Rockin' Robin: Robin Goldfarb Wilensky's Weblog

Hello all,

I'm sorry to report that I have been impacted by the recent reduction in force at Sun Microsystems. For all my loyal followers, I hope that you will continue to read about Sun in the Web 2.0 space and other cool initiatives that Sun is involved in.

You may find me on LinkedIn or on Facebook (search for Robin Goldfarb Wilensky). You may also choose to follow me on twitter or subscribe to one of my other blogs:

Education 2.0 - A blog for all things related to technology and education.

Kinderguarded - A blog for all things related to online safety.

Take care. I'm sure I'll see you around the blogosphere.

-Robin Wilensky

I found this great video on YouTube that explains quite simply what it meant by Web 2.0. While many of you might already know this, I thought it was worthwhile to post the video here.

Enjoy!

Yesterday I attended Day 1 of CommunityOne at the Marriott Marquis in NYC. I'm going to give you some highlights from the event to whet your appetite for more...

Top 5 list:

1. The Sun is breaking through the Clouds. Sun announced their "Sun Open Cloud Platform" beginning with the Sun Cloud which will consist of a compute service, a storage service, a virtual datacenter and an Open API. You can find the API already on http://kenai.com/.
   
2. Speaking of Kenai... Wouldn't it be great to have a place to host open source projects and collaborate with developers all over the world? Now you can! Register at Kenai and start creating today!
   
3. Build your enterprise social network fast with LifeRay. This is what WebSynergy (aka WebSpace)is built on. Social widgets like blogs, wikis, chat, rss feeds, tags, ratings, comments and mashups are easy.
   
4. Create Zembly and get going!
   
5. Follow Kenai & Zembly happenings on Twitter.
   

Action Item: Check them out!

In this next installation, I want to introduce you to Project Kenai. The title of this blog says it all but if that's not enough to catch your interest, here's more...

As a Web 2.0 company, or one that wants to grow its online community, collaboration is king because it ensures that you can accomplish your tasks faster, cheaper and more efficiently.

That's where Project Kenai comes in. Project Kenai is a platform and ecosystem for developers. Your developers.

Developers can:

• Freely host up to 5 open source projects and code.
  
• Connect, collaborate, communicate and code with peers.
  
• Eventually deploy applications and services to clouds, easily.
  

It's easy to get started because Kenai includes so many of the features developers need built right in:

• Code Repositories like SVN, Mercurial and external options.
  
• Issue Tracking like BugZilla and Jira.
  
• Collaboration Tools including Wiki, forums and mailing lists.
  
• Document Hosting
  
• Your Profile
  
• Administrative Role
  

Why should you care? In other words, how does this benefit your company?

Allows you to take advantage of shared resources: Developers work together across the Internet!

So, get started today.

1. Check out some of the projects already being worked on
   
2. Join the Kenai community
   
3. Request an invitation to host your own project
   
4. Stay connected: Read our blog, follow us on twitter and join our Facebook group
   

And, remember - if you love it, blog about it!

If you are like most Web 2.0 companies, or companies who want to use the power of the Web to grow their online communities, then the things you care about are NOT the traditional things that most companies care about. You most likely want a low-cost, low-maintenance, open-source, quick-time-to-market solution. However, you view technology as a competitive advantage and will pay for value-add features that enhance that advantage. But you already know this, so why am I telling you? Because I want you to know, that we know this too.

Sun is committed to helping you grow your community, which is turn grows your business. And we are committed to providing services and tools to help you do it better, faster, cheaper. That's where Zembly comes in.

In this first installation of Web 2.0 and Beyond, I want to introduce you to Zembly. Zembly is a new kind of development environment for building Social applications. What's great about Zembly for you?

• It's free. It's built on open source. There's no cost to you. Did I mention it's free?
  
• It's completely browser based so you can develop anywhere you are.
  
• It's social so you can connect with other Zembly users and more importantly you can collaborate with other programmers to build your apps.
  
