PART ONE

“And you may ask yourself, “Well how did I get here?” - David Byrne Talking Heads.

Women readily get written out of science. 

And I intend to do everything I can to end that. 

Apart from the obvious unfairness and inequality, it is intellectually ridiculous that women can’t contribute to science.

I want to make sure that my achievements establish places in science for women. 

I intend to ensure that it doesn’t take 100 years for society (and generations of young women) to suddenly discover that a lady called Wendy Hall did something of importance in science.

I don’t want it to be a revelation that a woman in science could achieve a lot of things. 

I want the record set straight because I’ve observed first-hand how these things just get written out.

Looking back over the last 30 years I'm often called a pioneer in the work I was doing - multimedia. 

It was a time when anything to do with it was so complicated it prevented anyone from seeing there was going to be a future in it. 

It was hard in those days to deal with video and audio and sound, and pictures. 

We were pushing against the norms of the day and we did it through computing another field that too few people knew anything about.

We were going to do things that would really help people experience the world - to learn to communicate with each other in new ways. 

We saw that the computer could mediate all of this media - the multiplicity of it - using these computational techniques. 

I had a lot of resistance to doing that, in the early part of my career, people just didn't get it. 

Yes, we were pioneers but how little did we know what was to come.

But first a bit of history -

The Frustration Of ‘Expert’ Denial

There was this professor at Southampton.

He told me, in public, that if I carried on doing this multimedia stuff then that there was no future for me.

He meant it too - he insisted - no future either in computer science or at Southampton.

To these people, this stuff wasn't computing. 

I should be doing operating systems or programming languages or compilers or something. 

It was if I was bringing computing into disrepute. 

I was a young lecturer. 

It was shocking that someone in the educational field would challenge someone’s passion for something new and (to me anyway) so obviously about the future.

He was thinking of the reputation of Southampton computer science.

Although a hard-nosed and very good scientist he just wanted us to be like Newcastle and Cambridge.

Thankfully my husband was extremely supportive.

So I stuck at it. 

The Pioneer

There was nobody else around doing this work.

It was the early days of the (IRS?) and we had to report on our research. 

I didn't have any papers in well-respected journals because my stuff was being published in little workshops. 

There were no journals to do with multimedia, there were no conferences, there was nothing. 

The field didn't exist anywhere, but it's what really excited me and my boss, David Barron - the head of the department.

He got it.

He bought a video display. 

If it wasn’t for him I may well be somewhere else right now.

Science Fiction - Science Fact

I recently saw Leonard Nimoy playing with a laser video. 

It was posted on Twitter but it came from the 80’s. 

And there he was showing everyone the future.

In this case, the technology was soon to be available - a far higher quality of video display so much better than videotape. 

David (Barron) bought me a video-disc player to experiment with.

We hooked it up to an Apple. 

So, although it sounds simple now we had an Apple able to ‘talk’ with a video display. 

We wrote the ‘drivers’ to get video onto the Apple - because they just didn’t exist yet.

The Professor accused my boss of favouritism because I was a young, attractive woman.

He had bought a £1000+ Philips Interactive CD system - at that time probably the entire grant for the whole department - spent on me.

The BBC Micro and the Doomsday Project really inspired me. 

I started working in computers and on the BBC Micro.

I was in a teacher training college - teaching teachers how to use computers. 

Enter The Browser & Hypermedia

I went to conferences where we were talking about the idea of hypertext and fledgling systems that were emerging around it

And then Apple produced the ‘HyperCard.’ 

None of this was computer science but it got us further.

But it did have a ‘language’ associated with it - a programming language. 

It was called (nest stack?) 

David (Barron) enabled me to attend a multimedia conference at MIT. 

At that stage, it still wasn't cool to be in multimedia but I met the hypertext hub. 

Doug Engelbart, Ted Nelson and xxxx

Then I met Tim Berners Lee - this was well before the web. 

This was the embryonic hypermedia community.

