TDoR and LGBTSTEMday

Happy #LGBTSTEMday to queer and trans people in STEM! And it’s also #TransAwarenessWeek which is dedicated to raising visibility, educating and addressing barriers faced by the entire transgender community. I prefer to talk about trans awareness here because this affects all aspects of my personal and STEM professional lives.

For many trans people, raising awareness means reliving past and present trauma. It means drawing attention to ourselves which increases the risk to our personal safety. It reminds us of the barriers we face every day just to live the way most people take for granted. We think of the abuse, harassment, and the times we felt ignored, undervalued and unappreciated by our family, friends and co-workers. That we have to work so much harder to get to the same place. That how we look, what we wear and how we sound and act are constantly scrutinized and held to unrealistic cis expectations of gender binary. Every day is a struggle for our identity and existence, and a fight for basic human rights. These problems are amplified in STEM because trans representation is almost zero.

I have been yelled at a few times in public washrooms. I have been groped by a complete stranger in front of a room full of people to be made fun of. I have been misgendered "Sir. Ma'am. Whatever" was the last time in front of a lineup in a grocery store. Despite having my name, I am routinely "sir'ed" over the phone. I have been disowned by my parents who call me an abomination. I have had slurs shouted at me, been spat on, called "it" and "freak". I have been told I am not a real woman. I get stared at and see the gaze go from chest to crotch. Most days I will question my safety somewhere.

I don't hide, I am out and seen. I speak up and out. I advocate. I champaign. I educate. It's an emotional labour. It's hard. I don't do it for me, I do it for those that need change to happen, those that are in an earlier part of their journey, for children and youth stuck in hostile home environments, for those struggling thinking they are alone and questioning if they are the only one. I am there for the terrified, walk with the scared, steady the stumbling and lift the falling. 

As I prepare to speak at #TransDayOfRemembrance #TDoR, I am acutely aware of how much has changed in fifty years, how far I have come, that at 55 I am still alive to do what I do. But I am also acutely aware of how much hasn't changed. As I reflect on the 462 reported deaths of trans people this last year I am also acutely aware of the many more that aren't acknowledged, those that are reported by their deadname or birth gender, the many more that take their own lives taking their 'secret' with them and the many many more that routinely face abuses. And just for trying live as our authentic selves.  

I often here local people say "That can't happen here!". Yes it does. This year I am dedicating #TDoR to Sam, a transman that died last month alone in a hotel room supplied by a local housing agency and not found for two weeks. He had no one to check up on him and no one that came looking for him. His death has largely gone unreported and unnoticed. He deserved better.  

If it is like this for me, someone with a lot of privilege both personally and professionally, just think about how it must be for others. Please educate yourself. Not just this week but every week. Support trans people and stand up for them. And before the week is over check in on your trans friends, family and co-workers to make sure they’re ok. They need you now more than ever.

#68, In memory of Pieter

This was going to be the basis of innovatorquiz #68, a little quiz I have been running on my facebook page on innovation.

As has become routine, a quick check of name spellings, dates and obscure detail to make the clues a little harder, I headed out on the web to put this one together.  Sadly this time, I learnt of a loss. SO instead of posting this one as a quiz, I am going to tell a short story.

Around 1993 I had started working on a relatively complex project for a small Cambridge based Company. I had dropped into the role of system architect by accidental default. I could visualise the whole system and its various interactions including all the network activity and hence, had achitected it all. My task for the next year or so, as well as holding all the disparate pieces together, was to write a network server that also handled realtime IO from a couple of scanners, other network output, alarms, disk storage etc all for a steel rolling mill. And I had to make work reliably under Windows 95. Enough said.

I started looking for a way to handle Finite State Machines design and implementation that made adaption easier. I first came across the work of Paul J Lucas. As part of his MS in Computer Science at the University of Illinois, he have produced a library and tools for what is now known as CHSM Concurrent Hierarchical State Machine.

At the same time I can across Pieter Hintjens, with his company iMatix and his web server project Xitami. Pieter was using Paul's work and Xitami was being deployed at CERN. Pieter and I swapped code, ideas etc etc over the course of about of what turned out to be a couple of years.