• It's easy. Zembly provides templates to get you started and you can clone existing widgets or applications for even faster development.
  
• It's flexible. There is an IDE-class editor built in. You can consume popular Web APIs with a single line of code or you can use your own server or API.
  
• It's hosted. Deploy and publish right from Zembly.
  

The applications you build run on popular platforms including Facebook, Meebo, OpenSocial, Google Gadgets, iPhone Web Applications (Safari) and any Web widgets.

So, what are you waiting for? Get started today! Oh, and if you love it, please blog about it! Thanks!

Yesterday, I attended a Sun-sponsored event headed up by UltraLightStartup.com. They are an organization that hosts Entrepreneur forums for Ultra Light Startups. What is an Ultra Light Startup? I wondered the same thing. According to their website, an Ultra Light Startup is one that:

• Aims to achieve profitability with little or no external funding
  
• Has low permanent headcount, low overhead, low budget
  
• Operates as ‘virtual enterprises’ (outsourcing, partnerships)
  
• Uses off-the-shelf and open-source software and platforms rather than build from scratch
  Uses cloud/network computing rather than owning hardware
  
• Maximizes efficient use of viral/guerrilla/social marketing
  
• Uses any other low-cost, high-flexibility techniques
  

The format of the forum is about an hour's worth of 60-second pitches by each of the Entrepreneurs in the room, Pizza & networking, a quick word from the sponsors (that's where I came in) and a panel discussion revolving around a particular topic. Yesterday's topic was Web Analytics.

So, of course, I spoke briefly about the Sun Web Analytics Solution. I also introduced other solutions that might be interesting for future meetings. These included Sun Startup Essentials, Cloud Computing, open source projects like Social Site, Zembly, WebSynergy, and Wonderland, and the whole xVM suite of products. Feel free to download my presentation for more detail.

I also wanted to highlight some of the more interesting pitches that I heard last night. I'd say there were about 40 pitches presented but obviously that's too many to list here. Here is my top ten list:

1. BabyNameWizard - gets first listing because it had the most hits and won first prize.
   
2. SlipFire - Wordpress SEO & design consulting. They also sponsor WordCamp.
   
3. Marketers Anonymous - Brand marketing consulting.
   
4. DubFiler - File sharing for musicians.
   
5. SEODrop - SEO Analysis.
   
6. RezRedo - Resume consulting and career searches.
   
7. Boomerater - Online advice for Baby Boomers.
   
8. Mobilestead - iPhone applications for hotels.
   
9. Fine and Raw - Fine and raw chocolates from around the world.
   
10. VeeJay - YouTube meets MTV.
    
11. Groupable - Helps groups get sponsors.
    
12. ProCompare - Review of business products.
    
13. RealOptimal - Viral optimization.
    
14. The Factionist - Clothing and products for the ethically conscious.
    
15. Growing Venture Solutions - Drupal consulting.
    
16. Noo.com - Find events and experiences.
    

Ok, I couldn't limit it to 10. So, it's my top 16 list.

Overall, I think the event was quite successful and I look forward to future networking opportunities.

Sun Microsystems unveils a new Facebook application created by Zembly (Sun's social network for developers of social applications) called myPicks Beijing 2008.



This Facebook game allows people to predict winners in the 2008
Summer Games on behalf of themselves and their countries.

• When you first add the application, identify yourself with your country.
  If your predictions are accurate, you win points. All points accumulated are also credited to
  your country.
  
• You can view the leaderboards of countries & individuals. You can also see how
  your friends are doing and how your fellow countrymen are doing.
  
• Using Zembly, this Facebook app scales to a very large number of users playing simultaneously so be sure to invite all your friends!
  

Use the widget to the left to get some quick stats on the number of people playing the game for a particular country. The widget then takes you to a page that explains the game and then allows you to go to the location in Facebook where you can play the game.

Zembly is the world's first and easiest Facebook development environment. Zembly is built from the ground up on Sun's industry-leading stack of enterprise hardware and software, including Solaris, Java, Glassfish, and MySQL, and running on Network.com's next-generation cloud-computing platform.
See press release.

