Recently, I got mad at my Windows laptop and decided to install Linux.

Why did I decide to install Linux?

I’m a Mac girl through and through (Steve Jobs and Tim Cook saw me coming a million miles away) but I knew that the majority of my clients were using Windows laptops and I needed to be proficient in the software. Many businesses I’ve worked for primarily used Windows and I was a Windows user myself until about 15 years ago. Not a lot has changed since I last owned a Windows computer but you always want to keep your skills fresh.

My Windows laptop isn’t that old, maybe about 18 months. But in that 18 months, drivers have corrupted, software has failed to install or corrupted as well, and a few other issues. When the audio driver corrupted for the second time, I nearly threw the laptop against the wall. No idea why it stopped working, it just did. I spent time fixing it and it worked but I was over it. My Mac is four years old and my previous Mac laptop was eight years old before I decided to retire it. Other than age related issues, I’ve never had problems with anything on my Macs. Things just…worked.

Because I swapped between my Mac and Windows laptops for Nerd Girl Industries related work, I didn’t lose productivity, files, or software. I just unplugged the Windows laptop, gave it to Mr. Lisa, and told him to do with it what he will. Mr. Lisa is a Linux guy through and through and he was going to use it for development.

A few months went by and the laptop lay forlorn on Mr. Lisa’s office floor. At this time, I was planning on speaking to a group of college students on being a woman in STEM and what my previous tech experience was. One of which was a network engineer.

What is a network engineer?

A network engineer is someone who makes networks go. We are responsible from the physical aspect (cabling, hardware) to software. I loved working as a network engineer and I was thinking about getting back into it. Things have changed since I was in the field and now everything is nearly virtualized. Since the virtualizations and hardware mostly ran on Linux, this gave me the idea to take back my Windows laptop, install Linux, and go.

What is Linux?

Linux is an operating system (like Windows and MacOS) created by Linus Torvalds and released in 1991. Linux is a derivative of Unix, an operating system that itself was released by AT&T back in the late 1960s. Linux is used, and primarily still is used, as the backbone operating systems for most enterprise hardware (servers, embedded systems, super computers) to software development. ChromeOS, which powers Chromebooks, is based on Linux.

What makes Linux different from Unix is that its development is free and open sourced. This means that Linux distros (distributions) are managed by volunteers who abide by the GPL license, which means that the Linux kernel, the heart of Linux, can have the freedom to run, study, share, or modify the software.

While there are enterprise versions of Linux (like Redhat), most Linux distros are free to download and install. (As mentioned, Redhat has an enterprise version but you can download a desktop version for free.)

Why Linux?

When Mr. Lisa and I were dating in the late 1990s, we both got into Linux. Mr. Lisa took to it like a fish to water and I was into it as well. We installed Mandrake when it was released in 1998 (deprecated since 2011) and went from there.

Linux at that time was very rough around the edges. Not all, if most, hardware was supported, most navigation and software were command line (CLI) based, and to even get a modem working could take hours. I went back to Windows and Mac (I had a Mac Quadra I liberated from work at the time) while Mr. Lisa continued using Linux. Other than a foray into a Mac laptop back in 2008, Mr. Lisa has been a Linux guru for most of his adult life.

In the near 30 years since I touched Linux, it has improved dramatically. Common software, or good approximations of, come in Linux variants, the desktops were graphical and easy to navigate, and like Macs, after installation of software, it just worked. Linux is so easy to use, even my tech challenged mother-in-law used to use it until Mr. Lisa swapped her to a Chromebook.

How will using Linux impact Nerd Girl Industries?

To my clients, very little. Having installed Linux alongside Windows, I can boot into either operating system as needed using Windows for Nerd Girl Industries projects and Linux for development and learning.

I’m also thinking about releasing a series of guides on how to do things in Linux that are well thought out, jargon free, informative, and as complete as possible. I found many guides in installing Linux to dual boot with Windows to be severely lacking, inelegant, and overall a pain in the ass. 

The creation of the guides will happen when the whimsy strikes me as it is a very minor passion project. I have a lot to teach myself about Linux and as a  librarian and a person who believes information should not be hoarded, will distribute these guides either the blog or via in the Freebies page.

And that is what I did over Snowmageddon last week! 

Resources

• Unix over at Wikipedia
• Linux over at Wikipedia
• GPL over at Wikipedia
• Ubuntu Desktop

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Mr. Lisa and I’s tax paperwork was due last week and it included income and expenses for Nerd Girl Industries. (I learned as an LLC, my business taxes are filed with personal taxes and not separate.)

As I cataloged my income and expenses for 2025 I saw two patterns: I spent more than I budgeted for the conference I presented at in July 2025 and I spent more than I thought on advertising for the year. In fact, I spent 12% of my gross income on advertising. A small business should spend between 7-8%. 

