Early this month Adrienne Haik of Metaversatility founded the group Women Metaverse Developers. What follows is my short interview with Adri, with minor edits for clarity.

Mega Millionsofus: What is Women Metaverse Developers (WMD)?

Adrienne Haik: WMD is a support, networking, and discussion group for women working in virtual world development: programmers, marketers, project managers, producers, women who work either as individuals or with companies. Our purpose is to increase the visibility of women developers in the industry and to provide a space to discuss common experiences, issues, and challenges.

It’s a commonly studied phenomenon that there are more men working in the sciences and technologies than there are women, and we’d like to not only provide support for our own members in this environment, but also act as an example to other women and girls who may aspire to become virtual world developers.

Mega: How did you come up with the idea to form Women Metaverse Developers?

Adri: What I first started noticing was how I felt like the only female developer at most conferences I was attending, like the only woman standing up to talk. That made me consider how feeling alone and isolated tends to perpetuate a gender bias. What finally pushed me to start a group though, was hearing Metaversatility (MV) Community Manager, Haver Cole talk about how happy she was to have found female friends outside of MV who are also developers, who she shared common experiences with. That made me realize that I wasn’t the only person feeling isolated, and also that women in our industry could and ought to become more visible to each other as a group.

Mega: What sort of events, discussions, conferences, etc. are you planning to organize?

Adri: We want to organize at least monthly discussion meetings, as a primary purpose of the group is to provide networking opportunities for our members. These discussions may be topical or may be meet-and-greet style events. We’re planning an ‘unconference’ day of discussions on women’s issues in virtual worlds for early next year, which will take place entirely in Second Life. We also plan to hold face to face meet-ups adjacent to major industry conferences.

Mega: Is this group for and focused exclusively on women developers in Second Life?

Adri: No, we want to appeal to women working in all aspects of the industry, regardless of platform. Second Life is one medium for our discussions, but we also have a Facebook group and will be launching our blog soon.

Mega: How does one get involved in WMD?

Adri: Women (meaning female-identified in daily life) who work in virtual worlds development roles should contact one of the group organizers: Adrienne Haik (SL: Adri Saarinen, adri@metaversatility.com), Katherine de León (SL: Mega Millionsofus, mega@millionsofus.com), or Rebecca Small (SL: Haver Cole, rsmall@metaversatility.com) or join the Facebook group Women Metaverse Developers for more information.

(Note: While we respect immensely the work our in-world business-running colleagues do, this group is primarily focused on business and businesswomen who work mediating the boundaries between worlds.)

Mega: Thanks for your time, Adri!

Adri: Thank you.

Adrienne Haik is a co-founder of Metaversatility where she focuses on business strategy, marketing, and making sure projects run smoothly. Other development companies participating in WMD include but are not limited to: Electric Sheep Company, Linden Lab, Makena Technologies, Massively, Millions of Us, and the New Media Consortium.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 13th, 2007 at 3:29 pm and is filed under Virtual Whirls. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.