ANGELA: This is Women’s Tech Radio.
PAIGE: A show on the Jupiter Broadcasting Network interviewing interesting women in technology. Exploring their roles and how they are successful in technology careers. I’m Paige.
ANGELA: And I’m Angela.
PAIGE: So, Angela, today we interviewed Lisha Sterling. She is the executive director for Geeks Without Bounds. She has a pretty awesome story where she started out actually doing humanitarian aid work, ended up in programing, and then wound back up in humanitarian aid work with programing. It’s a fascinating story. Geeks Without Bounds is a great program, and I’m super excited to have her on the show.
ANGELA: Me too. But before we get into the show, I want to tell you about DigitalOcean. If you go to digitalocean.com and you use the promo code heywtr, you can save $10.00, which turns out is a two month rental of a server. Right? Because it’s only $5.00 a month. They have datacenter locations in New York, San Francisco, Singapore, AMsterdam, and London. And basically, they’re a cloud hosting provider. You can spin up a cloud server in 55 seconds. That include 512 megabytes of RAM, 20 gigabytes SSDS, i CPU, and i terabyte transfer. And they also pay authors $100 to $200.00 to technical tutorials. So, if you happen to already use DIgitalOcean or want to try it, and then like it so much that you want to write about it, you can get paid for that. After, of course, you save on two months of service.
PAIGE: Yeah, and their tutorials are bar none some of the best on the internet. I even end up there for things not for my DIgitalOcean VPS, which by the way, with those SSDs is disgustingly fast.
ANGELA: So, if you use heywtr, you support Women’s Tech Radio. ANd turns out, if you did not remember to enter a promo code when you started DigitalOcean, just go try to put in in there.
PAIGE: Yeah. I actually did that and it totally worked for mine.
ANGELA: After the fact.
PAIGE: Like a couple years ago when Coder Radio had it. That was sweet.
ANGELA: Yep, so you can still use it. So heywtr. Go to digitalocena.com
PAIGE: Yeah. And we got started with our interview with Lisha by asking her to explain her current position and what she’s up to in technology.
LISHA: I’m the Executive Director at Geeks Without Bounds and we support humanitarian open source projects through a combination of hackathons and an accelerator program. So, my work these days sort of entangles both my early career in international aid work and charity work and my academic side. I studied Latin American studies in college. And the rest of my professional life, which has been software development and systems engineering. And now I get to use technology to do disaster response and humanitarian aid and international development work.
PAIGE: Wow. That’s a pretty awesome way to use technology.
ANGELA: Yeah it is.
PAIGE: So that sounds like a pretty big jump from, you know, international aid work into software development. Can you tell me the story of like how that came to be for you?
LISHA: Yeah. So, first off, being, you know, a privileged white kid, i had my first computer when I was eight years old. Actually, my dad got me two Timex Sinclair 1000s. One for his house and one for my moms’ house. And connected it up to the black and white TV and put rubber bands around it so that the extra 16K of memory wouldn’t disconnect while we programmed. And thus I began my journey as a new programer learning basic and then going there’s a thing called Assembly Language. And I got involved with a computer club and was your basic tomboy geek girl. Then I had my first kid when I was 17 and went off to El Salvador. Did aid work during the war and during the first year of the peace. Came back to the US, did a bunch of work with refugees. Had another kid. Decided that I should probably go to college. And since I’d been working with Central American and in Central America, it was obvious what I was going to study. I was going to study Latin American studies and go do more of the same sort of stuff. But being a mom with two small kids, I, and no real skills or degree, I was able to make $4.25 an hour and my childcare cost like $7.50 an hour. The math doesn’t add up.
ANGELA: No. Now that I have three, daycare just isn’t even an option.
LISHA: Yeah. So one of my friends from my young computing days, a young man that I dated when I was like 11 and 12, and our first date was actually to a tech conference at the Moscone Center.
ANGELA: That’s adorable.
LISHA: So, you know, we’re still friends as adults. And he said to me, why don’t you get a job as a programer? And I was like, you’re crazy. I don’t have a degree in CS. I can’t program. He’s like, don’t be stupid. Nobody cares about your CS degree. Just tell them you can program. Show them some code and they’ll let you do it. But his caveat came. You must charge $25 an hour. I was like, I can’t charge $25 an hour. He’s like, no if you do not charge $25 an hour I will never speak to you again.
ANGELA: Oh my goodness.
PAIGE: So I’m going to pause you there, because this is a really interesting question that I always dig around. Why could you not charge $25 an hour?
LISHA: Well, because I was getting $4.25 an hour. The idea-
ANGELA: Perceived value. Perceived value.
LISHA: Right. The idea that I was going to go to somebody and have balls enough to say, yeah I’m a programer. I don’t have any degrees or any proof that i can actually do this, but you should totally pay me $25 an hour for it.
ANGELA: Inferiority complex. Yep. I’m familiar with all of that.
LISHA: Yeah. Yeah. So, but, you know my friendship was on the line and my need to take care of my children was on the line. So I did it and just about keeled over the first time somebody said, yes we will hire you.
ANGELA: Wow.
PAIGE: What did it take to get your foot in the door? Was it really just like you friend said? You just showed up and were like, look I can program. Let’s go.
LISHA: Actually, yeah. It literally was that easy. So I went for low hanging fruit right at the start, since I was at community college at the time. And so at the time I was working as an administrative assistant for Sybase. This probably puts the timing into, into perspective.
PAIGE: Your choice of computerm, your choice of computer at the top made that pretty clear.
