WIT and SQLCruise
This year SQLCruise was balanced 50/50 men and women. This was a surprising ratio and we had a special WIT (Women in Technology) session to discuss it. Next year, there is only one woman signed up for the first Miami cruise (so far) and two women for the Alaska cruise. Both of the women signed up for SQLCruise next year are alumni from the original SQLCruise. So, what has changed?
Here is what I do know. The Alaska cruise sold out in one day, alumni were notified first and there are currently more men than women in IT. I assume that having only two women on the Alaska cruise is partly due to these points. Yet the Miami SQLCruise still has six spots left. Of the 15 spots, there is currently only one woman signed up. That one woman is me.
I can’t speak for the family aspect, as my husband and I are currently still trying to start a family. I know that this year @YanniRobel (blog) is bringing her family with her. A visit to the cruise website found an entire section related to youth activities and information. In addition to this, training rarely goes past 5pm and we are never in training while in port. I would think this would be a plus to encouraging families to travel with the trainees but I also wonder if it makes it more appealing to women in general.
This year my husband will be a trainee along with me on the Alaska cruise. When we discussed it, the biggest draw for my husband is he did not have to fly to a destination to board the cruise. What about you? Are you going on one of the SQLCruises this year? Did you go on a SQLCruise last year? What influenced your decision and will you bring your family with you?
Don’t forget, there are still spots available on the Miami cruise. Plus, there are still two spots that were picked up by vendors for both Miami and Alaska. I can’t wait to see what the vendors do with those spots this year.
The gender balance thing totally shocked me with the second cruise – I really expected to have a balance of women and men again. To be honest, I’m a little disappointed, because my first thought was, “What did I do wrong this time?” It’s not that I don’t want men on board, but I was worried that something happened on the first cruise to scare women off from the second one. The cruise was NOT debauchery by any means. The one thing I take heart in is that the two returning cruisers are both women!
I do think this year I wanna do a better job of interviewing the cruisers AND their spouses afterward to ask how the experience was, and what they’d tell new cruisers to do/bring/expect. If you’re thinking about bringing your spouse or kids on a cruise, you’d want to know how that works.
Good point (the two returning cruisers are both women)! I overlooked that. Definitely no debauchery on the last cruise. I know that last year Kendra and I signed up with only four spots left. Also, two of the four contest winners were women and that was announced only a couple weeks before we signed up. That is four of the seven. Was it timing? I am curious to see how it changes as we get closer to the departure date.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Brent Ozar and Ted Krueger, Crys Manson. Crys Manson said: [Blog] WIT and SQL Cruise http://bit.ly/cn5zZJ #SQLCruise #WIT [...]
Amy will be with me on the Miami cruise. We can add her to the WIT count for that one.
Yeah, you guys treated us women so poorly….no, wait….I have a vague recollection that women scooped all the men on the net book prizes. How could a post on WIT and SQLCruise omit this?
Heck, I was expecting that the cruises were going to have no men due to fear and intimidation
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In my WIT research one of the recurring themes is that women find it harder to participate in extracurricular events due to the heavier home workload. A 7-day cruise would be much harder to schedule than a 4-day one, for instance. The one thing I noticed on SQLCruise 1.0 was that the women were either single or had very strong support from the their partners. That makes a hugh difference.
Overall I would not worry about any one event. It is the trend that would be significant.
Oh, and how would Brent know about the acticvities aince missed all the debauchery by hitting the sack at 6pm every night. It was a lot more fun than he knew.
HAHAHA, truer words were never spoken.
And I can’t say that I was just exhausted from all the work on the cruise, either, because I do the same thing when I’m on a cruise with Erika. I think I’ve maybe made it to three shows out of 45-60 nights on boats!
LOL – This is a good point. Not sure how I could leave out how the women schooled the men when it came to getting those laptops. Maybe there are less women this time around as they want to give the men a chance? Nah.
Yah, funny thing is that in 1994 I journeyed thru AK and Yukon by bicycle (and ferry), and experienced the tidal wave of humanity that the cruises smother those small communities with. It was shocking enough that I swore I’d never take an AK cruise, but the training opportunity is just too good (and I know this from chatting with Crys). And I know I’m older, slower and more sedentary these days.
I do realize that the cruise ship $’s are how those towns exist, but…
Re: the gender balance, perhaps your marketing is just reaching more of the IT world now, so you’re seeing the gender balance that exists generally there? I’ve been really lucky to have nearly half my team be female, but I know that’s a rarity in IT.
