From She's Geeky Wiki

Contents 1 Friday Day 1 January 29, 2010 1.1 Session 1 1.1.1 A: Fun Emotion Games 1.1.2 B: BioTechnology at Santa Clara High School NO NOTES 1.1.3 C: My Gender is Breaking your Drop Down Menu 1.1.4 D: Green Power 1.1.5 E: Personal Genomics, Citizen Science 1.1.6 F: Designing Social Interfaces 1.1.7 G: Financial Basics 1.1.8 H: CoWorking 1.1.9 I: Success Factors for the 21st century SheEO 1.1.10 J: Online Video NO NOTES 1.1.11 L: Durpal, WordPress Informal Hack Session NO NOTES 1.2 Session 2 1.2.1 A: RSI Cautionary Tale 1.2.2 B:Speaking at Conferences 1.2.3 C: Using MultiMedia 1.2.4 D: Online Engagement for Social Change 1.2.5 E: Tech Talk and Geek Speak 1.2.6 F: Digital Game Museum 1.2.7 I: Quantum Computing 1.2.8 J: Carnegie Mellon Silicon Valley 1.3 Session 3 1.3.1 B: Field Biology Tech 1.3.2 C: Uncommon Leadership: Embracing Your Inner Dork 1.3.3 E: Command Line Talks 1.3.4 F: Getting More Women in Tech Community NO NOTES 1.3.5 G: HOw to Achieve Virtually Anything in 3 Steps 1.3.6 H: Writing Virutally 1.3.7 I: Windows 7 1.3.8 J: Lets Create a Start-up Now 1.4 Session 4 1.4.1 A: Dreaming about Digital Hearts in your Community NO NOTES 1.4.2 B: Privacy and Identity Online 1.4.3 C: Teaching Girls to Program NO NOTES 1.4.4 D: Women Centered Tech Prevent Violence in Refugee Camps 1.4.5 E: How to Fix a Bug 1.4.6 F: Singularity University NO NOTES 1.4.7 G: Bee Keeping 1.4.8 H: Connect the Dots: Network Tech Women Networking 1.4.9 I: Sexy Social Media 1.4.10 K: Geeky Card Game 1.5 Session 5 1.5.1 A: Tech and Women's Rights 1.5.2 B: What Software are Non-Profit Membership orgs are using NO NOTES 1.5.3 C: Privacy Preserving Comptation NO NOTES 1.5.4 E: How to save Money Online 1.5.5 I: Women Centric Events 1.6 Closing 2 Saturday Day 2 January 30, 2010 2.1 Session 1 2.1.1 A: Guide Dog Geeks 2.1.2 B: Going Mobile, Privacy Security ID - NO NOTES 2.1.3 C: UX Swap Meet 2.1.4 D: Yoga Sun Salutations 2.1.5 E: Django 2.1.6 F: Digital Game Museum 2.1.7 G: How to Effectively Teach Computer Programming NO NOTES 2.1.8 H: Permission Systems to Pursue Your Passions 2.1.9 I: How to achieve virtually Anything in 3 steps 2.2 Session 2 2.2.1 A: Women in Sys Admin 2.2.2 B: Raising Next Gen of BadAss Girlz NO NOTES 2.2.3 C: Jibber Jobber 2.2.4 D: Code Rocks 2.2.5 E: 10 Steps for Creating Engaging Content 2.2.6 F: Nonprofits and Open Source 2.2.7 G: Moving into Management 2.2.8 H: Getting into Open Source 2.2.9 J: Startup Bootcamp Part 2 2.2.9.1 Bios of Attendees 2.2.9.2 How to Start a Company 2.2.9.2.1 IP considerations 2.2.9.2.2 Operation Considerations 2.2.9.2.3 Understanding Private Equity Players (Venture Capitalists, Angels, and others) 2.2.9.2.4 Common Presenation Mistakes made during the Pitch 2.2.9.3 Resources 2.2.10 K: Mind Control to Tilt your direction 2.3 Session 3 2.3.1 A: Group Visit to Museum 2.3.2 B: Networking LDAP 2.3.3 C: Building Form and Survey Collection info with Google App NO NOTES 2.3.4 D: How to improve your Website 2.3.5 E: Vi/Vim Tips and Tricks 2.3.6 F: Acing your Next Interview 2.3.7 G: Bee Keeping 2.3.8 H: Art and Tech 2.3.9 I: Pair Programming 2.3.10 J: Model/ Analyze Electric Car 2.3.11 M: iPeriod: Nerdy Tools for Girl Stuff 2.4 Session 4 2.4.1 A: Intro to Marking with CNC Tools 2.4.2 C: Command Line Awesomeness 2.4.3 D: Discussion Engagement Platform 2.4.4 E: WordPress Workshop NO NOTES 2.4.5 F: BadAss 2.4.6 G: Women Designed Social Networking NO NOTES 2.4.7 H: Answering the Call for Participation 2.4.8 I: Forget $$ Real Currency of Future 2.4.9 J: Work Cooperative NO NOTES 2.4.10 K: Girls and Grad School NO NOTES 2.4.11 L: Girl POwer How to increase Women's Engagement NO NOTES 2.4.12 iPeriod 2.5 Session 5 2.5.1 A: CodeChix Jam Sessions NO NOTES 2.5.2 B: Cootie Catcher Games for Girls NO NOTES 2.5.3 C: Letting Go and Saying No 2.5.4 D: Future of Work NO NOTES 2.5.5 E Wordpress-O-Rama 2.5.6 F: Virtualization in the Clouds 2.5.7 G: Social Design NO NOTES 2.5.8 H: The Techy Side of Glasses NO NOTES 2.5.9 I: LIES about Weight and Health 2.5.10 K: Change Course Transition Construction 2.6 Closing 3 Sunday Day 3 January 31, 2010 3.1 Session 1 3.1.1 B: The 4D Brainwave NO NOTES 3.1.2 E: Philanthropy Philosophy 3.1.3 F: Switching Geekdoms NO NOTES 3.1.4 G: Linux/FOSS and Android NO NOTES 3.1.5 I: Women Designing Social Networks 3.2 Session 2 3.2.1 A: Parenting Geeks NO NOTES 3.2.2 B: Social Justice, Online Organizations, Disability Rights 3.2.3 C: Bicycle Communting 3.2.4 E: Persuasive Presentations NO NOTES 3.2.5 F: Brainstorm PII Conference NO NOTES 3.2.6 I: Augmented REality NO NOTES 3.2.7 M: One Atmosphere NO NOTES 3.3 Session 3 3.3.1 D: Education and Technologies NO NOTES 3.3.2 E: Geek Speak and Tech Talk 3.3.3 F: Lan Games 3.3.4 G: Stratesic Mapping NO NOTES 3.3.5 J: Security Basics NO NOTES 3.3.6 K: Creativity Exercises 3.4 Session 4 3.4.1 B: Stress Management and Relaxation Techniques 3.4.2 E: Image Editing in GIMP NO NOTES 3.4.3 F: Online Visibility Magnetic Barands NO NOTES 3.4.4 G: Job Seeking/Hiring OPen Dialogue NO NOTES 3.4.5 H: Managing Perfectionism and Procrastination 3.4.6 I: Aspergers 3.5 Session 5 3.5.1 B: Intuition in Business NO NOTES 3.5.2 D: Balancing Technical and Physical Needs NO NOTES 3.5.3 E: Lightening Talks NO NOTES 3.5.4 F: InkScape NO NOTES 3.5.5 M: Moving Beyond Elevator Pitch 3.6 Closing

Friday Day 1 January 29, 2010

Session 1

A: Fun Emotion Games

Convener: By Nicole Lazzaro (@nicolelazzaro - xeodesign.com)

Notes-taker(s): Scribe: Marn-Yee Lee (marn.misc@gmail.com)

4 kinds of fun that games create:

• hard fun - feeling of challenge and mastery - ability to get better at skills; breakthru; feeling of winning (body on fire)
• easy fun - imagination and feedback; doodling

other opportunity for interaction (e.g. exploration of the world's objects that you can goof off, and adventure)

• serious fun - creating reward and value (people play a game for a reason - extrinsic reward - health, money virtual or not, learn new skills). Helps you express your value. Creates / empowers your identity
• people fun - opportunity for social interaction. E.g. Facebook game, party game. Creates bonding and coordinates social bonds. Laughter is a good indicator that people are having fun.

References:

• See xeodesign.com for "Why we play games - the 4 keys to fun", 2004 article by Nicole which was presented at the Game Developer Conference
• Antonio Damisil
• Handbook for Human Interaction Design
• Game Usability
• Theory of Fun (Raph Koster)
• Social distribution

MORE Fun Emotions Games

B: BioTechnology at Santa Clara High School NO NOTES

Convener: Tracy Gunn

NO NOTES

C: My Gender is Breaking your Drop Down Menu

Convener: Sarah Dopp

Notes-taker(s): Kelly McVicker

TAGS for the session:

• gender * queer * design * technology * identity

Resources:

• Rapunzel--girls' tech ed project by Helen Nussenbaum
• Out & Equal--gender matrices model

Highlights:

• Open letter calling on Silicon Valley to consider their power to influence what their users consider "normal" in terms of gender.

• Limitations of website design when it comes to gender...drop down menus are created from a binary perspective, whereas gender exists along a continuum or spectrum and is dynamic. How do we capture info about gender that is relevant/useful to marketing, user experience or even identity politics, without limiting ourselves to the binary model or creating data nightmares?

• Why is gender important to us? it defines us in public spaces like restrooms, in relationships, but we need to also knowledge that attraction is much more specific than hetero or homosexual (a hetero woman is not attracted to ALL men) Gender matters because it gives us political identity, allows us to address imbalances.

• Question: what conversations are going on in tech communities around gender?

One is around the overlap of race drop-downs and gender. Maybe when we figure out how to deal with race, we can apply those lessons to gender. Facebook is playing with the option of allowing their users to respond to targeted ads...whether they're interesting, offensive, etc. Could be a potential point of influence on gender marketing. Targeted marketing backfires when it attempts to peg people and just pisses them off! Even with new marketing capability to drill down very narrow and specific on consumer identity, can still be far off the mark.

• The way we WANT to define ourselves creates data nightmares. Text fields aren't even considered data often. And a majority of users still just want a simple drop-down menu. How do you meet the needs of the majority and minority simultaneously? A binary option where the "it's complicated" or "other" response leads to a second, more robust menu of options

MORE My Gender is Breaking Your Drop Down Menu

D: Green Power

Convener: Beth Kilpatrick

Notes-taker(s): Jennelle Crothrs, Beth Kilpatrick

TAGS for the session:

• Green Jobs
• Home improvment

Resources that surface in your session - URL’s and other Links, Books, Organizations, Articles etc… related to this topic:

• Rrenewableenergyworld.com
• nabcep.org
• http://www.solarliving.org/

Please list below the essences or key points of the conversation (3-5)

• Job Ideas for getting into green tech. cunsulting for homes etc.
• What you can do in condos, apartments and homes for better energy usage

E: Personal Genomics, Citizen Science

Convener: Melanie Swan

Notes-taker(s): Emily Howe


Resources: 

• slideshare.net/LaBlogga/slideshows
• 
AccessDNA.com - compare consumer DNA tools
http://melanieswan.com/documents/multigenic_analysis.xis - study referenced

• DIYbio.org
• 

Background of DNA sequencing - Carlsons Law - biology dna sequencing equivalent  of moore's law


• genetic variation - SNP (signle nucleotide polymorphism) single point mutation 
structural variation, wider range variation


• comparing personal genomic tools  


• citizen science - peer research with gene friends (23andme or deCODEme) how to ethically review peer studies? 
• 

Personalized genomics slowly rolling out in medical field 
• 

synthetic biology - engineering biological systems

F: Designing Social Interfaces

Resources:

• http://gamedesigner.com (search for Social Mania)
• http://designingsocialinterfaces.com (book)
• http://developer.yahoo.com/ypatterns/ (social patterns)
• http://developer.yahoo.com/yahoopress/

Notes:

• "Social Mania" card game - You design a social product and the team w/the most points wins.
• Each 'product' must have a demographic, a delivery mechanism, and an object plus three features to 'ship'.
• The game is currently in beta at gamedesigner.com.
• The game is based on the book "Designing Social Interfaces" by Erin Malone and Christian Crumlish by O'Reilly and Y!Press.

G: Financial Basics

Financial Basics

H: CoWorking

Convener: Iris Kavanagh

Notes-taker(s): Sara Vainer

TAGS for the session: * Coworking * future of work

Resources: nextspace.us

Notes:

• NextSpace Coworking + Innovation is a coworking community that fosters economic growth within a community. Entrepreneur catalyst, uniting local entrepreneurs to allow individuals to work where they live.

• Coworking communities take away the leasing risk for start-ups by selling flexible memberships instead. Provide impressive conference rooms, resources, coffee and constant networking and coworking opportunities.

• Coworking spaces should be member-lead communities, but you need a community manager + staff that have a helpful, catalyzing presence to help foster relations and make connections.

• Coworking is the future of work - to be able to work individually while among others. It is support for solo workers.

I: Success Factors for the 21st century SheEO

Convener: Vicki Saunders Notes-taker(s): Vicki Saunders

1. Follow your passion
2. If you want money ask for advice, if you want advice, ask for money 
3. Deep self knowledge - understand what you are good at an what you aren't good at and hire for your weaknesses
4. Shared leadership vs. Top down command and control.
5. Ask for advice.  Find the expert.
6. Manage your energy
7. Be persistent. Be bold.
8. Anything is possible
9. Build your network - when you meet someone that you really resonate with, ask them "who are the 5 people like you that i don't know...."
10. Learn quickly. Be fast to adapt. It's your only competitive advantage.

• You'll get a lot of advice from people about how to raise money, how to do a pitch but the most important thing to remember is to do what works for you.
• The best investors fund people, not ideas. So, you are selling yourself and if you aren't being true to yourself it will show up in your presentation.

Resources:

• Mark Suster
• LynnL@microsoft.com - open to sharing resources for women entrepreneurs, check out bizspark
• women's networking alliance
• astia.org

Learning styles: procedural, analytical, relational, innovative

J: Online Video NO NOTES

L: Durpal, WordPress Informal Hack Session NO NOTES

Convener: Lis and Laura Henry

Session 2

A: RSI Cautionary Tale

Convener: Ilona Koren-Deutsch

Notes-taker(s): Sarah Dopp

TAGS for the session: RSI

Resources:

• Always go through HR
• Golden Gate Hand Therapy
• Restorative Yoga
• Human Scale's company website is informative
• Oracle's internal PDF on ergonomics is excellent

Key Points:

• ideal sitting position: feet on floor, arms slightly downward, looking straight ahead at monitor, look at top third of screen.
• take breaks: 5 minutes every hour
• don't grab mouse too tight
• warning signs: numbness, tingling in fingertips. shooting pain means it's too late.

