Toronto

Good-Bye OANDA / Hello Mozilla!

I gave notice last week.

This was the hardest resignation day I’ve ever had to go through. Not only because I noticed that people care about me and my work but more importantly to leave something so great behind.

I truly enjoyed working with, and learning from my amazing manager about product management, leadership, respect, opportunities, metrics, strategy and customers.

He defined product management as 3 main parts: customer, data, strategy.
I’ve always found those such great pillars to follow, and core ideas on how to tackle product management.


First product launch: OANDA API with API cupcakes!

But that’s not all. I’ve never worked at a company where leadership and management were so approachable, caring and listening. I already miss all the great conversations and insights I got from my manager, the CTO and CEO, well basically anybody there. I will forever cherish this, and do not ever want to cut my connections to them – Graeme and Ed, you promised me coffee time! I never had the feeling that anybody’s opinion is not valued or not considered, I never had to deal with any egos or had the feeling I couldn’t tell anyone (especially in senior management) if I felt their idea was not something we should pursue.

It’s actually pretty easy, everybody wants to be happy and productive at work, and the best way to achieve that is to work and have fun, together.

I’ve learned what constructive criticism, respect and loyalty mean. I’ve learned to build and form an opinion at work, discuss, feel different and be proud of it, and more importantly stand behind it, something that has not always been easy for me in the past.

I’ve learned so much here. This place is encouraging and positive and that’s what has always kept me there.

Thank you OANDA.

<obvious-shout-out>If you ever get a chance to work for OANDA, go for it, and apply, it’s a great bunch of people.</obvious-shout-out>

And, although I didn’t plan to move on so quickly after my enjoyable and productive 1 1/2 years at OANDA, there is a reason why I had to do it. It’s about growing and taking opportunities, and sometimes they come faster than you had planned.

Throughout my entire life, the web and its openness have always been a passion of mine. I’ve always been fascinated by the web and its possibilities; I’ve built many websites, have cursed about browser compatibilities so many times, built mobile websites for the CBC, lead a mobile/hybrid web app project at the CBC, have hosted many webperf meetups, haven spoken at conferences about the web, and last but not least I’ve written a book about web performance.

This is not to brag about my stuff, it’s more to explain my passion, and by now, I assume you’ve noticed a pattern: I believe in the (mobile) web and I am so passionate about it.

So, in a couple of weeks, I will start as a senior product manager at Mozilla. I can’t wait to bring Firefox on all mobile devices. I’m so thankful and grateful that I can finally put all my passion for the (mobile) web into an organization that truly cares for, and believes in the openness of the web.

My first week at work will be in Whistler, BC, where I will meet all my team members, well all Mozillians. After that, I’ll have my desk in the Toronto office.

I can’t wait!

I believe in the web, and I believe in mobile.

Let’s get started.

 

 

My contribution as a female tech speaker – Living the minority

I love talking about, and listening to the things I am passionate about (who doesn’t?). I love sharing my knowledge and learning about others. I love conferences. It’s a great place to learn new things, validate your knowledge, connect with like-minded and come back home with a bunch of things you want to try out and work on.

So it happens that one of the things on “my list of things to do in life” is/was to present at a conference. I happily and proudly checked this off last weekend.

I had the pleasure to speak with a smart colleague at FITC’s “Web Performance and Optimization” conference in Toronto, this past weekend.

Our topic was similar to the one we submitted (and got accepted) to the O’Reilly’s Velocity conference in San Clara this summer. I’m so beyond excitement to be presenting similar things (and more) to all those great and talented web performance enthusiasts in a few months.

Allow me to give a brief recap of the presentation from last Saturday – the way I experienced it.

It was a small conference, around 70 people attending, probably ~7 of those attendees were women – that’s it, not more! Well, not a huge surprise to me, I’m used to that from my time as a Computer Science student 10 years ago. But is the ratio still so drastic? Oh, and in addition, I was the only female speaker that day.

