Category Archives: Mentoring & Other Business

July 21, 2012 · 1:36 pm

Non-Travel Diary 4

While my husband John is in China on business for Huawei, I am keeping a non-travel diary. This has been a relatively quiet week. In addition to working full-time at Huawei:

There was a small amount of progress on our home construction projects. The painter spent a half day painting the wrong color stain on the baseboards. When I pointed out the error, he spent about the same amount of time sanding that color off and re-staining. Nobody was happy.
Thursday, I joined the monthly Board meeting of the Santa Maria Urban Ministry. We said an appreciative goodbye to our summer intern. The SMUM Tech Team (of which John and I are members) was assigned some new projects by the Board.
My newly-assigned 2012 TechWomen mentee from Lebanon and I made first contact. We exchanged introductory emails and are starting to make preparations for her visit to the Silicon Valley in September. Her background is impressive – I very much look forward to working with her in person. TechWomen is an initiative of the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA).
I communicated with the 2011 TechWomen mentees with whom I am presenting a panel at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing in October 2012 (Baltimore, MD). I am the moderator of the panel called “Technical Women in the Arab Region: Challenges vs. Aspirations”. We have travel funding confirmed for three of the panelists and we are working on support for our fourth. The ladies are traveling from Algeria, Palestine, Egypt, and Lebanon for GHC12. I am very eager to see them again!
Paul and I took our Wood Shop basic safety and equipment introduction at TechShop San Jose last night. We enjoyed learning to use the miter saw, table saw, band saw, electric sander, and drill press. The scroll saw is being repaired so we will learn how to use that later. I made a heart for John and Paul started work on an infinity symbol using the band saw. One of the other students laser-engraved the heart for me. I want to take a TechShop laser class next!
This morning, we had a community yard sale. Despite being on Craigslist and putting signs up on nearby corners, it was very poorly attended. However, it was fun to hang out with the neighbors. Our neighborhood apparently has 7 boys and 1 girl aged between 6 and 12 years old – who spent the morning rocketing from sale to sale comparing stuff and giving updates.
John comes home Tuesday morning!

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Filed under Home & Family, Hopper - Anita Borg Institute, Mentoring & Other Business, News & Reviews

Tagged as China, Geeks, House Work, Huawei, John, Mentoring, Middle East, Paul, San Jose, technical women, TechWomen, Willow Glen

July 4, 2012 · 1:56 pm

WP 6668, our backyard railroad caboose, sits in a garden of succulents and cactus. In fact, we measure the growth of our cactus by how high on the caboose they rise. The Silver Torch (Cleistocactus Strausii) with its obscene pink flowers, and the Black Spined Aloe are particularly vigorous growers. I am probably going to take out one of the aloes before it overwhelms its spiny neighbors. It can go live on the river bank where size does not matter.

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Tagged as garden, San Jose, Willow Glen, WP668

March 5, 2012 · 12:20 am

Drafting Proposals for the Hopper Conference (GHC12)

I am working with two teams on panel proposals for the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women and Computing, to be held 3-4 October 2012 in Baltimore, Maryland. Submissions are due 16 March. I have been going to the Hopper Conference for many years and have presented regularly. I am particularly excited about GHC12 because all of this year’s TechWomen mentees will be attending. My daughter Jessica usually attend GHC together.

Here is what we have so far for the two proposals:

Panel Proposal #1

“Silicon Valley Inside Out: Surviving the Distance” presents a panel of very senior technical women who work in R&D in the Silicon Valley, for companies based outside of the USA. Topics to be discussed include: culture and language, effective communication, distance collaboration and management, localization, norms and taboos, conflict resolution, issues and risk-mitigation.

Panel Proposal #2

“Mentoring Between Cultures: TechWomen” is a panel on mentoring between technical women, using the successful TechWomen program as an example. The panel members are senior women who work for Silicon Valley technical companies and served as mentors to one or more women from the Middle East or North Africa (MENA) during the first TechWomen term in 2011. Topics to be discussed include: best practices and tips for mentors and mentees, mentoring program design, effective mentoring across cultures and time zones, the benefits of women mentoring women and technical mentorships, the career advantages of mentoring for both mentees and mentors, how mentoring drives transformation, etc.

GHC presentation proposals are accepted based on evaluation by several judges. Competition is ferocious. I hope we are accepted. Wish us luck!

