Well, I finally blew my at-least-once-a-month deadline, and badly. Funny, normally my problem is coming up with interesting topics This time I'm bombarded with topics-- trust me, when I have time to scream, I'm going to have a lot to talk about. Well, maybe not that soon, I may need the time to actually scream.

An announcement should be forthcoming as to what all my spare time has been eaten by. Except for the weekend in New Orleans, but even that was in some ways part of it all. Mostly it was to party with a bunch of really cool Pagans in the French Quarter. It turned out to be more relevant that I was actually planning, but in a very good way.

I'm not intending to be cryptic, I promise. It's just that what I'm working on is pretty ambitious, and I can't quite prove yet that I can do it. Looking like an idiot because you can't make an advice column work is one thing. This would make me look like a cataclysmic idiot. The research and math are almost done, and most of the team is in place, but I don't want to say anything until I can PROVE it.

I will however, say I've spent rather a lot of time lately on Pagan Standard Time. Talking to Pagans about Paganism. Talking to activists about activism. Talking to non-pagans about how they see Pagans. I actually met flavors of Pagan I hadn't before, even a Roman Catholic Pagan. And she wasn't being strange, she just didn't find the two incompatible. Just a reminder that the variety really IS that broad.

But I did have an interesting notion I wanted to share.

The fact that there are a lot of Pagans in the IT field is an open secret. I only started in the IT field about three and a half years ago, but from what I understand, that's been the case for a very long time. We have a total lack of statistical Data, and I've been basing my internal estimates on the notion that we're a lot more prevalent in IT than anywhere else, except perhaps artistic fields.

Then I started thinking. I know lots of Pagans who aren't in the computer field. I know one Pagan off the top of my head that doesn't own a computer. And most of my Pagan friends who own a computer aren't very literate. (I'm not counting people I know strictly online. Obviously, all of those people are at least computer savvy enough to get on ICQ and surf the web, though for some of them, it ends there.) I would venture to say that at least half of my non-computer-based friendships with Pagans are with people who are not in the IT field.

Then the thought occurred to me-- the IT field, as a general rule, is more-laid back an open-minded that the whole of Corporate America. We the workers know that we are in demand, and we tend to be very confident. We tend to be ourselves. So we tend to be more out of the broom closet. What if we aren't more prevalent in the IT field? What if we're just easier to spot there?

One of the explanations I've heard is that we in the IT field tend to get our friends jobs. My job at Bank of America I got through a Pagan friend, and I did in turn get a friend of mine on board as well. But I met both of those friends while working in the IT field. And furthermore, it's not like we're casting spells to make room in IT for Pagans; we're referring capable people. And it's not like the IT field is the only field in which friends put résumés and applications in front of the right people. And it's not like we only do it for our Pagan Friends. Those referral bonuses cash just as well with non-Pagans, I promise.

There's about 30 or so people in my department; of those, three are Pagan, one's thinking about it, and one used to be. There are also two Pagans who have left the department, and there are Pagans in departments we work with. Is this an example of how many more of us there are in IT, or just a sampling of how many of us there are?

Robert Heinlein said, "If it can't be expressed in figures, it is not science; it is opinion." And he's right. The above is not some thesis proving anything, it's just food for thought. Exactly how many of us are there?

© 2000 by Cather "Catalyst" Steincamp