Today, we are celebrating Ada Lovelace Day to honor the GeoGraffiti Women in Technology.  What is Ada Lovelace Day?  Taken directly from http://www.pledgebank.com/AdaLovelaceDay, “Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology. Women’s contributions often go unacknowledged, their innovations seldom mentioned, their faces rarely recognised. We want you to tell the world about these unsung heroines. Whatever she does, whether she is a sysadmin or a tech entrepreneur, a programmer or a designer, developing software or hardware, a tech journalist or a tech consultant, we want to celebrate her achievements.”

Here at GeoGraffiti, we want to thank and honor the 3 women who helped bring the latest GeoGraffiti Voice Map Mashup to life.  Here they are in alphabetical order :) …

Eva Cheung

Eva Cheung, my beautiful girlfriend, has helped with GeoGraffiti from the start.  What is her role?  One of the most important roles in any user-facing technology is that of user acceptance testing.  No I don’t mean she develops test plans and test functionality according to some test matrix.  I mean REAL honest no-hold-barred user acceptance.  Basically after I develop some feature, I want honest feedback so she’s happy to offer constructive criticism.  I’m not looking for “This is a good value-added feature…blah blah blah“  I’m looking for what a user thinks and she has said stuff about some of the GeoGraffiti features like, “That’s ugly…“, “Mmmm… yeah no… I can’t use that…“, “It sucks…“, and the ever popular, “It’s just not pretty!“  While this may sound funny, it’s feedback that we take very very seriously!  After all, GeoGraffiti is for the the community so to have someone give you this sort of feedback is priceless.  This is the stuff you want and basically the root of what caused us to completely redesign the GeoGraffiti Voice Map Mashup from scratch.  I’m not the only person who thinks this way.  In fact, Guy Kawasaki, mentions a woman’s common sense as a valuable tool in producing a technology, business plan, etc.  In one of his books he mentions that if you have an idea, run it by 3 women and if they tell you “It sucks”, “It doesn’t make sense”, “I wouldn’t use it”, etc. then you’d better get back to the drawing board.  We take this to heart and really value this sort of opinion and feedback.  For your feedback and contributions, Eva, GeoGraffiti thanks you and honors you on this Ada Lovelace Day!

Gisselli Rodriguez

Gisselli Rodriguez, my youngest sister, has helped with GeoGraffiti since this past August when she moved to LA to attend Cal State Northridge.  What is her role?  Gisselli oversees all the GeoGraffiti Voice Marks and makes sure that all the data is accurate, corrects and updates our geographic data in order for GeoGraffiti to provide you, our users, the most accurate data possible, and removes any Voice Marks that aren’t exactly legal or violate any terms of service (there aren’t that many of those, but you’d be surprised with the kind of stuff we get sometimes).  Aside from her main role, she also requests feedback from her friends and ocassionally leaves a Voice Mark.  While this is just personal, I would like to thank her for taking some work off my hands when I was busy developing the Voice Map some months ago… no joke… I had a SERIOUS case of identity theft and she was able to take care of it for me within a month!  This is huge!  I had been battling this for over a year and within a month she had my record cleaned.  For your feedback and contributions, Gisselli, GeoGraffiti thanks you and honors you on this Ada Lovelace Day!

Yannell Rodriguez

Yannell Rodriguez, my other sister, has helped with GeoGraffiti since Eva told me “It’s ugly…“  What is her role?  My creativity only goes so far when it comes to graphic design so I decided I should consult someone who has a passion for this kind of stuff.  Who better than your own sister?!  It’s been a long and grueling process to get the GeoGraffiti Voice Map Mashup to the state it’s in today (yes yes I know there are still bugs… don’t worry we’re working on them :) ).  Her talent is amazing.  I’ve sat down with her countless hours just spitting out thoughts in my head about what I want and what I want to experiment with and she’s able to take this and turn it into art.  She’s also been instrumental in keeping us from making graphic design mistakes.  Much like Eva, she too will gladly tell me, “You know… this stuff just looks like @!#$” or “What are you thinking?!  That’s not the way you should do that!“  Wow… I guess after picking on her as a kid, it’s her chance to get back at me!  Ok ok… just kidding.  Again, this feedback is priceless.  We love when people are candid and don’t try to rephrase their sentences into something more acceptable.  It just makes everyone’s life easier and gets right to the point.  It’s exactly what you need when you’re working at a startup company pace!  She’s currently helping design the next version of the iPhone and G1 apps so watch out for those in the next few months!  For your feedback and contributions, Yannell, GeoGraffiti thanks you and honors you on this Ada Lovelace Day!

Don’t forget to forward this around to make sure our GeoGraffiti women are recognized today!

2009, Ada Lovelace, AdaLovelaceDay09, Honors, Thank You, Voice Map, Voice Map Mashup, Women, Women in Technology