Katy Dickinson

What Happens After College? (Geeks and the Silicon Valley)

On Saturday, 4 April 2009, I am giving a talk in Lafayette, California, called "What Happens After College? - Kids with Neurocognitive Disability Working in Engineering and Computing" at the Orion Academy 3rd Annual Seminar on Post-Secondary Transition Planning for Young Adults with Aspergers, NLD and other Neurocognitive Deficits.

I put together this presentation based on information and advice from many sources as well as from my own experience as the parent of a 16-year-old son with social-cognitive disability. I had particular fun creating the "Geeks and the Silicon Valley" section of the talk. I included my favorite quote from Larry Wall (creator of Perl): "Most of you are familiar with the virtues of a programmer. There are three, of course: laziness, impatience, and hubris" plus an xkcd cartoon, pictures of tshirts ("You read my t-shirt. That's enough social interaction for one day.") from Think Geek and the xkcd store, and other geeky stuff.

The second part of the talk covers what counts in finding a job in the Silicon Valley (Recommendations, Academics, Experience, Being Fast), how to get experience before getting a job (Open Source, Internships, Volunteer Projects, College Jobs), and other essential knowledge. I make several references to The Unwritten Laws of Engineering (Revised and Updated, 2001) by James Skakoon and W.J. King, available from the ASME product catalog. My last quote is from Ivan Sutherland in his 1996 Technology and Courage (Sun Labs Perspectives-96-1):

“I, for one, am and will always be a practicing technologist. When denied my minimum daily adult dose of technology, I get grouchy. I believe that technology is fun, especially when computers are involved, a sort of grand game or puzzle with ever so neat parts to fit together... If the technology you do isn’t fun for you, you may wish to seek other employment. Without the fun, none of us would go on.”

You can review my presentation online, or you can attend the event to hear it in person!

Posted at 10:53PM Mar 30, 2009 by katysblog in News & Reviews  |  Comments[1]

KQED "California Report" on Sun-IBM Rumor

I was listening to local public radio station KQED this morning while driving my son Paul to school. One of the regular programs, The California Report, featured a long story by reporter Oanh Ha on the history of Sun Microsystems and rumors that our company is being acquired by IBM. Sun was profiled as a world-class Engineering company more in love with creating innovative technology like Java than concerned with making money. I have worked at Sun since before he was born, so the report made for an interesting discussion with Paul.

The audio story is now available on The California Report web page:

Sun Microsystems, IBM and Silicon Valley
The California Report
Mon, March 30, 2009 -- 8:50am
"Every time you're on the Internet, some of the digital magic you encounter comes from a programming language called Java. The company behind that software is a Silicon Valley pioneer, Sun Microsystems. Now, reports abound that IBM is in discussions to acquire Sun. If the deal goes through, it would mark an end to a chapter in Silicon Valley history and likely bring more jobs cuts to the Valley."
Host: Rachael Myrow
Reporters: Oanh Ha

Posted at 10:33AM Mar 30, 2009 by katysblog in News & Reviews  | 

Headache Update

Two weeks ago, my 16-year-old son Paul started attending regular school at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital. That is, he was in class for a week then last week was Spring Break. He starts up again tomorrow. The Hospital School offers two two-hour sessions a day, morning and afternoon. They have one room for grade school and another for Junior High and High School. Kids who are not able to go to the classrooms get hospital room visits by the teachers. Tuesday afternoons, Paul goes to OT (Occupational Therapy) and PT (Physical Therapy). Paul likes the Hospital School but misses his friends and regular High School classes.

Paul still has bad headaches and falls down from dizziness several times a day. He feels dizzy if he walks very far. The pain is also effecting his memory. Pain is very subjective but I can tell Paul is in pain when he stops interacting and starts to hunch over. About an hour after he takes Tylenol (acetaminophen), he opens up, moves more freely - laughs and talks comfortably. Friday, we start work with the Pain Management Clinic at LCPH. I hope they will be able to offer some help or at least a new perspective on the problem. I hope that this is not one of those problems that Paul just has to grow out of.

The quote on the Hospital School hallway sign offers an image of hope for the future: "A gymnast in the air, the graceful gull swoops and glides along the coastal waters."

LPCH school sign

LPCH hallway art

LPCH garden

LPCH garden iris

Images Copyright 2009 by Katy Dickinson

Posted at 11:31PM Mar 29, 2009 by katysblog in Home & Family  | 

Caboose Window Seat Done

My husband John Plocher just finished creating the window seat for WP668, our 1916 backyard caboose. We bought WP668 in January 2006. WP668 has my desk in one bay window, facing our house across the garden. Princess Birdie is my 13-year-old pet cockatiel. She has one cage in the kitchen and the other next to my desk in WP668.

The bay behind my desk features a lovely custom three piece stained glass window created for us by Vince Taylor. The new window seat is deep enough so that the space below can store the window screen inserts John made last year. The seat will eventually have a cushion.