Now, this is pure advertising. This does not include marketing such as stickers, business cards, t-shirts, flyers, and whatever else I’m forgetting which would probably drive up the percentage a few more points. (This stuff did get tracked on my P&L but I’m too lazy to pull up the spreadsheet.)

In 2024 I spent 106% of my gross income on advertising. Again, this does not include business cards, t-shirts, flyers, and whatever else I’m forgetting which would probably drive up the percentage a few more points.

The first question is obvious: How did I spend more than I make in 2024? Easy. I had seed money that covered all the big expenses such as advertising and buying a laptop.

In 2025, everything was covered 100% by my gross income.

How did I spend my advertising dollars?

Now that we see I’m terrible with money, where did I spend my advertising dollars?

• Flyers on community boards around the area (I had to pay for printing)
• Print newspaper ads
• Digital newspaper ads
• Paid newsletters
• Direct mail marketing (the postcards you get in your mailbox)
• Conference programs
• Social media ads

Free advertising included

• Free newsletters
• Email signature
• Workshops (I received income from workshop and not the other way around)
• Testimonials on NGI’s website
• Networking events

Basically, I threw everything against the wall to see what stuck.

How  did I get clients and sell products and services?

• Free newsletters
• Flyers around the community
• Word of mouth
• Recommendations
• Workshop attendees
• Networking events

None of the direct marketing, newspaper ads (digital and print), nor paid newsletter gave me a single client or sold a single service. I’m not including social media in this per se since social media ads drove traffic to NGI’s website as well as increased social media followers, but there was no conversion.

More products and services

In 2025 I increased the number of workshops I offer, where I was teaching, and started selling digital products on the NGI Shop. One writer’s chapter keeps canceling my workshops due to low enrollment (they are TERRIBLE at advertising their own workshops) so I pitched my slide decks for those classes to the membership and sold decks that way, which was nice.

What did I learn about advertising and marketing?

The first big thing I learned was that my method of throwing everything against the wall and praying for it to work does not actually work.

The second thing is that the community flyers, recommendations, and word of mouth are the most effective way for me to get clients. Also, I’ve gained clients and sold services from workshop classes and periodical reminders to past clients. Cold calling was also effective, specifically to writer’s groups, since I am building a reputation. Providing testimonials, summaries, and take-aways proved effective for follow-up.

Having coupon codes also worked. I offer a variety of coupons at various price points depending on how the person found me. Additionally, I sat down with my content calendar for 2026 and found six periods to offer sales across services and products. 

For example, March is Women’s History Month so I’m offering 20% across all services and products if you use the code ADA at check-out. Upcoming sales are in June (my birthday), August (Women’s Equality Day), October (Cybersecurity month), December (Black Friday / Small Business Saturday / Cyber Monday), January (Data Privacy Week), and we’re back to March for Women’s History Month and the cycle starts all over.

Some sales are on specific products, a day, week, or month, or some other variation. 

What’s upcoming for 2026?

I made a colossal mistake of spending slightly more than 10% of February’s gross income on an ad for Alignable, a small business network. That ad generated one lead with nearly 500 page views. And the lead only earned a connection. I didn’t even talk to the person, rather, they just friended me. Once I saw the numbers after the first few weeks, I quickly canceled the ad.

I’m spending small amounts on social media ads (Facebook and LinkedIn) for March’s month long sale. I just checked and I got 10% click through rate (average is 5-7%) on my Facebook ad (no conversions) and for LinkedIn, 2.25% click through rate. I only ran the ads for three days with a tight budget on both platforms. Obviously, the bigger the budget the more eyeballs, but I do not have a bigger budget.

I plan on running social media ads on and off of March but I’ll probably stick with Facebook and not go back to LinkedIn. Too pricey with not enough click through rate.

I’ll be presenting more workshops throughout 2026 so that’s more free advertising. I also plan on continuing to promote workshops and services on writer’s groups since that is also free. Cold calling continues and follow-ups with previous clients is also on the docket.

Mr. Lisa and I, when the weather is better, will continue to place ads around the area on bulletin boards. With the flyers already created, it’s just a matter printing, driving, and posting the ads.

I will continue to attend networking events (also free) and top up business cards as needed. 

Is there anything else I should be doing?

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As a librarian and a human bean, I am a big believer that:

• Data and information should not be siloed
• Data and information should be easily available
• Data and information should also be freely available

Let me clear that I am not referring to personal data (SSN, medical history, etc), which should be private and controlled by you. I’m referring to things like the Epstein files (yep, I went there), research, public data collection; all of it. If it impacts society as a whole, we should have access to it without issue.

(This is why I donate to Wikipedia every month.)

What is open data?

Open data is data that is easily available, editable, and shareable to anyone at any time. Open data is governed by an open license.