B:Speaking at Conferences

Convener: Anna Ravenscroft

Notes:

Anna is a Pythonista, not a programmer. She's on committees to choose talks for conferences, but there aren'tnnot enough proposals from women! Why not?

Not focusing on gender bias here-rather, on why we "self-select" out of conferences.

What are participants' reasons for not proposing, or what was experience if spoke?

Obstacles

• Don't have time
• Don't know enough
• Not an expert/creator
• Only niche
• Afraid to speak in public

Don't have enough time

• Esp women, we're the support system for our "regular" lives.
• Need to prioritize! Need to ask for support from our systems to help us make the time.
• Takes prep time, too, need planning time and support for that.

Don't know enough

• Guys don't know everything, but they still do it.
• You do know enough if you're using it.
• Even if just learning-can speak on the learning of it.
• You can ask for feedback from others while prepping-you'll learn much in the process.
• "You teach best what you most need to learn." Jonathan Livingston Seagull (?)

Not expert

• You know from the users side! Know pitfalls that creators may not even know about or realize it's an issue.

Niche

• You are not alone! Can apply niche in other ways. Look for those angles of helping others to learn.

Fear

• Anna had that too. Can get over it! Start by giving presentations to user groups, toastmasters, people on your side.
• They want you to succeed and will be supportive. Not "me vs the audience" not heckling.
• Get feet wet. Not sure if you have enough material for time? Try lightning talks, Ignite formats, etc. first.

Other obstacles

Can't afford conference fees

• Guys ask employer to pay more than women. But speakers get in free. Try to get a scholarship.
• Think of it as an investment in self, career, exposure for project.
• Good for your professional growth, networking, getting known. Like paying for school.

Way to get started: speak at local school (alma mater)-reach out to dept chair in area of expertise, they're often looking for speakers from companies.

Break it down to chunks, step by step.

• Proposal process, speaking "chops," then getting accepted.
• Don't be discouraged if proposal is turned down, keep trying, ask for guidance from program committee/chair for next time. Engage in the full process.

"Open space"/unconferences/birds of a feather sessions often happen at conferences and that's another way to try out both speaking skills and get feedback on topics.

Hacker spacers (noise bridge) allow you to connect with other geeks.

Obstacle: feeling like you're not learning anything/bored as an audience member-don't want to be one of those! Anna says: prepare. Run your presentation by other people, like Agile Development. Find out from others what's missing, what will make it more valuable. It's an iterative process. Can be scary, if you fear criticism. But rehearsal will help with that, both style and content. Do the same presentation multiple times.

Another solution-team up with an experienced speaker to co-present. If you want to speak at a particular show, seek out a past speaker at that show and ask for tips.

Up to women to also provide the "supply"-women need to submit proposal. Also need to create "demand"-let conference organizers know that their speaker roster needs to be diverse. Drive the market. Don't wait for an invitation.

Another solution suggestion: Work with a speaking coach. One is coming to She's Geeky on Sunday. Can help you organize thoughts and points, not just content. @bronwynsf is a good resource.

Solution for being boring-insert humor, interesting facts, peer approach, interact with audience, seek their input during the presentation to adjust talk on the fly.

Review talks from previous years for ideas of what the accepted content has been in the past.

Look for speaker resources from conference organizers, some provide that resource.

Seek feedback from program chair on proposal.

Battledecks/Powerpoint Karaoke-improv to random slides, another way to hone speaking chops.

For Ignite: see Scott Berkun's Ignite presentation on how to give an Ignite presentation.

Devchix maintains a list of conferences with open calls for papers. GeekSpeaker, EventSeer, WomenInTech, Toastmasters also good resources.

MBA programs have business communications classes. (Tip: don't end statements with a question mark tone, going up.) Or, take a community college speech class.

Have a friend tape you or video yourself speaking.

Work your network and let your contacts know that you're available to speak.

Sometimes it takes a while to become an invited-don't feel like just because you're not invited, you're not wanted.

Ask your work manager for leadership training/communication class.

Get together with coworkers and friends for a houseparty/retreat to "tell each other what you know" as practice. Or get together to do group proposal creation.

Just because a call is closed doesn't mean that the organizers aren't still looking for additions.

Submit more than one talk per conference! One you can do cold, one that's really out there, and one that's fairly solid.

Can also submit a talk that you're still working on-ask for feedback in proposal form.

Read the tips and directions for submitting a proposal and follow them! Provide links, lots of info, talk yourself up. Why are you passionate about it? Also, make sure your proposal is explicit about why the presentation is relevant to the conference you're submitting to. If it's not an exactly tech-related talk, that's OK--make it relevant to the community. Or work a "people" angle into proposal.

Use slides for your talks and put them up on Slideshare-other conference organizers will find you and invite you. Also good way to network.

Find others with expertise and form a panel.

Think of it as an adventure and of the opportunities that will come from it. May lead to other leadership opps.

What about privacy? Keep your private life/details separate from your professional life. OK to keep boundaries. How to present your credentials/qualifications if you need to keep those private? Build a speaking reputation with small events first. Or, let organizers know the qualifications, but ask that those details be kept confidential-they will respect those requests.

C: Using MultiMedia

Convener: Erin Shatara

Notes-taker: Erin Shatara

TAGS for the session:

• multi-media
• education
• training
• eLearning
• online traning

Notes:

How to enable retention

• eLearning
  • As a cost saver
  • Add onto your regular schedule
  • Mood of the person attending makes a difference
• Integrate w/media is a must these days

How to bring tools

• Interaction design - adjust
• How to teach with video
  • Synchronous
  • Asynchronous with video
• What can be involved in multimedia
  • Blog
  • Pictures
  • Videos
  • Chats
  • Online labs
  • Non-linear discussions
• Tools for collaboration:
  • Meetings:
    • Yoohoo
    • GotoMeeting
    • Webex
  • Ecollaboration tools
    • eCompanion
    • Moodle ($500 / license)
    • Google wave
    • Google docs
    • Google groups
    • Yahoo groups
    • Ning (free), pay $25/month to remove adds
    • Droople servers
    • Ask what the students/learners are using…accommodate
  • Teach with FaceBook and Twitter
    • Instructors post and students respond
  • Video
  • Online lab environments
  • Interactive white boards
    • Mimeo
    • Wireless mics for
    • Smartboard
    • Screen flow
    • Jing
    • Mogulus
  • Audio -
    • Is important!
    • Get the experts to speak/record them
    • Wireless mics help - in Edu space can apply for grants
• Blog /FB
  • Have to register and use password to protect
  • Be careful who you accept
    • On FB - create groups for them if you do it
    • Create two accounts - one for students, one for personal use
• Rules for what works well
  • Use the connection that matches what they need - aka videos for project based
  • Create a connection
  • Use the right tool
  • Reinforce and be consistent
  • Present the right information -
  • Make it relevant and real world to their experience
  • Be aware of timing - when do they get the product
• Assessing what solution
• Tips and best practices:
  • If you say you are going to use it - USE it!  Otherwise you lose credit
  • Just ask
  • Feedback is essential - learner-centered education
    • Show them
    • Have them talk about it and try them
    • Give them feedback
    • Assessment as part of the process is essential
      • Verify their knowledge - helps build credibility to the knowledge
      • Can tell you the logic for right or wrong (you may have forgotten to consider this element…)
  • It is a lot to do to do it right:
    • Share the tasks
    • Get them to follow through with quality contribution
• Examples of good setups:
  • Adobe - good examples - Adobe connect great webinars
  • OReilly - authors have workshops
  • Lynda.com
  • Safari
  • Nettuts
  • Vectortuts
  • MIT open courseware (2000 courses)
• Program languages for
  • Python
  • Processing (from MIT)
  • Visually oriented
• How to ensure they get the process and are not reliant on the steps
  • Have mid-way points to check in and see what it would look like otherwise
  • Show them the end goal
  • Share anecdotes of process and final outcome to get them bought in - make it related to their world
  • Find out what motivates them
  • Relate to them - ask them to do something
• Getting by in and value

D: Online Engagement for Social Change

Convener: Vicki from Zazengo

Notes-taker: Laura Shapiro

TAGS for the session:

• social networking
• politics, social change
• social responsibility
• mentoring
• young women
• remote teaching, education
• empowerment
• social media
• countermarketing
• citizen activism

Resources that surface in your session: Orgs:

• Zazengo
• Peaceniks,
• Gaia
• Empowerment Today
• Global Fund for Women
• Shaping Youth
• Radical Designs
• Kurland Digital (software development for nonprofits)
• MentorNet

Websites:

• tcktcktck - photo meme took off, partnered with activists/sponsor orgs to get petition signatures and raise awareness of global warming.
• hopenhagen section on FB creates actions people can take to reduce carbon footprint -- make a game of offline actions and bring them into the social media space. 64% engagement rate. Multiple engagements were very high.
• Coke/Boys & Girls Club collaborating on FB promotion - put a coke bottle on your FB page
• Chase Foundation - contest pitting nonprofits against each other to compete for grant by selling lists of people/get them to become a Chase fan, energizing the nonprofits
• Cause World
• Donors Choose
• Ushhidi (Testimony) - open source tracking tool
• Gapminder - statistical analysis/demographics, 3-D data representation
• BeExtra - micro-work
• Shared Records - free, secure, open source record-keeping/storing (Una Mesa Foundation)
• TechSoup - tech resources and knowledge-sharing for nonprofits
• Twestival - Twitter-based water equality events (on- and off-line)

Key Points:

1) PRIVACY. It all goes back to selling your list. Maybe nonprofits don't want to share their lists with Coke or Chase. FB releases information not just about you but about your friends. If you take a FB quiz, you expose a lot of information. You can't leave Facebook, you can only deactivate your account. It's not easy to opt out. Google will turn over your information to countries that request it, exposing your constituents to legal reprisals.

SOLUTIONS: Open-source software development for offline/online apps that protect private information while connecting individuals and organizations

2) AFFORDABILITY AND ACCESS. Nonprofits are way behind the tech curve, often can't afford money, human resources to manage a robust online community, or more than one. Many users in developing nations lack technological resources, bandwidth, tech literacy.

SOLUTIONS: Partner with other organizations, corporate sponsorships. Games: a great way to get individuals excited and involved who have limited technological literacy or don't share a language but can understand online gaming -- very young people, for example, or people in developing countries. Thinking differently about how to connect unsophisticated technology with sophisticated technology - phone games, for example. Making use of existing technology on the ground. High-tech solutions aran't always the answer: quality content is still king. Don't reinvent the wheel -- lots of nonprofits are already working on the same things you are.

3) HOW DO WE MERGE ONLINE AND OFFLINE BEHAVIOR?

SOLUTIONS: Gaming, location-based services (LBS) incentivize offline behavior with online rewards -- badges, contests, prizes. Cause World gives "Karma Points". Users choose to allocate $ through acquisition of Karma Points. Micro-lending, micro-work.

4) HOW DO WE ENGAGE YOUTH WITHOUT TURNING THEM INTO GOOD LITTLE CONSUMERS?

SOLUTIONS: Create emotional connections, reward creative activity rather than visiting particular businesses; give tools not carbon credits

5) TRACKING IMPACT. How to monitor impact of money, time, effort on your cause? How do we monitor the regional impact of micro-loans, locally-based activism/investment? What tools show collective impact in a dynamic situation like Haiti?

SOLUTIONS: A number of mapping resources exist (Usshidi, Gapminder) and this kind of tool can be built into a game or be a component of a game. Need more and better realtime dynamic feedback tools.

E: Tech Talk and Geek Speak

Convener:  Miriam Petruck

Notes-taker: Anca Mosoiu <anca@techliminal.com>

After a short tussle with getting the projector, we started...

We all have some expertise, and we spend a lot of time hanging out with people who have a common background in that area.  But there are many occasions outside of day-to-day work where we are in conversation with people who are not savvy in our niche.  So how do we talk to them?

Miriam shows slides written in three different languages - we try to understand.  This makes her point.  

Job posting example to a list:  "High level skills in PHP, Jquery, blah blah...  "(Actually blah blah was used). A discussion ensued on the mailing list as to what this might all mean -  "What are blah, blah programming skills"?

Compose a 10-15-word sentence describing your expertise to make yourself more appealing at a party.

Anca:  I help techies and non-technies work better together on projects.

I'm a game designers.  I make games fun and easy for players.

Jen:  I'm a test engineer and hacker with 10 years of experience in breaking software or firmware.  (concepts that aren't understood:  "hacker" (might have a bad connotation?) "test engineer", "breaking" "firmware = keeps my jiggles in place?")  How about "I find flaws in computer programs to make the programs work better"?  

Interesting point - how do we make tech speak more general?  "Talk to Apple".  But the problems are pervasive in the culture - the marketing culture, etc.

"How do we make language simple enough for everyone to understand?" 

"Language develops outside of our control".

Susan:  I enable leaders to live their vision and be successful in a way that matters to them.  

"How do I describe what I do without diminishing it?"  

Enable has connotations with dysfunctional relationships and drugs in the "regular world".  (But in the Silly Valley world it means some kind of magical software that will make something "good" happens).

Words have many meanings, and that depends largely on the context.

What about using the word "help"?  "Leaders don't need help" but ... "A good leader knows how to ask for help".  Susan:  Actually, I don't "help" them, I coach them.  But coach is another word that's overused today.

But coming from another culture, the word "Enable" means something else entirely.

Nancy Brink:  It's interesting to see how the technology terminology puts off young people.  

Adapt your workshop to their language - maybe spend some time listening to them, and then tell them that you will introduce terms.

How can I explain how "cool" math, derivatives, science, etc is?  When I listen to them explain their passion, I try to put myself in their shoes.  

Susan London:  The first step - you have to know what the other person knows.  

What about the word women?  Women Technologists vs. Female Technologists?

A couple of different descriptions of She's Geeky (from Miriam's Slides)

What about the 100-word version?  Not for the elva

F: Digital Game Museum

Convener: Judith Haemmerle - digitalgamemuseum.org


Notes-taker: Friday Judith Haemmerle

Resources: Possible person to ask for games for building women's communities: Jesper Juul, http://www.jesperjuul.net/

Points:

• Museum focused on digital games, community based, using wiki-styled curation online, where gamers are recognized as the experts. Major issue is rights to abandonware and legalities. Preservation of commercial and non-commercial games.

• People want to donate their old games (and equipment), so building a collection is not the biggest issue.

• Need to find more volunteers, preferably women, and develop a user base/stakeholder base.