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Tagged as Geeks, Huawei, Jessica, Mentoring, Middle East, technical women, TechWomen

February 18, 2012 · 12:39 am

Silicon Valley Supports Technical Women

In the last week, I have been to three interesting events supporting technical women and girls here in the Silicon Valley:

FountainBlue’s When She Speaks, Women in Leadership Series panel on Work-Life Balance, featuring Huawei Human Resources Director Jane Helfen, hosted by Symantec
The Institute for International Education and Anita Borg Institute mentor recruiting event for the U.S. State Department’s TechWomen 2012 mentoring program for women in the Middle East and North Africa, hosted by Microsoft
Silicon Valley Leadership Group’s Women and Girls Leadership Summit, held at Clyde Fischer Middle School, San Jose (sponsored by Huawei, among many others)

It feels good to have strong support from such a wide variety of organizations for women in technology.

Images by Katy Dickinson 2012 Copyright

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Tagged as Geeks, Huawei, Mentoring, Middle East, San Jose, Silicon Valley, technical women, TechWomen

February 14, 2012 · 9:14 pm

TechWomen 2012 Applications

The Institute for International Education and Anita Borg Institute are again working together on the U.S. State Department’s TechWomen mentoring program for women in the Middle East and North Africa. Yesterday, Microsoft hosted the Mentor recruitment kick-off event, including a video of invitation and welcome by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, plus an in-person address by Lee Satterfield, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Professional and Cultural Exchanges at the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. Dozens of technical women from Silicon Valley technical companies attended. It was wonderful to catch up with the 2011 mentors, listen to the panel, and meet potential new 2012 participants.

Women working in technology fields from Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, the Palestinian Territories, Tunisia, and Yemen are encouraged to apply to be TechWomen mentees – Applications are due February 15, 2012. The TechWomen Mentor Application Opens March 1, 2012

It was fun to see the What is TechWomen? video (in which I was one of the speakers!) and to discover my picture at the top of the 2012 mentor handout for the event. This year’s TechWomen mentees will all be going to the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (3-6 October 2012 in Baltimore Maryland).

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Tagged as Geeks, Mentoring, Middle East, technical women, TechWomen

November 12, 2011 · 11:20 am

Hopper Conference, Portland Oregon

This is the final day for the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing here in Portland, with a focus on Open Source. As usual, the Hopper Conference has been an exhilarating experience, recharging me for another year of technical business in an overwhelmingly male industry. Also, as usual, the 3,000 attendees with several computers each regularly overwhelmed the local net, so I have mostly been tweeting rather than blogging this week.

My husband John and daughter Jessica are both here. Jessica presented a panel and poster. Jessica asked me what was my favorite GHC11 event. The most memorable was yesterday’s keynote by The Honorable Shirley Ann Jackson, President of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Dr. Jackson’s talk was not flashy but I came away with several new ideas and energetic motivation to follow up. The other conference highlight was the celebration of the TechWomen mentees, mentors, and program. I am so proud of my sisters from MENA!

I am proud that Huawei joined NetApp and Google in sponsoring TechWomen mentees to come to the Hopper Conference (and Huawei paid for the third Huawei-Santa Clara-hosted mentee to come too). Corporate community support at its best!

Yesterday, on behalf of the ABI Advisory Board, I was honored to introduce the presentation of two-time GHC award-winner Anne Ikiara of Kenya. She gave an inspiring talk about her organization NairoBits, which has given computer training to 6,000 poor young women in ten years for a cost of about $100/each. So impressive – I want to be her when I grow up.

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Filed under Home & Family, Hopper - Anita Borg Institute, Mentoring & Other Business, News & Reviews

Tagged as Geeks, Huawei, Jessica, John, Mentoring, Middle East, technical women, TechWomen

November 9, 2011 · 11:51 pm

Hopper Conference – Day 1, Portland Oregon

Today is the opening of the sold-out GHC11 – the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women and Computing here in Portland, Oregon. My contribution to the world’s greatest conference for technical women came early: attending the ABI Advisory Board meeting this morning and inviting Janet Abbate, Assistant Professor, Science and Technology in Society, Virginia Tech, to be one of the panel at the Hopper Conference Newcomer’s orientation this afternoon. Other than that, I am mostly hanging out with my daughter Jessica and the TechWomen mentees and mentors and staff. I am also representing Huawei, one of the sponsors of the scholarships to bring some of the TechWomen mentees to GHC11.

The flight north from the San Francisco Bay Area this morning was spectacular: we flew directly over a massive, cloudless and snowy Mount Shasta and smaller wintery mountains. Between GHC events, we plan to sample the delights of this pleasant town: this morning we ate Voodoo Doughnuts and tomorrow we plan to go to Powells City of Books. Jessica presents her panel and poster tomorrow afternoon.