March 24th is Ada Lovelace Day, an international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology. Ada Lovelace was one of the world’s first computer programmers, and one of the first people to recognize and understand computers as more than just a machine for doing sums. She wrote programmes for Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine, a general-purpose computing machine, which by the way was never built. AND Ada has gone down in history as the writing the very first description of a computer and of software.
According to the site FindingAda.com , “Women’s contributions often go unacknowledged, their innovations seldom mentioned, their faces rarely recognised. We want you to tell the world about these unsung heroines. Entrepreneurs, innovators, sysadmins, programmers, designers, games developers, hardware experts, tech journalists, tech consultants. The list of tech-related careers is endless.“
 
I am delighted to draw attention to women I know who are excelling online. The challenge is there are really so many to write about, I don’t know where to begin. Yes I do.  I want to begin with Toby Bloomberg of Bloomberg Marketing in Atlanta GA  whom I met online about 5 years ago. At the time Toby had just started a blog called Diva Marketing Blog. She was one of the early pioneers in blogging and I learned so much from her as I followed her career (and still do) and what I learned inspired me to start my own blogs (not one or two, but 5 blogs ~ okay call me crazy).  Anyway, in honor of Ada Lovelace Day, Toby Bloomberg is hands down my first choice.

There are also so many other women bloggers who could be added to the list such as Lisa Stone, Elisa Camahort Page and Jory Des Jardins, founders of BlogHer ~a community for women who blog. And three of my favorite bloggers are Patsi Krakoff and Denise Wakeman of hte Blog Squad and Yvonne DiVita of Lip-sticking ~ a blog about marketing to women.  Yvonne has always been there when I needed a favor from a blog buddy! I could go on and on and surely leave some very important women off this list, so let me end with this.

Although its too late to get your pledge on the site to add to the list, you can still post your favorite women who are excelling in technology.  And of course, leave a comment below so my readers can see who they are!  

Be sure and check out WE Magazine’s list of 101 Women Bloggers to Watch for 2009. We will be publishing our Women Bloggers to Watch for Spring shortly. If you know of a woman blogger to watch be sure and leave a comment. Self nominations encouraged *SMILE