• Educational games, what would women like to play? Would be good to develop a female community for traditionally "male" games and to foster female gamer interaction. Games drive a lot of technological development.

[2nd Session on this topic]

I: Quantum Computing

J: Carnegie Mellon Silicon Valley

Session 3

B: Field Biology Tech

Convener: - Jeannie Stamberger

Notes-takers: Melanie Swan & Jeannie Stamberger

• Way to report the data and the confidence interval (standard scale or context specific)

• How to articulate I don’t know, funny things, ambiguity

• How to (notice and) report absence of data

• ‘Reputation’ type rating with # years/type of training as quality attribute of the person reporting the data

• Simpler field protocols (antidote to archaeologists collecting 60 data elements)

• eBirds studied data reporting and perception; found that people were actually quite accurate in reporting

• linkage of automated data collection tools & human efforts

• how to engage citizen scientists, especially high school students & non-experts

• bioweathermap.org project (links genetics & field work)

+++++ Jeannie Stamberger’s Notes

Citizen science:

• Data collected and collated by citizen scientists on online databases
  • Weather mapping
    •   Surfnet.com
    •   http://bioweathermap.org/
  •    Openspime.com
  •    Sensor Net across UC system
  •    eBirds
•         Interpretation by citizens
  •    E.g.,  SETI will be launching this in next few years.

Problems

•   Accuracy
•   Coordinating data

Questions

• Do data collection standards exist?

Suggested solutions

• Self-reported confidence scale for accuracy of observations:
  • I don’t know what this is/What the heck is that?
  • I think this is X but something weird is going on
• Cross check observations with passive sensors, e.g. a webcam recording observations to crossreference with observations; use mechanical turk to find pictures of birds (https://www.mturk.com/)

Interests

• Data analysis and performance failure

How accurate are observations from volunteers?

• Testing of accuracy of volunteer bird identifications/observations (no body captured)
  • GGRaptorObservatory  (http://www.ggro.org/)  study  (link ?)
  • Species specific errors (e.g., two genders and species are easily confused)

Design of a study that high schoolers would participate in:

• Motivation – scavenger hunt, self discovery

C: Uncommon Leadership: Embracing Your Inner Dork

Convener: Susan London

Notes-taker: Teri Gardella

TAGS:

• authentic leadership
• “what are you up to”
• tribes

Resources:

• Uncommon Leadership (article)
• Tribes, We Need You to Lead Us (book) by Seth Godin

Notes:

• Historical Perspective:
  • Susan used to do a presentation called “Women Unlimited” since 1978 up until 2 years ago
  • Important to get clear about what we’re really “up to”
  • In the past there has been less regard for “feminine” qualities in a man’s world
• Desire for Leadership is in the room
• “The picture of a great leader isn’t me” is what most people think
• Need to own up to the fact that who we are is sufficient to create the world we want to see
• Need to embrace who you are, even if it’s not on the radar. (team catalyst, empowering teams, good listening, sense of humor, optimism, passion, ask good questions, genuine interest in people, loyalty, approachable, mentoring, herd cats, value diversity)
  • We live in a world that values being a good speaker more than being a good listener
• Leadership is not a position
• Connect what you DO with what you’re UP TO

E: Command Line Talks

F: Getting More Women in Tech Community NO NOTES

G: HOw to Achieve Virtually Anything in 3 Steps

Convener: Shawna Pandya

Notes-taker: Rebecca

Resources:

• Influence, Robert Cialdini
• Stickk.com
• Getting Things Done
• Life Balance software

Please list below the essences or key points of the conversation (3-5) (This may include key understandings or new learning, outstanding questions, observations, and, if appropriate to this discussion - action items, next steps)

What do you want to achieve?

• You can achieve anything.

• Attitude –> ‘I can’t’ -> ‘I won’t’ -> I will
• Smart Approach Focus your approach:
  • Specific
  • Measurable
  • Attainable
  • Realistic
  • Timely (deadline)

A+

1. Action Plan (reverse engineer your solution, pay attention to your unique way of working)
2. Accountable (Active, Publicly, Voluntary)

Procrastination

• To-Do List
• Pomodoro Technique
• Accomplice

H: Writing Virutally

Convener: Jenn Sramek - www.civicactions.com

Notes-taker: Jenn Sramek

TAGS for the session:

• virtual
• passion
• remote
• consulting

Resources that surface in your session - URL’s and other Links, Books, Organizations, Articles etc:

• Conversations for Action - framework for making agreements
• Withholds - framework for resolving issues
• www.civicactions.com - virtual open source web development company
• Edgewall Software - open source collaborative software (trac) - edgewall.org

Please list below the essences or key points of the conversation (3-5) (This may include key understandings or new learning, outstanding questions, observations, and, if appropriate to this discussion - action items, next steps)

We discussed:

• Virtual work is 90% people and 10% technology. People may connect with technology, but they communicate as people, so a lot of success working virtually is about the soft skills of people and agreement management.
• Virtual work does not work well if it is always virtual. It is important to schedule ways to meet and work in person.
• Have to accommodate people who are lower tech when managing things virtually. Make sure to keep people engaged.
• We discussed meeting facilitation and some resources (above) and some ways to keep people engaged on the phone/viop, etc. Make them feel seen and like a person by asking questions, noting something about them, keeping the ball rolling by surfacing things that might be of interest to those who are not speaking, etc.
• We discussed some of the challenges of virtual work in terms of loneliness (not working with other people) for which the solution is co-working, as well as the lack of "learning through osmosis" which is the exposure to communication styles, role-specific or client-specific knowledge that can be a huge loss when working virtually and some of the ways to counter that (pushing info to teams and people instead of waiting for them to ask questions, mentorship, open conference lines that mimic being in the same room.
• We talked about the different ways in which people found themselves working virtually and about productivity. People felt they needed to prove that they could be productive at home in some cases, even if it was clearly easier for them to be so. Some had the perspective of virtual work from working inside Second Life (and working with people in that context), while for others it was a day per week, or all of their working time. Others were interested in how to get this type of work.
• We spoke about the pros and cons of it from a personal perspective (can actually be longer hours, hard to leave the office, lonely at times, networking helps, time with kids is possible, make own schedule to a large extent, choice about where to work geographically, lack of mentorship, harder to manage people and their productivity when they are not visible.
• We discussed some tools (trac, basecamp, free conference lines, Maestro Conference, Skitch, etc. that help people work better virtually).

I: Windows 7

Convener: Jennelle Crothers

Notes-taker: Jennelle Crothers

TAGS: #windows7

Resources:

• www.talkingaboutwindows.com
• www.microsoft.com

My blog:

• www.techbunny.com

Notes:

System Requirements

The Basics

• 1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
• 1 gigabyte (GB) RAM (32-bit) or 2 GB RAM (64-bit)
• 16 GB available hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)
• DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver
• The average netbook meets these requirements.

Extras

• BitLocker requires Trusted Platform Module (TPM) 1.2
• BitLocker To Go requires a USB flash drive
• Mode requires an additional 1 GB of RAM, an additional 15 GB of available hard disk space, and a processor capable of hardware virtualization with Intel VT or AMD-V turned on

Windows 7 Versions

• Starter - No Aero, No 64-bit
• Home Basic - Emerging markets only
• Home Premium - Areo, Media Center and Touch
• Professional - No DirectAccess, BranchCache or Bitlocker
• Enterprise -Supports all features, volume licensing only
• Ultimate - Supports all features

Upgrading

• You can upgrade directly from Vista to the same version line (home to home, etc)

XP requires a clean installation

New Areo Mouse Features

• Peek - move your mouse over the little transparent rectangle in the lower right corner of your screen—and watch open windows instantly turn transparent, revealing all your hidden icons and gadgets.
• Shake - Click a window, hold down, and give your mouse a shake. Every open window except that one instantly disappears. Jiggle again—and your windows are back.
• Snap - Size and arrange windows by simply dragging their borders to the edges of your screen. Expand to full screen and back, or arrange two windows side by side.

Libraries

• Consolidates files stored in multiple areas
• Starts with pre-created ones for documents, music, pictures and videos.

Quick and easy way to collect all your files in one area for viewing and backup

Instant Search

Searches for file names, properties or text within files, and searches external hard drives, networked computers and libraries Can search directly from the start menu Results are grouped by category

Performance Improvements

• Sleep - Windows 7 is designed to sleep, resume, and reconnect to your wireless network more quickly.
• Search - Search results pop up faster. Sorting and grouping of search results is also significantly quicker.
• USB devices - When you plug in a portable flash drive or other USB device for the first time, Windows 7 can have it ready for you in seconds. If you've used it before, the wait's even shorter.
• Leaner and less busy - Windows 7 is designed to run speed-sapping background services (like Bluetooth) only when you need them. Less memory hungry than Windows Vista, which can boost boost overall performance.

Backup and Restore

• Backup and Restore your Data - Let Windows choose what to back up, or pick individual folders, libraries, or drives. You can back up files to another drive, your network, or a DVD. Backup and Restore for your personal PC and attached DVD or external hard drives comes with all editions of Windows. If you want to backup to a network location, network attached storage, or another computer on your network, you'll need Windows 7 Professional or Ultimate.
• System Restore for OS Files and Settings - You can create more system restore points and see exactly what files will be removed or added when your PC is restored.

Problem Step Recorder

• Solving problems unique to a machine can be an arduous task for both the end-user and the help desk.

The Problem Steps Recorder is a screen-capture tool that allows the end-user to record the problems they’re having step-by-step. The program is accessible from the Control Panel under “Record steps to reproduce a problem” or run psr.exe from Explorer

Action Center

• Action Center gives you one place to go to address system notifications and tasks. If Windows wants your attention, the Action Center icon appears in the taskbar. Click it and you'll see alerts and suggested fixes for any problems.

Reliability Monitor

• Measures the hardware and software problems and other failures in the system
• Calculates the stability index of your system and specifies results in the range from 1-10
• Trending - an application failure will make , for the score will go down. The score will slowly rise after successive days with no issues.

User Account Control

• Introduced in Windows Vista and improved in Windows 7- helps to avoid the need or desire to run everything as an Administrator.
• Separated standard user privileges and tasks from those that require Administrator access
• Users express frustration with UAC prompts with Vista: How many is too many? Because there were none in XP, some would say that “any” is “too many”
• User habits: user needs to get used to some operations requiring privilege. For any given UAC prompt, ask yourself “Would it be ok if malware silently did this to me?”
• Windows 7 reduces the number of OS applications and tasks that require elevation
• Windows 7 also reduces the number of prompts and provides 4 levels to adjust prompting behavior
• Applications: need to stop using privilege unless truly necessary. File and registry virtualization helps applications that are not UAC compliant

BitLocker and BitLocker to Go

• Available in Ultimate and Enterprise versions
• Encrypts the entire disk drive, even non-boot partitions
• Doesn’t require the creation of a special partition like Vista, Windows 7 does that automatically at setup
• BitLocker-to-Go encrypts removable storage devices like USB flash drives and external hard drives.

Free and reduced cost software for students – check out DreamSpark

J: Lets Create a Start-up Now

Convener: Icis Machine

Notes-taker(s): Icis Machine

Notes:

• Intros


• Evaluate our core competencies to enable us to come up with a startup
quickly that we can contribute to. Sensors were popular among the
group.


• Use core competencies to solve a problem: How to reduce the amount of
animals killed by motorists.


  • put something on a car or someone on the road?

  • Pre-market or post-market add on?

  • leave consumer market to buy in?

  • Road solution would be more complete and passive to motorists but expensive.


  • Deer whistle already exists and it is cheap. Perhaps a "better deer
whistle"; a multi-frequency pan whistle.

Session 4

A: Dreaming about Digital Hearts in your Community NO NOTES

B: Privacy and Identity Online

Convener: Convened by Kaliya Hamlin (@identitywoman) and Natalie Fonseca (@TechPolicy)

Notes-taker: Natalie Fonseca <nfonseca@techpolicysummit.com>

She’s Geeky, January 29 Some of the reasons women are attending the discussion:

• Working for a group that funds various women’s organizations and concerned about protecting women involved in domestic violence situations
• Interested in protecting daughter’s info online
• Recently merged several online identities into one
• Need to define and quantify privacy
• Want control of personal info
• Uncomfortable with geo-location apps like Foursquare – how much info do you really need to share?
• Recently revealed that she was female in some online
• (Natalie) Producing the pii (privacy, identity and innovation) conference in Seattle this August and want to hear what women think. More info at http://www.techpolicycentral.com.
• (Kaliya) Has been working on open standards for identity for years – the freedom to take your identity with you and the freedom to be anonymous. Co-hosts IIW (Internet Identity Workshop) twice a year and is concerned that women’s perspectives on privacy and identity issues aren’t being heard and included (ex. of Web Finger, which would allow you to query anybody’s online handle and get profile info back). Wants to create a blog post about this discussion.