What is an open license?

An open license is a license that allows copyrighted work to be reused, remixed, and redistributed. Copyrighted work is typically beholden to IP, trademark, and patent so an open license takes that content and allows free use of it.

Open license is also known as open source license which is used within the open source software community.

Creative Commons allows creators to design a copyright and use of their content using a variety of licenses, many which are open. This is one example of creating an open license.

What is open government data (OGD)?

While the uses and types of open data are vast, the heart of open data is data that is open government data or OGD.

OGD is data that is created by governments such as maps, math and science formulas, chemical compounds, and more. The concept is that since this data, even down to the most minute use, affects a citizen’s every day life, it should be easily, and freely, accessible to use.

Why is open data important?

Advocates for open data say that such data as OGD that is being held by commercial and private use goes against the common good. This data, such as the list mentioned above, benefits society as a whole and should be easily accessible, reusable, and redistributed to further society’s needs.

What are examples of open data?

Examples include health stats, transit schedules, weather forecasts, research data, and more.

Where can I get access to open data?

The list of sites that provide open data is vast so here are a few examples:

• healthdata.gov
• World Bank
• data.gov
• Harvard Dataverse
• Genomic Data Commons
• Open Data Washington DC

How can I participate in Open Data Week?

You can check Open Knowledge Foundation’s list of events or do a search for “open data week events 2026 -ai” on Google.

Resources

• Open Data Week
• Open Knowledge Foundation
• Open Knowledge Network
• Open data over at Wikipedia
• Free license over at Wikipedia
• Open data resources
• Open Data Day resources

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New month means new habits! What better way to kick off the month of March by getting into the habit of having a weekly digital clean-up?

I teach a workshop on cybersecurity for the rest of us. (Sign up for the workshop here or buy the slide deck here.) In that workshop, I lecture on ways to protect yourself online, from freezing your credit, getting dark web notifications, and using a VPN (and a whole lot more).

It’s become a very popular workshop, but it got me thinking: having digital hygiene is more than freezing your credit or knowing about social media engineering; it’s also about keeping active on unsubscribing from unread mailing lists, power cycling your laptop, and more.

And even better? A checklist is involved!

Let’s dive in!

What is a digital clean-up?

A digital clean-up is when you actively and regularly keep your digital presence in tiptop condition. Example? Clearing your browser cache regularly or keeping the software on your phone current are ways to perform digital clean-up.

How often should I perform a digital clean-up?

Short answer: weekly!

And to get you in the mood for when to do it, plan on Sunday as you get ready for the week. It shouldn’t take you more than an hour to go through the checklist, and that’s on the wide end.

New week, new you!

What is involved with a digital clean-up?

There is a checklist!

Here are 14 things to do weekly to keep your digital presence in peak condition!

1. From your inbox, select five pieces of retail newsletters you haven’t read in over a month and click unsubscribe.
2. Power cycle your wifi router.
3. Power cycle your laptop/desktop/device.
4. Close any browser tabs you haven’t looked at in over 48 hours.
5. Double check to make sure you have thrown anything in your computer’s trash bin you may still need.
6. Check your phone’s home screen and delete any app you haven’t used in 30 days. You can always download it again later.
7. Turn off notifications for any apps that you don’t need such as the game who notifies you to come back and play.
8. Check, and apply, any updates to your computer’s operating system or apps (same goes with phones, too!).
9. Check Apple App Store or Google Play Store for any subscriptions you may not be using and cancel.
10. Once you’ve double checked your trash bin, empty it.
11. Check your Downloads folder and delete anything you don’t recognize or move into a specific folder like Documents.
12. Open your phone’s camera roll and delete 10 blurry photos or videos.
13. Clear your browser cache.
14. Backup your data using the 3-2-1 method.

Anything else?

Nope, that’s it! It may take you longer the first time or two when you do this, but once you get in the swing of things, it’ll be done in a blink of an eye.

Tip: Set a weekly reminder in your reminder app so you won’t forget!

Lastly, if you want the checklist in one handy dandy location, I’ve got you covered! Sign up for Nerd Girl Industries Presents, the bi-weekly NGI newsletter, and the checklist will be in your inbox lickity split.

Source

Starting a business can be difficult, confusing, and overwhelming.

It doesn’t need to be and that is the frustrating part.

Before we discuss my idea, let’s take a quick jaunt of the past few years.

A (very) short history of Nerd Girl Industries

In the early days of the internet boom, I was teaching intro classes for the internet service provider I was working for. These were the days of dial-up and taking 20 minutes to download a single MP3 file. The digital world was big and overwhelming and who better than to teach how to navigate it than someone who worked in it?