LISHA: Right. Right. Right. Yeah, so I was working for Sybase as an administrative assistant and had gotten the opportunity to play with web stuff there on the side. The first browsers were out, but nobody was really using them. So even at Sybase they were like, this is stupid. Why are you wasting your time with this? But of course I was going to college so I went to all of my professors and I said have you seen this thing called the web? You should check this out. You can put your research up and you can put your classwork stuff up.
PAIGE: Which is exactly what the web was originally built for, was to share research.
LISHA: Right. Exactly. And they said, oh wow that’s neat. And yeah could you do that for me. So that was how i got my foot in the door. ANd then, you know, I got a little bit braver and I went to the administrators of the Parelta College District. So I went to the administrators at the Parelta COllege District and said, you know, you guys should really have a better website. And they said, you know what, you’re right. And so I got to do some contracting for them. And then I found out about dice.com and atually the saem friend that told me that I had to charge $25 or neer speak to me again told me about Dice. And at the time, almost nobody knew about it and you had to get your Dice listings off of Gopher. And he told me, don’t tell anyone about this, because when everyone knows about it then it’s going to start getting harder to get jobs. So you’re not allowed to tell anybody about it. So, you know, there I was in the early ‘90s using Dice by Gopher. But I found some jobs and then recruiters started contacting me and I found that I could actually work from home, which by that time was actually the UC Berkeley family housing. I was able to basically pay for my own schooling with scholarships, pay for my kids’ daycare and private school with programming. And everybody kept saying why aren’t you studying computer science, and I would say I’m already working in computer science, why would I get a degree in it? But then eventually I finished my bachelor’s degree and I intended to on with grad school, but I had that moment where it’s like I need some time without poverty and working just enough hours to keep us afloat is, we’ve done that for a while. I need to spend some time working full time. And then work ended up eating my life for oh, 20 years.
PAIGE: So at that point you got a full time job in computer science somewhere?
LISHA: Yeah. At that time I ended up getting full time work. I worked, while in the mid-90s I worked at Wells Fargo Bank doing problem and change tracking during the Y2K reprograming stuff. Anybody who says that the Y2K thing was nothing, was not there to program all the fixes.
PAIGE: Yeah. It only wasn’t a thing because you guys were doing it.
ANGELA: Yeah.
LISHA: Right. Exactly. It wasn’t a thing because there were a lot of people working really hard to make sure it was not a thing. So I was there. I worked, i did random contracts for media companies and whatnot in the San Francisco Bay area. Amazon, I worked at Amazon in the UK. That kind of thing.
PAIGE: And then eventually stumbled back into Geeks Without Bounds?
LISHA: Yeah. So my first sort of hit between the eyes was 2001 and after 911 I said I’m not working on any more Microsoft or any more closed sourced from here on out. I’m only going to do open source, because I’ve already sold my soul and I’m not doing humanitarian work, at least I’m going to do code work that I care about. So from 2001 onward I was working almost exclusively on open source software. And then even that kind of hit me at some point. I’m like, I went to college so that I could do humanitarian work. Why am I still writing code? And so I decided to just quit everything and figure out what I was going to do with my life, when I grow up. And I declared myself an un-graduate student. If you’re familiar with the idea of unschooling, which is like homeschooling without a curriculum.
ANGELA: Yep.
LISHA: There’s also such a thing as un-college. And I don’t know, there might be somebody else in the world who came up the with idea at about the same time I did, or even before I did, but I came up with this sort of independently. Where I had been thinking about going back to grad school and then said why would I get myself into more debt? I’m going to un-grad school. So that’s what I did. And that ended up getting me into an organization called The School Factory, which is the fiscal sponsor for Geeks Without Bounds. And then that, of course, led me into Geeks Without Bounds. I started out as a volunteer. Then i was the developer coordinator. And then last year I became the executive director.
PAIGE: Congratulations.
ANGELA: Yeah.
LISHA: Thank you.
PAIGE: That’s a really awesome journey. It’s all over the map, but it’s very personal . And I love that about tech. It’s not a straight and narrow path.
LISHA: Yeah. Yeah. And there’s lots of ways you can come to tech and there’s lots of things you can do with the tech once you’re in it or playing with it. It’s not just one tool. It’s like all these different tools. It’s kind of like saying, what can you do with wood? Well, you can do all sorts of things with wood.
PAIGE: Right. What do you want to do with wood?
LISHA: RIght.
PAIGE: Yeah. So, I think a lot of people would hear you story and stay, well you kind of had perfect timing. You’re like in the Bill Gates timing era, where if you just caught on to the right thing at the right time you were good to go. How would you respond to somebody saying that in today’s climate? Oh, I couldn’t just show up and say I know how to code, pay me $25 an hour, let’s go, kind of a thing. Because I would argue that in some ways we’re kind of seeing that again, but what’s your thoughts?
LISHA: I think we’re absolutely seeing that again. I think that right now is a really good time to ride the wave of open source into your dream job. ANd so, a little shameless promotion here. At Geeks Without Bounds, one of the programs that we have is an internship program and we take novice developers who have, who have learned some programming skills but have either never gotten any job experience or they don’t know how to use GitHub and work in a team, or go through issue tracking and figure out how to pick a project out of the issues, you know, that kind of thing. We give them mentorship. We have them work on some of the humanitarian projects in our ecosystem and we try to shove them at as many other opportunities to get a real job as possible. Sometimes we also manage to get a grant here or there to get them a stipend, but most of them are sort of slave labor in exchange for lots of mentorship. And they’re code up on GitHub so that they can show it to other people. And we have had some really great success with people coming into that program. Doing some amazing work on one project or another over the course of three months, five months, six months, and then going on to get a real job in programming. We had one guy who had studied aeronautical engineering. Got all the way through his degree and realized that that was not what he wanted to do with his life and what he really wanted to do was be a programer.