Discussion notes:

• Early adopter that uses Foursquare and other geo-location apps but she’s concerned that there isn’t enough education for users to explain what’s happening with their info. People who are choosing services for convenience may be risking having their info shared.
• Main issue is freedom to choose who sees my info. I’ll even send out test messages to see who’s getting what.
• Concerned about people who work at company’s like Facebook and have access to data (recent story about master passwords at Facebook that allow some employees to look at any user’s account). Need for internal business practices, checks and balances.
• Need companies to notify us of data breaches on the Web
• Facebook’s recent change to its privacy policy – not what I signed up for. Concerned about changes in privacy policies and how that information is shared with users.
• January 28 was Data Privacy Day and Microsoft issued a report that revealed that hiring managers were using information they found online to review job applicants (More info online at: http://www.microsoft.com/privacy/dpd/)
• Example of husband sharing home address on Foursquare, and how that made her uncomfortable.
• How can women explain to men why/how privacy means something different for women online?
  • Tell them to imagine letting everyone know that their most prized possession (e.g. stereo/entertainment system or car) is at home when they aren’t there.
  • Appeal to fathers who wouldn’t want people knowing where/how to locate their daughter.
• In general, how can we explain to people why privacy matters?
  • Experiment of teacher searching for students’ info on MySpace and letting them know in class what he found; it was embarrassing for students but helped teach to be careful about what you share online
  • Organized tagging - Create a bumper sticker that says something like, “If I were evil, I would have robbed you by now…thanks Foursquare or Facebook, etc.” and tag people’s houses when you know they aren’t there.
  • Focus on harm to kids and seniors because they’re generally more sympathy for how those groups are impacted
• Discussion about Google. Kaliya pointed out that Eric Schmidt said if you break the law, don’t expect us not to turn over data about you with a subpoena.
• Kaliya explained that she stopped using Foursquare because, even though she didn’t have a stalking situation currently, she realized that she was creating a trail of the places she regularly went. And if she ever had a stalking situation in the future, it would enable that person to figure out where to find her. But she also wonders if it might hurt her career to not be using the services that a lot of guys in Silicon Valley are using (ed note by Natalie: I feel the same way and also feel like I’m ‘not in the game’ sometimes because I won’t use geo-location tagging).
• How to avoid being affected by social engineering (i.e. manipulating people’s trust to get info you want from them):
  • Always verify who’s asking you for info, even if they seem to know something about you
  • Need to teach people that it’s okay to be rude – ask for info to understand who wants info
• Point made that the people who are driving this industry (geo-location, social apps, etc.) tend to be young, fearless men who probably aren’t married.
• So, what would you say to developers at Loopt, Foursquare, Facebook, etc. about what you want?
  • More granular control over what info is sahred and with whom
  • Report to me on what other people see about me (give me a look at what they view)
  • On the fly decision making that is usable
  • A machine-readable data feed that gives me the name, address and phone number of any 3rd party app builder that gets access to my data so I know if a bad actor has my info and I can try to do something about it
  • Kaliya mentions Mozilla’s Test Pilot project (More info at https://testpilot.mozillalabs.com/)
  • Pilot a personal data bank
• Kaliya clarifies that Facebook doesn’t sell your personally identifiable information to advertisers – they use a real-time auction that serves ads to people in certain demographic categories but it’s stripped of PII. She that Rapleaf is a service that has created an uber-database of email addresses that they sell to others without getting direct consent.
• Peer-to-peer friending lets you connect directly without needing to use a service like Facebook.
• Back to the question we started with: what, if anything, is different for women?
  • Women, in general, feel more vulnerable or fearful because women are taught from an early age to be careful, there’s a risk of violence against women, etc.
  • There’s a social double standard for men and women. Example: if I share online that I have kids, it might hurt my chances of employment in a way it wouldn’t for a man. Or if I talk about the details of a hot date the night before, I might be perceived negatively whereas a guy wouldn’t.
  • The Internet reflects the misogyny of the larger world. Example of feminist bloggers getting hate mail and needing to be very careful about their online identities.
• Issue of having different personas/identities online. For example, one women uses different email addresses, profiles and photos for each of her online identities. Wants to make sure that her employer doesn’t know about her social life, but she doesn’t want to have to change/give up her social life. She also monitors who tags her in photos; i.e. “tagging vigilance”
• Kaliya asks what are some of the types of personas people have?
  • Personal
  • Spiritual
  • Gaming/hobbyist
  • Feminist
  • Professional

• Examples fromparticipants:
  • She uses Gmail/Blog/LinkedIn for her professional identity; Facebook is her ‘softer side’; LiveJournal is where she discusses spiritual and more personal issues and she uses a pseudonym there.
  • Personal story from one participant - she used to have multiple profiles but decided to link everything together recently on Facebook. She was scared to do it at first but has found it liberating because she had a bad experience with an ex who had accessed her online accounts and pretended to be her.
  • One woman explains that she manages her online privacy by refusing to have a Facebook account at all. She decided that she’s not giving her data to “that punk.”

• Kaliya – We need to get more feedback on these issues outside of the Bay Area bubble.

C: Teaching Girls to Program NO NOTES

D: Women Centered Tech Prevent Violence in Refugee Camps

E: How to Fix a Bug

Convener: Akkana Peck   Resources: http://shallowsky.com/bugfixing/


Key Points

• Rule 0: Don't panic!


• Fixing a bug is like solving a mystery:
 Who, what, when, where, why


• What's most important is Where:
 where is the problem in the code?


• Code is just English text, with nouns and verbs.
 It's meant to be readable --
 even by people who don't know the language.

F: Singularity University NO NOTES

G: Bee Keeping

Convener: Vicky Tuite


Where:


• A small suburban lot is okay. Lots of beekeepers in San Francisco where the lots are small. 
Need to provide a source of water, so the bees won't find the neighbor's hot tub.


• Laws vary by location but usually it's not a problem unless neighbors complain.



Why:


• Honey and pollination. I got 4 gallons from a hive that died out recently. Renting bees out 
for pollination is a big business, especially for almond growers in the central valley.



How:


• Join a beekeeping club. There are clubs in Santa Clara, Gilroy, San Mateo, San Francisco and
Santa Cruz. www.sanmateobee.org. The San Mateo club is having a free 1 day class on beginning
beekeeping on March 20, starting at 9:00 AM. 


• The main hive parts are the frame and the hive boxes. The frame is made out of wood or plastic 
and has a plastic or wax flat part for the bees to build honeycomb on. The honeycomb is then used
to store honey and pollen or for the queen bee to lay eggs in. 


• To extract the honey, the frame is removed and the covering or capping of wax on top of the honey
is scraped off. Then the frames can be spun in a centrifuge or left to drip on their own for a day.

• A frame of honey can contain a jar of honey. Then the honey is filtered 1 to 3 times and put into
jars.


• The queen bee only lays eggs and provides pheromones that guide activities of other bees. She is not
the boss bee. Hives can get too crowded and half the colony will leave with the old queen. The remaining
bees will raise a new queen by feeding some regular eggs more days of royal jelly than the workers
usually get. The first queen out will kill the competing queens. Then she will go on mating flights
with 15 to 20 drones (their only use) . Then she comes back in and starts laying eggs.


• There are numerous pests: mites, bacterial infections, fungal infections, ants, moths, skunks and bears.

H: Connect the Dots: Network Tech Women Networking

Convener: B.J. Wishinsky

Notes-taker(s): Susan Kistler

• There is no one currently maintaining a comprehensive calendar of tech events/activities in the Bay Area.

Some resources:

• Anitaborg.org
• Grace Hopper Celebration
• Systers email list (some concern that you are unable to discuss things openly –such as employee issues- if you introduce co-workers to the group)
• Women in technology international (witi)
• One difficulty in assessing technical organizations for women is that some organizations target technical women in any industry and other groups which support people in any functional area who work for tech companies

I: Sexy Social Media

Convener: Irene Koeler

Notes-taker: Teri Gardella

Resources:

• Almostsavvy.com (Irene’s website) – tips on how to get started on Twitter, LinkIn tips
• Trust Agents (book) by Chris Brogan
• New Rules of Marketing (book) by David Meerman Scott
• Network Blogs (Facebook App) – pulls your blog post into FB and any comments on FB back to your blog
• Webinar about Social Media Optimation for your Website by nowspeed – available on demand

Key points of the conversation:

Be a consumer before you push stuff out (subscribe, comment, join, watch, listen)

Each platform has its own culture and etiquette

Make a plan

• Brand (what are you all about)
  • Once you build an audience, you need to be true to it (don’t change topics)
• Objectives
• Audience vs. Community
• Connecting with the right people
• Measurement
• Be realistic about your plan
• It takes time!

Need to manage your online reputation

• Everyone has the potential to be a publisher
• Information out there about you or your business may or may not be true
• Once you post or share online, you give up control of your content

Social Media can remove barriers between you and others

• Reply to questions, offer information to person, etc.
• Using tools to post to multiple places at once – good or bad?
• Can be annoying because you see the same posts twice (for example if you follow someone on Twitter and are friends on Facebook)
  • Someone unfollowed people on Twitter b/c they see the posts on Facebook
• Conversations can seem out of context when twitter posts appear on Facebook

On Twitter, everything (except DMs) is public:

• On Facebook, use privacy settings to limit visibility
• Use Friends Lists to categorize friends (ex: family, real friends, other) and limit who can see what by group
• Loophole on photo privacy – when you tag a friend, their friends can see the entire album even if you limit to just your friends

Best Practices:

• Understand the medium you’re using
• Use caution when posting -- it’s always out there!
• Keep up to date – don’t create a fan page or blog if you’re not committed to updating it

Stages of Engagement – it’s about relationships:

• Get people to know you
• Get people to like you
• Get people to trust you

K: Geeky Card Game

Session 5

A: Tech and Women's Rights

Technology and Women's Rights

B: What Software are Non-Profit Membership orgs are using NO NOTES

C: Privacy Preserving Comptation NO NOTES

E: How to save Money Online

Convener: Chelsea Rustrum

Notes-taker: Vania Benavides

Notes:

Cable
Call your local cable company and ask for a discount - if you don't ask, you won't get one!



Transportation:


• Stanford Marguerite shuttles - go around downtown to encourage carpooling and free transport

• rideshare - to save $ when you do car drives locally or long distance



To get out of a phone contract: 


• swap phone contracts - Cell Phone Depot
    
• http://www.cellswapper.com/
   
• also browse info online to see what others have done to get out of contracts:



Coupons


• stack coupons from the Sunday paper

• shortcuts.com

• ebates.com
• get 20% cash back on purchase
  
• retailmenot.com - coupon codes
   
• savings.com - coupon codes
couponcravings

• bing.com - cashback on purchases




Save money on clothing: 


• meetup.com - clothing swaps
   
• quality items
   
• cool new stuff
-sell your clothes to a thrift store - they either give you cash or store credit



Save money on entertainment 


• sign up for programs and get free entrance

• VISA signature card
• free wine tasting

• insideredbox.com - free movies 

• entertainment book
  
  • 200 coupons



Groceries


• save $ in bulk shopping for groceries
Shopping at Costco without having to buy a whole year's membership:
 
• get someone to get you a costco cash card by having a friend buy you one



Discounts on household Items: 


• alice.com
  • free shipping with each order

• 15% off Amazon shopping - subscribe to buy it every month once a month

• cashback programs - sunday coupons
   
• get free things with extracare bucks at CVS
   
• dealseekingmom.com
  



Question:
How much time do you spend on looking for deals? Do you have a system that condenses this?


• Chelsea has an aggregator on her site that aggregates feeds from other sites, and allows her to publish them on her site

• google reader to consolidate blogs that talk about discounts



Save money on babysitting:
 find or start a babysitting co-op



Get things for free in your town:
freecycle.org
craigslist.org



Saving Money on Ebay:
auction sniper on ebay



kqed shows for interesting places to visit for free and ways to save money: bay area bargains and bay area backroads

I: Women Centric Events

Convener: Ida Rose

Notes-taker(s): Kathy Lass

One version (one or two other versions may come later) of the ground rules or behaviors that a conference might encourage in order to have some of the same benefit as a women-centric conference. Skilled facilitators and speakers may be required to get the behaviors adopted.

• No acronyms
• OK to ask questions/ There are no wrong questions
• OK to go leave a session/join a session; Session leaders are not to take it personally
• Discuss issue/problem, not person
• Validity of one's experience is to be accepted at face value, not challenged
• Lead by example, host co-ed events with these behaviors
• Adding even one woman to a team changes it in a positive way
• Since not everyone is assertive, remind speakers / facilitators to look for people raising a hand, waiting for a chance to speak. Be actively inclusive. In a smaller meeting, one can use the "talking stick" method (You can only speak when holding the stick/pencil/pen - helps with interruptions)
• Back channel management - as a speaker, you can look at comments on something like twitter so that people who feel more comfortable communicating that way can be heard
• Tell the audience that they should "Expect to learn something" or that it's OK to be wrong, or that even they should _try_ to change one of their opinions.

Other notes:

• Anita Borg/Grace Hopper foundation: 
  • research shows that female role models and mentors help girls and young women stay in math/science/technology
  • they Systers list has benefited at least one session member to get back into a programming job after taking a few years off to stay home with a child
• conference is part tech/part professional development
• while some career development strategies are applicable to men and women, there are some challenges minorities (women in this case) face and it is helpful to have a safe place to discuss experiences and strategies specific to challenges women face/have faced
• some changes in tech culture that can help women can also benefit many people in the workforce who come from other cultures that don't express themselves the same way as American/Western men do
• Tech conferences in general don't have many women attending and there are no women on stage (on panels, or speaking)
• Girls in Tech conference- though the women were not in technical professions, they were very smart women and interesting speakers.; One person felt it was too bad that men were not let in to hear them
• At a women-only conference (specifically Girls in Tech?), it seems to be a a safe place to be a first time panelist and also a safe place for women who are not technical to ask a lot of questions.
• At a women-only conference, it is  OK to be a newbie
• Perhaps it would be worthwhile to identify behaviors that exist at a women-only conference to see if you can have a conference that encouraged those behaviors but that didn't restrict the attendees to men
• Instead of an Old Boys Network, can we have a New Girls Club?
• Because of changes in society over the years (50's nuclear family, 70's , women in the workforce), we've lost traditional communities of women support; we still need ways to have support of other women
• There are many men who want and can be very supportive. They have noticed women who have been too timid and want to support more participation by women.
• Many women want to listen before they speak; sometimes in co-ed situations there is not a lot of room for this "hesitation"
• On Clay Shirky's rant about why women don't succeed:

 -  he missed the point that women are not judged the same way that men are when they behave as he suggested they behave (women get a lot of criticism)  - all things being equal, he might be right, but all things are not equal.

• In a company, if a person is responsible for nominating their successor, they will normally pick someone like themselves, and therefore there is no room for diversity in the hierarchy unless it is deliberate
• CTO of Thoughtworks (a woman) noted that just having a woman on the team changes the whole dynamic, even without that woman trying overly to do so.  It seems to move the dynamic away from the locker room towards a more collaborative dynamic
• There is research to show that diverse teams are more creative
• At a women-only conference, one is not challenged on the validity of her experience like she often is in a co-ed setting
• In San Francisco, where there are more women working in Ruby, there now seem to be more men attending who are newbies, less afraid to ask questions
• In order to have certain behaviors reign at a conference, you need a skilled facilitator to lay out some ground rules like "no acronyms", "it's ok to ask questions", "it's ok to be wrong, "it's ok to leave a session ; don't be offended if people leave your session"

Closing

As a result of Today

Saturday Day 2 January 30, 2010

Session 1

A: Guide Dog Geeks

Convener: Jennelle Crothers

Notes-taker(s): Jessica DeVita (Stevens)

TAGS: Guide dog

Resources:

• www.Guidedogs.com
• www.citysightsguidedogs.com - SF Puppyraising club

Notes: Puppy Raising – the training period from 8 weeks to 16 months before formal guide dog training begins. Dogs learn manners, social skills and to manage their own behavior. Dogs go everywhere with their puppy raiser.

Breeds: usually black or yellow labs and golden retrievers. Good temperament, mellow. A lab's weight to strength ratio is a 1:3, i.e, a 50lb lab can pull a 150lb human. Dogs will need to be able to pull their person out of danger.

Names and lifespan: all dogs in the guide dog program get a unique name. Dogs take about 2 years to train, their lifespan is from 9-12 years and they typically work 6-8 years.