WP668 bay January 2006

Rebuilding the bay window February 2008

Linoleum floor installed May 2008

Glass installed May 2008

Window Seat frame February 2009

John and window seat top

Adding window trim

Caulking cracks

Installing under seat storage doors

All done!

Images Copyright 2006-2009 by Katy Dickinson and John Plocher

Posted at 05:43PM Mar 27, 2009 by katysblog in Caboose Project and Other Trains  | 

Here Comes Everybody

I recently finished reading a wonderful book Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations by Clay Shirky (2008). I heard a discussion with the author on KQED Radio and ordered the book. My copy is now full of check marks in the margins and yellow highlights over excellent and well-expressed ideas. I keep quoting Shirky in conversation!

Some key passages:

• "... many of the significant changes are based not on the fanciest, newest bits of technology but on simple, easy-to-use tools like e-mail, mobile phones, and websites, because those are the tools most people have access to and, critically, are comfortable using in their daily lives. Revolution doesn't happen when society adopts new technologies - it happens when society adopts new behaviors."
  (from Shirky's "Collective Action and Institutional Challenges")
• "The internet augments real-world social life rather than providing an alternative to it. Instead of becoming a separate cyberspace, our electronic networking are becoming deeply embedded in real life."
  (from Shirky's "Solving Social Dilemmas")
• "...a good social tool is like a good woodworking tool - it must be designed to fit the job being done, and it must help people do something they actually want to do."
  (from Shirky's "Promise, Tool, Bargain")
• "New tools... start with a huge social disadvantage, which is that most people don't use them, and whenever you have a limited pool from which potential members can be drawn, you limit the social effects."
  (from Shirky's "Promise, Tool, Bargain")
• "One of the biggest changes in our society is the shift from prevention to reaction... Society simply has less control over what kind of groups can form, and what kind of value they can confer their members, and this in turn means a loss of prevention as a strategy for reducing harm."
  (from Shirky's "Epilogue")

Posted at 08:18PM Mar 26, 2009 by katysblog in News & Reviews  | 

The Ada Lovelace Day Collection

I contributed two entries to The Ada Lovelace Day Collection of blogs in honor of yesterday's Ada Lovelace Day. About Ada: Ada Lovelace was born Augusta Ada Byron, she wrote the world’s first computer programs for the Analytical Engine, a mechanical general-purpose computer designed by Charles Babbage in 1837.

The Ada Lovelace Day Collection blog project overachieved its goal of collecting a thousand blog posts to draw attention to women excelling in technology. The total count now is 1119 posts in honor of women famous and private. The reasoning behind this project created by Suw Charman-Anderson was:

"Women’s contributions often go unacknowledged, their innovations seldom mentioned, their faces rarely recognised. We want you to tell the world about these unsung heroines. Entrepreneurs, innovators, sysadmins, programmers, designers, games developers, hardware experts, tech journalists, tech consultants. The list of tech-related careers is endless.
Recent research by psychologist Penelope Lockwood discovered that women need to see female role models more than men need to see male ones. That’s a relatively simple problem to begin to address. If women need female role models, let’s come together to highlight the women in technology that we look up to. Let’s create new role models and make sure that whenever the question 'Who are the leading women in tech?' is asked, that we all have a list of candidates on the tips of our tongues."

The two entries I added to The Ada Lovelace Day Collection were Savvy Geek Chix and Anita Borg (24 March 2009) and Jeanie Treichel (13 March 2009).

Posted at 10:34AM Mar 25, 2009 by katysblog in News & Reviews  | 

Savvy Geek Chix and Anita Borg

I just got home after attending the successful first Savvy Geek Chix event, put on by the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology (ABI). On this celebration of Ada Lovelace Day, it seems appropriate to have attended an event for women in computing. There were 110 women present. I learned some, talked with old friends, and met some very impressive new friends whom I look forward to knowing better. It was a typical ABI event - interesting, well managed, and a valuable use of my time.

ABI was named in honor of Dr. Anita Borg (1949-2003), whom I had the honor to meet several times during the last years of her life. Sun Microsystems was one of the companies which provided Anita Borg with funding to start the organization now known as ABI. In addition to starting ABI, Anita also created the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing conference and the Systers email community of technical women in computing. With Anita's example before me, it is hard to say "it can't be done".

Image Copyright 2009 by Katy Dickinson

Posted at 11:11PM Mar 24, 2009 by katysblog in Hopper - Anita Borg Institute  | 

SEED Mentor Matching Half Done

We started the mentor matching cycle on 11 March for the new SEED worldwide Engineering Established Staff term. In the first twelve days of this cycle, we have matched half of the participants (23 out of 47). All participants will be matched, most within the next few weeks. The SEED program will re-match any mentee whose mentor leaves Sun within three months of their match.

