Mice and Men.

E. and I were walking beside the St. Jacob's Railway tracks after attending our duties as long term Teaching Assistants for an Organizational Behaviour course.  We were both PhD students in the Faculty of Engineering, Department of Management Sciences at the University of Waterloo.  I was walking towards my car to go home and he was walking towards  the married students residences that were a very short distance from the campus.  The very same residences that I had lived in as a newlywed, earlier in my career as a graduate student.

My husband and I had moved out of these married student quarters just before finishing my master's degree.  I had applied for funding to do a doctorate and we were uncertain as to whether we would be able to stay in the residence and besides which we were ready for a non-student dwelling after many years of living the student life.

As it turns out, I did get funding for that doctoral research.  I also started teaching sessionally at Wilfred Laurier University.  So, a mere year after moving into our first 'real' apartment, my husband and I were able to purchase our first home in Waterloo knowing that we would be having a baby and I would be finishing up graduate work and this would take a few years.

But as the saying goes, the best laid plans....

By the time E. and I were walking alongside those tracks I had had my baby and my husband had left.  I was basically an emotional and intellectual trainwreck yet I clung desperately to the original plan.  This particular afternoon walk took place within a year of my husband leaving and I was suffering also from great shame.

E. and I had worked together for a number of school terms by this point.  He was a mature married student from Thailand and our department had many social gatherings embracing the myriad of international students so we were on good casual terms with each other.  In fact, we may have both served on our student council team.  We were both outgoing and involved.

I think this walk was the first time I was alone with him subsequent to my baby and then marriage fiasco.  I have noted the casual and friendly nature of our relationship yet he felt it necessary to ask me this:  "Do you think that the fact that you chose to have a baby during your doctoral research might have been the reason your husband left you?"

You know what?  16 years later and I'm still gobsmacked by the question and the emotional rollercoaster it sets off in me.  Researchers look for tidy answers to explain the lack of female representation in STEM.  This story is one of my contributions (yes, there are more) to the not so tidy answers I suspect litter the STEM landscape for women.

Social Media and Reputation Economics

Social media.  It's an oxymoron.  The only thing that distinguishes today's media from the past, and therefore deeming it 'social', is that we can respond immediately.  Letters posted in the 19th century (and earlier) were also social media.  As were the cave drawings in Europe from 32,000 years ago.

I believe that today's social media has allowed us to bypass the knowledge economy and move directly into a more transparent reputation economy.  It is not what you know, it is who you know.  The promise of an economy growing according to [knowledge generated] patents does not get very far without the money to build, test, market and improve said patented item.  And where does the money come from?  According to the Occupy Wall Street movement, the money belongs to only 1% of the population.  So if you've got a great idea you are going to have to gain access to some of that wealth in order to generate wealth with that idea.  And that, my friends, is where reputation is key.

I spent many years pursuing a doctoral degree.  The brick wall I came up against while researching my topic (Investment Decision Making in New Technologies) was the fact that time and time again the venture capitalists and the angel investors were not modelling anything when making these decisions.  It was the handshake and the reputation that sealed the deals.  To be sure, a thorough examination of the knowledge aspects were part of the due diligence process.   But the final decision came down to the handshake and the reputation of the development team.  This reality, as well as the chaos of my personal life, forced the ending of this academic route since handshakes are not only difficult to measure but a dissertation on the 'soft' aspects of investment decision making was not likely to be easily defended in an engineering faculty.

I learned a lot about communication networks in this field of study.  I've even published on the matter.  The idea of lead users is quite compelling and feeds nicely into the foundation of a reputation economy.  With social media you no longer have to rely on face to face connections or peruse trade magazines and conferences.  If you have an idea, you can actively search online for people looking for solutions that fit your idea.  Or conversely, if you have a problem you can look for ideas that solve it.

And how does the 'wheat get separated from the chaff'?  Reputation.  And this is greatly eased by the immediacy of social media.  Letters of introduction are no longer needed (my father brought a few with him when he emigrated to Canada from Ireland in 1967).  Answers to questions like:  How many twitter followers does the person have?;  LinkedIn connections?;  Blog traffic?;  Youtube videos?; Conference presentations?;  TED talks?; will allow a potential investor to ascertain quickly whether there is enough 'klout' to warrant further investigation or a seed investment.

The sad thing about bypassing the knowledge economy is that there might be some truly great ideas out there that will go nowhere in the reputation economy.  The world transformed itself in the space of a mere decade, leaving knowledge junkies like myself hankering a bit for a bygone era and resigned to blogging for a better world.  A 3.0 world where reputation is based on quality rather than merely quantity.

Opting out - maybe there is no glass ceiling?

I find this article powerful. (thx Javed!)

I am one of those women he writes of.

I opted into motherhood in 1994 and my life was irrevocably changed.

At the time (1994) I gave birth, I was enrolled in a PhD program in engineering....in the area of Management of Technology.

At the boom of the internet age I was at the leading edge in a world class university (University of Waterloo)...but giving birth to a child changed all of my priorities ...I did not finish that doctorate. I have yet to see a female authoritative figure in this field and wonder if all of us just opted out.

My child is now 14.5 years old and I am re-emerging and wondering how many other women have made this choice (not choosing 45+ hour week day care and opting to stay mostly at home during formative years)....perhaps some of you have made similar choices?