Questions:

Q: How do the dogs read traffic lights?

• They don’t! They watch the activity around them, other people, listen for cars. The blind person still needs to know where to go. The dog’s job is to get them from point A to B safely.

Q: Methods for training, no visual cues seem to be used?

• Model correct behavior, commands always start with the dog’s name. We use collar corrections, food, head collar and lots of verbal praise. Goals include the dog being “invisible” in restaurants, etc.

Q: Do the dogs get bored?

• Sometimes, they get bored in some situations, but overall, they like the work and understand that the person they are helping can't see.

Q: Does color of dog matter:

• No, just the breed

Q: Can people pet your dog while it’s working?

• Sometimes, please ask FIRST!

Q: Can you bring your dog to work?

• It depends on the situation. If you are blind and the dog is fully trained, they can. For people who are puppyraising it depends on the employer.

Q: What training does the volunteer puppy raiser get? A: There is a manual for training the dog and community support from other puppy raisers.

Q: What if the dog doesn’t work out as a guide dog?

• Puppy raiser gets first opportunity to adopt.

Q: How do you potty train?

• Dogs learn to go on command. For example, usually people take their dogs out for a walk and when the dog goes potty, the walk usually ends. Guide dogs go potty first and THEN they get a walk. We limit the locations they can go, use a verbal command “Do your business” and verbal praise.

Q: Training in general

• Reward good behavior, ignore bad behavior. When dog is doing something wrong, offer/encourage an alternate that conflicts.

Q: How to pick a good dog from shelter?

• Volunteer! Or adopt from shelters who do behavior testing. For adopting career-changed dogs (dogs who don't complete the program training) visit www.guidedogs.com for more information.

B: Going Mobile, Privacy Security ID - NO NOTES

C: UX Swap Meet

Convener: Ellen Francik

Notes-taker: Terri Davis

TAGS:

• User Experience
• Mobile
• Data Visualization
• User Interface

Notes:

Discuss main topics in the area of User Interfaces :

• How to model a complex system status using 6 screens - and indicate failures
• How to persuade users to input information when the amount of data input is lengthly
• How to present large sets of data on mobile devices or small screens without resorting to using scroll bars.

Summaries

1) The complex system was using 6 screens and was needed to visually represent the status of the linear acc. system ( Stanford ). The aspects of this problem included, the use of 6 screens, allowing users to potentially use remote devices to change views, to allow for different views, and to inform users of potential problems/alerts in the system.

Suggestions :

• Need to define the use cases and the environment. If you allow users to change the screens using a remote device - who is in command of the views. One user’s view may not be of importance to another user.
• Consider sound to indicate bad status - most users will not view the status screens and if the alert is only visually represented - it may not be notice. Consider movement as well.
• Users/People do become accustomed to screens - specifically for status systems. So its important to ensure that the representation of the system is understood by everyone who needs to interact with it.

2) This is an social application, and we need people/users to input information in order for the application to be useful. So, how do we persuade users to impart with information without losing them during data entry ? We are trying to build an social app that will allow users of a specific community to connect by common relationships such as companies worked, business connections, etc. This is different from linkin because you can’t specify the relationships in linkin - and this would allow to define the nature of the relationships.

• Present a VALUE ADD to the user - perhaps entice them with a preview of what they will be able to do - based on the amount of the information they entered.
• Allow for a Quick Add type of screen - so that even with a small amount of information they will be able to do something - but IF they provided even more - the functions and value add will be more evident.
• Be careful to allow for users to define themselves in different ways, Developer, Business, Consultant etc.

That is all we have time for - we didn’t get a change to discuss large data sets on small screens...but stay tuned...

Great Discussions.

D: Yoga Sun Salutations

Convener: Anna Raven

Notes-taker: Melanie Archer

TAGS

• yoga
• health

Notes:

Start with 3 Sun Salutations: forward bend to lunge to downward dog to cobra to downward dog to lunge to forward bend to standing. Breathe.

Then continuing with 3 more Sun salutations: As above, but insert Warrior (Virasana) 1 & 2 and Triangle after the lunge.

Continue with Tailor’s pose and Inversions--head stand, shoulder stand, or supported wide-angle forward bend (head on chair)

E: Django

Convener: Vicky Tuite

Notes-taker(s): Christine Bush, Strata Chalup

TAGS

• Django
• Python
• programming

Resources that surface in your session - URL’s and other Links, Books, Organizations, Articles etc… related to this topic:

• http://www.python.org/download/
• http://www.mysql.com/
• http://www.mamp.info/en/index.html
• http://www.djangoproject.com
• http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/whatisgoogleappengine.html
• http://djangosites.org
• http://djangobook.com
• http://www.wingware.com/doc/howtos/django
• http://withdjango.com/ (Jeff Forcier, Paul Bissex, Wesley Chun)
• http://uswaretech.com/blog/2009/08/django-socialauth-login-via-twitter-facebook-openid-yahoo-google/

Highlights:

• Django is a Python-based framework. It uses model oriented programming to create database-driven applications.
• You can use “from” statements to import Python modules into Django .py files.
• Vicky demonstrated a task manager app she built using Django. Her application included the following files:

models.py, urls.py, views.py, forms.py
index.html, form_create.html, tasks.html, vt_base.html

• Django generates RESTful URLs.
• Running a “Make Project” command generates code stubs.
• Django Admin is included in the framework download and is used to build against/interact with a database. The only required direct database action entailed with most Django projects is creating the database to be used. You can use a “synch” command to keep code and database synchronized during development.
• There is also a Python Manage shell you can use for debugging.

Django Notes

F: Digital Game Museum

Convener:Judith Haemmerle Note Taker:Catherine Herdlick

SATURDAY:

Skills/background of attendants:
Some programmers, some game designers, two children



Resources: 


• digitalgamemuseum.org

• Strong Museum / Electronic Games Museum in Rochester, NY 

• Journal of Play: http://www.americanjournalofplay.org/

• Game: Fat Princess
Organization: WIGI (women in games international)




Would love to preserve gaming history in the same way that computer history museum is preserving computer history.



About the origins of Game Museum

Favorite games for Judith to play with her son: Railroad Tycoon, Zork. And now he's a game programmer / indy game developer. Doing the one game a month (developed in a week).

Likes gamer culture. People who play games. Very few gams that are engaging for women. Moved here to be near her son and started volunteering at the Computer History Museum (CHM). About to shut down CHM for a year to put in a new exhibit. CHM is divided into all of these alcoves - only one is dedicated to games.

Games really push both hardware and software. Likes the t-shirts, etc. that go along with gaming culture. People everywhere have their own personal collections in their garages, etc. and are super willing to donate. So excited about this, she got a Masters in Museum Studies (other bg, construction supervision, math/science/computer teaching, managing collections for other museums - showing old tvs and radios?). Electronic

Games Museum does exist in Rochester, NY. Does like SIlicon Valley / Mt. View esp. for a location for this because it's 1/2 way between SF and San Jose. Got going in earnest about a year ago. Currently at the pre-garage state. Still haven't gotten incorporation status back from Sacramento. Will take awhile to get the 501(c)3 status approved. 



Originally started with 3 women and 3 men on the board. But the 2 other women have dropped out. Worried about the fact that now with only men on the board it'll be a problem. How to create an environment that involves women and female developers. 

How to get more women involved??? Especially in a leadership role?


How to make more female-friendly games?
- Very often, the games intended for women are made by men and HIGHLY miss the mark. 



Define "casual games" 


• Quick learning curve, more episodic, mass appeal

• Often misused term, a bit imperfect



Conversation about gamer boy response to fat princess and girl gamers got to push back. 



Nature of social games. 



Ideas:

• All-women game jam: Judith could get in touch with the guy from Cogswell, Hacker Dojo could be involved, a few women from yesterday would be super psyched.

• Wigi

• Wiki-style curation model 

• Display design - putting on shows, etc. 



Strong Museum / Electronic Games Museum in Rochester, NY also has a quarterly journal.



Getting the word out now about need to build a collection via word-of-mouth, etc. Is a great way to build the collection. Later, will take memberships and use that as a way to get some starting $ and talk about membership numbers to get more donations, etc. 



Digital Games Museum  - the goals and values, strategic plans for collection growth, etc. is all online. Wants help writing up business plan and financial projections.  Is starting with an inclusive policy - anything with a chip is welcome, even a "digital" board game.

G: How to Effectively Teach Computer Programming NO NOTES

H: Permission Systems to Pursue Your Passions

Convener: Yvonne Burgess

Notes-taker(s): Jenn Sramek

TAGS for the session: * permission * personal structures * living * leadership * passion

Resources:

• Elizabet Satouris - author of god article on Imaginal Cells
• Flylady.net - (Finally Loving Yourself)

Key Points:

• Expectations vs. Permission - you are breaking out of others' mold of you. Critics will say "Why do you want to do that?" but there is no answer that will satisfy both them AND you. People who seem the best at what they do are also often the most in pursuit of their passion.

• Doing too much was discussed. To counter the "You can do it, more, etc." we need to keep in mind to give ourselves permission to do NOTHING, which women so rarely do. People were in different places on the spectrum. THose who are just getting the concept of what they have permission to do, and those who are at the end of a long process of re-engineering their permissions systems.

• The Golden Chains - We discussed people working in jobs that were so comfortable and they were hard to leave (to pursue passions). The converse was also discussed, in that having a high paying job can offer the option of pursuing passions in off-time, so there is no one-size-fits all.

• We discussed the spectrum of passion from hobby to career.

• Guilt is not a substitute for passion. You are "not running away from him, but running toward your life."

I: How to achieve virtually Anything in 3 steps

Session 2

A: Women in Sys Admin

Convener: Jessica DeVita

Notes-taker: Jennelle Crothers

www.theubergeekgirl.com

Notes:

Differences in what can be learned in corporate IT, vs doing SOHO support. It's for the computer support role to be considered a “negative”, it's easy to complain about what doesn't work. It can be hard to move up in the corporate world, sometimes women can become bitter. Work life/balance can also be an issue for women.

Do women in our role need to know twice as much. But that women sometimes do that to themselves – by waiting to put themselves out until the feel they know everything.

Comfort levels vary when women come into a group. Hazing is part of the norm. You do need to be able to roll with it to some extent.

Share information is key and sharing information is power. Sometimes one system admin is just better at finding information.

Where does the negativity to woman begin in our area? If you are good, you don't have to stay in where you are. Finding a mentor and being a mentor to other women in technology are important to making people comfortable in a new role.

Users perceptions to women doing support – people appreciate someone who listens, but sometimes don't realize that a woman can solve the problems. Women can be more compassionate. It's okay to not know the answer – as long as you are willing to find the answer.

How do teachers come into play with tech support. Does having that background help with giving user support, etc.

Do your spouses support your particular role? Do geeks marry geeks? We enjoy talking to other people who can at least follow along. How does our job help adjust female stereotypes by being an example to our children, siblings, etc..??

B: Raising Next Gen of BadAss Girlz NO NOTES

C: Jibber Jobber

Convener: Alex Woody   Notes-taker: Stephanie Moore-Fuller   You should have:


• 200 people in your network who would reply to an email from you (about job networking stuff) within 48 hours.

• 10 companies you want to work for someday



Website is JibberJobber.com, it is a website to help manage your job search.



There is a free level, and when you sign up you get premium level for the first 2 weeks.



Advantages:


• you don't have to build your own spreadsheet

• it is linked with other tools like LinkedIn and Google

• the data is in the cloud

D: Code Rocks

Convener: Sarah Mei

Notes-taker(s): Liz Henry

Programming is/will become part of basic literacy. Let's get more women programming, from scratch. What it takes to move into that field.

What resources can you find?

We do introductions. Strata Chalup: http://virtual.net Sys admin, professional programmer in C in 1988 and 1996, kept going to system administration and project management. Enjoy programming. Web programming in C in 1994, not the server but making little C files to make html. But I felt like i wasn't really a programmer because I didn't write giant applications. Want to do Ruby

Christine Bush, love being a programmer. I never thought I would become one, but I am. Offer myself as a success story, didn't take computer sci in college. I do one on one tutoring. Python, Actionscript, XML.

Akkana, been programmer for long time, no comp sci in college, self taught. write for linuxplanet.

Me (Liz) No comp sci background but programming for fun since I was a kid in the 70s. Worked in IT, software engineer, Perl 10 yrs ago, now more Python, PHP, Drupal, happy to get anyone here started writing some code.

Beeta: I'm in high school. Biomedical engineering. what kind of programming to they use.? i'm on a robotic team and we use Autodesk. i've tried to learn that.

Fatima: Beeta's mom. developing for 13 years. web developer.

Strata recs Shawna as a doctor who does programming.

Melanie Archer : Talks about the "not really a programmer" idea. I don't have comp sci background. Why do people feel that is necessary

Christine: a bit of HTML, i'm a newbie, i want to do more CSS, PHP, Java but i have no idea how to start

Jennifer from BlogHer: I'm a newbie, interested in it, want to understand, want books, how-to.

Strata suggests site with open source manuals, flossmanuals.net How to think like a computer scientist.

Akkana: does anyone like that book and learn from it? It seems sotheoretical.

Emily: I loved it! The python one!

Sarah: Learn to Program by Chris Pine

Melanie: SArah's Rails for Women workshops. GREAT. immersion. hand holding, great for people with no background in programming.

Krisie Loue: 10 yrs programming, want more high level knowledge.

Beth Kilpatrick: not a lot of programming experience. i get html and can look at code and can understand what the code is doing but I'd like to write it myself.

Emily: one on one time is the best thing. you hit that wall.

Akkana: Codechix, we meet at the hackerdojo once a month, and there's linuxchix.org irc channel, good place to ask questions

Christine: Explains what Linux is

Sally Applinn - phd student, 18 yr background in UX but never learned to code, undretand talking to programmers. But now i need to take data and layer it onto things. Govt data. I'd like to learn how to do that. Javascript? Python? how to put data with apps.

Akkana, more of us: We need session on doing open data mashup stuff. map mashups. where to start?

Emily: Pro Web2.0 book.

Sarah Mei: google maps, nice api,

Melanie: application programming interface

Sarah: it's hard to say what language to use for what.

List of stuff we want to use: Javascript, Java. What is diff between javascript and java? PHP, C++ .

• Java vs. javascript.
• Ruby vs. Ruby on Rails vs. Python

• PHP vs. XHTML
• C#
• C++ vs Java
• XML
• Perl
• MYSQL, Postgres, Oracle

What is a compiler?

Compiled vs. scripting vs. interpreted.

http://showmedo.com/videotutorials/python http://php.net/manual/en/tutorial.php

I interrupt: Scripted languages you can read the code like English, run the program, open it and read it directly. Compiled, there's a bunch of files you can read, and you run a command that slams them together into an unreadable format, which you then run.