PAIGE: That’s a big investment to make that shift.
LISHA: Exactly. And I snagged him and I was like, let me put you to work. And it was fantastic. He got projects that he really enjoyed working on. He learned a whole bunch of stuff very fast. He managed to get a stipend and then he got a paid internship and then, you know, he’s working full time as a developer in Chicago and, you know, you can totally do that. And you don’t have to have to have a bachelor’s degree to begin with either. Anybody really can do that.
PAIGE: So do you take a lot of people who have maybe done either a lot of self-taught stuff on the internet now or boot camp graduates? How do you people kind of end up ready to go into Geeks Without Bounds internships?
LISHA: All of the above. I’ve had people who were in their junior or senior year of college decide to spend the summer working on projects with us. I’ve had people that were totally and completely self-taught. And there’ve been people who’ve done some sort of boot camp like experience. So they knew a bit more about how to work in teams and things like that, but they just wanted to get some more work experience while they were looking for a job. They already knew how to look for a job, they just wanted to keep their, the code lines on GitHub up while they were looking for that job. So, yes.
PAIGE: And that’s, I mean that’s one of the biggest recommendations I give to anybody who’s going through boot camp is keep committing. Just keep getting it up there.
LISHA: Absolutely.
PAIGE: So that’s kind of the intern side of it. How about in the nonprofit side. How does a nonprofit get involved with you? Are they just finding you online? Are you doing events or something to kind of bring them in? What does that look like?
LISHA: We end up meeting people in all sorts of situations. Sometimes as conferences or at say disaster response drills. Sometime we’ll meet people there. Sometimes it’s literally look for who’s in the area that needs support right now. And sometimes people come to us. And then, basically we just kind of have lots of conversations and develop relationship over time and let people know that if they have challenges that they think that technology could help them with, that we are happy to help them craft that into a challenge that somebody can actually address. And when we’re crafting or curating challenges for hackathons, we try to create a challenge that can actually be addressed in a weekend. So there might be back story and a problem that clearly this is not going to be solved in a weekend, but here’s the backstory and here’s the piece we want to accomplish this weekend.
PAIGE: So you guys kind of handle the project managy end of that prepping it to go into the hackathon?
LISHA: Right. Exactly. And then, so once you get a starting point basically, if you’ve got, say an app that sort of is attempting to deal with the big pictures, um, then you can break that down into lots of different challenges and you can take that from one humanitarian hackathon to next to the next. And the great thing about that is that you start with a couple of people who got interested in the project at the first hackathon and maybe on those, maybe two people will stay on board and keep working on the project over time.
PAIGE: Which is one of the biggest challenges with hackathons is actually getting people to commit, almost.
LISHA: Exactly. So you take the project to the next hackathon. And let’s say four or five people work on it and one of those people decides they want to keep working on the project long term. So now you’ve just snowballed your team. You’ve got two people or three people instead of just the people from the original hackathon. And then you take it to the next one and it gets stickier. And the more work has been done and the larger the core team is, the stickier the ball gets as it goes from one hackathon to the next.
PAIGE: It builds momentum.
LISHA: Yeah. It builds momentum and you get to a certain point where you can actually have a whole hackathon where all the challenges that are being presented are all based around that one piece of software. So, for instance, one of the projects that started at a hackathon, Taarifa, that project has had multiple hackathons that are just about Taarifa. Where all of the challenges are all, either bug fixes or feature request for Taarifa that have ranged from improved the documentation to create a Swahili translation for all of the text, to fix the security bugs, to create new features. And that team is one of, one of the most amazing teams that we’re working with right now, actually. I’m pretty impressed with where that project has ended up. It’s being used by the World’s Bank in many countries in Africa. We at Geeks Without Bounds are part of a consortium that is being supported by HDAF, UK aid to put Taarifa into the water system in Tanzania in order to allow citizens to report to the government when water pumps and spigots and other water points are broken. And allows the government to keep track of what is working and what is broken in the water infrastructure everywhere in the country.
PAIGE: Crowdsourcing water maintenance. That’s awesome.
ANGELA: That is awesome.
LISHA: Exactly. Exactly. And Taarifa was originally developed for water management, actually. But now it’s being used for tracking education systems, healthcare systems, and this summer I’m going down to Ecuador to work with people from the Kofan community in Northern Ecuador in order to use Taarifa to track pollution and encroachment in the Amazon Jungle. So pretty awesome little piece of software there.
PAIGE: Yeah. So you have a formal commitment in your life to only work on open source software. Is that something that’s carried forward that Geeks Without Bounds is also doing when they’re doing these projects with nonprofits?
LISHA: Yes.
PAIGE: Are you largely open source, mostly? What’s the deal?
LISHA: It’s all open source. We specifically work on open source humanitarian projects. So open source projects that for whatever reason we can’t find a way to call it humanitarian, we don’t work on those. We’ve managed to find ways to call lots of ways humanitarian though. Today we were working in PGP email app for Firefox OS phones.
PAIGE: Wow.
LISHA: And I consider that to be a humanitarian issue because Firefox OS phones are marketed to low income people in developed countries. And to people in the least developed countries on the planet. So, in other words, Firefox OS phones are being marketed to vulnerable people. And as a system it doesn’t have the security and privacy pulls that an iPhone or an Android phone has. And at the moment there’s no guardian project for Firefox OS. So we’re trying to kick one off, basically.
