Today is Ada Lovelace day, and to celebrate the birth of the world’s first computer programmer bloggers all over the world are writing posts about inspirational women in technology.

I’ve been very lucky in securing a brief email interview with the fantastic Vanessa Fox of Nine by Blue.

Vanessa is one of those people who break the stereotypes; in addition to being a supremely talented tech, she’s also a great communicator. During her tenure at Google she pioneered the company’s interaction with site owners and internet marketers by developing Webmaster Central, which has grown to be an invaluable resource and a great example of how companies should communicate with the public.

A testament to her abilities is the creating of an alliance between the major search engines over the sitemaps protocol, where Vanessa worked to bring Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft Live Search into an accord.

Vanessa kindly took time out of her ridiculously busy schedule to answer a few questions on work, life and women in tech.

How would you describe your current role, and what does an average day entail?

I absolutely love what I’m doing now, but it’s very difficult to describe an average day. Every day is so different!

I’m co-chairing a conference with Nathan Buggia of Microsoft Live Search for O’Reilly called Found, which is aimed at a web developer audience and focuses on search engine-friendly architecture. I’ve been spending a lot of time on that lately — finalizing sessions, deciding on speakers, and organizing other aspects of the event. Nate and I also have started a website on the topic called JaneandRobot.com, which again, is for web developers. We want to make fundamental information available about web development infrastructure to help formulate best practices in the industry. We hold meetups every so often. We’re hoping to do one in San Francisco in March and one in LA in April.

I also help program tracks for the Search Marketing Expo (SMX) series of conferences. Last month, I programmed and moderated the developer day track at SMX West. It was the second time we’ve done the track with SMX and it was great. I love hearing about the real technical issues developers have when building web sites and helping them come up with solutions. It’s one thing to say that you shouldn’t have duplicate URLs all pointing at the same page of content, for example. But it’s another to look at a system that uses parameters for tracking codes, partners, and sort orders and really figure out the best solution for that particular implementation.

I’m starting to spend more time working on NineByBlue.com, which is where I hope to provide holistic online marketing information, and potentially some analytical tools as well. Search acquisition can be a great channel for new customers and search data is an awesome way to learn about your potential customers and engage with them more successfully.

Along those lines, I do some search strategy consulting to help companies figure out who they’re customers are, how best to reach them, and how best to track success. I also do training workshops, particularly for developers, which I just love doing. I’m also an advisor for Plinky, which is a great new service from some other ex-Googlers.

I have a weekly radio show on webmasterradio.fm called Office Hours. You can listen live and ask me questions in the chat room or on Twitter or can download the podcast from iTunes. I get tons of email from people asking me questions about issues they’re having, and I figure that if I compile the questions and answer them on the show, I can potentially help more people.

I’m also an entrepreneur in residence with Ignition Partners, a local venture capital firm. I love everyone over there. I sometimes review potential investments and spend time with their portfolio companies. And I’ve been brainstorming ideas about dream products I’d like to work on.

I also write a lot. These days, I mostly write for Search Engine Land, where I’m an editor. I like to dive into industry trends and new releases and get a feel for what the overall impact might be.

I spend tons of time speaking at events. Next up is keynoting SMX Search Analytics, then heading straight from Toronto for San Francisco to do a session at Web 2.0 Expo. Later in April, I’ll be headed to Slovenia to keynote a conference there.

As you might imagine, this leads to no typical days! I spend a lot of time in airports and on planes. And I’m always behind in answering email. Always! Two different people sent me “Getting Things Done”, so I’ve been reading that, but I haven’t quite made it work yet!

I work a lot from home. I’m in my home office right now. I have a great view of Puget Sound, so no matter how hectic things get, I just have to look out the window or sit on my deck for a calming break. I’m very lucky, because when I’m in town, I get to meet with lots of new startups and see really cool things that are being developed. I try to spend at least a couple of hours a day writing, but if you’ve seen my blog lately, you’ll know that I haven’t quite accomplished that goal lately. But I’m working on it!

Who/what inspired you to pursue a career in tech?

It’s funny you ask that. When I was a kid, my two loves were words and research. I loved reading books. I loved writing. And I loved learning new things and doing research projects. I thought I would end up as a journalist, but I did an internship with a newspaper in high school, and decided it wasn’t for me. (Seeing how the newspaper industry is fairing now, that probably was a good decision!) It didn’t cross my mind to major in anything other than English in college, but once I was nearing graduation, I had this moment, of: oh wait. How am I going to make money? This was the early 90s, so while we didn’t have the web yet, computers and software were starting to become more popular. Technical writing seemed to be the only way to make a living as a writer, so I decided to try it out. Amazingly, I loved the tech part! I had been really into math before college, but I was so much *more* into English, that I didn’t even think to study it in college. And I don’t think I realized computer programming even existed. I dated a mechanical engineering major during college, and my view of the “engineering” department was that was all guys and all mechanical and electrical engineering.