Go for the Gold!

Governor's School – Year 3. This third annual installment hosting the Governor's School was slightly different than in years past. Why? First of all, it was held in NYC instead of Somerset. YAY! Secondly, we added lunchtime BOF's (something previous year's students had requested – or at least suggested). And, lastly, we were also invited to be part of their mentoring program which I participated in.

The Governor's School Day was a big success, although we neglected one minor detail. They were coming into the city by bus on the day of the All-Star Game parade. However, we were able to regroup and change the schedule on the fly in order to accommodate the late arrival.

The morning general session kicked off with a video from Jonathan Schwartz and then the keynote speaker spoke about college and what these students ought to be thinking about. We then had 9 breakout sessions that rotated in groups of 3 per zone. My breakout was slightly different this year. In past years, I had spoken about the “Participation Age” but this year I changed the content to reflect the current times and presented on “Web 2.0 at Sun” which was well received. At lunch time, the students were able to select which BOF they wanted to attend. I held a BOF on “Technology in School & Online Safety” which a few students showed up for and we had a very nice chat on these subjects over Pizza. I also assisted with a second BOF on Wonderland and 3D Virtual Worlds. This one had a phenomonal turnout. Next year we will need to do this in a bigger room.

The day concluded with a general session on Sun's campus ambassador and intern programs in a panel format followed by some Q&A and feedback from the students. So far, we already have a record 96% response rate from the survey Sun sent out to the students. Way to go!

With regard to the mentoring program, I worked with a group of students working on Technology Outreach. They were going to be introducing technology and engineering concepts to a group of middle school students and a group of seniors. I worked with them on the middle school content. The group met me in the city for an in-person meeting and I was very impressed with the work they had done up until that point. They seemed very prepared and excited about the upcoming events. They also created an extensive and well thought out document on how to build a technology outreach curriculum. They were thrown a few curve balls along the way but they learned from each experience. The participants at the first event turned out to be much younger than middle-school but also a smaller crowd so the curriculum was amended on the fly. Some of the activities that were going to be utilized included making roller coasters out of pipe cleaners and marbles and experimenting with putting candy in a soda bottle. They also created a presentation to explain the engineering disciplines and give insight into various fields that use engineering and technology. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend the event, but I'm anxiously waiting to hear how the most recent one went.

Overall, it was yet another fulfilling experience. Feel free to check out my “Web 2.0 at Sun” presentation:

• Web 2.0 Slides 1-22
  
• Web 2.0 Slides 23-48
  
• Web 2.0 Slides 49-61
  

I attended an interesting event yesterday. It's called the Gauntlet and it's kind of like American Idol meets Venture Capitalists. Sun Microsystems sponsors the Gauntlet, run by The Hatchery, a customer of Sun's. This event brings together pre-selected entrepreneurs with a wide range of investors and they have 7 minutes to pitch their business plan. The panel then asks questions of each presenter, followed by 2 audience questions and then the panel has 1 minute each to critique. Each Gauntlet has a different theme and this month's theme was the Social Web.

The three presenters were:

• Magnify is a consolidator, if you will, of videos on the net. You can add user-generated video to your website or blog or start one from scratch. It is community based so you start getting more and more visibility to your site. Representing Magnify was Alan Medvin, Director of Corporate Development.
  
• Sparta Social Networks is like Ning on Steroids. It lets you develop your own white-label social network and runs entirely on Java and PHP. They are also a MySQL customer! Representing Sparta was Jerry R. Sheer, CEO and Neil Schaffer.
  
• Wizi is like Dash for cellphones. Wizi is a free location sharing application and traffic network. Your phone does not require GPS capabilities although if you have it, you can participate in sharing live traffic data. As your network grows, it will get smarter. Representing Wizi was Paulo Dimas, CEO from Portugal.
  

