Claire pointed out several proposed explanations that others have come up with to explain why there are fewer women entering the field and cited statistics to show they’re not staying in the field.  The quandry that I have is where the line is to push kids into a direction they don’t want to go versus to encourage them to explore technology/science careers. Either way, I think this applies to any kids- not just mine – and not just girls!

As for the discouragement factor that she brings up, I think it’s a plausible, and insidious, explanation for the problem. Having “techie” parents and growing up in the heart of the space industry, I never experienced any discouragement as a young girl or teenager. But Claire’s article reminded me when I was going back to school when I was 28 and attempting to take an advanced math class, I really had to battle with the counselor to get her to sign off on the course. I was the recipient of a Pell grant at the time, and couldn’t just take it without authorization. I was told that I had been out of school too long to be successful. Furthermore, I wanted to take the self-paced class rather than the lecture class and was told that no one ever succeeds with that route. Well, I pushed back, explaining that I was in the software industry and could hold my own quite nicely in math. (I got an A. Can you imagine how badly I wanted to wave that in the face of that mis-guidance counselor!) How many other young women are getting told not to bother trying and believe it?

Fortunately for me, that’s the only real discouragement I really encountered that I actively had to battle. I discuss a few others in my previous post, Maybe It’s Just Me…A Perspective from One Woman in IT. And in that post, I also described my daughter’s perspective as a representative of the incoming generation of women in technology.

Although providing the girls in our sphere of influence exposure to the field of technology is a good step, we also need to be cognizant of other voices that they hear (friends, teachers, guidance counselors) that might be counteracting our best efforts. Helping them develop confidence in themselves and to believe that they can be whatever they want to be is also vitally important. Again, I feel this way about all kids, so I struggle a lot with singling out girls in particular. But if girls are especially vulnerable to the discouragement factor, then we need to be aware of that and take every opportunity to help them resist that discouragement, whether it’s your daughter, niece, friend’s daughter, or neighbor. We CAN make a difference one girl at a time! Along with Claire, I’d really like to see the obsolescence of WIT as well.

And the fun’s not over today. Rather than run 24 hours consecutively, #24HOP is now broken down into 12-hours over two days, so check out the schedule to see if there’s a session that interests you and fits your schedule. I’m pleased to announce that my business colleague Erika Bakse ( Blog | Twitter) will be presenting on Day 2 – her debut presentation for a PASS event. (And I’m also pleased to say she’s my daughter!)

Multidimensional Thinking: The Presentation

My contribution to this lineup of terrific speakers was Multidimensional Thinking. Here’s the abstract:

“Whether you’re developing Analysis Services cubes or creating PowerPivot workbooks, you need to get into a multidimensional frame of mind to produce a model that best enables users to answer their business questions on their own. Many database professionals struggle initially with multidimensional models because the data modeling process is much different than the one they use to produce traditional, third normal form databases. In this session, I’ll introduce you to the terminology of multidimensional modeling and step through the process of translating business requirements into a viable model.”

If you watched the presentation and want a copy of the slides, you can download a copy here. And you’re welcome to download the slides even if you didn’t watch the presentation, but they’ll make more sense if you did!

Kimball All the Way

There’s only so much I can cover in the time allotted, but I hope that I succeeded in my attempt to build a foundation that prepares you for starting out in business intelligence. One of my favorite resources that will get into much more detail about all kinds of scenarios (well beyond the basics!) is The Data Warehouse Toolkit (Second Edition) by Ralph Kimball. Anything from Kimball or the Kimball Group is worth reading.

Kimball material might take reading and re-reading a few times before it makes sense. From my own experience, I found that I actually had to just build my first data warehouse using dimensional modeling on faith that I was going the right direction because it just didn’t click with me initially. I’ve had years of practice since then and I can say it does get easier with practice. The most important thing, in my opinion, is that you simply must prototype a lot and solicit user feedback, because ultimately the model needs to make sense to them. They will definitely make sure you get it right!