Eventually, I moved into more challenging roles at larger companies with teaching became a major component of my day-to-day work life. As my education and career progressed, I started doing tech support for friends and family and writing best practice guides if someone needed a reference. People responded well to my endeavors (which is probably why I was constantly doing support) because I could explain things in clear language without the jargon and double speak of the nerd world.

(May I add I was doing this all for free? Not that I didn’t think what I was providing didn’t have value, rather, I didn’t think anyone would pay for my services! )

As I mentioned, with my background, experience, and knack for teaching, when I was laid off in the fall of 2023, Mr. Lisa thought it was a good idea to turn what I was offering for free into a business.

It starts with an idea

So, what exactly does Nerd Girl Industries do and why would that make it a suitable business model?

When deciding what to services to provide, we looked at what I was already doing such as content strategy, WordPress migration, keyword research, social media management, and more. I knew that social media managers existed but I was offering more than that. I dug deep online to see if others were offering similar services, and if so, how much were they charging.

Turns out there is a market for my expertise, but I needed to narrow down my offerings to be cohesive as a brand.

How do I do this?

Choosing my services

I originally started offering social media management services without content creation. I created my own calendars, content strategy guides and audits, and more. I kept up with industry news. I knew that what I knew was the latest information and that could help someone.

But in order to sell that service, I decided to volunteer one service to a group/person to fine tune my process and get a recommendation. A writer’s group I was a member of had a call out for social media person and viola!

(Recommendations are the lifeblood of any service, company, or product. I knew by showcasing recommendations on my website that it would cement my expertise level.)

I put in a lot of hard work for that group’s social media and blog. I updated the tags and categories, created a schedule, solicited content from members, and in short, turned their digital presence into a more active and vibrant community.

The president of the group was so thrilled, she had no problem writing me a glowing recommendation. (Thanks Leslie!)

After about six months of managing the digital presence of the writers’ group, the president asked if I was willing to teach a workshop on the topic? Since I loved teaching, and I could make money from it, I agreed!

Thanks to her, I screwed up the courage to approach other writers’ groups, conferences, non-profits, and small businesses. I started with that one workshop and by the end of 2025, I had created and taught ten different workshops from social media to getting your books into libraries and bookstores.

(And for 2026, I’ve booked nearly 30 workshops and it’s not even the end of February!)

Word spread and people started approaching me to teach for them rather than just me cold emailing. I started selling my slide decks on the side since many people didn’t want to attend the workshop but wanted the information. Not a problem.

As the workshops took off, I started looking at other avenues outside of writers’ groups where my workshops would be of some value. I signed up with SavvyAuthors and Indie Author Training to teach with plans on presenting the workshops on my own to control date, time, pricing, and structure.

Now the hard part!

With all of this going on, it all sounded positive. Word was getting out about my services, I was booking workshops and selling products online. I was doing a lot to sell the business, but the administrative side? No fecking clue!

I researched with simple queries like “how to start a business” and it got overwhelming fast. Consultants and “experts” in the field would give partial answers but would provide more if you coughed up money. Then there was the registering myself with the state. Am I LLC? S-Corp? Something else? Did I need a business license? What about banking and legal issues? How do I handle taxes? What’s an EIN and did I need one? How do I handle paying myself?

The list went on and on.

I conned a friend who is also an solo business owner about what he did to begin his business and we started setting up regular virtual coffee klatches. Every couple of months, we get together and I bombard him with questions and he would lay out what he did and how it worked. He was pretty straightforward that it took him a few years to get his head around running his own business before he went full time as self-employed.

I decided to write an ongoing series about my experiences starting a business with the hopes it will bring clarity to people’s questions, provide guidance, and take the frustration and confusion out of the equation

As a librarian, I’m a big proponent that information shouldn’t be hoarded or siloed. It should be easily available and accessible.

Hence, this blog series was born.

The series will be ongoing with a post dropping at least once a month. I’ll cover everything I’ve mentioned above and more.

Thanks for coming along with me on this ride and I’ll see you soon!

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Data Privacy Week 2026

Thankfully, for me, a lot is going on in January (and not just dry January either) that’s giving me a lot of content! We’ve talked about Public Domain Day, Women in Tech, and Wikipedia Day. We’re ending the month on Data Privacy Week.

What is Data Privacy Week?

Data Privacy Week is the annual celebration of protecting and spreading awareness of online (and offline) privacy.

How do we define “data?”

Your email, social media accounts, and communities you’re involved in have your data. Your car, watch, and even your home appliances have your data. The content that you post online, from memes to videos to text, is also your data. Even snail mail from trusted sources is data.

In theory, and in a perfect world, your data should only be owned by you and it should also be private. However, we do not live in a perfect world, so instead, we learn how to protect ourselves, and our data, online.

Why is data privacy important?

