When I pledged to do a blog post for Ada Lovelace Day, I
thought I would be going to Saudi Arabia for an e-learning conference. I thought's I'd be meeting lots of Saudi
women working in technology-related jobs, and that I would blog about
them. Great idea; never happened (see here
and here
and here
for what happened).
I did have a back-up plan as well. In fact I was so keen on it that I would
probably have done both blog posts in any case.
Well, I'm going to get in trouble for this, because my tech
heroine is a modest and private person, and doesn’t enjoy a “showin’ up” as we
say in Glasgow. She’s from Lewis, and they
don’t get big heads about things, or brag.
Honest, moral, loyal and hardworking.
Stereotypes, maybe, but there’s a
thread of truth of that in all the people I know from the Islands.
Lorna M. Campbell, please stand up!
Lorna has worked as Assistant Director of JISC CETIS for
some years now, in fact she was one of the founders of CETIS, back when it was
a wee project made up of people wanting to instil an open standards mentality
in e-learning in the UK.
Lorna is younger than me which has always irked me: when and
where did she find the energy and wisdom to be such a fine mentor and
supporter?
Lorna is different from me: she doesn't shout and stomp
about feminism, or indeed anything, the way I do. We’ve had a few tense discussions on correct
use of grammar and punctuation in official reports. But such is the force of her right-ness that
I now use two spaces after a full-stop, having never done that in my life
before meeting her.
Lorna kicks ass.
I honestly think she is the greatest unsung heroine in the
UK educational technology world. So much
wouldn't happen without her: she oils the wheels, she nudges things subtly in
the right direction, with the right word in the right ear at the right
moment. She knows what to say, and how,
and when, and what not to say.
When she was away on maternity leave, things started to go
to rack and ruin. I can’t really cite
anything definite here, just an impression. But thank all of our lucky stars, she came
back.
I was 34 when we met so she must've been, what, 31, 32? She (along with Charles Duncan and Allison
Littlejohn) hired me to do a small bit of work on the SeSDL project, one of the
earliest attempts to create a learning object repository (I think it was 1999
or 2000?).
She scared me then.
But I've always found that my most enduring friendships and working
relationships with other women start with me being slightly intimidated. I don’t intimidate easily, so I think it’s
always my unconscious acknowledgement that here is someone who is at the very
least a match for me. In this case, more
than a match. Yet she makes it very easy
to submit to her general superiority in every area, even for an egotistical
brat like me.
Specifically, she scared me because she was assertive and
professional and she said lots of technical stuff that I didn't
understand. I didn't of course admit
that I'd never heard the word "taxonomy" in an information management
context before. I certainly didn't admit
I'd never heard the word “pedagogy” at all, because that seemed to be awfully
important to their project.
I did at least use my librarian skills to gloss over my
ignorance and go and look these things up before they found out.
I was also intimidated by the fact that Lorna was pierced
and tattooed and dressed so well. I
wanted to be cool enough to impress her.
I was shocked that her project team thought a "taxonomy" could
be an adequate substitute for a "librarian". That was the beginning of a discussion that
is ongoing.
Later, she gave me the job that started me on the career
road I’m on now. As far as I can tell,
neither Lorna nor myself ever planned for or anticipated a career at all. We just ended up in the same place doing the
same thing. I remember that the job of
CETIS EC SIG Co-ordinator was the first job I ever had that I was terrified
of. The combination of her belief in me
(in spite of me being, like, her eighth choice for the role or something) and
her open insistence that I not embarrass her (or maybe that was another
project) exemplified a combination of support and terror that works very well
for her. I’m sure there must be some theory
of learning about that.
Lorna taught me how to deal with the range of personalities
you get in any technical field: most of them male. For quite a long time, when I was confounded,
or wanted to run from the room in tears or burst out in anger, I would simply
try to behave like I thought Lorna would.
Note please that I often failed so please don’t think any outbursts you
may have seen on my part are in any way modelled on Lorna.
Anyway, there’s always been time for a debrief with the
girls later, after something bad or annoying happens.
Which brings me to one important thing thing that makes
Lorna shine, for me: she genuinely supports other women in the field, hires
them, makes sure their talents are used and developed and their voices
heard. She does it unobtrusively, as if
it's the most natural thing in the world, and certainly not to the detriment of
any worthy men who may be around. She has modelled for me how to survive, and even thrive, professionally in shark-infested waters.
She is a good friend, and has an intelligence that is subtle
and broad-ranging and deep, and a willingness to learn and grow as well. She makes people feel good about themselves
without ever indulging in false flattery or untruths (anathema to an
Islander). And oh lord is she funny and
cutting when there’s a need.
Go Lorna!
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