Schema Generation

One question came up after the presentation about whether we use SQL Server Management Studio or Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS) to build the tables for the dimensional model. My answer? It really doesn’t matter how you create the tables. Use whatever method that you’re comfortable with. But just so happens that it IS possible to set up your design in BIDS as part of an Analysis Services project and to have BIDS generate the relational schema for you. I did a Webcast last year called Building a Data Mart with Integration Services that demonstrated how to do this. Yes, the subject was Integration Services, but as part of that presentation, I showed how to leverage Analysis Services to build the tables, and then I showed how to use Integration Services to load those tables. I blogged about this presentation in September 2010 and included downloads of the project that I used. In the blog post, I explained that I missed a step in the demonstration. Oops.

Just as an FYI, there were two more Webcasts to finish the story begun with the data – Accelerating Answers with Analysis Services and Delivering Information with Reporting Services.

If you want to just cut to the chase and learn how to use Analysis Services to build the tables, you can see the Using the Schema Generation Wizard topic in Books Online.

As an independent consultant, I don’t get to interact regularly with my peers, so I love the reunion aspect of PASS. And now that I’ve started following people on Twitter, my universe of colleagues has expanded even more, and I was delighted to meet the people behind the avatars.

The joy of PASS is not limited to those of us who have attended for many years. As I was sitting in the airport last Friday, I recognized an attendee who was a first-timer and asked about his experience. He replied that it exceeded expectations. He was so anxious to get back to work to put what he learned into practice. He felt that the value of the knowledge that he is bringing back to the office from PASS was so much greater than the price of the conference. Now that’s a ringing endorsement if I ever heard one.

There is so much more that could be said about PASS, and many in the community have already posted their thoughts on Twitter and on their blogs. There has been quite a stir in the business intelligence community this past week about the future of Analysis Services, about which I will comment in a future post. Today, however, I will focus on a few follow-up comments and links to resources related to activities in which I participated last week.

Getting Started In Blogging And Technical Speaking

Kendal Van Dyke (blog| twitter) presented a session with tips for getting started in either of blogging or speaking. He invited a panel of experts to join him, including myself, Rob Farley (not pictured below) (blog| twitter), Aaron Bertrand (blog | twitter), Buck Woody (blog | twitter), Todd McDermid (blog| twitter), Mike Walsh (blog | twitter), Thomas LaRock (blog | twitter), Ted Krueger (blog | twitter), Patrick LeBlanc (blog | twitter), Andy Warren (blog | twitter), and Brent Ozar (blog | twitter).

Photo courtesy of Brent Ozar

Who had control of this very interactive session? You’ll have to buy the PASS Summit DVD to find out!

I waited patiently for my turn to speak. With a room full of speakers, getting your own turn can be a challenge! I heard a few attendees express concern that they didn’t know what to write about, or that someone else has covered the topic. My response to this concern is that everyone has a unique take on a topic, and that’s why T-SQL Tuesday is such a great way both to learn and to contribute. T-SQL Tuesday was started by Adam Mechanic (blog | twitter) and gives everyone with an opinion (and who doesn’t have one?) or a specific experience to add to the topic. You can see the first invitation to T-SQL Tuesday here to see how it all started and the most recent T-SQL Tuesday posts hosted by Paul Randal (blog | twitter). The best way to keep tabs on who’s hosting the next round is to follow the #TSQL2sDay hash tag on Twitter.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get to hang out for the entire presentation, because I had to move on to the…

Women in Technology Panel

I was honored to participate as a panelist for this year’s Women in Technology luncheon. It was well attended, and I heard so many positive comments after the event from both men and women. I drew inspiration from my fellow panelists as well as the stories shared with me by other women attending PASS this year. You can view a recording of the event here if you’re a registered member of PASS (which is free to join).

It’s so difficult to say what the right answer is for increasing the numbers of women in technology. The numbers are diminishing at a deplorable rate (as I discussed in a previous post). It seems to me that to foster change we need to start laying the groundwork with our children. By “our children”, I mean society in general, not me specifically, although I have tried do my part! On the one hand, I don’t recommend forcing children into a career path that they can’t embrace enthusiastically. On the other hand, I believe that one reason that girls don’t pursue technology as an option is lack of exposure to the possibilities. Lynn Langit (blog | twitter) is a role model for showing kids (not just girls!) how to explore these possibilities through www.teachingkidsprogramming.org. Check it out!