Data about you is used to determine:

• Your socioeconomic status
• Where you live
• What race and gender you are
• Preferences

As mentioned, in a perfect world, the data about you should be owned by you, but in reality, it is not. Companies and advertisers use the data they collect to make assumptions about your potential needs and wants. An example would be how you interact with accounts and ads on Instagram informs the algorithm what other accounts and ads for you to make future purchases or to follow.

How do I manage my data privacy?

The National Cybersecurity Alliance has you covered. Here is a very robust list, with links, to online platforms from Amazon to Zelle on how to manage your privacy settings for each service.

How do I control my data?

Here are a few simple steps you can start with right now to control how your data is collected, stored, and used.

• When creating, updating, or agreeing to services, think about what is convenience over privacy. Does that service need to know something about you that is irrelevant to the service such as your phone number?
• Can you access privacy controls for those accounts and services to modify to meet your needs?
• If an app or service is asking you for something, such as why does Google Chrome need to know my bluetooth devices or Candy Crush my contacts, ask why they need to know that data before agreeing.

What are ways to protect myself on and offline?

Aren’t you in luck! I teach an hour long workshop, Digital Hygiene: Cybersecurity for the Rest of Us ($99).

If taking a workshop isn’t up your alley, the workshop’s slide deck is available ($19). The deck gives you everything from the workshop in one convenient and easy to reference doc.

Interest piqued? What’s in the workshop (and slide deck):

• Different scams from social engineering to password cracking
• Creating strong passwords and using a password manager
• What a VPN is and why you should use it
• Freezing your credit report and using a free Google service to keep tabs of yourself online
• Links to resources recommended as well as other best practices

This is just the tip of the iceberg!

This all sounds kind of scary!

It can be scary but by being smart, using best practices, and keeping an eye on your data, you can safely enjoy your time online.

References

• Federal Trade Commission. “Privacy and Security.” Federal Trade Commission, 2024, www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/privacy-security. Accessed 26 Jan. 2026.
• —. “Data Privacy Week | Bitwarden.” Bitwarden, 2025, bitwarden.com/blog/data-privacy-day/. Accessed 26 Jan. 2026.
• —. “Data Privacy Week.” Yale Cybersecurity, 27 Jan. 2023, cybersecurity.yale.edu/data-privacy-week. Accessed 26 Jan. 2026.
• —. “Data Privacy Week – National Cybersecurity Alliance.” Staysafeonline.org, 2025, www.staysafeonline.org/data-privacy-week. Accessed 25 Jan. 2026.
• —. “*Privacy Not Included: A Buyer’s Guide for Connected Products.” Mozilla Foundation, 2023, www.mozillafoundation.org/en/privacynotincluded/. Accessed 26 Jan. 2026.

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It started with a rant on how Bluesky handles its data. (On Bluesky I might add.)

This post started the back history of why I hate how Bluesky handles its data, but that is just empty text that serves no purpose. But what did spawn from that was me throwing thoughts into the ether on women in tech moving on to how the lack of teaching the history of tech to the younger generations is crippling them.

I meet up once a month with other women and women presenting folks for a women in tech event. We get together, drink beer and cider, eat pretzels and beer cheese, while we talk about our work, our interests, and our projects. I’ve met a lot of cool people that way which is helping me build a network here in lower N. Michigan.

(A woman no one knew showed up one meeting and asked if her boyfriend could come talk to us about our ideas on his new app. The boyfriend showed up anyway and spent the entire evening taking over the conversation. We were all stunned. Here is our place to not be with men and yet he couldn’t stop mansplaining the project. The woman never came back and the coordinator of our meet-up apologized profusely for letting that happen. Look, men, women and non-binary folks need their own space; stop trying to take over!)

A young whippersnapper joined us back in the summer of 2025 and she was soliciting us to come speak to her peers at the local community college on women in STEM. I threw my hat in the ring, we had a video chat, and I told her my story of how I took a class called Introduction to the Internet back in 1994 or ’95 and it was all command line. Archie, Veronica, Pine, FTP, and IRC were our tools of choice. These words mean very little now, especially to people like the young whippersnapper.

I’m in an interesting position since I started out in tech all those years ago but swapped to the humanities in the early ’00s when the company I worked for was going through massive layoffs. I wasn’t on the chopping block but I took that as a sign to get the hell out of dodge. I applied to a few colleges, got accepted, and in the winter of 2003, I was sitting in a classroom for the first time in nearly a decade.

Since those early days of my academic career, while I continued to pursue a humanities degrees (double major of English Lit and Art History; masters in Humanities, masters in Library Science and Archives), tech never left my world. I was building, exploring, or fixing things. I was the go to person for friends and family. I took to the internet like a duck to water and found jobs that catered to both halves of my brain. I’m a hybrid.