I also met a few people during the networking prior to the start of the Gauntlet. One of which was Mor Sela the founder of ProCompare, a collaboration site for IT professionals and business decision makers to meet. He is also the Meetup Organizer for NY IT Professionals and is very much interested in having Sun present at the next meeting. He did not know that Sun has solution offerings for small and medium businesses and is excited to learn more.

Which brings me to the conclusion. Why does Sun sponsor this event? Well, a big part of Sun's strategy today is to reach these small and mid-size business, up & coming startups and Web 2.0 focused companies. It's one of the reasons that we acquired MySQL and it is definitely the reason we created Startup Essentials, a program designed to lower the entry barriers for startups. Other ways that Sun is thinking about small and medium business include:

• Our Eco-friendly products and solutions lower your power, space and cooling requirements and costs.
  
• Our Virtualization solutions help you do more with less.
  
• Our Web Infrastucture offerings help you build a better web faster and cheaper with lots of Open Source tools like Java and Glassfish, LAMP and AMP support, and optimized hardware designed for the web.
  
• Our Product line focused on small and medium businessesoffers choice of operating systems including Solaris, Linux and Windows! Yes, I said Windows. And VMware. Sun also has a full line of x64 hardware servers and blades.
  
• Our Web 2.0 Solutions add value with things like the Sun Web Analytics solution and more...
  
• Our Desktop Virtualization solutions saves you money on expensive desktop fat clients, offers you anytime anywhere access and offers alternative productivity software.
  

So, that's why Sun is a sponsor of the Gauntlet and why the Gauntlet is such a cool event. I'm definitely looking forward to the next one!

This is the same old story we've been hearing for years. We like you but "You're just too expensive!". Come on - that is old news. You've already learned that we are not proprietary and now you'll learn why we are cost effective too. I'll give you a hint - it has something to do with not being proprietary!

Web infrastructure is our bread and butter. Sure, we still do the high end stuff for applications that need it but Web 2.0 is where it's at and we've got the most cost effective solutions for you! Let's start with your basic Linux vs. Solaris discussion and then get into Web Infrastructure.

Example #1: It's not just about acquisition. A study by Crimson Consulting Group highlights why Solaris is actually more cost effective then Linux. When doing a cost analysis, you must compare all costs including acquisition, support, implementation and administration. Solaris comes out ahead and this paper isn't even looking at OpenSolaris!

Example #2: SWaP it!. Ok, ok, so you might think that the above study was sponsored by Sun and may be slightly biased. Maybe. But, here's one by Paul Murphy, a unix author, on his own blog site. Oh, and did we forget to mention the SWaP metric above. Yes, aside from all the hard costs listed in the study, SWaP (Space, Watts and Power) was left off. Paul explains why this impacts the cost of Solaris (for the better!) and that's on Sparc.

Example #3: OpenSolaris. Speaking of OpenSolaris, here's a quick article that talks about why OpenSolaris has a leg over Linux...

Example #4: Solaris x86 - right in the mix. Speaking of Linux and x86 platforms, Solaris is right there in the mix. You might think we are the old pricey OS company but we're not. We just price competitive with your other choices. Linux, Windows, etc...

Example #5: Stuff from Sun Ok, I must include a few links from Sun because I really want to impress upon that once you've accepted that the costs can be the same or lower than Linux, you must also include the benefits of using Solaris over Linux for your web infrastructure. It is our hope that that will help tip the scale towards Sun.

• Sun for Web Infrastructure talks about why use Solaris 10 for your web infrastructure.
  
• SAMPand More SAMP This Webstack includes Apache, MySQL and PHP (among other tools) for OpenSolaris. Check it out!
  
• By the way, did you know we just acquired MySQL for a whopping $1B! See deal and product details at Sun's MySQL Acquisition.
  
• Lastly, Sun is committed to helping startups get off the ground with highly discounting pricing and free stuff. Sun Startup Essentials offers deep discounts on hardware, storage and hosting, as well as free software and services!
  

I hope that this gives you a good unbiased sampling of why Solaris is less costly than Linux for Web Infrastructures! Enjoy!!

