Interview: Emma McGratten - Ingres
Finishing up our interviews with this year’s Women in Open Source speakers, we had a chance to sit down with Emma McGrattan, SVP of Engineering at Ingres. We had a chance to discuss the world of open source databases as well as many early forms of free and open source software.
- Gareth
Gareth: Emma, can you tell us a bit about your background and what part of the world do you currently call home?
Emma: I’m originally from Ireland, and have an Electronic Engineering degree from Dublin City University. I have had a fairly nomadic existence since leaving college back in 1989 and I’ve lived in LA, Dublin, London and New York. I currently live in New York but spend about 50% of my time on the road, pretty much evenly split between Europe and the US. Despite the fact that I haven’t really lived in Dublin since 1989 I get back there every 6-8 weeks and still call Dublin home.
Gareth: You currently work at Ingres. What does Ingres do? What is your current role in the organization? How did you get started at Ingres?
Emma: Ingres is an open source database company with over 10K customers scattered around the globe. My first job out of college was at a now defunct company called Retix where we were building a network management center and needed some place to stash all the data. At the time, 1989, Ingres was free with many desktop UNIX distros so we decided to use Ingres as the database for the product. I was a big fan of the technology and in 1992 when Ingres was hiring for their desktop center of excellence I jumped at the chance to join. As well as UNIX, I had experience with OS/2 and was hired to port the Ingres DBMS to OS/2. That was the first Ingres port to make use of operating system threads, and was quite a fun project. Since then I’ve moved through the ranks and my current position is SVP of Engineering. I run the Ingres emerging technologies group and we get to work on all the fun new stuff.
Gareth: How did you first get involved with technology? What about the Open Source community?
Emma: I got my first home computer back in 1982 and enjoyed writing games for myself and my siblings. My games were popular and I used to share copies of the tapes with friends who would sometimes change them and give me back the changes, so in essence I was doing open source development since my very first programming role 
Ingres has been an open source project since 2004 and I’ve stepped up my involvement in open source since then. As well as being SVP of Engineering at Ingres, I also sit on the board of the Eclipse Foundation.
Gareth: Do you feel as though you are treated differently in the technology world because you’re a woman? What about the Open Source Community? If so, how? And how do you combat these?
Emma: I was educated in a convent school in Dublin back in the 1980s and went from a very sheltered girls-only environment into an engineering class that was almost exclusively male and I quickly made the shift to become “one of the lads”. I don’t believe that I’ve ever been treated differently in the technology world because I’m a woman, although because I have a tendency to wear business suits to conferences and meetings people will assume that I’m more business focused than technology focused, but I suspect the same is true of a man showing up in a suit to a meeting.
Gareth: The open source community is very much a meritocracy and as a result everyone, male or female, has to demonstrate their skills to earn respect. What methods do you use to encourage other women to get involved in technology? What about getting involved in the open source community? In your opinion, what else can be done?
Ingres is one of the founder members of the Open Source Bootcamp (osbootcamp.org) which is a program that goes into universities to educate students about open source and to encourage them to become involved in open source projects while still at school. When attending these events I will always make time to talk to female members to the audience to encourage them to participate and offer to mentor them to ensure that they’re successful. I think mentoring is hugely important to give women the confidence to get involved with and stick with open source development.
Gareth: Thanks for taking the time to speak to us, we’ll see you at SCALE 7x!