SFWoW

San Francisco Women on the Web: serve, educate, empower

On the SFWOW email group, we have a few different subjects where we can post messages. This is to facilitate email filters more than anything, as some subjects are more interesting to some rather than others.

Recently the (community) posts came under a little debate. There are too many of them. So everyone has chimed in on what kind of posts we’d like to see more of and what kind of posts we’d like to see less of. In response to that thread, I wrote my own little history of the (community):

I’ve been on this list since 1995 when it was known as sf-webgrrls. In the beginning the list was all about UNIX and Networking in the IP sense of the word and html tags. Our web browsers were Netscape and Mosaic. Web sites were gray. Hardrives had 256 megs of storage space. Information was saved on floppies. Pine was the email client of choice. Marketing wasn’t even a topic of discussion and all the women on the list were hardcore tech oriented people and this list was a much needed list as women were few and far between in the NOCs of the Bay Area.

Then web site design became an issue, testing web sites to see if they would crash became a concept, then marketing products via web sites, then web site launches, product launches, party invitations, and The Webbies. Oh, and who could forget connectivity and bandwidth? Everyone was incredibly busy, working 12, 14 hour days everyday, and spending a lot of money. And how do you create a nested table? Do I need a home router?

Then 2000 happened (for me) and 2001 (for others). I got layed off, you got layed off. Are we scared yet? Have we lost our homes yet? Are we moving out of the area? How long can I eek out on unemployment? How can I transition into another line of work? Is there still enough work out there to go freelance? But it was all good, wasn’t it? Does anyone have a workaround for the MSG in top ramen?

Suddenly we went from an incredibly headdy place to a very weird place. And it was rather sudden. There were days when this list was a real lifeline for some of us - keeping us connected to a group of somewhat like-minded people going through similar circumstances. (community), which used to be (off topic), posts were more frequent. (Tech) became less important because a lot of us weren’t working. Out in the world, Tech itself was stagnating, languishing in the ethers.

It’s only been in the last year that jobs have been starting to ramp up here in The Bay Area. Still nowhere near pre-2000 levels, Craigslist has had a lot of tech postings in the last year compared to the four years prior. I can remember the days not so long ago when an entire week’s worth of job postings showed up on the front page of the software/qa/dba section of craigslist.

(community) is what got us through the downtime. I enjoy being able to give travel advice and info (and plugging my site in the process). I like having a place to ask for a recommendation for housesitters (I am one!), restaurants to take clients, office space for rent, roommates needed (or how to get rid of one), and ok, a really good nail salon. It’s important to be able to ask your peers for these recs. Asking somehwere else, well, those folks just don’t know me like you all do.

So what’s the point, you may be asking yourself? This is a cyclical list. To get back to our tech roots will take a little conscious effort. I also agree with Andreas who posted a response to this thread, that a lot of the questions I have these days are business related. But I think there is still a lot more tech to be discussed.

So, if you are new, welcome to the list! If it isn’t what you expected then make it so. It’s your list after all.