So, working as a technical writer really opened my eyes. It combined all the things I loved: researching and learning new things, writing, and educating. It’s all about learning something really technical and complicated and then writing about it in a way that someone who knows nothing about it can understand it. I loved the creative and logic aspects of programming, so I started learning it on the side and got into writing API documentation. The first language I started learning was SmallTalk!

In 1995, the company I was working for decided it should have a web site, and so I jumped right in, learning how to code HTML in a text editor. As time went on, I started doing more audience analysis and usability work as well. By the time I worked at Google, I was able to take all of the skills I’d picked up over the years to create Google Webmaster Central, which intersected technical web development, search engine algorithms, audience understanding, education and training, and a number of other things. I’m really proud of what we accomplished and what that team continues to accomplish.

I feel as though I just keep learning and then sharing that knowledge, which is my favorite situation to be in.

Do you find women in tech are more accepted, and respected, now than when you set out on your career?

This is a difficult question for me. I wish it was a question we didn’t have to ask. I do think women are more accepted and respected in tech, but we still have a ways to go. A couple of years ago, I was at an Anita Borg scholarship lunch at the Grace Hopper conference, and I was talking to a female engineering student who told me that the conference was the first time she’d talked to other female engineers. In school, all of the other students are men. I was amazed that women are still having that experience. At Foo Camp last year, I led a session on women conference speakers. Some women were angry we even held the session. They didn’t think women should be considered for speaking slots because of their “womanness”. I’m conflicted because I completely agree with that sentiment. But on the other hand, women are overlooked. Most of the time, it’s not intentional. I heard Shirley Tilghman, the President of Princeton, speaking once, and she said that it’s natural to have a perspective based on ourselves. So, for instance, she noted that university boards searching for job candidates are often all men, and so they just think of other men candidates by default. She said just making sure a woman is also on the board to suggest female candidates can make a huge difference. She’s been criticized though in appointing women at Princeton. Some have said that she’s hired them *because* they are women. She said, ‘I was very surprised that students question that when you appoint a woman, that person may not be the very best.’ It’s a tough problem. She’s right that no one would have thought a thing had she appointed men. On the other hand, a woman at Foo Camp said that she didn’t want preferential treatment for women because she felt it would make her be less respected in the workplace. Her coworkers would assume she was hired as the token woman, and not because she was the best person for the job.

There are so many factors beyond just choosing the best person for the job or the speaking slot or whatever. Are the selection committees mostly male and therefore they default to think of other men for the positions? Are women generally less likely to apply for slots because they are generally less aggressive or more likely to feel they need to be perfect first? Are women more afraid of failure because they feel the deck is stacked against them and they have to prove themselves for all of womenkind? And of course, it’s a biological fact that women have the babies. Babies benefit all of humankind, of course, both to continue our species and because men get the benefit of fatherhood without the worksidling pregnancy, but women tend to have the most career impact. I think our society overall could do a better job of supporting parenting.

But to answer your question, yes. When I was at Google, the engineering tech lead of my team was a woman and we had several women engineers and testers. In the early days, I worked with a much higher percentage of men. In college, and the first couple of years after graduation, I worked in the home improvement industry and the company I worked for was an abysmal place for a woman. I think it probably helped me feel confident in dealing with any situation and develop a thick skin, but looking back, I find it amazing that kind of work environment was allowed.

How do you think we can excite and encourage girls at school to be interested in tech as a career?

This is another tough one. I want to encourage girls to pursue whatever they want, and if that’s not tech, I want to support whatever that interest might be. But I think that getting more girls interested in tech may at least partially be about visibility. I had no idea that some of these tech roles existed when I was younger. And any that I did know about I associated with men. The more we can get techie women role models for young girls the better. We should be going out to elementary and junior high schools and letting girls know what opportunities exist. It’s easier for kids to dream about things they know are possible. I know there are a lot of programs out there doing just that, which is great.

I also think that we still don’t know all the complex dynamics. We know that women and men don’t always think the same ways and that it can be really beneficial to have both men and women on a team to bring multiple perspectives and strengths. But do women generally thrive in a different work environment than men and are current work environments designed for male success? Does society shape girls to less strong/aggressive than men to their career detriment? Are girls not encouraged to learn negotiating skills? Does very fact that tech fields tend to be male-dominated keep women from wanting to join, for fear that they’ll be the outsider in a boys’ club? There are so many factors. The good thing is that a lot of people are looking into exactly these things and hopefully will gain insights that can bring us to that balanced place we all hope for.

Huge thanks to Vanessa for her time!

You can find out more about Ada Lovelace on wikipedia, and read more posts at ada.pint.org.uk