Women of High Standards

Ada Lovelace Day is a celebration of women in technology. 

In honor of this day, I would like to use this wonderful opportunity to acknowledge the contributions of not only one, but three fellow technical women. I shared a lot of experience with them in Standards Bodies. I loved working with them, learned from them and continue to correspond with them as this is a rare friendship. 

All the women in this blog demonstrated excellence in their contributions to the standards as they have high standards for their work. They are detailed, yet never lose the sight for the big picture; they excel in  understand the implications of the technology vs political decisions yet try to achieve to serve the community in the best way possible; they strive to produce easily consumable documents so that mere humans can read them; they are approachable and very nice to work with. Consequently, I enjoyed my relationship with them tremendously. Many specifications you may encounter, especially in the Web Services and XML area, owe a portion of their development to these women who never sacrifice quality. Further, they are multifaceted as they are also artists, musicians or athletes. 

I am honored to work with them and look forward to the next opportunity where we may work together again or simply discuss where the technology is heading to and how it is changing. 

• Maryann Hondo is an architect who is an expert in security and policy at IBM. We first met during a WS-Metadata Exchange meeting and I had the chance to work with her in WS-Policy working group in w3c. We collaborated on the guidelines for WS-Policy assertion authors document and contributed to the working group. Maryann has been instrumental in getting me enlightened about the security implications and the relationship of the policy framework as one feeds on the other. She brings perspective as to the challenges of a design may exist and what pitfalls one may fall into across multiple specifications and assertion families. Further, beyond our shared experience in standards, she is very versed about emerging technologies and how can shape our future. Maryann is my sounding board. 

• Eve Maler is a technical director at Sun Microsystems. I met Eve when I was involved in XML standards in Sun and she was our AC Rep to w3c. Her understanding of the evolving standards and how certain players may help or hinder the evolution of a certain specification never ceased to amaze me. She certainly understands how standards can help or hinder. Her contributions to XML and Security standards are too numerous to mention. Further, her positive personality is simply contagious. I look forward to a meeting to sync up with Eve and learn about the larger perspective. 

• Monica Martin is a program manager at Microsoft. She has contributed to with many vertical and XML/WS/ebXML standards and acted in leadership roles. Her keen eye in making the specifications coherent is impeccable. She can see the relationships and implications between specifications that others will miss and will work hard to correct inconsistencies between them. Further, Monica is always willing to share her knowledge with others. I learned a lot from Monica beyond our technical experiences in together. My regret is that I never had the chance to work with her on business processes. Hoping that one day it may change. 

At these uncertain times when many technical women are either forced to leave standards or technology altogether, these women and their invaluable work should be cherished. The institutions where they work are very lucky to have them. 

Hence, this blog.