Today, October 15, is Ada Lovelace Day, a day to celebrate the contributions of women in computing (and in other science and technology fields); a time to remember the nineteenth-century's fascinating and brilliant "first computer programmer" Ada Gordon Lovelace; and an excellent opportunity to praise and encourage the Adas of our day.
As a digital humanities "dude," I'm especially lucky and proud to be able to count a great number of computing women as colleagues, friends, and role models in my field. (I'm sorry that I don't have time at the moment to go on linking to more of these modern-day DH Adas, both here at Stanford, and in the big, wide world: I've left out dozens, I know!)
Melissa Terras, a DH colleage at University College London, has just contributed a must-read contribution to this year's Ada Lovelace Day celebrations: "Father Busa’s Female Punch Card Operatives," an account of some of the women (with never-before-published historical photos) who contributed to the efforts of the founding father of humanities computing, Fr. Roberto Busa. If you have limited time to celebrate the day, please stop reading me and go read Melissa's essay.
But if you are still reading, I'd like to point out a few of Melissa's own inspirational contributions to the field. Perhaps most visibly, Melissa presented a stunning closing plenary lecture -- a digital humanities call-to-arms, really -- "Present, Not Voting: Digital Humanities in the Panopticon" at the DH2010 conference at King's College London; even if you weren't among the lucky few hundred people sitting electrified in the room, you can still read the full text orwatch the video.
More recently, as chair of the DH2014 Program Committee, Melissa successfully shepherded a proposal to add a "community keynote" speech to the annual DH conference schedule, in order to encourage and make room for a more inclusive roster of keynote speakers -- an accomplishment that is particularly pertinent as we celebrate Ada Lovelace Day. The selection of that first DH community keynote speaker, announced just a few weeks ago, is equal cause for celebration: Bethany Nowviskie of the University of Virginia, current president of the Association for Computers in the Humanities, a wonderful colleage, and an inspirational "woman of code."
Let us celebrate and honor Ada Lovelace by remembering and encouraging our sister techies past, present, and future.