While I was listening first (and later presenting myself), I noticed that most male presenters had a very specific way of selling and promoting themselves – They all were very confident (Not jealous, good for you, boys!). A supportive and beautiful person on my side that day, full of great constructive criticism, noted something after I was done presenting. She confirmed something that I had honestly (and secretly) already felt, she said I could have been more promoting myself “..like the guys did”. It’s true, as the only woman speaking that day, I could have represented the female minority better by maybe emphasizing my successful web performance results to those 63 men and 7 women that day. Well, it’s not that I wasn’t passionate about my topic – Maybe it’s just that women share their success in a different, less self-selling way and/or are less confident.

I’d like to quote something from Geek Feminism now:

So! Getting women to submit content: easy? Um. When I’d talk to men about the conference and ask if they felt like they had an idea to submit for a talk, they’d *always* start brainstorming on the spot. I’m not generalizing — every guy I talked to about speaking was able to come up with an idea, or multiple ideas, right away…and yet, overwhelmingly the women I talked to with the same pitch deferred with a, “well, but I’m not an expert on anything,” or “I wouldn’t know what to submit,” or “yes but I’m not a *lead* [title], so you should talk to my boss and see if he’d want to present.”

Ok! So I guess I am not imagining all of this. It really seems to be true that men are generally more confident than women when it comes to work related areas where they can promote themselves.

The beautiful thing about life is that you (can) always learn and get better.

And to be honest, my observation at FITC’s conference has even more encouraged me to submit call for speakers forms! I enjoyed presenting! Like a lot – You ain’t stoppin’ me now.

Below the slides from our talk on Saturday

[slideshare id=17289690&w=427&h=356&sc=no]

Additional resources in regards to women in tech and female speakers

  • https://plus.google.com/communities/101818001236662563704/stream/02ee47c3-6a09-4925-8467-e503c684c4ce
  • https://twitter.com/callbackwomen
  • http://www.facebook.com/ShePlusPlus
  • http://2012.jsconf.eu/2012/09/17/beating-the-odds-how-we-got-25-percent-women-speakers.html
  • http://geekfeminism.org/2012/05/21/how-i-got-50-women-speakers-at-my-tech-conference/

6 years later

I can’t believe 6 years have passed. I remember writing those posts below, still being on a temporary work permit in Canada, wishing to work for a bigger media company while learning lots during my first job in a media company.

Things change.

I’ve been part of the CBC mobile team since 2008, extremely proud of that and being more than ever interested in mobile web. I remember a friend from University worked for a mobile company six years ago and she was telling me that mobile will become big. I didn’t believe her back then and almost thought “who would want to develop for a crappy, small device like a phone?” Well, I proved myself wrong – There is no doubt anymore that mobile is not the next big thing, so here I am now, back as a big advocate for the mobile browser & creating mobile web apps.

I’d like to use this post to let you all know that I am back and hoping to post more valuable information here so you can witness how passionate and interested I’ve been in mobile web, mobile performance and the future of such.

roger’s and bell’s online services

i am frustrated: ok, let’s take the two biggest communication providers in canada: bell and rogers. you would normally assume that at least they provide you with user-friendly websites: well structured and with a great offer of online services which actually work?!?!? well, i have to correct here a little bit (and with a lot of frustration):

incident 1: don’t think you can register for online billing if they say you can: i have a rogers account: now, i wanted to link my billing to my online account. i typed in my account number + postal code, then a screen appears: you have 2 more chances to try it? what? why? i try it again and same problem again: you have 1 more time to try it. believe me, i checked the account number and my postal code. they are correct.
incident 2: bell didn’t tell me when i ordered basic lite internet that this only allows 1GB of down/up load bandwith. ok, i exceeded it already once, now i wanted to upgrade (ding ding: more money for them), so i followed the nice provided link “you can upgrade here” and after typing in and collecting all the information needed, they say: due to technical difficulties it’s not possible to upgrade. well i have tried it now every single day for the past 3 days. what kind of service is that? i sent an email to them, also no response …
well, at least my online billing with bell works 🙂

i guess bell or rogers can for sure compete with german’s “deutsche telekom” customer (online) service.

please dear bell and rogers: if you can’t offer online services then don’t promote them on your website.