kleaneasy

I've had the pleasure of talking to Eileen Brown this afternoon, in fact I've not long come off the phone with her. The purpose of the call was to discuss women in gaming, or in this particular case my personal experiences of education and the industry.

Its not a subject I discuss very often and to be frank thats because I find the entire issue very frustrating. It still astounds me that in this day and age we need to work so hard at ensuring children, teens and adults have the opportunities to work in certain sectors, ones which quite honestly should be available to them without question and automatically just as any other.

My eldest child is 14 and having made her choices starts her GCSE's in September. Throughout the last year while she's been making a lot of decisions and considering her future I've found myself repeating the same thing over and again, quite simply that she needs to work hard enough over the next 2 years that come the end of school she has the freedom to do whatever she wants to do, CHOICE! 

I stand by that, choice is of more importance than we can possibly understand at 14, in fact its importance is only ever really understood if you dont have those choices and as time moves on and you reflect this realisation can be quite a pain in the ass.

The problem with the gaming industry however is having the option to follow such a career is not entirely dependant upon your own personal effort at school and subsequent education/ career choices, its dependant on so many other factors way beyond your control that you have to ask how does a child of that age (one which is still growing not only physically but mentally) have the confidence and motivation to push for a career in an industry that to all intense purposes doesnt even exist in their world?  It is this which is the real core of the issue in my opinion.

We hear people discuss discrimination in the work place and I dont question the difficulty many clearly face day in day out because of the ignorant attitudes held by many, but if we focus on the ignorant opinion of those in the industry now and dont address those already in the system at school and set to be the next generation of gaming industry what have we resolved?

The bitter reality is that even in this day and age when we so frequently discuss how many powerful women are in the work place our girls, currently at school and leaving are still not given the same opportunities to follow education and work choices within programming and gaming as their male counterparts. When a girl clearly shows a natural talent towards programming rarely will anyone follow this up with advice and information on how those talents could be used in this industry, when do we see actual information, support and motivation for those wanting to pursue such a career?

The entire system needs to change to ensure those with the natural talent and/or desire have the opportunities to persue careers in the industry regardless of their gender. Hopefully with the ongoing persistant efforts of many who work hard to keep this topic high on the agenda we will see this change.

Oh and for anyone with any doubts on how real an issue this is, ask yourself how many times you've witnessed a discussion on girls in gaming and heard the repeated response that girls dont game for work or pleasure because they either dont want to, dont like it or simply can't. It still amazes me whenever I hear such a response, we have female soldiers in Iraq yet girls can't program a computer.... go figure!

It’s come to my attention on browsing my own blog that I seem to be suffering a lack of extensive vocabulary of late after I noted a rather large number of my blog entries seem to start with 'So....'

In light of this new discovery I'm planning to only blog when I can think of something a little more original, although this could mean I blog even less than I already do.

Anyway while I'm here..........I mentioned quite some time ago now that I was working to scan in all of my old photos to my pc so I could put the truly awesome photos in an album with everything else archived in what’s otherwise known as 'the attic'.

This would leave me with our entire collection on PC and available to view through media centre with ease. The plan was going rather well with me scanning in a few here and there as time allowed and sorting them so I knew what was done and yet to be done, at least it was going well until we hit a snag with the PC and I hadn’t backed them all up. The PC was fixed and those I had backed up replaced but this left a small group of pics in the 'done' pile which weren’t actually done.

Bring on a couple more PC screw ups (thanks to my rather wonderful but bloody annoying 14 year old who insists I don’t know anything and she is all clever all knowing) I soon reached the point of brain freeze with countless piles of pics, none of which really fitted into any category any longer because the backups have been shifted around so many times since, sorry I’m rambling.... point is I have started all over again from the beginning, and things seem to be going smoothly. All being well and I should have this all done soon...at last!

Still after all this time I just don’t seem able to get into a regular blogging routine. Its a matter I've given a great deal of thought lately (ok so I've given it a little thought), some methods of online communication grab my attention and time within my routine with ease while others never seem to gain any of my interest or time despite persistent effort.

Just as everyone else I regularly receive emails telling me the world and his wife has invited me to join their friends list on yet another social networking site, these are thrown into my junk mail folder as rapidly as they arrive in my inbox, myspace, wayn and many others have failed to gather any of my attention while facebook on the other hand has become a regular on my daily online check list with little or no effort.

Of course it doesn’t take a genius to figure out my difficulty or should we say refusal to allow these countless social networking sites into my routine is the shear amount of time required to keep any of them respectfully up to date. After all is there any point holding an account on yet another site you only visit once never to return again?

I've come to the conclusion that Facebook beats all other social networking sites, for me at least because the feeling of interaction and involvement in the lives of friends and work colleagues is so seemless, real, constant and frankly easy. Each day/ time you login you're updated on their current mood, latest shenanigans and picture evidence of said activities and it’s for this reason I think my ability to blog is so impaired. You see it miss’s out on the interaction that facebook so easily provides, and when like me you can talk till the cows come home yet become speechless the minute that human interaction is lost blogging is a pretty difficult habit to pick up.