Metrics

The 23 newly matched mentors include Distinguished Engineers, Directors, Vice Presidents, and senior Engineering staff members. The geographical pairings so far include:

• Albuquerque, NM USA with Beijing, China
• Brisbane, Australia with Beijing, China
• Burlington, MA USA with Broomfield, CO USA
• Camberley, United Kingdom with Oslo, Norway
• Itasca, IL USA with Burlington, MA USA
• Itasca, IL USA with Velizy, France
• Leeds, United Kingdom with Hamburg, Germany
• Menlo Park, CA USA with Austin, TX USA
• Menlo Park, CA USA with Bangalore, India
• Menlo Park, CA USA with Houston, TX USA
• Menlo Park, CA USA with other San Francisco Bay Area locations
• Montbonnot Saint Martin, France with Prague, Czech Republic
• San Diego, CA USA with San Diego, CA USA
• Santa Clara, CA USA with Beijing, China
• Santa Clara, CA USA with Burlington, MA USA
• Seattle, WA USA with Santa Clara, CA USA
• Somerset, NJ USA with Universal City, CA USA
• Walldorf, Germany with Menlo Park, CA USA

Next Terms

SEED runs seven terms a year. The next terms will be for PreSEED and GSS SEED. Applications for PreSEED and GSS SEED will be accepted starting at the end of March 2009 - the terms will run June-December 2009. Those terms will be followed by an Established Staff term plus the year-long term for Recent Hires (applications in June, terms to start in September 2009).

Posted at 03:20PM Mar 23, 2009 by katysblog in Mentoring & Other Business  | 

"Your Cell Phone Law Sucks" Billboard Still Up

On 11 February, the attention-getting tactics of Highway 101 billboards in the Silicon Valley escalated in energy, if not in good taste. For many years, these very large and expensive rental signs have competed for drivers' attention with increasingly bold bright graphics, 3D projections, and provocative text.

Last month, news sources reported that Grant Paulson of Pleasanton spent $10,000 to buy billboard space between University and Embarcadero on 101, posting a long message to California Senator Joe Simitian, criticizing him for his efforts to pass a cell phone ban for California drivers. The Senator reportedly thought the critical billboard was funny. The sign was supposed to come down by the end of February, but it was still up this morning. Maybe the billboard company does not have anyone else who wants to rent that space?

The 75-word hard-to-read sign says: "Senator Joe Simitian: Your cell phone law sucks. Amazing how 1 man's bad idea can screw over & inconvenience millions of people in CA. Let's overturn this law in the next election & protect what rights we still have left."

By my own observations, many of my fellow 101 drivers ignore the new law and continue to drive with cell phone to ear, supporting Grant Paulson's sentiments in their own way. That the billboard went up and stays up is a peculiar tribute to free speech.

Image Copyright 2009 by Katy Dickinson

Posted at 04:23PM Mar 20, 2009 by katysblog in News & Reviews  |  Comments[2]

Submissions for Hopper 2009

I have spent the last few days reviewing drafts for submissions to the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing ("GHC"). Hopper will be held in Tucson, Arizona: September 30 - October 3, 2009. Sun will again be a Platinum conference sponsor (thanks this year to generous funding from the Women@Sun-West internal-to-Sun group). All conference submissions are due tonight.

Not counting invited talks and presentations submitted by other groups which include Sun staff, I think Sun will finish with about a dozen proposals for panels, BOFs (Birds of a Feather discussion topics), posters, presentations, and workshops on topics including:

• Creating an open online community for student developers (BOF)
• Designing for the 100+ Year Archive (Presentation)
• Dual-Career-Couple Problem (BOF)
• From Spec. to Silicon: Successful Validation of a Server-class SoC Microprocessor (Presentation)
• How environmental and economic factors are changing manufacturing and supply chain designs (Panel)
• Leveraging the Power of Your Women’s Network (Panel)
• More Than Just Coding: Alternate Careers in Computing (Panel)
• Open Source Community Development (Panel)
• The Value of Awards & How to Get Them this is my own panel!
• Women and the Flat Connected World (Panel)

I have also reviewed two Hopper submissions by my daughter Jessica:

• Playing with Alice After School (Workshop)
• Poetry and Prose Performances Project - p4 (Poster)

Jessica has already been on a Hopper panel (GHC 2007's "Girl Geeks"), and she presented the poster “How to Combat Plagiarism in Academia (and How Not To)” at GHC 2008.

GHC 2009 selection decisions will be announced on 18 May 2009.

Posted at 10:54PM Mar 16, 2009 by katysblog in Hopper - Anita Borg Institute  | 

Qatar and Coffee Pots

My daughter Jessica is back safe in Pittsburgh, PA, from her CMU Spring Break in Qatar (CMU-Q). It has been fascinating listening to her stories about the trip. You can see Jessica's pictures at http://www.flickr.com/photos/jdickins_photos/ and her comments on her blog http://feelingelephants.wordpress.com/.