It was so exciting to be at the forefront of that. 

Later I got involved in something called Microcosm. 

All of it evolved through the coming together through video and the inspiration of hypermedia - the idea that you could link anything to anything. 

This was the origination of semantic links or the Knowledge Graph as we call it today. 

The Power Of Connectivity

The power of having links in databases has meant countless different applications for all kinds of people. 

It was the focus of my ideas with my team.

An incredible team of people with different ideas and fresh ways to link information together in meaningful ways.

We had to configure this so that you knew why links were being created, so that you can infer additional information from the linking. 

We were doing this while Tim was developing the web. 

Microcosm was a much more sophisticated hypermedia system. 

But of course, it wasn't free and it was proprietary, that was a mistake.

Tim made the web open, free and decentralised.

This meant the whole world could use its power of it without economic barriers to people. 

He was right even though now we are witnessing huge flaws. 

“In spite of the pandemic of misinformation and self-serving models used for nefarious purposes if Tim (Berners-Lee) hadn't done what he did and made it free and open it wouldn't have taken off.” - Dame Wendy Hall

We wouldn't have had all the advantages.

It was Mosaic and Marc Andreessen and his team that boiled the hyperlink concept down to the simplest of things.

So, while I think the Microcosm ideas are still relevant today they became so much more relevant in the Semantic Web/Knowledge Graph as we call it today. 

It was prescient.

Web Science

Working with Tim Berners Lee and Nigel Shadbolt through the mid 2000s (15 years after the web started) there was a light bulb moment.

The way the web had evolved depended on what people did with it.

This unlocked enormous insights of human behaviour. 

As a result, we decided that we needed to think of them as ‘social machines’ - social sciences hate that term.

Nigel talks about it a lot and it has moved the debate along in important ways.

Google, Facebook and Twitter are all examples of social machines. 

We called it Web Science because we meant it to be about the understanding of connectivity across the web.

We called it this because we couldn't think of anything better.

Tim wanted to call it ‘Philosophical Engineering’ - because he'd studied physics.

But the point was how do you build these types of systems with an understanding of what people might or might not do with them.

This ‘science of web connectivity’ meant developing a rigorous understanding of the application.

Through study we improve the critical platform - the foundation of what has come to underpin our world.

Even though it's a name that the social scientists have never liked, it's stuck so we didn't try to change it. 

I'd want Web Science to be part of my legacy.

I want people to know that it was a collective effort over many years and multiple dimensions and that there was a woman involved. 

I don't want people to think that it was just one person.

Tim has done an incredible job to personalise the invention.

But there was a lot more to it and others have played critical parts.

I think there’s real significance and value in people knowing that a woman was very much behind the thinking.

”Look at the leadership in Silicon Valley, it's all white male. There may be one or two Indian chaps around now. They're all very geeky and a bit on the spectrum. They're running these massive and now exceptionally powerful companies. The only female name that comes up is Sheryl Sandberg. She is the only one.” - Dame Wendy Hall

The Diversity And The Feminine

There's such a paucity of female influence in the companies that matter.

And where there are it can still be very toxic for women.

Several people have tried to develop projects that get more women interested in technology.

But frankly, it's probably become worse for women now than it even was 30 years ago.

In the real technical space, it's very hard for women to succeed - the role models are the wrong type.

Sadly, currently - there's not a lot of money in inspiring a generation of women.

Women need to be paid properly to turn up, to offer advice and leadership thinking.

We have so much value to give but it requires enlightened colleagues to realise the criticality and impact that’s possible.

The Psycho History Of Web Science

Science Fiction aficionados will need no explanation but Web Science draws on many similarities with Foundation and Empire.

In the book Asimov tells the story of a new breed of man who creates a new force for galactic government.

The ability to forecast what people, the masses are going to do.

The Foundation hurtles into conflict with the decadent and outdated First Empire.

What ensues is a struggle for power amid the chaos of the stars.

Humankind stands at the threshold of a new, enlightened life.

