Triscadecaphobia - and a film crew...
Yup, I have triscadecaphobia. I hate days like these. I'm glad I don't have to get on a plane today... I'd rather hang around an airport and fly tomorrow instead, so I thought that I'd keep a bit of a low profile today and not do anything to attract the gods of bad luck. So what did I do instead? I went to talk to the lovely folks over in Channel 9 about Women in IT.
as one of the few (9% of attendees at this weeks conference are women), I don't tend to notice that I'm in a minority when I travel - I mean - I get all of the opportunities to dance with my colleagues - and never have to sit on the sidelines. I was in the Merchant Navy for 10 years, working on Supertankers, and that to me, was a minority group (I was the only female on the ship generally). So when Jennifer asked me to come and talk about women in IT, I jumped at the chance, and as I'm in Redmond anyway at the moment, it seemed like a great opportunity.
So what did I say? I talked about being at sea, geek dinners, Evangelism and the ladies restrooms at conferences. You'll be able to watch me on Channel 9 on the WM-IT section in a couple of weeks time. I'm in the queue for posting at the moment I'm certainly honoured to be in the list alongside so many great female Microsoftees. And what went wrong?
Nothing. Maybe I don't need to be scared of today at all.....