Karen has some very good points – women find it hard to participate due to family commitments. I completely agree. I couldn’t imagine going on SQL Cruise when my children were younger. Back then I spent my vacations cleaning the house! And I have a husband who cleans better then most men…
Another thing to note – most of the women on SQLCruise are married to guys in IT. I think it is much easier to sell SQLCruise to a geek husband then to a non-geek one.
I love what Diane said and it’s so true. It’s SO much easier to sell SQLCruise to a geek husband and it’s so true as well on what Karen said. I don’t even have to sell anything to John since he like the idea as much as I do.
Family commitment is a huge factor and I was able to attend the first SQLCruise because I was able to rally my mother, my nanny and the girl’s dad all together to tend to my kids. It’s VERY hard for me to be away from them that long, which is why I will take them with me on SQL Cruise Alaska, oh and my nanny so I can do all the ‘after hours’ activities
but I know not a lot of us out there as lucky as I am to have a supporting husband and a way to tow all of our kids and attend such a cool event like this.
I was even ready to sign myself to both cruises (yes, I’m as crazy as Crys) but I have to back out from Miami one and give someone else a chance from my team to get all the fun. Leaving my work without any DBA for a week while we both stranded in the middle of the sea apparently not a good sell to my boss
but I’m now curious to see who’s other women out there will join Crys to win all the prize. Oh, did I just say that out loud? 
Crys – you and I will kick the rest of the gents’s rear out together in Alaska cruise and win all the prize. I’m so looking foward to it!
You all make some good points and I agree. Family commitments could be part of the issue as to why there aren’t more women signed up. Also, there are more men in IT so it is possible that has something to do with it.
Personally, I would hop aboard as quickly as possible if I could. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to budget for a cruise this next year. On this last cruise, if we could have afforded it, we’d have brought our daughter. We got lucky that family agreed to watch her while we were gone.
Diane does make a good point that it could be a bigger sell to women whose husbands are in IT. Although, even if my husband weren’t a geek, he’d want to cruise regardless.
I don’t know if this next point is true or not and I’m not crazy about bringing it up, but to be honest I don’t make a lot of money. I’m not complaining because I love my job. I work in the public sector, and it seems there are quite a few women in IT in the public sector. I don’t know if it’s like this in other places but the last place I worked (also in the public sector) had an all woman DBA team as does my current place of employment. So another possibility could be that not a lot of women can afford it. I’m sure there are men out there as well that may not be able to afford it.
Having said all that, I don’t think there’s anything Brent or Tim have done wrong. It’s a great idea and I wish more women would sign up.
Karen does have another good point, though, which is to not look at the one event but to look at the trend over time. Especially considering the Alaska cruise sold out in one day. Given more time, it’s possible more women would have signed up. In general, some women may need more time to plan ahead if they have family commitments they need to take care of first. By the time they make arrangements, it’s too late to sign up. In my past experience, I’ve rarely known any woman in IT who can make a quick decision like that without having to make family arrangements ahead of time. That’s just what I’ve observed, though.
Just my two cents.
I wanted to go ont he Alaska cruise, but being the responsible married man that I am, I couldn’t pull the trigger on a decision of that price quick enough. Plus at the time, I was talking to a company in CT about possibly going to work for them, and still do not know if I will be in WA or CT at the time of the cruise.
Part of the problem is that I’m not in the target audience for the cruise. I want to go on the cruise, but I don’t want to pay for the training. Not that I don’t think the training is worth the price, but like I said, I’m not in their target audience. They are targeting people who want to elevate their game to the Master level. I’m already at that level. I have no doubt that I would still learn new things in the training. I learn new things every day.
Personally, I’d love to go on the cruise, and maybe teach one or two classes and just hang out with everyone for the rest of the cruise.
I think Rebecca brings up a good point about the pay factor. I know that five years ago I would never have even considered doing it, that I couldn’t afford it or the cost was too high. Before my current employment I worked at a non profit and even though I was treated very well with my review each year, there is only so much money at a non profit. Though I was also young, didn’t have the confidence to fight for myself in regards to pay, and sucked at budgeting. But that was okay because I led a very bachellorette style life and didn’t have a family. I also wasn’t planning on a family, ever. Not much has changed, minus the fact that I’m older and actually trying to start a family now. I love this training but if I had it five years ago, it would have been at an even better point in my experience level. Five years ago though, I was one of the ones that went to PASS, only attended sessions, knew not of this twitter thing, and barely spoke to anyone but my coworkers who were also there. I would have never even heard of SQLCruise.