PAIGE: Yeah. So I’m going to jump in just for anybody listening who doesn’t know, PGP is an email encryption program called Pretty Good Privacy. It’s kind of the de facto standard right now for email encryption. Usable by anybody. If you’re interested in having encrypted email, there’s tons of stuff online. And one of our former guests, uh Snubs, has some awesome tutorials on Hak5 about how to do that if you want to check it out. But yeah, so privacy and security.
LISHA: And for newbies to PGP who use hotmail or yahoo mail or Gmail, I would recommend looking up a program called Mailvelope. It’s a Firefox and Chrome plugin. So you just plug it into your browser and then it recognizes that you’re on a webmail site and it will allow you to encrypt your email in webmail. Which is pretty cool.
PAIGE: Yeah. That’s pretty awesome. I mean this project you’re involved with, I’m not going to lie, it touches my heart in a very special way. I think that technology can change the world if we let it. And I think getting more people involved at that level is just phenomenal. The way that you’re doing it is great. If people want to find you how do they do that? To find Geeks WIthout Bounds, to get involved either as a nonprofit or as a coder, whatever?
LISHA: Whatever, yeah. So we’re online at gwob.org.
ANGELA: Thank you for listening to this episode of Women’s Tech Radio. Remember, you can go to jupiterbroadcasting.com for the show notes and a full transcription, as well as the contact form. Drop down the show drop down to Women’s Tech Radio and send us your feedback or suggestions on who you’d like to hear on the show.
PAIGE: You can also check us out on iTunes and our RSS feed is linked at our show page on Jupiter Broadcasting. If you have a moment, please leave us a review on iTunes. Those help out the show and also lets us know what you think. And also, follow us @heywtr on Twitter. We’ll talk to you soon.

ANGELA: This is Women’s Tech Radio.
PAIGE: A show on the Jupiter Broadcasting Network interviewing interesting women in technology. Exploring their roles and how they are successful in technology. I’m Paige.
ANGELA: And I”m Angela.
PAIGE: So Angela, today we had an awesome opportunity to interview Shannon Morse. She’s a new media podcasting host. She’s known for the show Hak5 and also TekThing is her new show. We got to talk to her about how she got into everything, gaming, and all sorts of fun topics.
ANGELA: Yes, we sure did. And before we get into the interview, I’d like to mention Digital Ocean. If you go to digitalocean.com and use the promo code heywtr, you can save on simple cloud hosting dedictated to offering the most intuative and easy way to spin up a cloud server. You can create a cloud server in 55 seconds, and pricing plans start at only $5.00 a month. That’s 512 megabytes of RAM, 20 gigabytes SSD, 1 CPU, and 1 terabyte transfer. Digital Ocean has data center locations in New York, San Francisco, Singapore, Amsterdam, and London. And the interface is incredibly simple, intuitive. The control panel is awesome. It will help you design exactly what you need, which empowers users to replicate on large scales with the company’s straightforward API. Check out digitalocean.com by using promo code heywtr.
PAIGE: And we got started with our interview today by asking Shannon what’s she’s up to in tech these days.
SHANNON: So, I am a producer and host of several different tech shows on the internets, on YouTube and on RSS feeds all over the place. Specifically, my main shows right now are Hak5, H-A-K-5 over at Hak5.org, and TekThing, which is T-E-K Thing dot com. ANd both of these involve, well Hak is obviously about hacking and internet security. And then the TekThing show, that one is about technology in general for consumers.
PAIGE: So you’re like a new media entertainer? Would you fit into that category?
SHANNON: Yeah. Yeah, I guess you would say that. You know, I was just filling out my tax docs and I was like, uh, what do I put my profession as. I guess I’ll just pick journalism.
ANGELA: Yep, I know how that goes.
PAIGE: I get to fall under the consultant category for almost everything. So how did you get into that? New media is, such like a, if we can use that term, it’s such a new thing. It’s kind of all over the place. What started that for you?
SHANNON: Well, I’ve always been interested in technology and stuff like that. And then I didn’t discover podcasting or internet media until I was in college. So, it was probably like 2003 or 2004. And I was really, really in to video games at the time. Which, I still am even though I don’t have enough time to do it these days. And my friend and I discovered this podcast called Pure Ownage up in Canada.
PAIGE: Oh my god, I love Pure Ownage.
SHANNON: Yes, me too. I’m so excited that they’re working on their movie right now. I backed it on Kickstarter when they did that. Or Indiegogo. So, my best friend and I, we drove like 20 hours from Missouri all the way up to Canada for the weekend, just to see this live premier. I fell in love with the community, and I fell in love with like how there was no middle man between the host of the show and the characters and their fans. So you could just walk up to them and like chill at a bar after their live premier show. So, for me, it felt like it was the perfect middle ground of loving technology and being able to enjoy it with your fans as well.
PAIGE: That’s really — I would have never really thought of that end of it. That there’s no middle man between the fan and the person. Because I always think about it from the technology standpoint. To say there’s no — especially then — there was no middle man between me and the content. Like, that came right from the producers of the content to me as a consumer.
SHANNON: Yeah.
PAIGE: And back then they had to just host it on their site and you had to download it. There was no YouTube or anything.
SHANNON: Yeah. A lot of us who are working in podcasting, we don’t have agents or anything like that. So the only thing that’s holding us back from reaching out to people is actually getting out of our house and getting out from in front of the cameras and going outside into the sun and enjoying time with real people. So yeah, I fell in love with it. And then after that I just started talking to the right people. I ended up meeting the guys from Hak5 and they asked me if I wanted to move out to Virginia, as weird as that is. But I moved into the Hak house, as it was called back in day. ANd they invited me on the show after I did a little bit of camera work behind the scenes. At that time I just had a full-time job and I just kind of did it as a hobby. But eventually it turned into a big full-time gig. So I’m really happy that it did.