When finding a library job after I graduated in 2010 was nearly impossible (I eventually got hired for a library systems admin in 2011), I thought about going back into tech again. The money was certainly better, and surely how non-males were treated was better, right?

I’ll let you chew on that for a bit.

(The answer is “no” and in some ways, it’s a lot worse. If you are a non-male working in tech and you claim you’ve never been insulted, suppressed, patronized, or mansplained, you are fooling yourself.)

Lisa’s history of working in tech

The whippersnapper and I set up a Google Meet meeting and I told her my story. I told her how I was so focused on the internet in my first foray in college, I became the unpaid tech support person in my school’s computer lab. That in the spring of 1996, I started volunteering for a local freenet (bastard child of BBS‘), which was a volunteer run ISP that provided connections and server space to the internet for locals. You either connected your modem via a local phone bank or telnet into the service. I handled questions on how to use IRC and how to move email in Pine. The cost was very low to have an account. Maybe $5 or $10/month? (Mine was free since I was a tech support person.) When I left college, I spammed my resume (via email thank god) to every local ISP within a 60 mile radius of my house. I eventually got a job doing tech support for a ISP 40 minutes away.

By this time, how we think of the internet with browsers and such was a thing. I remember my college lab installed Netscape .96 (precursor to Mozilla/Firefox) and I stood behind someone watching the image of something I can no longer recall render line by line. The college’s entire connection to the internet was a T1 (1.544 Mb/second compared to my current home speed of 300 Mb/s). Command line was faster than graphical interface but who wanted to stare at a blinking cursor when you could see the color image of a flower from Scandinavia even if it took 15 minutes to download? (Answer: no one.)

I eventually moved to San Francisco in the summer of 1997, started working for a local ISP there and later moving to Virginia in the fall of 1999 doing networking for a global company. I went from answering phone calls to making the internet move. It was thrilling to make and understand how data moved from one point to another.

Working as a woman in tech

In all these moves and jobs, I was typically one of few if not the only woman. I was “assertive” and a “bitch” because I knew what I was doing. I learned and studied. Working in tech was an outlet for my brain, I made great money, and it was a career where I didn’t need a college degree (but certification was almost a must have). Even after becoming team lead, I still was having difficulty with my colleagues.

And to be brutally honest, it was not only the men but also some women were assholes. The concept of women supporting women was not the thing then as it was every person for themselves. This was not to say all women were jerks but many were.

In 2011, I started working as a librarian with my tech jobs on my resume. I was hired because I understand how a library catalog worked or how to write HTML to update a page. I was liaison to the tech department and worked with the computer profs on making sure their students had the most up to date knowledge and information.

But I left that job, and I went back to thinking about tech again. Could I get back into networking? Surely my skillset may be rusty, but I could do it. But competition had changed in the 10 years since was gone and now college degrees in computer science were murmured along with certification.

And how were women perceived now compared to then? (I’ll let you take a guess.)

(Do not get me started on when technology is promoted for women and it is always pink graphics, dumbed down titles, and sounds patronizing as hell.)

(Also don’t get me started that coding and fullstack development are the main fields women are suggested to work in. There is a lot more to tech than those two things and we’re doing a huge disservice to women in limiting their choices.)

Teaching the internet

Library jobs came and went but tech, and teaching tech, remained a constant in my life. Starting in my San Francisco days, I taught my own introduction to the internet and at the global company, classes on BGP, IP routing, and DNS. Later it went to classes on tech literacy and how to use social media.

I can not get away from tech if I tried.

This is me telling all of this to the whippersnapper and she’s excited to have me speak. She thinks what I will talk about will be important, especially the roles of women in STEM. We also talk about computer hardware, Linux, and how the internet goes. When I started to talk about Unix (precursor to Linux), she had no idea what I was talking about. When I explained data packets fly via switches and routers, her eyes glazed over.

It got me thinking, and of which I’ve been mulling, that we are doing a disservice to the younger generations not explaining how the internet works. The whippersnapper cared, of course to an extent, but she knew mostly nothing and she knew enough nothing to not even know how to go looking for it. Chromebooks, tablets, and phones you can watch TV on have been a constant in her life. She does not know the sound of a modem connecting or using *70 to turn call waiting off so that if someone called while you were connected to the internet, the connection would not be disrupted. (Y’all remember Motorola Razrs? Mine was hot pink and I put sparkle jewels on it).

As a society, we’re constantly talking how we need to remember the history of the event or a place or a thing to make sense of the present and so we won’t repeat our dumb mistakes. We use history as the backdrop for books, food, and movies. History is all around us, so then, why are we not teaching these whippersnappers the history of the internet?

I know there are youths who do know these things, but not enough, I think. Are they teaching the history of the internet in computer science programs? Are we seeing movements or activities to garner interest?

I’m not saying these don’t exist but I am saying there is not enough.