I was about four years into the engineering of software and had been encountered the world of software patents, many frivolous adding to the difficulty of commercial software production. Pieter was passionate about the subject and was president of the Foundation for a Free Information Structure, ad association that fights against software patents. I could see both sides of the coin, the need to protect a companies investment and the need to stop frivolous patents. Peiter and chatted about this fairly often.

Our paths diverged although I 2009/10, I picked up some of his work from Libero and ZeroMQ as I wrote an MPI compliant implementation to work on top of my patented networking hardware. We exchanged a few emails once again just reconnecting and touching base.

I had come across his work once again with his book 'The Psychopath Code' in about 2015.

My plan had been to make a rather obscure quiz entry for this one with CERN as the reference. I knew there would be lots of guesses around other web based innovation at CERN but few would get this one, although I suspect a few might get close. There was a lot of innovation thanks to the work of Paul and Peiter.

I went to look up how to spell Pieter's name and was shocked and saddened to find he had passed away some years ago at the age of 54 leaving 3 young kids. He documented some of his fight with cancer and his journey to euthanasia - http://hintjens.com/blog:115 - on his website. His site is worth a browse and read.

Thank you Peiter.

"What if we had all of the holiday stuff without all the stuff stuff" - Interac ad

Anyone that listens to me with even half an ear will no doubt have heard me talk about how credit cards have had a huge impact on society, not just economically, but in term of attitudes. In 1972 Access, A UK credit card created from a banking consortium, later taken over by Mastercard, used a slogan in their first advert that epitomised the issues that would follow. "Take the waiting out of wanting".

This week I happened to catch an advert for Interact, a debit card system here in Canada. It starts "What if we had all of the holiday stuff without all the stuff stuff" and ends "Interac, for the stuff that matters."

I was fairly shocked, happily, when I first heard the ad. 47 years, nearly 2 generations, later the tides a turning.

Now I realise that it's an ad, and there is a vested interested. But in the capitalist based economy driven to a large extent by financial services and therefore credit and interest, the enticement of short term gain, and greed, used to create an entire credit industry captured in that 1972 slogan, has given way, at least in an ad, to a call away from excessive spending.

Again, those that give me half an ear, know that the the rampant attitudes around Christmas are quite the turn off for me. The commercialism and greed are pretty hard to take. Seeing more and more being spend with less and less gratitude is sickening. Not to mention the casting away of common decency. Have you noticed how the rules of the road are abandoned at this time of year? Have you notice how people aren't smiling.

I am therefore pleased to see that advertising has come round to the idea that the wanting of stuff is by implication not the thing that matters.

As I said, I know Interac has a vested interest, but I have to hand it to them. Nice going.

Pride, why I march.

Today it is the local pride parade and I will be marching.

I march because the rights I have today have been hard fought. I mostly enjoy equal rights because of the actions of others. That needs to be remembered. In some parts of the world I could not freely be myself. Even a generation or two ago I couldn't.

Those same equal rights are under threat in some places. I march to be seen and counted.

I march in memory of those that have lost their lives simply because the prospect of being themselves was too hard. Whilst we mostly have equal rights, we still don't have broad equal acceptance. Their loss needs to be remembered.

I march for those that aren't brave enough to be out here, seen and counted, still struggling to be. For you, I am here helping to pave the way. For you, I am here.

I march to represent those that would want to be here but can't.

I march for the generation to come to ensure that have the same or better rights and freedoms to equality and inclusion that I do. Especially, that kids don't have to go through what I did.

Today I march with pride.

Vulnerability in Business

I have been reading Traction by Gino Wickman. As well as the great input for the entrepreneur world I inhabit for work, it has been validating personally for the approach I take with dealing with people at work.

Over the last 50 years or so the Personnel department has given way to Human Resources. The issue I have seen for many years is that there is a wholesale dehumanization of people with a move to viewing them as merely a resource.

The term resources within a business context will likely first conjure the thought of money. “Working capital, the life blood of a business” is something I have heard for many years in the business community and it is still a popular phrase. The  transposing of values here was not lost on me. Humans have became resources whilst money has has been anthropomorphised.