ANGELA: So, I obviously am into podcasting. We go to conventions in different places. Mainly local, like Washington, Oregon, California, but we did Ohio an Ohio fest for technology related stuff. I get a lot of people coming up to me saying, Angela. And I’m like hi, I don’t know you. But they know everything about me. You know, has that happened to you?
SHANNON: Yes. Very much so. Most likely it’s happened most often at a convention called DEFCON. Which is in Las Vegas. That’s the biggest hacker convention in the US and possibly the world. I’ll have to check my facts on that. But yeah, I’ll go there and I’m walking down to the room where we set up our booth and we do all of our interviews and everything. People will stop me and they’ll be like, oh my god congratulations on getting married. And I’m just like, I forgot I posted that publically. Thank you.
ANGELA: Right.
SHANNON: It’s a little awkward, but I’m like dude it’s so cool that people are willing to come up and be just be like, hey congrats, and I’m like cool, give me a hug.
ANGELA: Yeah. Yeah.
PAIGE: Yeah, I actually had that experience when I first met Angela, because I had been a follower of Jupiter Broadcasting for a long time and she post so prolifically about her kids and her awesome photography of her kids and I’m like, I feel like I just know you and we just met. It’s cool to get to know the person behind it, but definitely and interesting experience.
SHANNON: Yeah. Totally.
PAIGE: And like my experience with meeting Chris at the convention, because I was star struck. Before I asked him, I was like oh I’m so nervous. Maybe he’ll just give me some advice on podcasting and it will be great.
SHANNON: I don’t try to act too star struck whenever I meet other podcasters that I listen to all the time, but sometimes you just can’t help it.
ANGELA: Yeah, I’ve had people come up and their like, I don’t really know what to say. I’m like, but I’m — it’s really cool to actually meet you. It’s really neat.
PAIGE: Yeah, I have to make a confession that I was actually really nervous to ask Shannon to be on the show, because I have been watching Hak5 since before she came on Hak5 and I kind of watched her journey and that’s been really awesome to see. Especially because when it got started it was such a dude show and as a woman watching the show I was always like, yeah this is cool. And they had that one chick would kind of stop in and do some gaming stuff once in a while.
SHANNON: I’ll be honest, it was very intimidating when I first started on the show. I was not involved with the hacker community very at the time. And I was just kind of getting my feet wet into the whole process of learning all of the information that’s out there about hacking and internet security. But in the, god how long have I been doing this? Seven years? Oh my gosh, that’s a long time. So in the seven years that I’ve been doing this, I’ve learned so, so much. And I feel like a lot of this is, it’s just because I’ve gotten so involved and I made sure to ask the right questions. I come to it as a, no question is a stupid question. So I’m going to be person to ask that question, even though other people might look at me and think I’m stupid, I don’t care, because other people have those questions, but they’re afraid to ask them. I felt like I’ve grown so much just by being a part of this show and it’s been really informative for me. And I’m glad that I have some female fans out there. It makes me very happy.
ANGELA: What was your focus in college? Was it a technical degree?
SHANNON: It wasn’t, as weird as that is. I probably should have gone into theater at the time, but I didn’t, because I was obsessed with theater. I went into hospitality and restaurant administration. So I guess what I took out of college, mostly, was the business perspective. It helped me be a better public speaker, because we did a lot of presentations for our classes. And it also taught me a lot about how to run a business. So, we’ve been able to open up a store for Hak5 online. So we do a lot of ecommerce. We’ve also learned a lot about marketing and things like that.
PAIGE: So you said you’ve always been interested in technology. What did that look like as a kid for you?
SHANNON: Oh yeah. My dad had a computer in my nursery. He did. We didn’t have enough rooms in the house apparently. This is the story he’s told me. When I was a baby he just stuck his first computer, or one of his many computers, in my nursery and he would let me sit on his lap and pound at the keyboard until I figured out something that happened on the keyboard. So I’ve just been around computer my whole life. My dad was a really big influence on that for me. Also, for my Star Trek geekiness, because he watched it every single day after work, so I would sit down and watch it with him. I love my geeky influences. But yeah, I learned how to build computers when I was, probably an early teen, 11 or 12 I think was when I first built my computer with my dad. He got me into building websites when I was in middle school. So I learned a little bit about HTML and how to build a really simple anime fan gallery type website on GeoCities. So I learned a little bit there. I also got really involved with video gaming. I made a good group of friends at school who got me really obsessed with that kind of stuff. So it was just always a really good influence with me, like as far as the people that I was hanging out with. My dad was always there and he was always like, yeah come with me to the computer store. We’ll go to Best Buy and you can check out motherboards, back when they had motherboards.
PAIGE: Dude, you had the best dad ever.
SHANNON: He was awesome. He’s a great guy. He still gets really geeky with me. I’ll be like, let’s go to Fry’s and he’s like, yeah let’s go.
PAIGE: My friends call that Meca.
SHANNON: Oh yes.
PAIGE: So you did all this as a young person. And then why did you end up choosing hospitality instead?
SHANNON: A lot of it was because I really like working with people and I felt like if I went into a tech thing I wouldn’t get to work with people as much, like one on one or face to face. But I went into a lot of jobs during high school and during college where I managed restaurants or I was a server. I think I did assistant management at a Dominos Pizza for like five years. So it was really fun for me. I loved being able to make people happy and make perfect, perfect food for them and see the smile on their faces, and get really good tips out of it. So for me it was just all about really enjoying my job and being able to be around people. Because I’m a friendly person.
