Kimberly N. West - Blog, Blog, Blog...

Am I paranoid?

This morning I was walking into a client's office which happens to be a large transit company in a metropolitan city.  As I was about to walk through the automatic double doors a gentleman stopped me and asked if I worked for this transit company.  I replied yes.  He asked if I would take an large manila envelope inside for him and run it up to accounting.

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In milliseconds my mind went through a series of thoughts:  1. Why can't you take it upstairs? 2. What's in the envelope?  3. Why are you asking me?  4. Security should be able to take care of that.  5. Where is your employee ID?  6. Could that be a bomb?  7. Could that be anthrax?  When I finally regained my composure I let this person know that I would not be able to help with his request and that he should seek assistance from the security guard at the front desk.  He said OK as he departed.  He never tried to speak to the security guard.

I was left wondering, would I have reacted with such almost rude suspicion before 9/11?  It didn't matter what race he was, or that he had on a nice suit or that he was rather polite.  All that mattered was that envelope, the contents and why he couldn't take it in himself.

Like many, 9/11 had a profound effect on me.  I lost friends, colleagues and memories when the towers came down.  In the mid 90s I worked across the street from the NY Stock Exchange.  For a little extra exercise I would take the subway to the Towers stop, drop of shoes to be repaired or clothes to be cleaned, grab a bagel with cream cheese and a cup of coffee (official NYC breakfast) from my favorite sidewalk guy and walk to work.  From 1998 until 2001 I flew to anywhere in the world that tickled my fancy, on a whim.  That has changed drastically.  On 9/11 my favorite Mexican restaurant was destroyed and one of my favorite places to shop was obliterated.  The place where my then boyfriend proposed to me is gone, international travel has slowed to a trickle and  I still can't bring myself to go down to lower Manhattan when I visit New York.

The experiences of that day have made us all more careful in our daily dealings.  However, I was never more concious of how 9/11/2001 effected me until, on May 10, 2007, this gentleman asked me to perform the simple act of taking an envelope into a building and I refused.  The entire interaction took less than 15 seconds and I had to ask myself...

Am I paranoid?

Excuse you, did you see me standing here? Part 1

I recently had a phone conversation with a female friend and colleague who needed to vent.  She is the owner of a small technology security consulting firm and apparently had a bad day.  This bad day stemmed from the treatment she received at a trade show from some of the other attendees and vendors.  I already knew what was coming.  It seemed that, while visiting  booths at this trade show, she had been ignored by a few vendors that she wanted to engage and treated rudely by some of the attendees.  She questioned if it was a race thing.  I told her no, I don't think it was purely a race thing, I think it was a race/gender thing. 

I felt her angst, I really did.  From my own experiences I know the frustration she felt in being made to feel like she was invisible or that these vendors, for whatever reason, didn't think she looked important enough to begin a dialogue with.    "Why were they interacting with every white and asian male that came to their booths while I was told that someone would be right with me and that someone never came," she asked?  Not once, not twice but three separate occasions at the same event.  To add insult to injury, she was trying to engage these vendors to spend money with their companies.  Big guarantee that will never happen.

Now, you may think that my friend is a shrinking violet or didn't convey that she needed to speak with a channel representative or didn't step up to the plate to ask for what she needed.  Let me assure you that she is indeed the opposite of shy.  The last straw came when she asked a passing male channel/sales rep for  assistance and he said that someone would be right with her.  After watching two people who came into the booth after her get serviced, she asked yet another rep for some assistance.  Same result.  A minute later my friend cornered the first rep she spoke to and asked what was the problem with getting service around here.

In her words...

"In the back of my mind I could see the situation play out in three different ways: 1. I could silently leave asking myself why no one honored my requests for assistance, therefore allowing them to continue with the horrible customer service I encountered; 2. I could catch a major sista-girl attitude with the rep I was speaking to and turn the place out, possibly reinforcing a stereotype that black women are loud and difficult;  3. I could take the high road and calmly and diplomatically ask why my requests had been overlooked and explain that I was there to demo a specific product because I had potential customers for it.  I took the high road", my friend said.

"I asked the rep, who never quite made eye-contact or greeted me with the same handshake and wide smile as he had the others, why I was constantly passed over and ignored.  He replied that they (everyone working the booth) thought I was part of concession services, not an attendee at the trade show.  I asked why and he began to stutter and couldn't give me a straight answer.  I let him know what my purpose was but, since I had been ignored, I would have to recommend their competitor's product to my clients.  I also went so far as to say that I would write the senior channel rep and alert him/her to my experience at the booth, wrote down the name on his name tag and walked away.   I should have gone for option 2. and turned the place out", she laughed into the phone.

Sad as it may be this is not an isolated situation.  I hear similar stories from women in technology all the time.  The most glaring and egregious examples however, always come from black women or darker skinned Indian and Pakistani women.  I personally, have had a few encounters that should have been chronicled in Ripley's Believe It Or Not.  I have heard male speakers at educational events make the most thinly veiled/outward, positively insensitive doltish comments.  Then stand there with the innocent 'what did I do' look on their faces when someone confronts them about it.  Interestingly enough, these comments do not always come from white males.  So on one hand these are gender issues but on the other hand these are also race issues. 

