My writing highlights include:
Manager development vs exploiting would-be managers (puzzling.org, November 2024):
With lower formal demand for managers but continued informal demand for them comes increased opportunities to exploit would-be managers, or former managers, by making them “shadow managers”.
Employees needing the most support during an abrupt telecommuting transition (puzzling.org, March 2020):
Working from home is a major infrastructure problem at both a household and a societal level and this will turn out to be a pipe dream if we rely on employees to absorb the cost of long term work from home transitions.
Grooming: two case studies (puzzling.org, October 2018):
Grooming is a technique used to prepare a future abuse victim to be accepting of abuse: gradual pushing of the future victim’s boundaries, encouraging the future victim to push boundaries themselves, plus plenty of positive reinforcement that this is good fun, we’re close friends, and so on.
Because of the positive reinforcement, which is a key part of healthy relationships too, grooming is tricky to identify in the moment: you may only be able to make it out in the rear-view mirror.
- Your first fundraiser (puzzling.org, January 2017):
[A] series of articles with my fundraising wisdom, with the hope that new women in technology groups and other activist groups can skip to advanced level fundraising much sooner. May you spend the least time and the most joy on fundraising that you possibly can!
- No more rock stars: how to stop abuse in tech communities (hypatia.ca, with Valerie Aurora and Leigh Honeywell, June 2016, also available on puzzling.org and en français sur repeindre.info):
Don’t set up your community so that if someone has a breach with your community (e.g., is targeted for sustained harassment that drives them out), they are likely to also lose more than one of: their job, their career, their romantic relationships, their circle of friends, or their political allies. Encouraging and enabling people to have social interaction and support outside your organization or cause will also make it easier to, when necessary, exclude people behaving abusively or not contributing because you won’t need to worry that you’re cutting them off from all meaningful work or human contact.
- The AdaCamp Toolkit, a 20,000+ word guide to running inclusive technology-affiliated events, of which I was primary author and sole editor (July 2015):
AdaCamp was a popular and effective two-day unconference run by the Ada Initiative and dedicated to increasing women’s participation in open technology and culture. While no more AdaCamps will be held, the Ada Initiative is happy to share the open source AdaCamp Toolkit, which gives people the tools they need to run events similar to AdaCamp.