-Robin

Talk about showing up at places and nobody knowing why you are there. PodCamp NYC is one of those events. Sure, there were a few who understood that we provide the backend infrastructure for those cool new Web 2.0 companies but why do we care about podcasting, among other Social Media technologies?

Tom Taylor and I manned the table representing Sun and explaining things like Startup Essentials, the Sun Web Analytics Solution and other upcoming technologies. We showed presentations of where and how Sun plays in this space and even had Second Life at Employee Island running for a bit (before the unconference wifi died).

We quickly realized that it would be beneficial for us to have more representation at these conferences including session attendees. So, I switched focus and sat in on several session where I made lots of new contacts.

The opening session was brief. They just wanted us to dive right into the unconference and make sure we understand the ground rules. This is our conference. There are no attendees, just participants. And, we are all bound under the Creative Commons sharing license.

Then it was down to business. The first session I attended was called Teachers Teaching Teachers and it discussed a weekly podcast used to show teachers how to use technology in the classrooms. What I found most interesting about this, as it relates to Sun, is the host used for these podcasts. It's called EdTechTalk and I believe that it would be an ideal forum for Sun to host a show called "Startup Essentials for Students". Additionally, I met some folks who work at Carrot Creative who are very interested in partnering with Sun on some startup initiatives. Overall, it was quite a productive session to attend.

The session on using technology for differentiated instruction was interesting because it talked about ways that technology can reached underserved populations, again feeding Sun's notion that helps bridge the digital divide. The Second Life: Shifted Learners session was quite amazing. A middle school teacher is using Teen Second Life in extraordinary ways to teach students about immigration, bring literature to life and learn about body image, among other things.

The afternoon sessions I attended were equally engaging. There was a session on Social Media and issues around safety and privacy. The big message here was transparency and to remember that you are the same person online vs. offline. The session on Education 2.0 spoke of ways to use 2.0 technologies in the classroom and in every day life. One women spoke about how she creates a wiki page for her holiday gift list and how she recruited (dragged?) her family into using it. The last session was about how organic adoption of social media is the best method for corporations. Social media works best when it is not a campaign! I believe Sun gets this message but it was nice to hear.

Overall, I think that our attendance at this event was both important for our presence alone and with our Platinum sponsorship even better and also important as a way to keep a pulse on what is going on in the industry.

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Just wanted to add a few notes here about "Bring your child to work day". Overall, I think the day went well. We showed a Mitel demo to the children which they enjoyed. But, I think the highlights for them were the sessions on "Eco" and on gaming. In the afternoon we hosted several high school students from MOUSE.org, an organization that creates technology opportunities for underserved students. I presented Sun's vision to them and how we are utilizing Web 2.0 technologies to be more productive at work. Then two of the students presented to us. One about an inventory solution he worked on and the other about a wiki site he build for "One Laptop Per Child". It was great to hear these students presenting on something they were passionate about and then ensuing conversation that took place was insightful. One question that was posed to the students was what they would like to see out of Sun. The answers, like a "Web 2.0 Operating System", were quite interesting.

Ok, that's all for now....
Hope you enjoyed this review.

So you say Sun's web solutions are proprietary! HA! First of all, I would argue that Sun's web solutions have NEVER been proprietary since they've always been based on open standards like LDAP, HTML, IMAP, SMTP, etc... But, that's old news.

Here's the new news. Sun is back in full force and kicking in the Web 2.0 doors at startups and traditional customers alike. Of course, it's easy for me to say as a Sun employee but you want proof!

So, I'm going to focus on gaming and education - a strong interest of mine - and gaining lots of momentum....

Project Darkstar - A Gaming Server (All OPEN SOURCE)
Project Wonderland - The client-side Virtual World (ALL OPEN SOURCE)

Example #1: Media Grid's Immersive Education Initiative. The Immersive Education Initiative is an international collaboration of universities, colleges, research institutes, consortia and companies that are working together to define and develop open standards, best practices, platforms, and communities of support for virtual reality and game-based learning and training systems.

