Katy Dickinson

Caboose Railings

We are still working on the stair railings for WP668, our backyard caboose. Chris Gremich (CG Designs in San Jose, CA, phone: 408-313-3706) has made the part of the bannisters. He needs to finish those and then attach them to the balusters. Balusters have to be less than 4" apart for safety. WP668 still has the temporary railing John put in last year.

Those who have been to Sun Microsystems' Menlo Park, CA, campus have probably seen where we got our bannister design.

WP668 today

WP668 Bannisters so far

Sun Bannister

Images Copyright 2008 by Katy Dickinson

Posted at 08:52PM Oct 14, 2008 by katysblog in Caboose Project and Other Trains  | 

Blessing the Animals

Last Sunday was the popular Blessing of the Animals service at St. Andrew's Episcopal Church (in Saratoga, CA). We took our cockatiel "Birdie" in her basket. Last year, we took our cat, Valentino. The service, starting off with a green parrot singing "Jesus Loves Me", was predictably wild and well attended. There were occasional dog squabbles, yips, and barks from the pews. There were more dogs than any other animal but cats, turtles, rodents, and even a fish came to church to honor St. Francis of Assisi, patron saint of animals.

Singing Parrot

Dog in Church

Cat Blessing

Dog Blessing

Bulldog Smile

Church Turtle

Enjoying the Service

Calm Cat

Church Hamster

Blessed Beta Fish

A Girl & Her Cat

Birdie Blessing

Birdie in the Car

Images Copyright 2008 by John Plocher and Katy Dickinson

Posted at 08:22PM Oct 14, 2008 by katysblog in Church  | 

Getting 37 to Hopper

For those who are just starting to appreciate how wonderful the annual Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing is for your Engineering organization's networking, technical education, morale building, and recruiting, here are some tips. Sun Microsystems has been a Hopper conference sponsor for many years. Earlier this month, at GHC 2008, Sun was a Platinum sponsor and had 37 staff participate, including 14 presenters and panelists. (We met some Sun Campus Ambassadors and former Sun interns at Hopper as well!) There were companies which sent more staff to Hopper 2008, but not many!

Dr Sheueling Chang

Dr Gilda Garreton

Valerie Fenwick

Dr Susan Landau

Catherine Ahlschlager

How did Sun get so many people to Hopper 2008?

• Hopper asks for panel, presentation, poster, BOF and other proposals long in advance of the conference. (The deadline for Hopper's October 2008 conference was in March 2008.) Sun submitted many more proposals than were accepted. Start working on ideas now for Hopper 2009!
• In these tight money times, many managers feel that they should not spend their travel budget, even for a CTO-sponsored conference. I have found that Sun's CTO organization offering a limited number of free registrations plus matching funds for travel puts Hopper in a new category and encourages Sun managers to approve the balance of the travel funds. Winning a travel scholarship is seen as an honor.
• Papers required for travel vary a great deal from country to country. Check out the Visa Network Requirements page for details. It can help (and sometimes is required) for a non-US traveler to have a formal letter of invitation from the organization they will visit in the USA. With a travel scholarship award to someone coming from outside of the USA, I always offer to write them a formal executive letter of invitation to support their visa.
• Frequent email communication giving information on conference preparation can be of great help. "Frequent" means once or twice a month starting about 9 months in advance, increasing to one or two emails a week in the month before the conference.
• Not everyone is an experienced traveler. Some travel advice that proved valuable:
  • Remind newbies that they may need to order business cards weeks in advance so they are delivered in time to pack. Provide information on how to order cards.
  • Send out weather information so travelers know what to pack.
  • We started from many places (Beijing, San Francisco, Boston, San Diego) but all flew at the same place (Denver, CO). A Wiki page listing arrival and departure times allowed us to share shuttles, rental cars, and companionship.
  • One of the airport shuttle companies was much cheaper than the others - providing this information in advance saved Sun travel money.
• Having a single Sun internal web page listing Sun's speakers (with talk/panel titles, dates and times, room names, etc.) with photos, names, and titles of all participants helped us plan our time and find each other during the busy event.
• Having one person be the contact on key topics (like shipping giveaways, posters, and other exhibit table stuff) makes for less confusion.
• Sun provided great tshirts (soft, well fitting, and well designed) for both staff and giveaways. We encouraged Sun staff to wear their shirts at Hopper - this is good advertising plus we were easy to see in a crowd.
• Sun's table in the Hopper exhibit hall served as a central place to find people, leave or pickup messages, and find current information. Next year, I want to follow up on a suggestion and offer a sign on Sun's table listing where Sun staff are speaking.
• We had professional recruiters with us but most of those staffing Sun's exhibit table were Sun Engineers or executives, who could answer questions from their own experience in software, microelectronics, systems, storage, research, systems, networking, security, and operations.
• If possible, I encourage more than one person per country to attend - so they have support and someone familiar to talk to and maybe travel with. This may be particularly important for younger staff who like to travel in packs.
• Dr. Greg Papadopoulos (Sun's CTO) is executive sponsor of Sun's participation at the Hopper conference but I ask other executives to get involved and show their support by funding Sun's reception, giveaways, or part of the sponsor fee.

Dr Sukyoung Ryu

Katy Dickinson

Foz Saeed

Tarik Ono

Meenakshi Kaul-Basu

Some of Sun's Giveaways:

Sun's Hopper 2008 Shirt

OpenSolaris Student Pack

Images Copyright 2008 by Katy Dickinson

Posted at 04:09PM Oct 14, 2008 by katysblog in Hopper - Anita Borg Institute  |