One of Jessica's Doha, Qatar photos surprised me. It is of a monument honoring the Qatari traditional coffee pot. This coffee pot looks very similar to one I have in my home office, which my father brought home many years ago from one of his trips to the Middle East. He thinks he bought it on Oman.

Jessica in Doha, Qatar CMU-Q Spring Break

Coffee Pot Monument, Doha

My office coffee pot in San Jose, CA

Images Copyright 2009 by Katy Dickinson and Jessica Dickinson Goodman

Posted at 03:35PM Mar 16, 2009 by katysblog in News & Reviews  | 

Favorite News Sources

We cancelled our local newspaper subscription a few years ago when the advertisements overwhelmed the news. I stopped watching TV over ten years ago. Here are my favorite sources of news:

• The Economist a thoughtful weekly analysis from a non-US point of view
• NPR - National Public Radio - by way of KQED 88.5 FM for balanced daily news, analysis, discussion, and entertainment.
• The Santa Cruz Comic News for great weekly political cartoons and News of the Wierd
• Science News a biweekly summary of important and emerging research in all fields of science

Posted at 09:07PM Mar 15, 2009 by katysblog in News & Reviews  |  Comments[1]

Images of Spring

Spring is here in Northern California. Here's how I know...

My garden toad is out and about

My daffodils are blooming

Daffodil up close

Resurrection lily leaves are out

It's dry enough for sidewalk chalk

Manzanita is blooming

Images Copyright 2009 by Katy Dickinson and John Plocher

Posted at 08:38PM Mar 15, 2009 by katysblog in News & Reviews  | 

Jeanie Treichel

I have enjoyed knowing Jeanie Treichel for at least fifteen years. Until recently, Jeanie was in charge of most of the characteristic amenities of life at Sun Labs in Menlo Park, California. Among her many activities, Jeanie ran the weekly party ("The Bash"), the intern program, the lab reports and technical publications, the Noosphere and its library, and she was the resident historian. In my favorite quotes page, I have the following from Jeanie (told me on 9 October 2000):

A local guide told Jeanie when she rested once too often when hiking up
the Ruwenzori range ("Mountains of the Moon") in Africa in 1956:
"Memsahib: to arrive, you must go!"

Jeanie worked for Xerox PARC, then Sutherland, Sproull, and Associates before becoming one of the founding members of Sun Labs in 1990.

At Jeanie's going away party (and Ladies Lunch), she was presented with an album of photos from her 19 years with Sun Labs, including photos with some of the great leaders and innovators of the Silicon Valley: Scott McNealy, Jim Mitchell, Greg Papadopoulos, Wayne Rosing, Eric Schmidt, Bob Sproull, Bert Sutherland, and Ivan Sutherland.

You can see some of Jeanie's work in her publications:

• Sun Labs-The First Five Years: The First Fifty Technical Reports. A Commemorative Issue By: Ching-Chih Chang, Amy Hall and Jeanie Treichel, Sun Labs Report Number: TR-98-51, Sep 1, 1998
• Sun Labs: The 3rd 50 Tech Reports - Commemorative By: Jeanie Treichel, Sun Labs Report Number: TR-2008-150, May 12, 2008

Jeanie ended her last email to Sun Labs with this quote:

Come, fill the Cup, and in the Fire of Spring
The Winter Garment of Repentance fling:
The Bird of Time has but a little way
To fly---and Lo! the Bird is on the Wing.
The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
Edward FitzGerald 1809-1883

Jeanie Treichel

Sun Labs Ladies Lunch

Jeanie Treichel in her office

Jeanie's photos

Jeanie Treichel in Africa 1956

Jeanie's office giraffe collection

Images Copyright 2009 by Katy Dickinson

Posted at 05:25PM Mar 13, 2009 by katysblog in News & Reviews  | 

Making a Window Seat

In between job hunting, my husband John Plocher, has been designing and creating a window seat for WP668, our 1916 backyard caboose. WP668 is a bay window caboose with my desk in one bay, facing the house across the garden. The other bay features a lovely custom three piece stained glass window created for us by Vince Taylor. The red linoleum flooring and stained glass were both installed in May 2008. Everything was designed around the planned window seat. The window seat is deep enough so that the space below can hold the window screen inserts John made last year. The seat top is done and John is working on the front. It will be painted white and have a leather cushion when complete. Photos of the project so far:

WP668 in March 2009

Floor installed May 2008

Glass installed May 2008

Window Seat and Template

John and window seat top

Window seat top installed

Images Copyright 2008-2009 by Katy Dickinson and John Plocher

Posted at 12:40PM Mar 13, 2009 by katysblog in Caboose Project and Other Trains  |  Comments[2]