Example #2: Virtual Worlds in the Corporate World. Here Sun is listed with all the other big guys though you have to wait until page 5 to see it. One section states: "Sun Microsystems, meanwhile, is developing MPK20, a virtual world extension to its 19-building facility in Menlo Park, Calif. According to Nicole Yankelovich, principal investigator of the collaborative environments group, at any given time more than half of Sun's employees work remotely (which Sun encourages because it reduces the need for office space and has environmental benefits). Virtual worlds are a compelling alternative to the boring old audio conference. "We need a way to bring everyone together and get some informal brainstorming going," she says." More info can be found at CIO Magazine.

Example #3: Digital Native Blog. Just an example of people outside of Sun who are starting to blog about this. There are tons of others like this.

Example #4: MiRTLE.
A project at the University of Essex to provide a mixed reality environment for a combination of local and remote students in a traditional instructive higher education setting.

Example #5: Stuff from Sun Up until now, I've been very careful not to include any examples that came from Sun bloggers since I know you will think that is skewed. But, I would be remiss if I did not at least point you to Sun blogs on the subject. Blogs about Darkstar & Blogs about Wonderland. I must also give you this link to Sun in Education. Lastly, and a personal favorite of mine: Ways that Sun is "eating our own dog food" and utilizing our OPEN SOURCE gaming technologies to foster learning environments that reach the needs of our newest employees - employees who are digital natives. Meet Karie Willyerd, our CLO (Chief Learning Officer).

I hope that this gives you a good unbiased sampling of why Sun's Web Solutions are NOT Proprietary! Enjoy!!

-Robin

Girls Dominate Math & Science Competition
How cool is this?!!! Especially since winners Janelle Schlossberger and Amanda Harinoff are both seniors at John F. Kennedy High School in Plainview, N.Y. (For those of you who don't know, I live in Plainview, so I'm especially excited & encouraged by this news).

If you are interested in this, also check out the, still in construction site MAGIC site for a mentoring program for middle & high school girls interested in computing & technology...

More stuff I found over break for women in tech...
Webgrrls - The women's tech knowledge connection
Webgrrls LI - Long Island chapter
Webgrrls NYC - New York City chapter
Femina - Sites for, by and about women

That's it for now. Hope everyone had a great holiday and HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

GHC 2007
Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing

Session/Event:My turn to volunteer at the Sun recruitment booth (Day 2, During Session 3)

Commentary:
This was actually one of the highlights of the event. It was really interesting to speak to so many college students who are interested in working for Sun and learning about the vast subject areas that these girls are studying within the field of computing. Here are some pictures from the recruitment area.

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Session/Event:Technical to Management: Expect the Unexpected (Day 2, Session 4)

Commentary:
I missed the beginning of this since I was still working the booth but here's what I did get out of it.

How to transition...
1. First you have to want to transition!
2. Focus on helping people grow their own careers
3. Learn how to manage people
a. Be clear about expectations
b. Address issues immediately
c. Coach employees
d. Acknowledge accomplishments
4. Network with peers
5. Expand knowledge of the business
6. Jump in & out of technical management (Try it out)
7. Learn how to ask for help and define the help you need.

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Session/Event:Innovation Inside Corporations (Day 2, Session 5)

Commentary:
For some reason I don't seem to have notes on this session. However, check out Angela Dalton's blog for details...

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Session/Event:Building Sustainable Corporate Networks for Technical Women (Day 2 Session 6 BOF)

Commentary:
This session was given by a company called Invent Your Future who specialize in developing women leaders. It was done in a roundtable format and we went around the room introducing ourselves and asking which companies currently have women's networks to one degree or another.

These companies include:
Symantec
Google
Microsoft (3 day conference every 2 years)
IBM
Sun (Women@Sun)
Intuit
Cisco
Intel
HP

It was interesting both b/c it was many of the players you'd expect to see but also because of the fact that they players were so well represented in this session. The questions of what scale of networks, sub-topics discussed, technologies used (video conferencing, dial-in or in person) were uncovered.

