I am a woman in technology and I am very proud of what I do. I love SharePoint and I love the community. I automatically get involved with anything I can that I think would help in the long run. I run the Office Geeks and I try to help Michael Lotter out with SharePoint Saturday. No one has once told me I could not speak at an event or participate due to my gender. Yes sometimes a conference may be harder to get in due to the amount of submissions that the coordinators may receive. I understand I may not get in because someone better was chosen above me. That’s how it works out occasionally with TechED or SharePoint Conference or some of the other events. I am also the new kid on the block and I don’t expect automatic admission until I improve my skills, but it will never stop me from trying. There may be some women who do not submit and that I can’t help. If you are not submitting then you are not going to get into a conference. Telepathy doesn’t work. I have tried it many times hoping it would it just doesn’t. I am all for more women in technology, but we need to promote that more women push themselves harder to get into conferences. We need to encourage them to submit. We need to encourage them to take the initiative. I have never met a single person pushing women back because of gender. If you look at the conference attendee list for .Net in general and not just SharePoint you will notice people like Rachel Appel, Dana Coffey, Kathi Kellenberger, Susan Lennon, Jessica Moss, Kathleen Dollard, and many others. There are some groups out there that are not going about how to get more women involved the correct way. It is splintering the community. We need to make sure that we encourage a more professional community. I understand there are social aspects to the community, but picking fights is never a good idea. So if you take one thing out of this blog post please understand that we should encourage more women to get involved without instigating a rift of men versus women when there is no male versus female oppression. I am not trying to name names or point fingers, but don’t you agree we all have much more fun when there is no drama involved? I hope that you all have a good weekend.