Along these lines, I proposed that maybe – as great a community as PASS is – we should collectively think about what we can do for our kids. Someone tweeted that I suggested we should bring our daughters to SQLSaturday, but actually I wondered aloud if we could do something similar to SQLSaturday that focused on the kids (and not just girls). Maybe we could get some sponsors to help, too?

Demystifying MDX in Reporting Services

In this session, I explained some of the nuances of working with MDX in Reporting Services. I have posted my demo reports here.

In addition, you might want to refer back to some of my recent posts about using dynamic MDX in Reporting Services: Part 1 and Part 2.

If you’re not familiar with MDX, I presented Session 07: Intro to MDX for 24 Hours of Pass: Summit Preview which you can view if you have a free PASS membership. MDX is not going away any time soon, contrary to recent rumors, so invest some time learning it if you plan to work with real Analysis Services cubes, which will continue to have their place in the BI stack for several years to come.

Real World Analysis Services Stored Procedures

This topic drew a larger audience than I expected as it’s a fairly specialized topic. For years, I never needed to use Analysis Services Stored Procedures (ASSP), avoiding it because folklore said so due to performance hits. However, some things just can’t be done any other way and I ran into such things this past year. To date, I haven’t found much written about ASSP other than BOL, but you can find some excellent examples to download at CodePlex. Plus I’ve uploaded the very simple (non-production-ready) C# example that I used in my session demonstration for you to peruse.

What’s Next?

So now that I’ve completed all the training and Webcasts and conference sessions that I’ve been focused on the last couple of months (with one exception – Delivering Information with Reporting Services, a free Webcast at 12 pm Pacific on Wednesday, November 17), I plan to get back to a more regular blogging schedule. There are certainly plenty of topics on my “to do” list!

No, the statement that caught my attention first was “…when I approach male attendees, they seem a bit shocked that I am talking technology with them.” And I thought, really? In this day and age? I mean, it’s 2010, right? If I am reading this post correctly, this quote comes from something that Denise Dubie of NetworkWorld wrote, but I couldn’t locate the article online and the blog post didn’t provide a link.

Conceding that I read the post in a hurry yesterday, I decided that perhaps I’d been too hasty and read something out of context. So I went back and re-read the post again today. The author, Lori MacVittie, appears to be quite a prolific blogger at DevCentral. I don’t know anything about her, but her blog archives are impressive. Clearly, she’s a woman with several years of experience, not someone who just stepped out of college and entered the work world. I’d expect that across those years, she’d have a variety of experiences with all types of men – some who were favorably disposed towards working with women, and some who weren’t, but her post implies a preponderance of those who weren’t. She doesn’t really provide any evidence, anecdotal or otherwise, but makes the following observations:

• Offering an explanation for the failure of women to enter science, technology, engineering or math (STEM), “Young women, according to research [which she fails to cite], aren’t thinking about the difficulties that exist in a traditionally male-dominated field…[it has] everything to do with men and attitudes.”
• Why do these men have these attitudes? She explains that IT is still young compared to other STEM, it’s dominated by men, and women in general haven’t been out in the work force all that long (less than 40 years,she says). “It’s no surprise that men in general, then, haven’t had a whole lot of time yet to adjust.”
• “It would likely be difficult to find a woman in technology that hasn’t had this same experience. The shock, the surprise, the change in tone and demeanor that comes from male counterparts upon realizing that the woman they’re talking to knows what she’s talking about.”
• “The debate over ‘booth babes’ isn’t really about booth babes… It’s about the reaction of men to a technically competent woman, no matter what she’s wearing…It’s about the assumption that no woman is technically competent — at a trade show or on a conference call.”