We then got a little bit of a sales pitch about the webinars that Invent Your Future offers.

Some suggestions on creating networks were offered:
1. Roll out topics (train-the-trainers) that match company goals (to get funding). And, use "Slides-in-a-box" which will be customized as necessary.
2. Have mentoring "pods" (A 1-M model). These would meet less frequently (maybe once per month). You could then pick topics like: News & recent articles to discuss, Corporate Social Responsibility, Development Paths, etc... Alternatively, you can have multople mentors for a specific topic.
3. Look for existing mentor models to not reinvent the wheel. E.g. TripleCreek.com, MentorNet.net, MentorResources.com.

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Platinum Sponsor Night pictures:

GHC 2007
Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing

Session/Event:Maria Klawe, President of Harvey Mudd College (Day 2, Keynote)

Commentary:
Maria discussed why it's the best time ever for women in computing.

Best Time Ever

• Industry & Academia recognize that women have talent (whereas they didn't believe it in the past).
  
• Almost everyone wants more women: Industry - intense demand for CS grads. Academia - need for CS students.
  
• Recognition that attracting & retaining more women requires change. Need better work-life balance, better introductory CS courses that are both fun and deep, more supportive environments for everyone, more valuing of broader range of interests and styles. [What industry needs most is CS people who have other interests; people who can bridge 2 or more related fields. You can combine computing with almost every other interest: travel, art, politics, languages, theatre, etc...)
  
• Computing is a key tool in addressing problems facing the world in healthcare, education, environment and more... As an example look at Google's Digital Study Hall. It has huge latency (the contents of the WWW is put on a huge hard drive and sent to small villages around the world. Each week they receive a DVD or email with updates. They are also recording teachers who know how to teach subjects like english, math, science. The technology to watch these DVD's is there but in these small villages electricity is on only 6-8 hours/day and the times change. The DVDs train teachers to teach in a certain way to make it effective as a model.
  
• Industry, Academia, Professional Organizations, etc. are creating programs to keep women in the "Computing" pipeline. Women graduate students percentage is higher than the undergraduate percentage.
  

If all this is true, why are the numbers dropping?

• There is a myth about IT jobs disappearing
  
• The image of "computer jobs" is not attractive
  
• The image of CS courses is not attractive
  
• CS classes are being cut or are outdated in high schools
  
• Industry, Academia, Professional Organizations, etc. are creating programs to keep women in the "Computing" pipeline. Women graduate students percentage is higher than the undergraduate percentage.
  

So what can WE do about it?
In High School

• Outreach to schools, parents, teachers:
  
• Focus on the unconverted - get yourself invited to talk about something else (slip in creative areas of leadership in CS) at PTA meetings, etc... Take whatever opportunity is offered. Insert truth about CS as an aside.
  
• Go where the girls are. Craft messages for math, bio, chem, art, engineering (CS/music, CS/art, CS/writing, etc...)
  
• Create/find awesome CS summer camps
  
• Have scholarships for HS girls to go to GHC.
  

In College

• Create fabulous CS intro (and other) courses
  
• Get some CS required or have a Dean advise all students to take a CS course (put in Handbook).
  
• Bring Freshman to GHC.
  
• Engage post-Freshman in summer research experiences that first summer
  
• Make it easy to switch into CS/Double major. e.g. Make a digital-premed program.
  

Change the Image

• Have IT companies use advertising budget to brand CS careers
  
• Get a female idol as CS spokesperson
  
• Get a hot book written about people in CS careers and publicize it.
  
• Create a Cool CS Career month
  
• Use Social Networking sites
  

Resources include: NCWIT, Anita Borg, CRA-W, ACM-W.
Action Item: Talk to at least 1 preferably 20 high school girls about computing careers before next Hopper.
Check out Maria's presentation.

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Session/Event:Making the Future Web Accessible to People with Disabilities (Day 2, Session 1)

Commentary:
I really enjoyed this session and will try to capture as much of it as possible. You can also check out another blog entry about this session.

