(From Boingboing.)
Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology. Over 300 people have already signed a pledge to publish a blog post, video blog or podcast episode about a woman they admire on 24th March 2009. We need 700 more people for the pledge to be successful.
Recent research by psychologist Penelope Lockwood discovered that women need to see female role models more than men need to see male ones. But in the tech world women’s contributions often go unacknowledged and role models are hard to find. Ada Lovelace Day is a chance for us to sing the praises of the women who make tech tick: entrepreneurs, innovators, sysadmins, programmers, designers, games developers, hardware experts, tech journalists, tech consultants… The list of tech-related careers is almost endless and we want to see examples from all of them!
Ada Byron Lovelace is recognized as the writer of the world’s first computer program, which remained theoretical since the machine she wrote for, Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine, was not operational at the time. She was also the daughter of famous poet Lord Byron. She is widely popular in the geek community, especially after she was portrayed as a character in William Gibson and Bruce Sterling’s novel The Difference Engine.
The project was launched by Suw Charman-Anderson on January 5. By the time of this post the pledges were up to over 800, getting close to the 1,000 target (though extras are always needed to cover for those who won’t be able to participate after all). I pledged, of course. So on March 24, expect a post here about techie women.
Fair warning: I will likely lead up to this event with rants about various Hollywoodian portrayals of women — or their absence — in science in technology. If you have trouble getting in touch with your inner feminist, skip reading on those days. 
Links of interest:
[...] February, 2009 by Sophie Lagacé A month from today, we will be celebrating Ada Lovelace Day, and as promised I am now starting a series of posts to discuss the perception (and my reality) of [...]
[...] 3 March, 2009 by Sophie Lagacé (Continuing the discussion started last week in Part 1 and leading up to Ada Lovelace Day.) [...]
[...] 10 March, 2009 by Sophie Lagacé (Continuing from Part 2 of the discussion of women in science and technology from last week and leading up to Ada Lovelace Day.) [...]
[...] 17 March, 2009 by Sophie Lagacé (Continuing the discussion of women in science and technology from Part 3 last week, and leading up to Ada Lovelace Day.) [...]
[...] here we are — today bloggers are celebrating the heritage of Ada Byron Lovelace and other “techie” women in science, technology, [...]