Going through the Cs. All compiled languages. C++ for a lot of scientific programming. Maybe slightly more arcane. Once you compile them they're really fast. Chew through large amounts of data very quickly. They're around since the 70s, 80s, except C# which is 5 years old from Microsoft and is more like Java. It's a bit like Java 2.0.

Visual Basic… it's its own little Microsoft closed system world and it's great if you stay in it because the dev env is nice with lots of tools but if you want to go out of that and connect it's hard.

Strata talks about low level programming, so good for scientific programming IEEE 420 bus is the standard for what information gets exchanages, it's a connector that gets plugged in, you have a device driver for it, open it like a file, you control it. i did a flight motion simulator and diagnostic info. there's no trick to it, a robot arm, a temperature ssensore. out of the first 24 bits, that's temp reading, out of next 7 bits, that's the speed, next 2 bits tells you if the sensor is off or on. C makes it easy to read these bit by bit. make the robot arm hand claw open and claw . Very good for scientific instruments and programming.

Sarah: C you get right to the nitty gritty and controlling hardware. You can do it in other languages with a little more setup.

Akkana: Operating systems are written in C, often.

Sally: so other languages are written in C

Strata: core written in c, interpreter, then the rest of the language will be writtn in the language itself.

Christine B: down side is you have to learn about memory management and garbage collection and low level computer stuff, the more recent langaugae remove that burden so you can focus on content. Flash is awesome… you can start drawing and get started very quickly and easily. Actionscript too. It runs just in the browser.

Melanie: What is Flex?

Chrisinte: framework for actionscript, like a library. best way or most efficient way to do certain recurring tasks usually from community, organization that manages the language will release a framework or library. prewritten piece of code you can use in your application.

Beth: So like in dreamweaver

Fatima: Java, Ruby?

Sarah: Java used for web apps, also Ruby. you can run ruby inside of java these days. from programming perspective they feel very different, the syntax is very different, but you use them for similiar purposes or tasks

Akkana: Rails is good for talking to a database and big web app with maybe all your customers. Java is a bit confusing on the server beause there's more than one framework, Tomcat and others. Ruby, you knoweveryone uses rails.

Christine: java is a language not a platform.

Liz: I raise political/cultural issues with Free/Open Source languagesand frameworks and databases vs. proprietary.

Can you just learn one lanaguae that does what you want to do?

Akkana: most programmers know a bit of many

Sarah: it becomes easier to learn new ones once you know one.

Sally: Vitamin D information. especially important for programmers

http://w3schools.com/ More great beginning programming tutorials

http://en.flossmanuals.net/ And more - which you can edit!

E: 10 Steps for Creating Engaging Content

F: Nonprofits and Open Source

Convener: Jenn Sremak

Notes-takers: Rowan Fairgrove

Tags

• non-profits
• open source

Resources:

Civic Actions Jenn works here. Internet professionals empowering social change. We span 6 time zones, 8 countries and 12 languages, working in real-time 24/7 with the latest in social media, open source and emerging technologies.

Drupal:is a content management system that you will hear mentioned often. It integrates with salesforce and other CRM systems. And has a very extensible toolset. Clone is another open source CMS. Drupal is popular because it can be managed by multiple people in an organization so the website can be upated and made more usable than it was when things had to be sent to a single "web master" individual.

CiviCRM  <http://civicrm.org/> CiviCRM is a free, libre and open source software constituent relationship management solution. CiviCRM is web-based, internationalized, and designed specifically to meet the needs of advocacy, non-profit and non-governmental groups. Integration with both Drupal and Joomla! content management systems gives you the tools to connect, communicate and activate your supporters and constituents.

Acquia <http://acquia.com/> is a hosted drupal service. Acquia offers a free Drupal distribution, a network of services to simplify the operation of your site, commercial support, and even hosting for one stop Drupal infrastructure support.

Aspiration Tech - <http://www.aspirationtech.org/> connects nonprofits to software solutions that help them more effectively meet their missions of positive global change. They have local and global events. There is a Social Media Sewing Circle that is Bay Area.

Tech Soup <http://www.techsoup.org> offers nonprofits a one-stop resource for technology needs by providing free information, resources, and support. In addition to online information and resources, we offer a product philanthropy service called TechSoup Stock. Here, nonprofits can access donated and discounted technology products, generously provided by corporate and nonprofit technology partners. It offers closed source software quite cheaply rather than being open source per se.

NTen -  Nonprofit Technology Conference  <http://www.nten.org/ntc> will bring together an outstanding group of nonprofit leaders, IT innovators, communications gurus, fundraising superstars amongst other nonprofit staff looking to learn the latest trends, practical how-tos, and IT solutions to optimize their organization's technology to further their missions to create more social good in the world.

Shared Records <http://www.sharedrecords.org/> The Shared Records project provides a free web service for community organizations to securely store and share records. SharedRecords also provides software tools for storing, retrieving, and annotating those records. This site and associated software is expressly designed for organizations that want the advantages of electronic storage and communication while maintaining their existing work practices and protecting the privacy of their clients.

Nonprofit Quarterly <http://www.nonprofitquarterly.org/> believes that open societies require venues for individuals to undertake public projects together that are larger than friends and family but smaller than the state and that range from community arts and group homes to environmental advocacy.

Asterisk <http://www.asterisk.org/> is software that turns an ordinary computer into a voice communications server. Asterisk is the world's most powerful and popular telephony development tool-kit. It is used by small businesses, large businesses, call centers, carriers and governments worldwide. Asterisk is open source and is available free to all under the terms of the GPL.

SugarCRM <http://www.sugarcrm.com/crm/> for managing contacts.

Conversation:

Judith - They use Open Office and Linux. There are now several open source projects in the museum community - Collective Access and Omega for instance.

Jenn - closed source you can't get into the code. Open source is open to developers to collaborate on software. Using open source does obligate you to give make to the community. Rule of thumb - budget about 20% a year of your website costs each subsequent year just to maintain (not update) it.

Jenn - Gorgeously customized can be good and can be a trap. Drupal in particular is good for iterative development. So you can have people use it and see what really works. Amnesty built their site on Drupal 5 and put in their budget the money to put some stuff back. Which makes other developers want to help Amnesty since they are contributing back to the system. There are local Drupal user groups. There is on in Berkeley. There are Drupal camps "website in a day" projects and such. Drupal is also doing a lot of internationalization. So if you are planning to translate your information into another language, Drupal has good tools for that. Check out the forums on Drupal.org.  CiviCRMhas widgets that will allow you do do spot fundraising for instance.

Jen-Mei, we have set up phone systems with Asterisk <http://www.asterisk.org/>. A small organization can ahve a phone tree, hold music, conference calls. SugarCRM <http://www.sugarcrm.com/crm/> for managing contacts. Total cost ofownership is a consideration. Microsoft makes Office so cheap for 501c3 and people need so little training compared to say Open Office that it can be cheaper to use the closed source product.

Karen - I have a non-profit that someone set up for them that has a website that someone set up for them but it is quite static. Can anyone recommend a great non-profit website where they are using the tools? Both tools for serving clients and for attracting donors. What are forums for branding, getting their name out there. They are still using spreadsheets and stuff. They don't have any information beyond names and stuff.  How can you leverage a volunteer base?

Suggested sites to look at from Karen's question:

• St. John's Shelter in Sacramento <http://www.stjohnsshelter.org/>
• Kiva <http://www.kiva.org/>
• Donors Choose <http://www.donorschoose.org/>
• Kick Starter <http://www.kickstarter.com/>
• Room to Read <http://www.roomtoread.org/>

Jenn wants to unpack the question. Figure out what the needs are - who are the constituents and how best to engage them. How web savvy are your users?

G: Moving into Management

Convener: Rachel Luxemburg

Notes-taker: Stacia Carr

TAGS for the session:

• #careerDevDirectReports
• #GenerationalMgmt
• #demonstratingLeadership

Notes:

• Career Development
  • What are managers required to do for their direct reports?

• Managing Across Generations
  • Work with your HR department
  • Recognize that different generations require different types of mgmt

• How to move into management?
• Demonstrate leadership, take initiative, manage up, do some big picture thinking, make sure you get credit
• Layoffs and Firing

H: Getting into Open Source

Convener: Anna Billstrom

Notes-taker: Lara Ortiz de Montellano, Tiffany Von Emmel

Why don't we feel comfortable?

Collaboratie organization - IS it organized?

Have we noted a problem with some open source app and NOT gone and fixed or improved it? Why? - lack of confidence?

Anna - story of how she started - yes, i have time. i can do it. Because it is volunteered, you think yes, i can. then this guy comes along, and challenges the quality of work. The gy hadn't committed code. The core community gave supportive feedback to Anna. Now, she listens to them.

Not all people are the same.  Noticing that guys have less expectation that people will follow through, whereas women are more committed to following through, and are anxious if they do not

Having your own local contacts do a code review before you post to boost confidence in your own work.

Different communities have different idioms/local styles - how big a deal is it?  Varies withthe project.  Some are more rigid than others.

Hang around and see if it is a place where you want to be. Join the list, and see if commits are happening. is there a communication that you are not a part of? that might be an old boys club or there's some club

Problems of trying grasp all the local politics ahead of time - not really practical. 

Do we care if it's accepted or just did we fix the bug for our own uses and sending it in is ancillary.  Many guys not.  Are we more hung up on submitting it as part of the project?

OMG - they are looking at my code, line by line, and there is a way to do it. 

Willingness to make mistakes in public (even if it's not usually THAT public). maybe 4,000 people on list but four people looking at it

Maybe good to start in places we're not that emotionally invested, or start in an area with less gatekeeping.  Something less sexy and eternally neglected like docs or examples.  Find a small pond. Linux device drivers underserved and a zone of opportunity.

Sarah - if someone complains about the wiki, wonders why the person doesn't just fix it.   You don't want to dive in where a lot of people are complaining about an issue.

How much time does it take to contribute? 

Sarah went and just asked for someone to help mentor her in an initial contribution.

Rupa - If you have a question, post on the Codechix list

Jumping into coed projects and acting as inspiration/founder effect.

Why are we not contributing? no clear organization, and not clear where to get started.  Lack of overt entry paths.  

Project cores vary in goals - is it just "I'm doing this and just happen to be open sourcing it" and maybe not even looking for developers, and often dev skills do not map to organizational skills or interests even in projects that do want help.

Generally projects have wiki, bug tracker, user list and/or dev list, and code respository.  If they don't have it, they're pretty feeble and a poor prospect.  If they do it's a place start.

Rob Savoy, Founder of EFF - has only written free open source source software. The benefits of writing Open Source - everything you write is that you can re-use in your next project.  Not constrained to reinvent it every time you change jobs.  

Also resume value of contributorship... 

Pair programming on open source projects? - Is this something we can do and would it help make it less overwhelming?

Gnome specifically recruiting women.  Some kind of summer of code thing for women students, which also suggests an active interest in women contributors generally.

Open source business models:

• Open Laszlo - the professional services became the money maker, and many companies have mixed models. Eg putting commercial features on top of open source core.
• Red Hat - the software is free. you pay for support
• Consulting - splitting projects into open source portable elements and customer specific elements that stay as corporate IP.
• Value to business of getting other people to maintain, test, doc, port etc.
• Also warm fuzzies of having total strangers finding your stuff useful.
• Solving your own problems by writing/fixing the software you need.

Just because there's a jerk doesn't mean he's representative of the general community (even if sometimes the others aren't calling the jerk out, just cringeing quietly).

Often men are pretty excited to see women involved.  A lot of guys "I really want it to be different but just don't know what to do."  A lot of other people are just thrilled to have people insterested in their own subgeekery.

Don't apologize preemptively and try not to get too carried away with the exlamation points. Generally, don't give way to the equivalent of nervous chatter.

SCALE coming up Feb 19th in LA. Dreamfish Marketplace looking for devs.

J: Startup Bootcamp Part 2

Convener: Icis   Notes-taker:  Josephine Liang

Notes

Bios of Attendees

Leslie -- instructional designer, multimedia producer, graduating as phd in education -- want to start a nonprofit to support adults with health problem --- health social networks -- face to face or online

Amol -- interaction designer -- ministartup -- design consultancy -- lot in software -- education -- share a white board -- focus on white boarding -- how to focus on the tak found siliconvalley link -- startup -- serves startup company

Katy -- consultaing social media to startups Christine -- out of school in 7 years -- project maangment -- try to get a startup -- meet the right people Cynthia -- founded 3 startups, board in companies, worked in 30 startups, 100 pitches of the month, any interest to venture Lauren -- phd -- SEO-- finished up proof of concecpt.

Anca -- programmer -- technology salon -- safe place to experience tech Melanie -- citizen of science initiative -- geneno reposititory -- use google wave -- diy bio incubator -- natural language processing, AI technology

Stacey -- computer security -- started own company 3 years ago Terry -- browsing

How to Start a Company

• A lot of products cannot stand on their own and often need help early on to be successful.

• Many successful companies do not start as research lab, -- start as a single product

then goes to research lab -- research lab can get government grant -- but not a good thing to start

• Get a group of people who has experience with her first start up
• get proof of concept
• then find funding

IP considerations

what about Intellectual Properties? Should be worried LCA -- have entensive training on what can or can not give and the implication Since VC's will not sign an NDA, you should give as little as possible

Operation Considerations

1. MS Bizpark

Microsoft's attempt to help early stage startups. Serveral things useful whatever the technology:

• find the connection with field evangelist
• have resource to distribute to female entreprenuer
• msdn.deverloper network
• If you have problems with one of their products, find an evangelist of the product who can sent you to the field evangelist
• or conference speaker who can direct you to the right person

1. start in the cloud and rent computing time and hosting

read the LSA -- make sure get the good premium cloud vendor --- MS has Windows ASer ? MS cloud --- started in January 1st - in Beta now. --- different cloud provider has different LSA -- compute cycle is charged -- automatically scalling in MS cloud

However, using cloud computing can be a security risk to your intellectual property.

1. other resources for bootstrapping software:

• eagle CAD software -- $400 / seat,
• use student tool - find student to buy those tools for you
• Use coworking centers such as hacker dojo, noisebridge -- plug and play technology center
• Find funding by provide funding using collage incubators or business plan competition - if you win, you could even get office space
• Get a CFO sooner rather than later or at least QuickBooks
• Use Barcamps to get ideas off the ground in a short amount of time.