Shawn Lawton Henry went into a lot of detail about how to make the web more accessible. She did this primarily through demo's and video's so it will be a little bit hard to represent it here. However, here are some notes I jotted down.

First of all much of what is being done today in this area is thanks to the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). Here are some tools being used today.

• Screen Readers (Reads the text of web pages. Links are in a different voice.)
  
• Dynamic Braille Displays (and keyboards)
  
• Mouthsticks - for data entry for those paralyzed from neck down
  
• Text size increases (Browser settings); Zoom Text (size increases significantly by moving around)
  

People have many different types of disabilities including congenital (birth), disease/illness, accident or aging. Glenda Watson Hyatt has cerebral palsy and she wrote a book an autobiography called "I can do it myself". She typed the whole book with one thumb.

What are the accessibility issues or barriers?
1. Images pose a challenge. You need to provide a text equivalent. Using the Opera browser you can turn images on/off easily and see that with images off it's ugly. So... ALWAYS USE "ALT" IN YOUR WEB PAGES. A lot of sites aren't doing this one basic thing...
2. Heading in code is used for Navigation. Could be confusing for sighted users - use with discretion. But use headings especially for sections. Without usual layouts, it's like a string of text.
3. Use Markup lists. Don't use tables in place of lists when it's really just a list.
4. Link text. "Click here" links don't work from an accessibility point of view. When tabbing through links in a screen reader it would sound like "here, here, here, here" instead of "content 1, content 2, content 3, content 4".
5. Be aware of color contrast
6. Be aware of text resizing.
7. Use captions and include transcripts where possible. Podcasts for example are not accessible without transcripts.

Guidelines
1. WCAG - Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. Section 508 is a small subset of WCAG 1.0. A section 508 compliant website may not be 100% fully accessible.
2. The American's with Disabilities Act (ADA) is not related because it was created before the web so it doesn't address this.
3. Users: User Agent Accessibility Guidelines (UAAG) refer to things like browsers, media players, assistive technologies described above.
4. Developers: ATAG (Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines) includes things like evalution tools & authoring tools.
5. WAI-ARIA is for Accesible Rich Internet Apps like AJAX, DHTML, etc... Standards are under way. Working on a best practices for developers. Specs are available today at www.w3.org/wai
You need to remember to include real people for testing accessibility.

Resources:
Check out Shawn's book Integrating Accessibility Throughout Design
Whitepaper: Developing a Web Accessibility Business Case
Websites:
Guidelines & Checklist
Presentations at WAI
Check Your Work
Just Ask

How to Check for Accessibility
1. Take away your mouse. Is it still accessible? Also, check headings. Opera allows you jump to headings using the "S" key.
2. Turn off images. All major browsers allow you to do this. And/or look at alternate text next to image. In Firefox, display Alt attributes on developer tool bar.
3. Plug in for IE and Opera -> Accessibility add-on. Shows structural elements.
4. Use advanced tools that will run through the whole site.

Action Items:

• Gently educate & encourage "inaccessible" sites to change.
  
• Reward accessible sites
  

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Session/Event:Helping Businesses Invent the Future: Improving Engagement among Women in High Tech(Day 2, Session 2)

Commentary:
Heather Foust-Cummings works for Catalyst, Inc in NY. Catalyst is a non profit organization that helps to expand opportunities for women in business. They are member based and provide access to research, etc... Heather is director of research and telecommutes fulltime. Part of a group of "Ladies with Laptops". She reported on a study that was done looking at recruitment, retention & advancement of women. The study is not yet published.

What can women do to advance?

• Seek out opportunities to work with other women & find mentors.
  
• Volunteer when chances to participate across departments or BU's arise. (e.g. Work on a task force)
  
• Network!!!
  
• Be proactive
  

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Session/Event:Systers Lunch

Commentary:
Lunch with systers organizer Robin Jeffries who works for Google. Nice to put faces to names.