Ada Lovelace Day - Cynthia Beuselinck

It wasn't very difficult to come up with female technology role models for Ada Lovelace Day. The difficulty for me was paring my list down to one person. Since I am sure that others will be writing about some of my favourite folks (Connie, Sabrina, and too many others to mention). I decided to write about someone who stays just a little under the usual radar.

Cynthia Beuselinck, a long time members of the Alberta Association of Library Technicians, is definitely an inspiration to my interest in technology. In 1994, Cynthia developed a team, and the first AALT website. Working as a Library Technician for the Calgary Board of Education in a technology role, she undertook to learn HTML when most others in our organization had not heard of it, weren't connected to the web, and had no idea of the impact that it would have on our professional, and personal lives.

Cynthia continues to inspire library techs in Alberta by thinking and working outside the box. Recognizing a market need for technology training, and her own entreprenurial skills, she founded Inet Toolbox. Cynthia continues to inspire others through seminars, conference presentations, and mentoring in the Alberta library community.

Thanks for the kick in the pants Cyn. I will continue to try and keep up.

Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology.

Women’s contributions often go unacknowledged, their innovations seldom mentioned, their faces rarely recognised. We want you to tell the world about these unsung heroines. Entrepreneurs, innovators, sysadmins, programmers, designers, games developers, hardware experts, tech journalists, tech consultants. The list of tech-related careers is endless.

To see a list of all Ada Lovelace Day 2009 blog posts worldwide, see: http://ada.pint.org.uk/list.php.