A local women in technology group sent out a message that another group is looking for speakers for an Internet of Things Event.  Said the group was very interested in making sure that women were visible at the front of the room.  I count that an admirable thing, given the relative lack of women in the computer science field : having visible folks from any ‘identifiable’ group makes it easier for members of that ‘identifiable’ group to project themselves into that role, which makes it more likely that the field will grow in diversity and perspectives.  Note that ‘identifiable’ group could mean gender, race, ethnicity, economic stratus, etc – if you can identify with it from seeing or hearing someone, it’s an identifiable group.  (Note that under my definition, that would mean that that doesn’t require that that speaker identify that way, just that other folks categorize them as like themselves.  But that’s a side note.).

The challenge for me: after getting information from the organizer, I wasn’t sure my background and expertise quite fit what they were looking for.  Now, there’s an oft-raised concern of women that we back away because we feel like we’re not quite good enough for the challenge, that we’re ‘impostors‘ who don’t give enough credit to our own accomplishments.  In my case, I had done a single IoT project, which had never gone into production use.  Does it count as a ‘Thing’ (my capital T) or a prototype thing?   The group itself is focused on Microsoft .NET technologies, which doesn’t mean that they don’t do other stuff, but it does mean coming in with a concept of how my IoT [T][t]hing compared or contrasted with the Microsoft approach would make me a more informed speaker.  Frankly, I didn’t want to do that much delving.  I’d have been happy to reshape my particular talk and update it a bit, but I didn’t want to the person at the end of the panel feeling like they were the weakest link.

So, I ultimately passed.  I’d rather dedicate geek prep time to building an IoT effort #2, or working on an open-source project, or exploring the ins and outs of containerization technologies or Javascript frameworks or PaaS or NoSQL database interaction patterns.  But I sure hope another female IoTer steps up and is visible…  going to kick myself later if the panel still ends up being only men.