Becoming a BCS Fellow

Many congratulations to all the new BCS Fellows.

I was immensely proud to become a Fellow a few years ago. Not long before that I looked a this group in awe: a lot of highly esteemed individuals, mostly men, and not somewhere I belonged. It took someone else to point out that I was worthy to be counted amongst this group, that I could be a catalyst for change, that I did belong.

The support of others is not unique in my career. It is full of mentors and allies who have given me the nudge, the helping hand, or even the kick I needed to make bolder decisions or take bigger strides. I work to pay that back by doing the same for others, especially those who may doubt that they belong.

Last week I spent a day at our offices with a load of Girl Guides from south west London alongside a bunch of volunteers introducing them to electronics through an open source education kit to build a basic electronic musical instrument. The girls were from a range of backgrounds but, for most, a future career in IT wasn’t an obvious path… yet. They all got a great sense of satisfaction from completing the project, realising they were able to do this, that they could belong in this world. I also love that they got first hand experience of debugging - a critical life skill in my view - whether they were aware of it or not.

I’ve spent most of my career in the software industry and six years ago I started work at Red Hat, the world’s largest open source company. This has been a pivotal experience for me, at quite an intrinsic level. Today, open source is everywhere, the innovation engine for ours and pretty much every other industry, it’s in everything from critical national infrastructure, core banking to millions of Raspberry pi projects around the world. Red Hat specifically focuses on Enterprise Open Source Software, ensuring government services and businesses can run efficiently and continue to adapt to future needs.

And we are community-powered. We believe in the power of community, of collaboration, of open decision making, and a belief that the best ideas can come from everywhere. Experiencing this first hand has had a huge impact on me. I didn’t appreciate how cautious I had been before until I came to work here and experienced something different. If I’d made a mistake before I would have expected to justify it, now someone is more likely to ask me what I learned from it. Today we have a name for it - psychological safety - but it can be more common to hear that, than to experience. As with so many things in life, experiencing something yourself helps you appreciate the value for others and this is something I actively work to create and maintain and my team do the same in their work with each other and with their customers.

As an example of how the best ideas can come from everyone, we now have a global initiative, a global brand actually, called Future Females in Tech (FFIT) inspiring girls to consider choosing technical subjects and a possible future career in tech. The idea came from one of our inside sales teams. A conversation with her customer sparked an idea. She shared that idea, both with them and with people around her and found a group of people with a similar passion to inspire the next generation. The first event was in 2022 with school in Edinburgh and with the help of a lot of lego (which can explain so many things in tech effectively, right?!). She and the team took 80 15-17 year olds who had mostly never considered a technology future to almost the whole room? considering it - including some who immediately changed their GCSE choices. This has now been run with several other customers giving hundreds of girls a taste of what is possible, that they could belong in this future, and FFIT is now a global brand for us.

Being a place where everyone can bring their best ideas and for those ideas to be heard, where we belong, is supported by the same values that drive the BCS. We are not all here today only because of our technical prowess but also because we embody professionalism, advocate for ethical IT and facilitate inclusion. I’m looking forward to everything your involvement will bring to our great industry and the collaboration that will bring.