PAIGE: I had a very similar story where I was really involved in tech doing a lot of IT support and i kind of topped out desktop support and knew that the next step would kind of be to end up as a server monkey in a server farm, like just in the basement. I kind of had to transition. And the first interview I did where I was trying to transition, they were like well why would you want to leave this field? It’s lucrative, it’s good, it’s interesting. And I’m like, you know, I don’t want to just stare at server fans all day. I want to interact with other people.
SHANNON: Yeah.
PAIGE: Even if it’s in a non-technical space.
SHANNON: That’s why I love podcasting now, is because I can, I can use my tech experience that my dad’s taught me, and I can use what I can find online and through educational books that I can purchase and learn, and I can also use my theater obsession, and I kind of mixed the two together. And I can still talk to people face to face with interviews, and talking to fans, and going to conventions and stuff like that. So it’s the happy medium for all those different obsessions for me.
ANGELA: Mm-hmm.
PAIGE: What have been your biggest challenges with podcasting.
SHANNON: Being a woman.
PAIGE: Really?
SHANNON: Yeah, I think so. It’s been very tough for me to get over my own conflictions in my brain telling me, you know, whenever you’re around men who are in a certain technical community, they may talk down to you because you’re a female. Or if I am at a convention, I have to deal with people sexualzing me becuase I’m a woman and because I just happen to have girly parts. So it’s been very hard for me to get people to act mature whenever I’m talking on a show and I just happen to be wearing a shirt that has a little bit of cleavage or something like that. So, it’s been hard, but I think I’ve gotten to the point where I’m respected because I respect people just as much, and I’ve learned a lot about what I’m good at. ANd I also don’t lie to people. So, you know, whenever I’m on the show talking about a certain segment, I’ll tell them straight up. Hey, I”m not an expert in blah, blah, blah, but this is something that I studied and I know this is correct.
PAIGE: I’ve always been really impressed with your ability to kind of present a brand new topic and be humble about it, without being apologetic.
SHANNON: Yeah. Yeah.
PAIGE: That’s really key, especially for women. Our tendency is to be apologetic that we don’t know things. And it’s okay to not know everything, but it’s also okay to know what you know.
SHANNON: Yeah, I totally agree with you on that. And I’m totally willing on the show too to ask for support as well. Like, if there’s a certain thing that I run into, like a problem, which I’ll run into problems. Everybody does with technical aspects. I’ll ask the community. I’ll say hey has anybody else run into this problem. Can you answer this for me? Email and I’ll shout you out in the next show. So that way it’s rewarding for them and it’s rewarding for me to, because I love to learn. And I’m always willing to learn, because, you know, you can never learn everything that’s available in the world.
ANGELA: Have you done any kind of boot camp or any kind of online, specifically technical classes?
PAIGE: Yeah, like what’s your favorite resource for learning all the new stuff that you’re constantly teaching?
SHANNON: I’m a huge bookworm. So, if I can find an educational book that’s written by an expert in the field, I’m going to buy the book. I know that I could just Google it and probably find a great Wikipedia article about whatever I’m learning, but I prefer to use school textbooks.
PAIGE: I think you might be the first guest that’s said that.
SHANNON: I don’t know why, but I learn so much better whenever I can sit down and read a book. And I think it’s just because I’ve always been around books my whole life, so I’m a huge bookworm.
PAIGE: Yeah, I have to say, I kind of agree. Like when I really need to deep dive a topic, like I just recently had to start learning angularjs for my job, and trying to do it with the online tutorials I was getting some of it, but when I finally was like, okay I’m just going to get the O’Reilly book and sit down and plow through it, it all just comes together so much more richly.
SHANNON: Yeah, it’s really tough too with online articles, because a lot of them start at a, you know, a more advanced topic. When I choose to start my segments at a very beginner topic. So, if I’m just learning things, I can’t start from like halfway in, like the 201 series. I have to start with the 101 or else I don’t understand a thing. So I’m very logical. I’m very step-by-step and tutorial based. I like to teach people the same way that I like to teach myself.
PAIGE: Yeah, I have to say, I’ve definitely recommended you hack tip segments for several women trying to kind of get their head around some basic stuff for Linux.
SHANNON: Thank you.
PAIGE: Stuff like that.
SHANNON: I’m really happy to hear that.
ANGELA: Yeah, Paige is a huge advocate. She runs the Portland chapter of Women Who Code and does a lot of networking.
SHANNON: Oh that is awesome. Yeah, I’ve even had a few people email me and say, hey I’ve been using your hack tips as a series in my school or in my classroom. So it’s really, really inspiring whenever I have people email me and tell me that they’re using this to teach a younger generation.
PAIGE: So, what would you, I guess, I’m always interested because, especially with it being so accessible. Really, all you need is a computer, an internet connection, and some sort of microphone and you can get started podcasting. What would you say to people who are interested in sharing their knowledge in this way?
SHANNON: Definitely do it about something that you’re obsessed with. Not just something that you’re semi interested in and you kind of want to teach people about it, but something that you really know. Something that you’re willing to learn and really delve into and really become and expert on. Because if you’re not, it really come across in podcasting whenever somebody doesn’t know everything. And be willing to learn more too. And then as far as technical experience with podcasting, get a good mic. Audio is key. People won’t listen to a podcast if it doesn’t have good audio. And don’t worry about how many people are watching your show, because the ones that matter, they will be there from the beginning to the end. You don’t, it doesn’t matter if you have a million views. Don’t look at it as trying to make money, just look at it as sharing. Sharing something that you love.
PAIGE: The internet is an awesome place, because we’ve all taken the time to share.
SHANNON: I agree.
