Shelley Powers is an American author, web developer and technology architect. She works with and writes about open source, LAMP technologies and

web service A web service (WS) is either: * a service offered by an electronic device to another electronic device, communicating with each other via the Internet, or * a server running on a computer device, listening for requests at a particular port over a n ...

development, CSS/XHTML design, web graphics and the use of these technologies in the

semantic web The Semantic Web, sometimes known as Web 3.0, is an extension of the World Wide Web through standards set by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The goal of the Semantic Web is to make Internet data machine-readable. To enable the encoding o ...

. For her work as an author and her long-running tech weblog Burningbird, Powers was called "one of the more visible women in technology" by Virginia DeBolt of

BlogHer BlogHer is an American media company founded by Elisa Camahort Page, Jory des Jardins, and Lisa Stone in 2005. It is an online blogger community and holds a yearly conference for women bloggers. BlogHer is owned by SHE Media which is a division o ...

in 2008. She has been an advocate for

women in computing Women in computing were among the first programmers in the early 20th century, and contributed substantially to the industry. As technology and practices altered, the role of women as programmers has changed, and the recorded history of the fi ...

. She told the BlogHer interviewer, "Women are making great strides in every field of science and technology, except computers and engineering. Our numbers are decreasing every year -- a fact that should alarm not only women, but men."

Personal life

In 2020, Powers moved from St. Louis to

Savannah, Georgia Savannah ( ) is the oldest city in the U.S. state of Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia and the county seat of Chatham County, Georgia, Chatham County. Established in 1733 on the Savannah River, the city of Savannah became the Kingdom of Great Brita ...

. She graduated from

Central Washington University Central Washington University (CWU) is a public university in Ellensburg, Washington, United States. Founded in 1891, the university consists of four divisions: the President's Division, Business and Financial Affairs, Operations, and Academi ...

with a

B.A. A Bachelor of Arts (abbreviated B.A., BA, A.B. or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is the holder of a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the liberal arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree ...

Industrial Psychology Industrial and organizational psychology (I-O psychology) "focuses the lens of psychological science on a key aspect of human life, namely, their work lives. In general, the goals of I-O psychology are to better understand and optimize the effec ...

and a B.S. in

Computer science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...

Career

In the late 1980s, while at

Boeing The Boeing Company, or simply Boeing (), is an American multinational corporation that designs, manufactures, and sells airplanes, rotorcraft, rockets, satellites, and missiles worldwide. The company also provides leasing and product support s ...

, Powers began working with data and data interchange. At Boeing, she learned about the Product Data Exchange Specification (PDES). After this, she moved to Sierra Geophysics, a subsidiary of

Halliburton Halliburton Company is an American multinational corporation and the world's second-largest oil service company which is responsible for most of the world's fracking operations. It employs approximately 55,000 people through its hundreds of su ...

, where she learned about POSC. Powers's career as a computer book author began when she was working as a

Powerbuilder PowerBuilder is an integrated development environment owned by SAP since the acquisition of Sybase in 2010. On July 5, 2016, SAP and Appeon entered into an agreement whereby Appeon, an independent company, would be responsible for developing, s ...

developer in the 1990s and posted on help forums. An editor for Waite Group Press saw her posts and asked her to co-author a book on the software.

Bibliography

*''Learning Node'' (

O'Reilly O'Reilly () is a common Irish surname. The O'Reillys were historically the kings of East Bréifne in what is today County Cavan. The clan were part of the Connachta's Uí Briúin Bréifne kindred and were closely related to the Ó Ruairc ( ...

, 2012) *''HTML5 Media'' (

, 2011) *''JavaScript Cookbook'' (

, 2010) *''Learning JavaScript, 2nd edition'' (

, 2008) *''Painting the Web'' (

, 2008) *''Adding Ajax'' (

, 2007) *''Practical RDF'' (

, 2003) *''Unix Power Tools'' (

, 2002) *''Essential Blogging'' (

, 2002) *''Developing ASP Components'' (

, 2001)

References

Sources

External links

* Powers
Burningbird
website *
O'Reilly profile
American technology writers American bloggers Living people Place of birth missing (living people) Year of birth missing (living people) O'Reilly writers 21st-century American women writers American women non-fiction writers 21st-century American non-fiction writers American women bloggers {{US-nonfiction-writer-stub