And that, my friends, is where I’ll pick up next week!

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Do you use Wikipedia? I have been hard pressed to find someone who hasn’t used Wikipedia in any capacity. When I started teaching information literacy classes back in 2011, I was a big believer in teaching people how to use Wikipedia responsibly. (Much to the chagrin of my colleagues at the time.)

I have an account but I have not edited a Wikipedia article, however, I do have a recurring donation every month to keep the site active. Plus it’s good karma!

What is Wikipedia?

To be sure, I’m shocked that I have to define Wikipedia since you’d be living under a rock to not know what it is! But just in case you don’t, Wikipedia is the free online encyclopedia with the guise of containing all of human knowledge. You do not need an account to access Wikipedia or to read Wikipedia articles. You do need an account to create and edit Wikipedia articles.

While content in Wikipedia is volunteer added (Wikipedians), the content must be peer reviewed and references must be provided to back up claims. 

The concept of Wikipedia was that information and knowledge should be freely available and that no one entity should control it. Wikipedia was the offshoot of Nupedia and a competitor of Microsoft’s Encarta and Encyclopedia Britannica. You can also think of Wikipedia as a large online library of information.

Wikipedia was launched on January 15, 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger. The site was made live two days after the domain name was registered. The first page was in English and as of early 2026, there are over 7 million pages in the English language with over 66 million pages overall. There are over 350 languages with articles in Wikipedia. 

Wikipedia is a non-profit organization.

What and when is Wikipedia Day?

Wikipedia Day is the celebration of the birth of Wikipedia and its first edit. The celebration is held annually on January 15. 

2026 is Wikipedia’s 25th birthday.

It is also the same day that the Creative Commons was created. More on Creative Commons in a bit.

How can I celebrate Wikipedia Day?

In addition to donating money, creating an account, and editing articles, there are loads of other ways  to celebrate! Some locations, such as NYC, Chicago, and Seattle are having an in-person celebration. If you can’t make it, there is also a virtual celebration that will include talks and presentations.

What is Creative Commons?

The purpose of Creative Commons is to provide online resources such as videos, photos, and words, with copyrights to allow remixing and reuse of the content. Yes, you can disallow remixing and reuse of your work if you like. All Nerd Girl Industries workshops and slide decks “Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International” which means that my work must have attribution, it cannot be resold, and I do not allow anyone to build off my content. I choose this license because of how much energy, time, and brain power goes into my work and I do not want anyone to profit from it. However, my slide deck for “Not Your Mother’s Librarian” has a more open copyright since I give it away for free. The only thing I require for that slide deck is you give me attribution.

Creative Commons was created on the same day as Wikipedia, January 15, 2001.

Creating a Creative Commons license is free.

You can learn more about Creative Commons here.

What are other sites like Wikipedia?

Yes!

Wikipedia and its related sites are all hosted by Wikimedia Foundation (also started by Jimmy Wales). The Wikimedia Foundation is a non-profit organization.

Those related sites are:

• Wikimedia Commons Freely available and use of media such as photos, videos, and sound recordings
• Wikidata Freely available information data)
• Wikispecies Information about all of life such as animals, plants, and more
• MediaWiki The software that runs Wikipedia and is freely available to use
• Wikinews Free news source
• Wikiversity Free online learning sources
• Wikiquote Collection of quotes
• Wikivoyage Travel information
• Wikisource Fee library of text and translations of text
• Wikitionary Free dictionary and thesaurus

Whew! That’s a lot of freely available information! A lot of it I did not know existed until I started researching it.

Wow! January seems to be a pretty big month in terms of freely available content!

Yep! We have Public Domain Day on January 1st and the celebration of Wikipedia and Creative Commons on January 15th. The goal of all these organizations is to have content easily and freely available to use.

How do you use Wikipedia and are you going to celebrate Wikipedia Day?

References

• —. Contributors. “Commemoration of Wikipedia Founding in 2001.” Wikimedia.org, Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., 20 Mar. 2005, meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Day. Accessed 12 Jan. 2026.
• —. “Creative Commons.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 13 Mar. 2019, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons. Accessed 12 Jan. 2026.
• —. “Event:Wikipedia 25 Virtual Celebration – Meta-Wiki.” Wikimedia.org, 2022, meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Event:Wikipedia_25_Virtual_Celebration. Accessed 12 Jan. 2026.
• —. “History of Wikipedia.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 3 Apr. 2019, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Wikipedia. Accessed 12 Jan. 2026.
• —.. “One-Day Conference for Wikipedia Day.” Wikimedia.org, Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., 27 Nov. 2019, meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Day_unconference. Accessed 12 Jan. 2026.
• —. “Wikipedia:Wikipedia Day.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 9 Jan. 2026, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Day. Accessed 12 Jan. 2026.
• —. “Wikipedia.” Wikimedia.org, Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., 5 Jan. 2003, meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia. Accessed 12 Jan. 2026.
  