PAIGE: So we talked about your biggest challenges in podcasting. What keeps you in podcasting? What lights your fire about it?
SHANNON: For me, it’s really when I go to conventions or when I go to a meetup or something like that and I see a little boy or a little girl come up to me and be a a little bit shy about meeting me, but tell me that they’ve learned from me and they’ve been able to develope some of experience with whatever I’ve been teaching on the different shows. For me, it feels so good to know what I’m changing somebody’s view on technology. So it’s not just like, you know, when me and you grew up. It’s not like it feels geeky for them. Like, we’re look at as, looked down on, looked down up.
PAIGE: Yeah, I remember when geek wasn’t cool.
SHANNON: Yeah, it wasn’t cool back in our day, but now it’s more of a cool thing because you have these interesting people get into it that are so obsessed with it that we come across as like, I don’t know, BIll Nye’s. I remember watching Bill Nye in high school and thinking wow he’s so cool. He makes me so excited for science. I want to be that person. I want to be the person that gets these little kids excited about talking about internet security and hacking.
ANGELA: Yeah, exactly.
PAIGE: Right. Yeah, I’ve never seen anyone be able to light up a room about PGP the way that you can.
SHANNON: Yeah, I love seeing when a little nine year old girls comes up to me and her eyes light up, because she’s like oh my gosh I learned so much from you. I just makes me feel so good inside. And that’s really what keeps me going.
PAIGE: Yeah, I totally agree. Reaching out, helping the community, and just building it back. And I think hearing you talk at the beginning about how being involved in the community was what kind of jump started you into the knowledge and the place that you have in podcasting, this community, the hack community, the tech community is welcoming by in large. Like you said, no question is a bad question.
SHANNON: Yeah, absolutely. And I’ve had a few people look at me and just be like, you’re asking that question? And I’m like, yeah I am, because guess what, the five people behind me, they want to ask that question too, but they’re too afraid to raise their hands.
PAIGE: Yeah. No, exactly. I talk a lot — I teach an intro to JavaScript course and one of the biggest things I teach is ask questions and let me help you learn how.
SHANNON: Yeah, absolutely. Because you’re not going to learn if something goes over your head. You have to ask those questions.
PAIGE: Yeah, and don’t be afraid to ask how to ask the question too, because sometimes it’s just that you’re missing that, you know, you’re asking these questions and you’re just asking the wrong question. So go ahead and ask what should I know here. What am I missing?
SHANNON: Absolutely. Oh man, I wish I could have taken your course in college.
ANGELA: And so then, we talked briefly about your nickname. On Twitter your /Snubs, or I guess @snubs. And your website is snubsie.com.
SHANNON: Yeah.
ANGELA: Can you tell us how you got that nickname?
SHANNON: That was in high school. I was hanging out with my friend Danny and I was really into video games at the time. I was learning that I really needed to get a screen name. And I thought Shannon is not that great of a screen name so I need something cool. So one of my friends, he was like well what about Snubsie Boo. And I was like, that’s so cute. Snubsie Boo. So over time it just kind of shortened down to Snubs, because it’s easier to spell and it’s faster to type.
ANGELA: That works.
PAIGE: Sometimes what our friends lay on us, it just sticks.
SHANNON: It’s a boring question, or it’s a boring answer, but I get it all the time.
ANGELA: I think the first time I had to come up with a screen name was for Livejournal. Well first of all, it was actually AOL and I wanted Curly, but there were apparently 8,500, 700. Anyway, it wa Curly85647. When I got to choose one creatively in high school for Livejournal, I just Googled, I put a random word into Google, just picked a random word and then did it again with a different word and picked a second word and it ended up being Scaling Dynasty.
SHANNON: Oh, that’s cool.
ANGELA: I know.
PAIGE: That’s pretty cool, actually.
ANGELA: I know. It is cool. I haven’t used it anywhere else, but yeah.
PAIGE: My friends always get a little bit weirded out when they find out my online handle, because I’m kind of like a tomboy girl, backwards hats and everything, and my handle is Feather.
SHANNON: Aw, that’s adorable. I like it.
ANGELA: Yeah.
PAIGE: It works for me.
SHANNON: People get weirded out whenever I walk into like a Fry’s and I’m like, I want to build a computer. And I get these looks from the reps and they’re like, you sure you want to build a computer? Like, yes. I can do my manicures and pedicures and want to build a computer too.
ANGELA: Yeah.
PAIGE: Do you find that because you have a fairly feminine appearance, even for women in technology, that that sets you even farther apart?
SHANNON: Oh for sure. I did an experiment recently where, and it was just kind of a quiet experiment that I didn’t tell anybody about, but you can see it on TekThing if you look close enough. So, in one episode I wore a very floral shirt. It was very, like it had flowers all over it and it was pink and it very, very girly. I was talking about some kind of technical segment. I don’t remember what it was now, but I got a lot of harsh criticism on that episode. And I was like, well I know that I was teaching the correct facts, so I’m going to try something new on the next episode. So, on another episode of TekThing I decided to do another different shirt where I wore a gaming T-shirt. So it wasn’t flattering, it wasn’t girly at all. It was just a gaming T-shirt with a bunch of consoles on it. I got really, really good constructive feedback on that one. Nobody was negative. I was like, that’s strange. So I did it again, same thing. Isn’t that weird?
ANGELA: Wow.
PAIGE: Wow.
SHANNON: Yeah, isn’t that crazy. So I was like, huh. So, it totally has to do with how you show yourself on a show. And a lot of it is kind of sexist. And I don’t think it’s meant to be, but it’s just the way that we’ve grown up and the way that we perceive women as compared to men. So women generally are perceived as lesser or we don’t have as much education as men or as much experience. Not that I’m a feminist, necessarily, I might be sometimes. But, I’ve noticed a big difference depending on what i wear on the show.