Wow. Those are some heavy-duty attitudes she’s talking about. And it’s quite possible those are attitudes that she has to contend with. I just haven’t seen anything like it in my career, at least not for a very long time. And even when I did, I would consider the experience an outlier. No, actually – the time I’m thinking about had nothing to do with the man in question going into shock upon learning that I knew what I was talking about. In my situation, he was blatantly discriminating by holding me back from a job he knew I could do in favor of a man and kindly asked me do the work required of that position until he did find a man. In retrospect, it really did work out for the best. I was the one in shock that I actually heard him say – to my face – that he wanted to put a man in that position. But I digress…

I started my IT career in 1984, installing computer systems for tractor dealerships and training the personnel how to do everything with that new computer — running the parts department, managing the service department, selling farm equipment, doing payroll, and keeping the books. As a very young woman in a very male-dominated industry – agriculture – it was quite an experience. I had one good ol’ boy in Kansas refuse to hand over the $250,000 check for his newly installed system because he didn’t think it was right that my company send someone that was still wet behind the years (and female, although he didn’t say it out loud). I just smiled and reminded him that he had a working system and trained personnel, so I thought he got exactly what he paid for. He smiled back and handed me the check.

Other than dealing with the very male client base, I didn’t realize at the time what a novel position I was in from a sociohistoric point of view. The software company that employed me had a lot of women. More than 50% women as I recall. The men there didn’t have an attitude that I recollect. But maybe it’s just me…and a bad memory. Anyway, it just seemed normal to have women in the workplace. It wasn’t until years later when I took a women’s history course that I realized that 1984 was the year that women entered the workplace en masse, in professions other than teachers and nurses and secretaries. I was so busy being in the middle of it that I didn’t notice. And had nothing to compare it to.

If I had no reason to appreciate the novelty of what I was doing in 1984, because I had nothing to compare with the experience, why should men who are younger than me require a period to adjust? That’s the implication in the “Booth Babes” post. We simply need to give men more time. And let me do that math – 2010 – 1984 = 26 years. If any man my age or older can’t adjust in 26 years, well, I’m sorry. I think he’s got other issues, since the world is moving much faster and requiring many more adjustments than having women around. Maybe it’s just me…I might need to develop a more sympathetic outlook towards men who are having such trouble coping with technologically-savvy women. If I can find one.

I guess I’m luckier than women like Lori and Denise who are encountering men with bad attitudes. I am surrounded by a community that is admittedly male-dominated. I no longer work for that software company surrounded by women, and as I get older, I notice there are fewer and fewer women in IT. The facts bear this out if one considers just computer science degrees – only 18% were earned by women in 2008 as compared to 37% in 1985 (National Center for Women & Information Technology).

My daughter graduated from MIT in 2008. Not with a computer science degree, but one in theoretical math. I thought young women weren’t supposed to do that sort of thing? Maybe it’s just me…and my genes. She decided that the proper thing to do with a theoretical math degree would be to continue on to grad school, but ultimately decided against that and became a business intelligence consultant like me. (See, I’m doing my part for WIT!)

I asked for her perspective on this notion that men have negative attitudes about women in IT or STEM for that matter. She said that in school she had heard that women in math could have problems with old professors, but she never personally encountered it and never felt disadvantaged, although being female clearly put her in the minority. No, the bigger problem was with other male students, but she chalked that up to their introverted natures. Hmm, could it be the shock and awe that Lori and Denise described was not a negative attitude, but rather the social awkwardness that sometimes characterizes guys who work in IT? Just a thought…

As for her experiences in the work world, my daughter says her biggest obstacle to acceptance has not been gender, but age. She’s still young and has to prove herself. And that’s to be expected.

Maybe it’s just me… Perhaps my worldview of the attitudes towards women in IT is too narrowly focused. Over a 26 year career, I’ve worked in a lot of industries with a lot of different technologies, but I certainly have no idea what’s going on in the IT world at large. My focus has been limited to the Microsoft SQL Server community for the past 10 years. From the way Lori and Denise make it sound out there, I’m rather glad I’m having such a sheltered experience. The SQL Server community has been quite welcoming to women for as long as I’ve been a member. In fact, there is an active effort to get more women involved through a Women in Technology (WIT) special interest group. At every conference I attend, there is always some event devoted to WIT and this year I’ve been invited to participate in the panel discussion at PASS Summit 2010.

Maybe it’s just me… but I think the guys in the SQL Server community are awesome and certainly don’t deserve to be lumped into the same group with others who might have a problem with women in IT. Looking forward to seeing all of you in Seattle in November!