'Excuse you, did you see me standing here? Part 2 will set your ears aflame as I get up on the soap box and let you know what I and many women in technology think about the state of race and gender relations in the industry.

She's Baaaaaack

Hello World!

After a lengthy hiatus (a little over a year) I've returned with a head full of questions, commentary on the state of enter almost any word here and general rants and raves about being a small business owner, female technologist and whatever else pops into my head....

So what shall we talk about today?

Web 2.0 Is Made Of White People Fallout

<sigh> Where do I begin? 

I’ll start by stating that I am an African-American female with over 20 years in the IT industry and have attended various IT industry and/or trade shows all around the world for at least 15 of those 20 years.  I echo Brent Leary’s sentiment, “this isn’t a new phenomenon”. To those of you for whom lack of diversity in our industry is an epiphany I ask, “where the hell have you been?”  Minority inclusion is not complete without the participation of the country’s two largest minority groups.  You can usually count the number of African-American and Hispanic-American (which are the two largest minority groups in the US) delegates/attendees at major industry events on one hand, and speakers are close to non-existent.  Going one step further, I’m usually the only ‘woman of color’ in the bunch and occasionally the only woman (more on that in another blog).  One would know or realize these discrepancies if one were aware of the entire IT community rather than myopically or ignorantly focusing on their little corner of the world. So yes, Web 2.0 (and every other majority owned and/or operated enterprise, institution, think tank, etc.) is made up of white men.  DUH. 

Anil Dash said that he believes that the people who organize Web 2.0 genuinely want their event to be inclusive.  That may be true.  However, I submit that they, and countless other companies that organize events of this type, never even consider whether or not their events will be well attended by minorities.  It’s just not part of their thought process.  The assumption is if the event has compelling and relevant content, is held in a ‘cosmopolitan area’ (Anil, we need to talk), and has decent speakers, everyone will attend.  Newsflash: just because you build it does not mean we will come.

Pete Cashmore stated that Anil’s post on the Web 2.0 conference put into words something a lot of us have been thinking. I know that we have discussed these issues in the minority community for years but who is this ‘us’ you refer to?  Now, some of my closest friends and associates are white males in and out of the IT industry and they’ve never heard this dialog from anyone outside the minority community. 

Pete also asked how do we tackle the lack of diversity in the Web 2.0 world?  Let’s take it a step further.  How do we tackle the lack of diversity in the world of IT, events included, in general?  Here is something to ponder; learn from other industries.  Every mature industry in this country has had to deal with issues of diversity.  IT at this level is relatively young compared to manufacturing, consumer products, agriculture, etc.  The consumer product industry is a prime example.  They found out the hard way that minorities in this country will not purchase a product if they don’t see someone that looks like them on the packaging, in marketing material or in the media.  This gave rise to hundreds of marketing conferences and events geared towards teaching companies how to reach individual minority markets.  Studies have shown that when minorities are properly engaged, revenue and profits go up.  IT could use a similar model. 

And to those of you in the majority community who have been thinking about this issue, stop thinking and start acting if you truly want a more inclusive community.  Have lunch with or befriend a minority IT professional. Find out what they think, what’s really going on and how we can become a more inclusive community.  These are issues and questions that cannot be resolved or answered by white men; they can only be answered by the population you seek to engage.

As an aside, business associates and colleagues have been after me to start a Blog but I’ve been rather reticent. This was just the catalyst I needed – Thanks Pete!

What The World Needs Now...

...Is not another Blog but here I am anyway.

Friends, family, business associates and colleagues have been asking me to start a blog for quite some time.  I've held off because I have a reputation for being highly opinionated, can't seem to hold my tongue and love facing issues head on.  Of course that usually makes for a pretty good blogger, so here goes.

My name is Kimberly N. West and I'm the CEO of an IT consulting firm in Atlanta, GA named SpyderWeb.  I have about 20 years in the industry and have worked with conglomerates such as Microsoft to small mom and pop shops.  I have also had a successful career as a management consultant so I'm a geek who can speak 'suit'.  If you want to know more you can read the bio.

The goal of this blog is to disseminate information on how small and medium businesses can use technology in a more efficient manner, be a catalyst for lively discussion, kick up a little dust and ocassionally ruffle a few feathers but not be vicious or offensive.  I hope to learn about and from people who own and/or run small/medium businesses, their technological and managerial issues and how they solve them.  It's a learning experience for all.  If I'm clearly out of line, call me on it and I promise to return the favor.  Most importantly let's make this a bi-directional flow of information.

My first real blog stems from blogs found on three sites: Brent Leary's blog entitled Web 2.0: The Old Boys Network of the 21st Century?, Pete Cashmore's blog entitled Web 2.0 Is Made Up of White People and Anil Dash's What It's Like At Web 2.0.  The subject matter made me see red and you can read why... Enter at your own risk.