Ada Lovelace, a 19th century British writer who is considered one of the world's first computer programmers is today being honoured by bloggers all over the world. In the spirit of providing young women with role models, over 1500 bloggers are participating in the first annual Ada Lovelace Day and have pledged to write about a woman they admire working in technology.  I am choosing to write about Sonia Brock.

I fell across Sonia Brock in 2007 when I was writing reviews of podcasts for Podcast User Magazine. At the time there were so few women in podcasting - and in tech for that matter - that Sonia shone like a light to me the moment I listened to her podcasts. This is one woman with a real story to tell - and is for me a true example to us all.

Sonia Brock

Sonia is now about 72 years old (check out her hat) - but the striking thing about Sonia's story is not that she strove to be a major player in the tech scene, but that her natural zest and inquisitiveness for life meant that she has ended up there.
For about 13 years she worked for the Canadian Federal government, ending her career there as a self-trained webmaster. She took these skills and started designing websites for clients herself.

She started her podcasts 'A Storied Life' in 2005 as a simple record for her family of her life, not really realising the reach that putting them up as podcasts would have. She wasn't doing it 'because she was in tech', but simply because she discovered that with a bit of effort, she could. She wasn't looking for an audience - but the audience found her.

As she explains,

"to make a podcast I edited the code of an existing XML feed to create my own but there were bits I didn't completely understand, so I bought FeedforAll which made life easier. I had a directional ball microphone and a Mix Preamp that I bought on eBay. My brother gave me a mike stand with boom. To record and for editing I use Audacity and Adobe Audition... I've lived a longish life and know a bit about entertaining so the rest is Podcasting history, so to speak."

It's the podcasts and the stories of her life she tells which are spell binding. We have podcasts about knitting and her cat, interspersed with:

• My Early Days With Computers: 'How early adoption of computer technology changed my life, for the better, I should add'
• Martial Arts - eh: 'I signed up at a Tae Kwon Do gym. Now started a rigorous physical regimen unfamiliar to my sedentary office body. It was like paying to join the Marines'
• Cloth Dolls: 'When I was smaller my mother used to read me the Raggedy Ann stories and the most fascinating part for me was, when the people were away, the dolls would stop pretending to be not alive and 'come to life'.
• War Games: 'I am a war gamer on and off the Net. This is a look back on this area of fun and games'
• Guild Wars: 'My online addiction to a massive multiplayer war game. An entertaining look at a new way of socializing and a game complexity that rivals chess to some degree.'

And let's not also forget that she loves Jazz, appears as a guest sometimes on the radio, and is a cloth doll maker.

Sonia has taken technology in her stride, using it to her advantage. But what hits me the most is how throughout her life she has always taken control in everything she does. She has just got on with what she wants to do, been herself and achieved great things through perseverance and hard work.

She has always worn the trousers, there's no mistake. Let that be a lesson to us all.

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