Understanding Private Equity Players (Venture Capitalists, Angels, and others)

Investors are looking to do two things:

1. making money off the entrepreneur
2. making money off the investment

• They may come bearing money, but they can also bear trouble

difficult to tell if some one is con-artist so find a legitament place to pitch your idea or get an introduction to an investor. A lot of places you can pitch your idea to:

""Please no more Social Media companies!!!!""

• If the company making money, it is easier for the founders. Twitter started tech first and then business model.

• Find the right investor for your idea. Shop around.
• Be picky about the investor because they will become family for a very long time.

Some VC will come in in small amount like $10,000 and then he/she will form a syndicate and invest in your companies -- or a supply chain of money -- They can also tie you to who can give money to you (good and bad) -- really know who are dealing with -- intentions, backup plan

Using The Funded can help you understand how other founders have done with other VC's or angels.

• Angels work as syndicates: A group of people who go in together to fund a company.

• Don't ask for money;ask for advice. It is the best way to get money from a VC

• Consider finding a strategic partner, who is looking to invest in technology.

currently: microsft intel, google, intel, all look for places ot invest

Common Presenation Mistakes made during the Pitch

common mistakes woman do: jumping, being cute, look for a date,

be calm when speaking to the group

what make a difference to have a woman to present the idea than a man? CEO is not always the most knowledgable person about the business -- he/she maybe the most connected or talk the best

CEO driven by getting the product out more quickly (the business type) -- the best is the CEO who are in tech but getting a Business degree while runig the ocmpany

Resources

cynthis kocialski www.cynthiakocalski.com www.comnotes.com

lauren Barghout PHD burningeyedeas.com

Tech Coast Angels -- Angel group(just go to mark sesster's blog) make a a podcast for VC [1]

melanie swan -- citizen's genomics @lablogga

urban tribe -- social network --

K: Mind Control to Tilt your direction

Convener: Timbrely Pearsley

Tags:

• Mind control
• CBT


Notes:

• David Burns, The gentle art of verbal selfdefence & How to disagree without being disagreable
• Suzette Haden Elgin, The game
• Neil Strauss, Qurkology
• Richard Weisman
Nami.org, blog - ozarque
• Distorted thinking will drive you down

• Catastrofyig small things

• Too much "What if"

• Things are most of the time not about you in others inner dialog

• Don't try to read someone else mind and think you know their subtext. Just accknowledge and relese.

• Polirized thinking, nothing is black or white, it's hgrey scale.

• The world does not revolved around you.

• Teach our children about distorted thinking, and how to handle it.

• React vs respond

• Frame the distortion

Session 3

A: Group Visit to Museum

B: Networking LDAP

Convener: Erin Shatara

Notes-taker: Erin Shatara

Resources:

The LDAP Protocol… (ppt)

• http://www.citrix.com/English/ps2/products/product.asp?contentID=21679&ntref=prod_top
• ldap error codes: http://wikis.sun.com/display/SunJavaSystem/LDAP+Error+Codes
• http://support.microsoft.com/kb/218185

What is LDAP: 

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightweight_Directory_Access_Protocol
• http://www.openldap.org/
• http://bytes.com/topic/c-sharp/answers/245110-how-determine-dc-answers-ldap-query

C: Building Form and Survey Collection info with Google App NO NOTES

D: How to improve your Website

Convener: Susanne Omander

Notes-taker: Susanne Omander  

1. Are you interested in improvement our is your site good as it is?
Analytics and webmaster tools helps to measure

2. Have you submitted your site to the local business websites? Google,
bing Yahoo (free) Yelp (payed)

3. Content on you web site, good landing page, user in mind (not your
business idea) when designed the site business idea) when designed the
site
4. Online marketing (Ads)



1. Ask if they looked at your web site at al

2. Ask what they would change, add to your website. Are they just
looking at one thing or trying to get the whole picture

3. Ask for references 4 Ask for a free consultation and estimates. SEO $25-180/h

E: Vi/Vim Tips and Tricks

F: Acing your Next Interview

Notes-taker: El White

Overview: why do this?

• J showed her portfolio which included an expanded resume, code and schematic examples, performance reviews and personal interests. Takes it with her to interviews to have examples handy.
• Can replace whiteboard coding. But not always. Really good for examples and answering questions.
• Important: use personal project code and not stuff you’ve done for a company.

Resume- find your target position

• What do you wanna do?
• Transitioning?
• Recent grad?
• No experience?

Break down into sections

• Provide examples
• Use SW on the fly

Package the portfolio together.

G: Bee Keeping

H: Art and Tech

Convener: Dee   Notes-taker:  Astra Bryant

TAGS:

• Art,
• Technology

Resources:

• Book: Color (about how color is produced around the world),
• Etsy, Church of Craft, Spoon Flower (making fabric),
• Meetup.com (setting up a community),
• Steven Johnson “Everything Bad is Good for You”

I: Pair Programming

Convener: Sarah Mei,Anna Billstrom, Carmen   Notes-taker:  Anna Billstrom

Akkana; should the most experienced person be the typer?

a-billstrom: no, and you should swap out regularly

akkana: do your typos go away?

s-mei: sometimes, in theory

rupa: how do you resolve conflicts?

J-mei: it forces you to get social skills, you have to negotiate, you have to resolve it

the only programming i've done is JS and some HTML, pairing with people with disparate exp. levels, in intro to java, etc. I had problems taking leaps,

what about not having the language background, in high concepts

a-billstrom: the focus is more important

s-mei: the learning is really accelerated, the input from hearing is higher, so almost hearing and doing is better than learning and doing.

l-hansen: as a novice there are diff. benefits, If there's 2 novices, it's a struggle, you are there through he struggle. If you're with a senior engineer, you end up seeing a higher level, that sinks in slowly. Sometimes you have to just go and do it.

a-billstrom: it's interesting how many people are int. in working with lesser experienced people

j-mei: yes it's a new perspective, and with learning projects is great - it depends on the process

lynn: works at microsoft, I've been pair programming, I learned Java and after a month, was able to teach in it too. I've been a trainer for 10 years, and it was a religious experience! I've been teaching girls for 3 years, pair programming totally works with kids. It's more social, they wrote their first program in 10 minutes. don't wait 10 years to do it. It was humiliating at first. When we came into .Net, he wasn't good at it. If you're feeling stupid, neither of us know Ruby, so.

a.billstrom yeah check your ego at the door, or "it's checked for you"

rupa: more than 2?

s-mei, yeah

liah: it's hard to see the screen

rupa: more than 1 screen

j-mei: 2 keyboards, or 1

lynn: with the kids, 5 minutes, and 25 minutes with my adult partner, he always does 1st in person, then after that virtual. 2 months virtual so far. His key thing is the initial visual in person meeting. I'm surprised at how much we can do virtual. MSFT has a free tool called share-view, and VMC. EC2 image in Amazon, too.

s-mei: there are a few folks at Pivotal who work remotely and with the Mac you can do it, there's a screen. It seems to work well for them.

anne: arent' there moments when you have to go and sit by yourself and understand this

j-mei: extreme programming, there are "spikes" when yu're not in pairs, that's so foreign you have to study it on your own. Then come back to the team.

L-hansen: how do you deal with it when you're not using the egg timer, when the other person wants to be in charge all the time.

s-mei: in TDD one person will write the test, and the other writes the code, that's one way to deal with it. depends on how much code it takes to make the test pass

j-mei: you need to notice how much you're using the keyboard, etc. and remember to switch pairs. Don't always pair with the same person.

s-mei: this guy at pivotal calls it "promiscuous pairing"

anne: what about management and that there's 2 people on it

a-billstrom: it's quadruply productive

akkana: and you're not chekcing gmail/etc.

kathy: what about how long they can focus, checking gmail for 1 minute

s-mei: once an hour get up and walk around, with anna we were down for 2 hours,

liz-henry: paired with someone not a programmer at all, a UI or a product person

liah-henry: I paired with my boyfriend, he felt like he got stuff, which he wouldn't get by himself

stacia: i run a tech department, in pair programming everything takes 2x as long; her thinking was, it takes longer to program, when you push to QA there are less bugs

s-mei: there are just folks who don't make good pair programmers. They want to be on theri own, not social enough. They are actively hostile to the idea.

liz-h: pairing with my sys admin.

s-mei: i'm more productive when I pair.

j-mei: one of the benefits of the management is that they are working together, and keeping each other in check. It manages the whole "code ownership" thing to break free of it.

Kathy out of an 8 hour day, how much do you spend pair programming

s-mei: pivotal spends 8 hour day doing it, programming. Pretty hard core. Most who do it are blazing cloud as the work load is

anne- there are some folks who are fast, but go many different directions. i'm not like that, i go slower

s-mei: that's indicative of not really thinking it through-- the point isn't not to go as fast as they can, it's more explaining what they're doing, a more coherent thought process to it

rupa: how do you deal with ... at work i have this legacy system, if someone else comes into this system. It's a piece of crap that's around forever.

j-mei: you're explaining what you do as you go, they're asking questions as you go along, and at one point they'd pick it up and go along.

a-billstrom: it shines a light on some utilities or hacks you do for a while that aren't great and efficient

liz-henry: make the person send you the version control

anne- you can record or do voice to text,

j-mei: if youre pairing all the time, you're going to be doing it repeatedly

liz-h: no- that's actually what I do all the time

l-hansen: pull the code before work, and then pull it again afterwards, and then it sort of gets into my head better.

s-mei: how do you deal with source control when pairing. The way that pivotal handles it is that they have a little after-commit in git. They look at the git user with two lasts name, gitpair gem and pivotal has one too.

j-mei: there are diff. version control systems, etc. at the very least you can put your initials in with each commit, and subversion is going to lose all that anyway

l-hansen: I think that a) pair programming is a lot of fun; when you're buy yourself there's not much laughing. b) it's good for women too- it's more social and communicating, having fun, it's enjoyable job experience.

project ideas: carmen & jen-mei were going to pair on a test that she wanted to write. We were going to test a file upload.

<off to write projects and skills on board, and pair Photos forthcoming>

J: Model/ Analyze Electric Car

M: iPeriod: Nerdy Tools for Girl Stuff

Session 4

A: Intro to Marking with CNC Tools

C: Command Line Awesomeness

Convener: Liah Hansen   Notes-taker: Liah Hansen 

RESOURCES Linux Journal - work the shell, also Kyle Ranking - http://bit.ly/60rsJ9

Google for unix:

• apropos <paginate, sum link,> spews all the possible things you might be thinking
• man <command>

Book:

• unix haters handbook
• unix in plain english

options = flags = switches

locate: looks at a database finds any file on the system that matches a certain string

find: an older command, uses more resources

which: gives you pathway - looks in your path to see if you have a command that matches a certain name

| - pipe -> passes output to another command

> - redirect output to file

< - direct contents of file to command

cd -change directory

pwd - print working directory

ls - list

ls -l list (options: -l long, -a all)

ls -l | more => paginates it

more

find

STDIN

STDOUT

ls | grep txt out put will go into a rep that will go into a rep that will connect one file to another with a pipe

grep -r

grep pdf *

ls > /tmp/filelist.txt

cat /tmp/filelist.txt

difference between cat and more cat spews whole thing, more does one page at a time

ls | grep pdf

locate LinuxJournal

which ls

apropos pdf gives all the files with the string pdf in them

moving files

• cp. - copy
• mV - move/rename
• rm -remove/delete
• mkdir -make directory

sym links make it easy to move everyone to a new software package

common problem: don't end your path with a slash

.profile

.bash

if you type rep, it doesn't by default look in filenames that start with dot…you have to tell it to look for files with dot. rep path .* it looks in . and ..

find out where path is set:

cd

grep PATH.??* - this command makes it look for files which start with dot which does not do by default

grep home.??* find out what home variable is set to

awk and sed - partners in crime

seed is stream editor

awk is ability to search in stream and be able to output variables

touch will create file

apropos | grep 1

Teaching Programming

Resources for teaching programming

Tools:

• Alice
• Greenfoot.org (simple Java IDE – you can decide how much syntax to expose the kids to – girl friendly)
• Scratch (totally visual programming env)
• Small basic (like logo, draws as moves)
• Kodu (kids programming env)
• Processing (based on Java, interactive visual things)
• Squeak – based on small talk, etoys,
• Mark Guzdial wrote books on Squeak & developed CS programming curriculum. His wife Barbara reaches out too.
• Sarah set up program for her school. Teachingkids.railsbridge.org
• Hackityhack
• Shoes – simplified easy to install Ruby
• CS exercises that don’t involve computers
• National org that has info on curriculum for kids – teach first graders algorithms (csunplugged.org)(international society technology and education iste.org)

Books:

• Learn to Program
• Seymore Papert – books on logo and more

Questions:

• How to teach non-programmers in one day
• Teaching Styles
• Be aware of who you are calling on
• Group work vs solo
• Compulsory vs elective – have to change your approach
• How to deal with reluctant kids
• Facebook distraction vs engaging
• Setting up environment – hosted env, thumbdrive
• Common knowledge that teachers learn
  • The biggest thing is to setup the environment to account for the slowest person in the class- your prep, etc. I think of it interms of scaffolding. Have a baseline, where they can come in and be productive. Give them something really simple to do. Have a framework where they can make it work in under 10seconds. Priorities have to be- all the same operating system, same basic setup, so yu can give universal instructionst hat everyone can understand.
  • We don’t have that in the workshops, but we have TAs that help setup. And we have a setup bit the night before.
  • If you have instructions folks can follow if they get stuck- but if you have step by step instructions, people just read and type. How do you get them to learn?
  • There’s so much style when you’re in front of the room, it’s up to personal style. I do one step by step. “Here’s a step, go.” Ask them if they’re done first, to help their neighbor.
  • I’m a really big fan of peer to peer- you don’t know something unless you can teach it.
  • In a junior high school school setting, the kids who are way ahead start to resent that. They don’t want to be the one helping. In a one-day, two-day short session people like to help.
  • I made some kids TAs. I give them a priviledge.
  • Akkana: I’ve tried to do this- some girls like helping, others don’t. Some people feel more inspired, if there’s a bonus exercise, if you get done early.
  • S. Mei - That helps with the “facebook” (not doing course work), too.

