Watching Lindsey Kildow's courageous Olympic performance after her horrific crash during a downhill training run this week, I felt inspired. She skied through her pain even though her doctor thought she wouldn't be able to race. When some physical or emotional annoyance gets in between me and my goals as I blog in the male-dominated technology arena, I remind myself of Lindsey, who skied despite the pain.

I'm also inspired by women who work in technology and find time to make it better for other women in the field. It's not always pleasant to take a stand regarding women's presence or visibility in technology. Some people feel that doing so only further marginalizes women. Others might argue that women aren't in technology primarily because they don't want to be, that societal factors play a minor role. No matter the truth of such positions, I know I appreciate it when other women and men as well take little and big steps to promote women in technology.

Here's just a small sampling of women managing technology careers who find time to make it better for all women working in technology:

• Christine Herron of Christine.net has been tracking the number of women attending recent tech conferences including the Open Source Business Conference, DEMO 2006, and O'Reilly Emerging Telephony (eTel).
• Charlene Li of Forrester Research displays the BlogHer blogroll as the only blogroll her popular weblog. If you're interested in social computing, check out her recent post summarizing Forrester's report on the topic.
• Web Teacher Virginia DeBolt will be serving on the panel at SXSW Interactive addressing women's visibility on the web. Today in preparing for that panel, Virginia posted an excellent resource for anyone who's interested in gender relations: a blog by linguist Suzette Haden Elgin that covers gender issues in speech. The other panel members will be Ayse Enginer, Liz Henry, Tara Hunt, and Jan Kabili.

I may be exaggerating when I say that blogging in tech sometimes feels like an out-of-control run down a steep and icy mountain. Still, I find courage by modeling myself after Lindsey Kildow and after my sisters in technology who take action to promote women's visibility and presence in technology.