ANGELA: Right. Well, and if you just put it into sentences that somebody reads, it’s like if the audience is thinking what does she know? She’s wearing flowers.
SHANNON: Exactly.
ANGELA: That sounds weird. But it was like, oh she might know something. She has a gaming shirt.
SHANNON: Yep.
ANGELA: That’s so bizarre.
SHANNON: It’s totally bizarre, but it’s true. And that’s the way our society has been taught.
PAIGE: It’s an unconscious bias and that’s the hardest part about it, is it is by and large an unconscious bias. I get treated very differently than most of my female counterparts because I wear baseball caps, I wear T-shirts and jeans, and most guys just treat me like one of the guys. So it’s kind of interesting because I feel sometimes like I get to be a double agent to like infiltrate and be like, advocate for women. And they’re like, but you’re one of the guys. What’s going on?
SHANNON: That’s hilarious. It’s terrible, but it’s hilarious.
ANGELA: Yeah.
PAIGE: But at the same time, it’s interesting because I’ll get the unconscious bias the other way where I show up to women’s event and because I don’t look very feminine, I can get the judgement in the other direction too.
SHANNON: Oh yeah, for sure.
PAIGE: It’s very interesting. Although, the geek community is more accepting of that.
ANGELA: Accepting, yes.
PAIGE: Which is good. Speaking of dressing, interestingly, one last thing that I’m’ always fascinated by, who’s your favorite character to cosplay?
SHANNON: Oh, heck yeah. Um, I would say Sailor Mars. She’s my favorite.
PAIGE: Oh, good call.
SHANNON: From Sailor Moon. If nobody has watched it, Sailor Moon is amazing. So good.
PAIGE: Yeah, you went old school.
SHANNON: Yes, it’s totally old school but I made my first Sailor Mars costume when I was in college and I loved it so much. I even dyed my hair black and I grew it out so it would look like Sailor Mars. There are pictures. There are pictures on the internet of my Sailor Mars cosplay on my Twitter.
ANGELA: Yeah, I was just going to say, who are you dressed as in your current Twitter picture?
SHANNON: Let’s see, my current Twitter I think is just my, oh yeah, that’s my Renaissance festival costume.
ANGELA: Yeah. Okay. Yeah, awesome.
SHANNON: I just decided to dress as a Ren Fair person.
PAIGE: I’m trying to put together my very first cosplay costume and it is a big reach, because I want to cosplay as Baymax from Big Hero 6.
ANGELA: Oh my gosh.
SHANNON: Cool.
PAIGE: But I’ve been a costumer for a long time. I do a lot of Renaissance fair and all that jazz. I like costuming, but this is an interesting. I want to do the blow up and figure out how to make it work.
SHANNON: That is really cool. I wish you tons of luck. It’s hard work, but it’s worth it.
ANGELA: i actually have a fan for material to blow it up.
PAIGE: All right. We’re going to have to talk.
ANGELA: Yeah. That’s great. It’s for a Hulk costume, but you could totally just use it for that.
PAIGE: Oh, that’s neat. I should look into that. So cosplay, what about cosplaying do you enjoy, Shannon?
SHANNON: I like being able to dress up and pretend to be somebody else. It’s the theater thing for me.
PAIGE: I always like the idea of be all you can be.
SHANNON: Yeah. Oh man, it’s so much fun.
PAIGE: Yeah, it’s very fun. I highly recommend that if you’ve never played dress up as an adult, you at least give it a go. At the very least it’s an interesting psychological experiment.
SHANNON: It is. It’s kind of like Halloween every single day.
PAIGE: Yeah, with less candy.
SHANNON: Yes, with less candy. Well, unless you buy it from the grocery store next door to the hotel like I do.
PAIGE: Feel like you might have done that.
SHANNON: Maybe.
ANGELA: Might be from experience.
PAIGE: Just one last question. You have mentioned that you go to conventions. What’s the next convention that you’re headed to?
SHANNON: Let’s see, the next one will be this summer. If will be DEFCON again. This will be, I think like my sixth DEFCON. Wow, that’s a lot.
PAIGE: Oh wow.
SHANNON: And after that, I’ll be going to Dragoncon for my first time this year, so I’m planning to cosplay at that one.
PAIGE: Are you skipping PAX this year?
SHANNON: No PAX, yeah no PAX for me.
PAIGE: Oh bummer.
SHANNON: Do you go to PAX? Maybe I should go.
PAIGE: Yeah, we’re up here in Seattle, so I’m planning to go to PAX this year. It will be my first year. It will be a good time.
SHANNON: It looks amazing. I have friends from Missouri that go to PAX and i’m like, oh man, I live so much closer, I need to go.
PAIGE: You really should come up.
SHANNON: I’ll take you up on that.
PAIGE: Awesome. Very cool. Well, thank you so much for joining us Shannon. This has been amazing. We’ll look forward to seeing you on your shows.
SHANNON: Thank you so much. And it was a pleasure talking to both of you.
ANGELA: Thank you for listening to this episode of Women’s Tech Radio. Remember, you can find a full transcription in the show notes at jupiterbroadcasting.com or also at heywtr.tumblr.com.
PAIGE: And also, any links to Shannon’s shows will be in the show notes. So if you want to check her out, go ahead and take a gander there. You can also find us on iTunes. Subscribe to the show there. Or if you prefer an RSS feed, it’s’ available at jupiterbroadcasting.com under the heywtr show. And you can also follow us on Twitter @heywtr. Thanks for listening.