These changes in language have far ranging effects. In general money tends not to have an emotional response to it's use in business yet the language of life blood places very people based values upon it. On the other hand people feel, they are emotional yet are viewed as a resource, stripping them of their very nature.

Many corporations will talk about a happy work culture but many know this is glib platitude in many instances. Some companies do walk the walk, a popular example being the Virgin group, where Sir Richard Branson is cited often for his beliefs of looking after the employees first whole will then look after the company.

Humans are vulnerable, they feel, they have emotions. Vulnerability is a strength of its own. Consider that for a moment. Vulnerability is often associated with being weak, fearful, and exposed. But what would happen if:
 you let your colleagues see who you really are
 what you do best you did more of
 you let your leaders know you have doubts at times
 you listened more to your colleagues
 you understood your weaknesses and let go of some of the things you don’t do very well
 and instead you other who excel at those things take them on
 you asked for help?

In Traction, Wickman talks about letting go of the vine, the vine that you have been holding on to.

Those that have been around me for any time will know I talk about Cost, Price and Value. These three are often cited round sales like activities. The questions go along the lines of what does it cost to make the widget, what price is the widget being sold at and what's the value of the widget to the purchaser. I hope it is obvious that the relationship of these three leads to to understanding of profit, loss, sales, customer satisfaction and disappointment and so on.

However, the notion of cost, price and value can be applied to other areas of life too. What's the cost of a friendship, what's the price of a friendship and what's the value. I pick this example, not because I am a cold hearted friend but because I recently helped someone understand the extent to which they were being used and abused in a relationship – sometimes the cold hard truth is exposed simply and with clarity.

And so it is with vulnerability. What is the cost of being vulnerable in our relationships, personal and at work? What is that cost, probably cast in terms of risk, and what is the value.

To me the value has always been apparent. People feel. Treating them as such makes all the difference in the world to them and from a management only perspective, as Sir Richard Branson has noticed, employees that are happy look after the company. It's good for the people and it's good for the bottom line.

Personally, I would like to see the language around HR changed.

On the disproportionate value attached to money

This is a subject of my mullings that comes round fairly regularly.

Our western society attaches a much higher value to money than it's true worth. If our society were based on a barter system, the trade of objects or time would render this over valuation null and void.

I'm sure I could probably google around for a while and find papers by economists, psychologists and sociologists (oh my) on the subject, and I am sure their points of view are all perfectly valid but I suspect would miss the mark in being human terms.

How much value for instance would one place on such human experience as love, respect, family or simply the act of spending quality time with someone. These things are often termed as priceless, a term a certain money based organisation hijacked, yet often termed of a lower or non-significant value when money comes into the equations in some sort of way, even tangentially thus opening the question of disproportionate value of money.

The other thing I have contrasted is banks. If we were bartering than my time helping you might be expected to be returned as a like amount of time. This is something people routinely do with friends. Imagine if you helped your friend for a few hours and interest were accrued for the return help. I know things don't work that between friends, but this was simply to illustrate the notion of the value of money verses a barter equivalent.

Units in the natural world

For some time now I have had this notion about numbers, and the math thereof, in the natural world compared to the numbers used in math.

Our current math system is pretty much centered around the use of digits, mostly base 10 with some recent excursions into other bases (2 used in high tech for instance). One could argue that the ancient greeks had a propensity to enjoy base 60 and base 360, but I digress - who me, already...

Our use of numbers and the development of a math system surrounds the use of our digits, steered by our nominal 10, fingers and thumbs.

Looking to the physical world, we see some particularly odd numbers cropping up, however. For instance, perhaps most well known is the ratio of a circle's diameter to it's circumference, PI, being 3.14159 etc. But there are other interesting numbers. For instance the Euler number, e being 2.71828 etc, or the golden ratio and the Fibonacci sequence, 1.618etc.

These are just a few numbers to illustrate the interesting numbers that crop up in the sciences.

What if these numbers are the units in some other numbering system that govern the math of the universe?