  
  
  
  

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First, A Welcome

Today not only marks January 1, Public Domain Day, and the start of a new year but it is also the first article in The Blog of NGI!

The Blog of NGI will cover in-depth topics on a weekly basis, posting around 9 a.m. on Mondays. The articles will have a brief summary in the NGI newsletter (Have you subscribed yet?) as well as a line or two in NGI TV. 

(The next issue drops on January 12!)

Topics covered will be things history of tech, rants and raves, analysis, and whatever else I can think of. I keep the newsletter pretty short but I wanted a place to really stretch my creativity and that’s where NGI TV and The Blog of NGI comes in!

Now on with the show!

What is Public Domain Day?

To put it simply, it is the day, typically January 1 in the US, where creative works lose their copyright and go into the public domain. When something goes into the public domain, you can reuse, remix, create with, or just simply enjoy the work without restriction.

Copyright dates and lengths vary from country to country. In the US, if the work that was created before 1978, it is up to 95 years since publication (hence the work going out of copyright in 2026 is from 1930). Due to the Sonny Bono Act, works created after 1978 are life of the creator plus 70 years. So, if I published a book in 2015 (which I did) and died in 2042 (which I hope I won’t), the work will not be in the public domain until 2112 (70 years after my death).

To give you another example, Jane Austen died in 1817. Since her work is in the public domain, her novel Pride and Prejudice was re-released with remixing, by Seth Grahame-Smith, into Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. By taking the original story and interjecting zombies, he created a whole new work without restriction from Austen or her estate. 

Note: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is a copyrighted work so you cannot remix, reuse, and repurpose the book without permission from Grahame-Smith.

And another Austen example, I’m reading Pride and Prejudice over at my personal TikTok where I read a chapter a week. By re-using this content in a new and fresh way, not only am I taking advantage of Austen’s work in the public domain but I’m also spreading the word of Austen. (Win-win!)

What’s the history of Public Domain Day?

The use of the phrase “Public Domain Day” is recorded in 2004 by Wallace McLean (a Canadian public domain activist) with support by Lawrence Lessig (an American legal scholar). Websites and journals started writing articles on Public Domain Day as well as listing significant works going into the public domain. Over 20 years since that original idea, Public Domain Day is widely celebrated worldwide.

How much are the works in the public domain?

Free! You do not have to pay a single cent to use the work.

If I create something using a work in the public domain, can I sell it?

Yes! If you search for Pride and Prejudice at your favorite online bookseller, you’ll see zillions of copies by different publishers. If you want to release your own version of Pride and Prejudice, lets say with commentary,  you absolutely can!

What are examples of works in the public domain?

Gosh! That’s a book in and of itself! Here are some works that have entered the public domain in the last few years:

• The first instance of Mickey Mouse, in the cartoon Steamboat Willie, is in the public domain (though Disney is arguing about this)
• F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Beautiful and the Damned, The Great Gatsby, and This Side of Paradise
• Music by Jelly Roll Morton, Bessie Smith, Al Jolson, and George Gershwin
• Cecil B. DeMille’s film, “The Ten Commandments”
• The first film adaptation of “Peter Pan”
• A.A. Mile’s Winnie-the-Pooh, Now We are Six, and House at Pooh Corner
• Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, Orlando, A Room of One’s Own, and Mrs. Dalloway
• The film, “The Jazz Singer”
• “Animal Crackers,” the musical starring the Marx Brothers
• Carolyn Keene’s first four Nancy Drew books

Remember, this is just the tip of the iceberg as there are literally millions of materials in the public domain.

Where can I find a list of all the materials in the public domain?

Hah! While I too had this question, the reality is that there are millions of items in the public domain and to manage a list is impossible. 

But, I can help you with a bit! In 2019, Duke Law School started publishing a list of popular items going into the public domain. Here are those lists.

• 2026 (1930 and earlier)
• 2025 (1929 and earlier)
• 2024 (1928 and earlier)
• 2023 (1927 and earlier)
• 2022 (1926 and earlier)
• 2021 (1925 and earlier)
• 2020 (1924 and earlier)
• 2019 (1923 and earlier)

Where can I find public domain materials?

As a librarian, the first thing I will tell you is be very  careful on where you find materials claiming into being in the public domain. Here is a list of verified sites that have the millions of materials in the public domain.

• Internet Archive (books, music, video, and publications)
• HathiTrust (books and publications)
• Project Gutenberg (books)
• Library of Congress (books and music)

What are you going to create with works in the public domain?

Further Reading

• Center for the Study of the Public Domain
• Public Domain Review
• Public Domain Information Project

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