Jan 17, 1949 — Anita Borg Is Born

Today, January 17, is the birthday of Anita Borg (1949–2003).

Anita Borg was an American computer scientist and a creator of pioneering communities for women in the tech industry.

One of the most significant products of her professional work was MECCA, a communication system built on top of email protocols. MECCA supported community management, topic-based discussions and threaded conversations. In many ways, it was an early precursor to modern forums and chat communities — only powered entirely by email infrastructure. It allowed participants to organize discussions by topic, moderate conversations, reduce spam, subscribe to specific threads, and do many things we now take for granted in today’s online platforms.

Using MECCA, Anita Borg founded Systers in 1987 — the first large-scale online community for women in computing. Today, Systers continues on Discord.

In 1994, Anita Borg and Dr. Telle Whitney organized the first big women-in-tech conference named in honor of Grace Hopper.

In 1997, she founded the Institute for Women in Technology (IWT), which lives on today as Anita Borg Institute for Women in Technology AnitaB.org — https://anitab.org (amazing domain name 😊).

MECCA: https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA376234.pdf
Anita Borg Institute for Women in Technology: https://anitab.org
Systers Community (Discord): https://discord.com/invite/systers