But it could easily be sidelined by the old forces of barbarism.

Asimov predicts where we are - not through a lost science of psychohistory - a statistical form of mathematics that allows an individual to predict the future (and dictate it) based upon trends in human progress.

There are characters that are clearly the archetype for many current villains.

“We could have called the ability to forecast what people would do psychohistory - but instead we called it websites” - Dame Wendy Hall

PART TWO 

The Becoming - A Woman In Science

I was the first in my family to go to university - a typical baby boomer.

At the end of the Second World War, my family knew nothing about universities.

I was really excited to go and initially for all the typical reasons.

In my day women went to university to find a husband and get married.

In the 70s, inside the universities, it was assumed that women didn't think about a further career. 

I didn't see it as the beginning of a career either.

It was about having a bit of freedom before I settled down into a family.

But my view changed as the society around me changed.

It was quite an age.

It was the dawn of the feminist period - the bra-burning era - a very different context to the world of today. 

Suddenly we would be reading about people like Germaine Greer - she was a bit ahead of me.

They were genuine trailblazers with lasers that shone sharp lights on long-standing inequities.

This inspired very different thoughts in me, sparking my imagination and showing me a path to follow. 

But even then I didn't consciously think I'm gonna create a career.

I went into PhD without knowing what a PhD was really just because I enjoyed the intellectual stimulus,

For most of my career, I've been the only woman around in the field.

The only woman in meetings.

I did it with a lot of help from men - I was lucky to have very good mentors.

Early on I got an Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council investment in 1996.

I got my chair in 94, I was still quite young ~40.

I was the first female professor of engineering at Southampton

I sometimes get labelled as the first female professor of engineering in the UK I wasn't, but I was the first at Southampton,

It was another 10 years or more before there was another one.

I got a research fellowship in research.

I teach, educate, lead inspire coach and mentor as my chair is computer science so in computer science - it’s a lot.

It’s ironic because there are very few women that have done what I've done.

I was one of the very first if not the first female computer scientists to get into the Royal Society.

The Gradual Journey To Breakthrough

When I was younger I didn't think about things like what drives me or what my ambition was. 

Neither did I think I've got to have money and career and nor did I think I wanted a family and all that.

I certainly didn't start off with a purpose. 

In truth, I found myself gradually edging, in quite a random fashion, towards the intellectual side of things. 

I simply found that far more fascinating. 

I decided I wanted to stay in higher education and at university.

With luck for life!

I definitely didn't start off with the dream of being where I am today. 

I had no idea I could do this sort of thing, no idea at all. 

When I got a job at the university as a university lecturer I thought that was it - bloody fantastic. 

And I believed that was probably it and where I'd end up. 

Even in my wildest - I wouldn’t have expected I would be a Fellow of the Royal Society. 

Back then that would be about the last idea I could ever have had. 

It has taken a lifetime but perhaps there is something in what I keep getting told - there’s something a bit iconic about me.

I don't quite understand it but my purpose is becoming about the legacy.

This isn’t about celebrity or fame but simply that I want people to carry on my work and be inspired by the passion that was ignited in me. 

“Things happen fairly slowly, you know. They do. It takes years.” - Steve Jobs  (On the seemingly overnight success of things - like the iPod)

PART THREE:

Right Here Right Now - The Bench Of Brilliance

People ask me to be on boards all the time but I most often don’t accept.

I’m not really here to review spreadsheets and do governance - I want to inspire and make a difference.

I engage to be objective and challenging.

I want to have fun, create the sparks and watch fireworks happen.

My role is to have my vision grounded it what matters and what’s possible.

I love being around people who want to achieve.

I will bring the future forward at the same time as transferring my real-world experience of doing innovation.

Translating the imagination and creativity full time - bringing forward a bench of brilliance.

Businesses don't need people like us all the time.

They only want us that at those moments in time where they can catalyse change for the future of the business.

Many of them don’t yet realise it but they need a woman.

I also want that to be my legacy.