also manage this feat without a manual…

Vik :v)

OK, so someone needs to take this till-receipt thing a stage further and create a little reel-to-reel scroller, with a tiny handle on it. The reader could then wind forward the pages as they go. It would make the scroll properly portable.

The design of such a device should obviously mock/reference the Kindle and other e-readers, thereby making a good political point about the freedom of literature - although the Kindle is digital, the wind-up paper scroll is actually more free, forward-looking and modern, at least in terms of copyright.

Sadly I don’t have the skills. Is there a Maker out there who does?

Is it *because* the majority of attendees are male, or something else?
It’s something else. But I’m not sure what. I am used attending events where the majority of participants are male. It seems to be something about the format of these events but I can’t quite put my finger on it.

I certainly didn’t get the impression of any leering or “OMG A GIRL!!1? type reactions to the female attendees at Dev8D
I’m happy to say that I have only rarely come across that kind of attitude working in ed tech.

does it matter whether the makeup of the audience reflects a census of the population?
I think what matters is whether the make up of the audience is proportional to the balance of the field and from what I’ve read above, I’m not sure it was Dev8D. For example at the recent CETIS Future of Interoperability Standards meeting less than 10% of the audience was female. Not very encouraging perhaps but a reasonably accurate reflection of the number of women working in the field. However I think there are many more women working as developers than in interoperability standards bodies. As Juliette has pointed out above some developer events have a much higher proportion of female participants. So I think there are more female developers out there who are choosing not to attend events such as Dev8D or the CRIG Unconference.

unless those who were put off from coming can tell us why and what we (as men? as event organisers? as a community?) can do differently, we’re stuffed.
Agreed. I think we have a responsibility as a community and as event organisers to try to find out what’s going on here.

Lorna, you mentioned in your blog post that you find the environments “blokey.” What is it that gives you that impression? Is it *because* the majority of attendees are male, or something else?
I certainly didn’t get the impression of any leering or “OMG A GIRL!!1″ type reactions to the female attendees at Dev8D, which certainly for a while seemed to be cited as the reason you don’t get as many women at techie events.

And of course there’s always the question looming on the horizon: Does it matter? I’m not saying that it’s a good thing that the majority of attendees are male, but as long as all the people who *do* come enjoy themselves and get something out of experience, does it matter whether the makeup of the audience reflects a census of the population?
Perhaps the point is that women are being put off from attending where they could be one of those people who enjoys and benefits from the event, but unless those who were put off from coming can tell us why and what we (as men? as event organisers? as a community?) can do differently, we’re stuffed.

If people don’t have the ‘developer gene’ then of course the event’s not going to be right for them, but it’s certainly possible to like coding and not find events like dev8d welcoming. I hope that hasn’t been the case with dev8d this year and it certainly wasn’t for me, but we shouldn’t assume that it isn’t an issue.

This is a difficult topic generally. You can’t easily separate what is ‘you’ from the part of you that’s female, and it’s dangerous to extrapolate from yourself to 50% of the population. It’s also far easier to just find the communities that *are* welcoming than to try and explain to the communities that aren’t why they aren’t and to attempt to change them.

(For the record, I wasn’t so far off being a non-attender this year. Don’t suppose he realised this, but it was a word of encouragement from Ben O’Steen to go that swayed me into filling in the form!)

Basically I know quite a few men who in their lives have coded until dawn. For fun. Most women, in my experience, don’t get that intense about it.

Women are less likely than men to be afflicted with the “Dev” mutation. Those that are we should make welcome and get them to show as cool things they’ve coded/built.

And just to clarify once more (because this is a thorny topic). I do not suggest men are better at something. I have observed that women who really love coding (and related activities) are much rarer than men who really love coding.

A much better bet is One-Net which is a truly open source project. Admittedly, it does not have all the functionality of Z-Wave but it is definately one to watch; it is also much faster.

Richard