Sisterhood Is Digital

Despite the beautiful northern California weather, 23 eager dreamers have sequestered themselves in a windowless conference room in Santa Clara. Like so many other Silicon Valley denizens who aspire to nothing short of changing the world, this group is brainstorming exciting new product ideas. But don't confuse this group with a typical Silicon Valley startup. For one thing, all of these dreamers are women. For another, they've convened at the request of a nonprofit organization, not a top venture-capital firm or investment bank. Finally, most of them aren't Web geeks or MBAs. They are what the insiders in the technology industry rather coldly refer to as "users," or, only slightly more affectionately, as "customers."

This is a diverse group of people. There are two juniors from a nearby high school, one of their teachers, and three administrative assistants, as well as a leader of the Career Action Center (a well-known Palo Alto organization), a seventysomething retiree, a stay-at-home mom, and two professors -- one of law, the other of psychology -- from Santa Clara University. Mingling among the civilians are some women with decidedly hard-core technical credentials: prominent computer scientists from Compaq, IBM, Sun Microsystems, and Xerox. But these geeks aren't flaunting their expertise - which is another big difference between this group and the usual Silicon Valley scene. "You are all experts," declares Anita Borg. "This is not a focus group. Each of us is here as an expert in our own experience."

Borg, 50, is the impresario behind this unlikely gathering. She is a Silicon Valley superstar, an accomplished computer scientist who is known for her pioneering work in fault-tolerant operating systems and for tools she developed to predict the performance of microprocessor memory systems.

But Borg is even better known -- celebrated, really -- for her activism on behalf of women. She created Systers, one of the world's oldest global electronic networks of women in computer science, connecting more than 2,500 women in 25 countries. She also cofounded, with Telle Whitney, 43 (now vice president of engineering at Malleable Technologies Inc.), the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, a prestigious conference for women in computer science.

Today's workshop, called "Technology in Support of Families," is part of Borg's latest -- and in some ways, her most ambitious -- initiative: the Institute for Women and Technology (IWT), a nonprofit group that she cofounded and heads. IWT has a small full-time staff -- but some big-time backers. It's housed at Xerox's legendary Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). Companies such as Compaq and Sun Microsystems help fund and contribute some of their best researchers to the project. Hewlett-Packard recently donated $2 million in equipment and $100,000 in seed capital to support the creation of a "virtual development center" -- a research facility that is designed to help turn ideas into products.

Why would so many big-name companies support Borg's work? Part of the answer to that question lies in the power Borg's name wields in technology circles. Barbara Simons, president of the Association for Computing Machinery, who's been on the Systers list for 12 years, is clear about Borg's standing among female engineers: "She is a leader and a heroine to many women in the field. I've seen younger women at conferences who were just thrilled to meet her. She has those all-important leadership qualities: She's not afraid to act on her beliefs. She has the vision to start new things and to come up with ideas for dealing with problems. She thinks big."

John Seely Brown, 59, PARC's director and himself a legend in computing circles, is one of Borg's most enthusiastic supporters. "Every day," he says, "some kind of visionary walks into my office for one reason or another, and 99% of those visionaries lack the discipline to put an idea into action. Not only does Anita have wonderfully poetic ideas, but she also has the personality, discipline, will, and desire to act on them."

Simply put, Anita Borg knows how to write code - and how to raise hell. One of her T-shirts reads: "Well-behaved women rarely make history." Back when she worked at Digital Equipment Corp. (she spent 11 years there), she was scheduled to address her colleagues at Digital's large internal conference. At the last minute, she threw out her prepared talk about microprocessors and instead delivered a speech titled, "Why There Are Only Seven Women Left in Research at Digital." At a recent ceremony honoring the "Top 25 Women on the Web," Borg accepted her award and then declared, in her trademark high-energy style: "The genius of women in this industry has not been tapped. The companies that finally figure out how to tap into that genius are going to eat everyone else's lunch." The response from an audience of 400 mostly young women was a rousing round of applause and a loud burst of cheers.