Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder

18 May 2015, 23:06 p.m.

Recompiler, Passionate Voices, Book Club, A Soviet Spy, and More

Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2015 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.

A few announcements:

We have three days left to fund The Recompiler, a new technology magazine that will combine tutorials and technical articles with personal narratives and art. My household has now funded this campaign and I hope to attend the launch party in Portland next month. I particularly loved seeing (via the video on Indiegogo) that 2600 is one of the inspirations for The Recompiler. 2600 has many virtues, but it pays people in a free t-shirt or a year's worth of issues of the magazine. I am looking forward to seeing The Recompiler pay people to write "you can totally do this, here's how" high-quality technical articles.

My old boss Erik is running a new video interview series called "Passionate Voices" and kicked it off by interviewing me (72 minutes); if you are interested in my work on inclusive communities, my thoughts on codes of conduct, and my reflections on the Recurse Center, you might want to watch this.

In about ten days, I'll be leading a Geek Feminism book club on Courtney Milan's Trade Me -- read the first chapter free online, get hooked, and snarfle down the rest by May 28th so you can participate in the comment thread.

Also on Geek Feminism, I posted a quick note about the word "girl" in the name of superhero Supergirl.

Finally: I met some pretty interesting people via the Columbia master's program I did. And for several years, I've known Jack Barsky as a mentor, a tech executive, and a friend. He's now the subject of a profile by 60 Minutes because, no joke, he used to be a Soviet spy. This guy who gave me important advice, who always got to the heart of the matter and had super emotionally honest conversations with me, has a past that sounds beyond melodramatic. I was not aware until this month of all the twists and turns within his story, and I am honestly still processing it. Give it a look.