“things you’ve learned by teaching”

• teaching seniors- if they don’t have glasses, increase the font size
• that applies to kids and grownups, increasing the font sizes
• S. Allen: You have to make them take breaks
• Sonya: 15 minute spurts, depends on kid and subject. I try to break it up into small chunks, take temperature of the room, see if I’m going to make my goal for the day. Did they eat breakfast, go to the bathroom, etc.
• S. Allen: 20 minute lecture, 20 minute lab, break.
• A. Billstrom: the homework question at the end is grea,t makes it gel
• Akkana: The woman who is ahead of everything, was told, “she was the head of her typing class.” Didn’t hit me that typing was the big issue.
• S.Allen: the biggest factor in the RonRails class, is how good are they at the command line
• S. Allen: it’s interesting thinking about all the skills that are useful in a short class
• Astra: re: Mathlabs, teaching people who had used scripts, but wanted to know how it was built. The idea of loops and basic programming ideas as well as a specific Mathlabs language and the intricate parts of the underlying structure of it. Should I teach these in parallel, or the philosophy of how to teach.
• S.Allen: nobody cares about the philosophy until they’re into a program. They don’t understand the diffence. Say it anecdotally – as a footnote- they’re not in the context to be engaged in it. Knowing the history when you don’t even know it.
• S.Allen: this is the basic 3 lines, then run it, and check it
• S.Mei- it’s important to get something running as quickly as possible.
• S.Allen- Surprising for me, to make them go through something, and I’ll explain it afterwards.
• Akkana- it’s not enough to just show it and run it themselves
• Suzi- I’m going to play devil’s advocate- I took a class and we went through the agile book, and, cool. But trying to start up other Rails projects, reading the code, but I felt stumped, if I was sit down and write something from scratch, maybe it’d be different.
• S.Allen- It’s different from programmers and non-programmers. If you’ve been one, you have the vocabulary, to teach, etc.
• Suzi- There’s this difference in levels.
• Astra- it was contractual to teach, but I got blank stares when I had to teach these programming rules. We had very specific methods, doing programs.
• One thing is to use the “way things run” as enticement, to demystify the magic.
• Dive into it to impress them on complexity then back out to the script
• Sonya. Or, talk through each loop, and have them shout out numbers as they change. If you can make a fool of yourself you can get them more enthused
• Liah: We do a lecture, do a demo, and then do a demo with real code. And we have the kids-adults people do one, and then it solidifies quite a lot.
• S.Allen: 3 different ways of learning the same thing.
• Carmen: I was teaching object-oriented concepts, and there were kids between 18 and 20, and they didn’t know about it, I was telling the girls n the car, I showed them Tupperware, four layers, and explained to them inheritance and all this stuff. The way I used to teach- I’d bring things from the real world, instead of all explanation. I have a question: I’m taking a C++ class, and teaching myself Objective-C. My professor is from here, he’s a foreignor also, he speaks slow. My classmates are mostly Asian, so he repeats things over and over. That was the first teacher that was paying attention to those kind of details. So when someone is following asleep, he chop-chops his hand.
• S.Allen: That’s good for just all audiences too, speaking slowly, and it’s a new vocabulary
• Jen-mei: Also that it’s good to be aware of your students, setup interactions so you have a 1-on-1 interaction. Has anyone had a student that worked in pairs.
• A.Billstrom: Alex did it the other day- saying “use the braintrust!” and “You should ask your neighbor” “look to your left, that is your programming partner.”
• Sarah Mei: You might want to have it on your own machine.
• A.billstrom: powerpoint of the setup were so valuable for months later.
• S.Allen: upcoming workshops: Sarah Mei and I did a workshop every month, well we did it once a quarter. This quarter we are trying to make it self-sustaining. We’re leading up to a Feb workshop – to do 4 this year- getting different leaders for each one. We have 7 or 8 women who we can then teach to be master teachers. And we want to do teacher training. “Why don’t more women want to teach?” “Maybe if you don’t change the curriculum at the beginning of the workshop…” So we’re trying to be replicable.
• S.Mei: Out on the board, there’s stuff about diff. organizations, there’s one for the workshops, so sign up fro the mailing list. If anyone wants to teach tell us.
• Liah: We also have a study group “women on ruby” from the workshops

How do you train teachers

• Sonya: I‘m a big fan of the apprenticeship model, if you want to show someone how to fall apart. Have them watch you teach something, have them teach it with you, then watch them teach.
• Akkana: It helps to watch before people fly solo.
• S.Mei: We have interns that we promote early, because we’re trying to get more teachers.
• Sonya: you can have a code word for “you need to jump in because I don’t know what I’m doing.” That the students won’t understand.
• Liah: I was teaching, and I was doing stuff in IRB, and I was typing more than I should. This guy came up to me and said, “If you hit the up arrow, “ I’m like- “I know, thanks.”
• S. Mei: Sometimes people get confused, esp. if they’re beginners.
• Akanna: Yeah the students don’t see your mouse and keyboard so they get confused.
• Suzi: There’s a great screencast that lets you do captioning
• S.Mei: That’s another session.
• S.Allen: (via Wikipedia): apprentice- can’t charge for work, journeyman- can be paid, but supervised, master- non-supervised and can be paid

How to make it more efficient to create a curriculum

• Informal learning – getting out of a rut when you don’t have a teacher – when google doesn’t know, where to go to get an answer
• Retention of knowledge
• How to inspire people to learn, retention of students

D: Discussion Engagement Platform

E: WordPress Workshop NO NOTES

F: BadAss

Convener: El White

TAGS:

• confidence
• self-esteem
• communication

Notes:

• Not everyone is what they appear. Every one of us has things that make them especially cool.
• In dealing with inter-gender communication, women are often at a confidence disadvantage.
• This session described how a set of slides can be used to help women improve their self esteem. The goal is to implement ten slides to describe events, actions and ideas that embody achievement.
• These slides are to be used for self-review, not necessarily for business situation. Instead, review when confidence is low or when there is a component of psyching up (i.e. job interviews).
• Everyone described a few of their slides (and moments they were proud of).
• Other esteem boosting methods were discussed.

G: Women Designed Social Networking NO NOTES

H: Answering the Call for Participation

I: Forget $$ Real Currency of Future

J: Work Cooperative NO NOTES

K: Girls and Grad School NO NOTES

L: Girl POwer How to increase Women's Engagement NO NOTES

iPeriod

iPeriod: Nerdy tools for managing your girl stuff

iPhone apps for tracking your cycle

• iPeriod - free and paid versions*

iMensises

for Android

• pCal

One woman talked about tracking her own body temperature for the past 3 years to 

Books:

• Taking Charge of your Fertility
• Recommended for those who don't want to get pregnant and those who do. 

There are apps to do this stuff & you can just use paper. 

Sexual activity tracking

• We mentioned Bedpost but no one uses it. (an online site for sex activity tracking).
• We talked about how we wanted these tools to be client side and not live in the cloud for fear of data leakage. 

Sleep

• Book: No More Sleepless Nights

Differences in that women go through with stage of life. 

• Body Bug
• Fit Bit
• Quantified Self

Calendaring for Polly People

• We talked about the issues of having 4-5 personal calendars and not being able to merge them together to share with other people as "One" Calendar. 

We talked about Menstrual Cups and Cloth Pads 

• These are alternatives to buying disposables. 
• There were new ones for people to see. 




Session 5

A: CodeChix Jam Sessions NO NOTES

B: Cootie Catcher Games for Girls NO NOTES

C: Letting Go and Saying No

D: Future of Work NO NOTES

E Wordpress-O-Rama

(in process)

Wordpress Workshop 1: Setting up Wordpress on Your Mac Liz Henry

First thing to do is go to http://www.mamp.info and download single user version of MAMP.

Install it in Applications.

Download Wordpress, and install in the htdocs folder within MAMP.

Launch MAMP. Preferences - path to Wordpress should reflect reality Other defaults are generally ok, such as: PHP5 port etc.

Create and name the blog -- it can be changed later. You'll be given a password which can also be changed later, by going to your Profile.

Open a terminal window, renamed wp-config-sample.php to wp-config.php, edit: - fill in your info, incl. database name, username, password, and host.

Wordpress Workshop 2: Using and Enhancing Wordpress Liz Henry & Suzi Grishpul

Wordpress is a great starter website. Perhaps you have a customer who needs help, but is going to maintain it him/herself.

Drupal is more common content management system in enterprise situations, but for simple sites (i.e. a simple page hierarchy and a blog) Wordpress is ideal.

Q: How is Drupal different from Wordpress? A: Both are content management systems. Drupal is also open source. It is more robust. It uses modules to add functionality (rather like Wordpress uses plug-ins, but not quite.)

Themes - you can find good themes @ http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/ - or google for them - themes use widgets in different places - put themes in /wp-content/themes - Appearance -> Edit Themes (in side menu) will show css code, if the folder on the server has the right permissions! http://codex.wordpress.org/Changing_File_Permissions - Ready to start hacking at your own themes? http://codex.wordpress.org/Stepping_Into_Template_Tags

Widgets - sidebars are collections of widgets - find them on the wordpress.org site (as plugins) - allow you to select and de-selected attributes of your site - can be put in different places - you can also use your Wordpress dashboard to find and set them up.

Plug-ins - add functionality with these - available at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/ - Wordpress offers a list (can't sort, searching difficult) - usually have settings (not sure where -- dashboard, config menu, tools menu, etc.)

Q: Why doesn't WordPress standardize how to configure widgets once installed? Seems like configuration is everywhere.

Recommended Plugins... - WP Security/ exploit scanner - Simple Newsletter plug-in - wp stats - shows stats on your admin dashboard - dashboard notepad - leave notes - Contact Form 7 - easy-to-build-forms that you can drop anywhere in the content - Buddy Press - enables social networking - p2 (p2theme.com) - feedburner - track readers of your feed

Wordpress holds conferences! - Word Camps --- inexpensive ($30?)/ free --- user track --- developer track --- genius bar where answers are available --- May 1 in SF

F: Virtualization in the Clouds

G: Social Design NO NOTES

H: The Techy Side of Glasses NO NOTES

I: LIES about Weight and Health

K: Change Course Transition Construction

Closing

I appreciate She's Geeky Because

Sunday Day 3 January 31, 2010

Session 1

B: The 4D Brainwave NO NOTES

E: Philanthropy Philosophy

F: Switching Geekdoms NO NOTES

G: Linux/FOSS and Android NO NOTES

I: Women Designing Social Networks

Session 2

A: Parenting Geeks NO NOTES

B: Social Justice, Online Organizations, Disability Rights

C: Bicycle Communting

Convener: Alison Chaiken

Notes-taker(s): Melanie Archer

TAGS for the session: * bicycle * commuting

Resources:

Bike Magazines (Print):

• League of American Bicyclists
• VeloVision (UK)
• Momentum (free)
• Cycle California

Trail and Road Maps:

• Silicon Valley bike routes, published by VTA(http://www.vta.org/). Obtain from agency, not bicycle stores.
• San Francisco bike routes, published by San Francisco Bike Coalition (http://www.sfbike.org/). Can purchase at bike stores.
• “Walk Oakland” map has bike routes. Buy in bike stores.

Gear:

• Bicycles. Bike preferences are individual. Alison rides a road bike, Suzanne rides a 7-speed commuter bike with a coaster brake, Anna rides an “old” hybrid, Melanie rides a folding bike. There are now many bikes sold in the US with classic commuter features (racks, fenders) like those found in the rest of the world; there are even cargo bikes like the Xtracycle which can carry big loads. Some bikes come with internal gear hubs, which keep the bike's mechanism much cleaner.
• There are even ski-bikes for bicycling in regions with heavy snowfall.
• Clothing. The Bicycle Fashion Show at Maker Faire featured models riding bikes and wearing bike-compatible clothing, proving you don't have to wear tight spandex to ride a bike. Some designers specialize in clothes for women cyclists, such as Nan Estep (Temescal Farmers Market, Oakland), Title Nine Sports, and Sheila Moon.
• Alison pointed out that the light-reflective road workers' vests at Home Depot are a lot less expensive than similar items at bike shops, and work just as well at nighttime.
• Helmets were assessed as all the same in terms of safety; paying more for a helmet yields a more comfortable fit. Bike helmets ruin many hairstyles—they don't seem to fit over braided hair or dreads, and few models have room for a ponytail.
• Bike Accessories. Depending on your bike, you might have to buy carrying racks, panniers, and fenders separately. Also useful is a cargo or bungee net to secure stuff to the rack. Another good feature is a chain guard to keep your trouser legs out of your bike chain.
• Bike saddles are another thing to customize to your preference: some people will find wider saddles uncomfortable, others will prefer them. Some bike shops let you try a model first before you purchase a saddle. There are saddles designed especially for female anatomy. The wrong saddle can rendered you not only uncomfortable but also injured; this is an accessory worth spending money on.
• You might also have to customize your bike handlebars. Typical mountain bike or road bike “ram's head” handlebars are uncomfortable for many commute riders. However, the upright posture provided by “cruiser”-style handlebars can be tiring over a long distance.
• Bicycle lights are very important accessories. Alison demonstrated the undeniably easily seen Reallite (http://www.reallite.com/RLHome.htm). Other riders advised using bells to alert motorists in daytime to your presence.

Using your bike: The #1 reason people had for not bike commuting was fear of using the road. Bike lanes are only a partial remedy, since the very common accident of being slammed by somebody opening a car door into your path isn't prevented with a bike lane. However, riders shared their anecdotes of the times when bicycling was more convenient than driving, such as visiting Stanford and needing to find parking.

• Suzanne noted that in Sweden the snowplow clears the sidewalk and bike lanes first!
• Traveling with your bike: There are many styles of bicycle racks for cars. The consensus on roof racks was that they're poor choices—not only must you lift your bike to the roof of the car, but you also have to remove the bike's front wheel to fit it in the rack. Some of us just pushed our bikes into the hatchback or rear seat of our cars. For pickup truck drivers, there is a bike rack that fits in the pickup bed made by Yakima, sold at REI.
• Getting your bike across the country for either moving or vacation could involve:
• Obtaining a cardboard bike box from bike store, and packing your bike as the airlines require. This involves deflating your tires, removing your pedals, and turning your handlebars 90 degrees.
• Packing your bike in two picture frame boxes and shipping it via UPS
• Getting your local bike store to pack and ship your bike for you

E: Persuasive Presentations NO NOTES

F: Brainstorm PII Conference NO NOTES

I: Augmented REality NO NOTES

M: One Atmosphere NO NOTES

Session 3

D: Education and Technologies NO NOTES

E: Geek Speak and Tech Talk

F: Lan Games

G: Stratesic Mapping NO NOTES

J: Security Basics NO NOTES

K: Creativity Exercises

Session 4

B: Stress Management and Relaxation Techniques

E: Image Editing in GIMP NO NOTES

F: Online Visibility Magnetic Barands NO NOTES

G: Job Seeking/Hiring OPen Dialogue NO NOTES

H: Managing Perfectionism and Procrastination

I: Aspergers

Session 5

B: Intuition in Business NO NOTES

D: Balancing Technical and Physical Needs NO NOTES

E: Lightening Talks NO NOTES

F: InkScape NO NOTES

M: Moving Beyond Elevator Pitch

Closing

She's Geeky Is