Posted on

Giving feedback, getting feedback

A couple of days ago my sister visited and we talked about going to a play later in the spring. While she was there I picked up my laptop to get tickets. Turned out that there was only one way to get tickets and that was by buying them with a card on a web site. I had a card so no problem so far.
I started filling out the form. I was a little bit annoyed since the site wasn’t using https and the only sign of some kind of security was the sentence: “You will pay over a secure connection”. I hit the pay-button and a lightbox turned up asking me for my card details. Without looking closer at the form I closed the browser. My sister looked at me.

– Why did you do that?
– It wasn’t secure, I replied.
– How could you tell?
– Did you see any padlock?
– ???

I later emailed the support for the web site. The answer I got sounded pretty much like my sister. They didn’t get it. How could I say it wasn’t secure? It was! They even told me so on the site! In addition they emailed me links to their provider who also said that everything was very very secure. I emailed them back with screenshots of their site compared to another site that I actually do find secure. I explained everything in detail and gave them some suggestions on how to improve things. Today I got an email again. A positive one. They said that they were happy about my suggestions and would as soon as possible make sure that the whole checkout was secure. I was happy.

Ok, so now here is three questions.

  1. Why don’t people in general know about secure connections?
  2. Why don’t people who run a web shop know about secure connections?
  3. How do we fix this?
Posted on

On diversity and people being weird

Maybe you have noticed the discussion regarding diversity in the tech industry lately. No? Really? I’m pretty sure you have read something about it. Either the cancellation of The British Ruby Conference or the discussion lately around Edge.

There is one thing about this that concerns me and that is after reading several articles, comments, tweets etc. It seems like the general opinion is that diversity is good and we all (most of us) want it. But, and this is where I have a problem, we do not want to do anything to achieve it. It’s bad trying to get a variation of people cause somehow that equals not getting the best people. Tech events for women are discrimination. I’ve been in involved in some tech events for women and whoa, the negative comments you get. In general most of the things that people suggest doing to improve the diversity are criticized.

Kagami is not getting it

This is the thing I do not get. How can it make sense to want something but at the same time not wanting to do anything to achieve it? It’s just like this story my dad once told me about a lady who really wanted to be good at playing the piano. She was asked if she wanted to take some lessons. No, she said, absolutely not, I just want to wake up one day and be really good at playing. People you know what? The world doesn’t work like that. If we want something we need to work for it.

It’s why this year I will try to do my share of changing things. Cause yep, I actually do believe in diversity as well and as a woman I feel like I need to step up. Especially when harassment like what happened to Iris is still around. For me this means that I will continue to tweet and blog. I’ve also said yes to speak at a local meetup. The last thing is something I’ve always said no to in the past since I felt like I was being asked simply because I’m a girl and not because somebody thought I actually had something to say. This year I will stop saying no. I’m going to try speaking now and I think it’s going to be good.