"Leap, and the net will appear." -- John Burroughs

In October 2007 I phoned Deanna Kosaraju and said, "I'm thinking about quitting my job and doing a service year at a nonprofit. Can you use me?" I started going in to the Anita Borg Institute office after the 2007 Grace Hopper Celebration, and five months later I was hired as their Communities Program Manager.

For the last four years it has been my honor to work for the Anita Borg Institute. I've learned so much from the exceptional staff, volunteers and community. It was fun to build the Institute's social communities on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, and to see them fill with inspiring technical women and diversity champions. But a few months ago I started thinking about moving on. And then I started preparing: updating profiles, looking at job listings, talking to a few friends.

In that wonderful way fate has of giving us a nudge when the time is right, yesterday I was laid off. I feel extremely fortunate and grateful that my volunteer service turned into a four year paid position. I'm enjoying some time off for rest and play, and I'm excited by the possibilities of this new adventure.

As I did in 2007 when I started this blog, once again I leap into the unknown trusting that the net will appear.

Goin' Back to She's Geeky

In October of 2007 I left my software industry job and went immediately to two back-to-back conferences for technical women. The first was the fabulous Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (GHC), presented by the nonprofit Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology (ABI). The second was a fiesty little unconference for technical women organized by Kaliya Hamlin, also known as Identity Woman. I had a fabulous time at both of these very different events and got to know many very smart, accomplished, interesting and, yes, geeky (and I mean that in a good way!) women. I now work at ABI and get to help produce GHC, and I'm totally looking forward to this fall's conference in Tuscon, AZ, Sept 30-Oct 3. But that's months away, so I'm glad that She's Geeky is returning to the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA on January 30-31.

If you're scratching your head and wondering what an unconference is, it's a facilitated, participant-driven event. The attendees put together the agenda at the unconference itself, based on their interests, expertise and needs around the event theme. It's a popular format for technical conferences in the Open Source, Linux and Web 2.0 spaces. I've been to a few now and found them to be fun and productive networking and learning experiences.

As with any other technical conference, at technical unconferences women often find themselves in the minority. Enter Kaliya Hamlin, an experienced unconference organizer and facilitator, and the She's Geeky, the technical unconference for women who self-identify as geeks. She and her friends have created an event for women with a wide range of interest or experience in using or creating technology to gather, share, and learn from each other. Not only do I consider She's Geeky worth attending for its own sake, but I think it would be a great place to get familiar with the unconference format if a woman was a little shy about diving into the Bar Camp scene.

Registration is open now at http://shesgeeky.org/. I'm geeky, and I'm goin' ... how about you?