Category Archives: News & Reviews

March 16, 2015 · 12:06 pm

Touring with TechWomen Tunisia Delegation

IMG_1571

This week, I am a member of a TechWomen Delegation for the sixth time – having been on every delegation since the program started. It has been my honor and pleasure to visit Emerging Leaders in Morocco (2011), Jordan (2013 – with a side trip to Lebanon), Rwanda (2014), Morocco (2014), South Africa (2015), and now, Tunisia. As always, we travel with a U.S. Department of State Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs representative, in addition to Institute of International Education (IIE) staff. I begin my ten days in Tunisia with local tours, both informal and formal, to provide cultural context. Last weekend, we visited:

Dougga
IMG_1215

IMG_1203

IMG_1347

IMG_1235

Sidi Bou Said
IMG_1521

IMG_1570

North African American Cemetery and Memorial
IMG_1630

IMG_1632

Carthage
IMG_1668

IMG_1687

IMG_1645

Bardo Museum
IMG_2032

IMG_2084

IMG_2043

IMG_2087

Images Copyright 2015 by Katy Dickinson

3 Comments

Filed under Mentoring & Other Business, News & Reviews

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , ,

March 11, 2015 · 3:13 pm

Mentoring Standard – A New Venture

Mentoring Standard Logo_2.1_large

High quality mentoring changes lives. Until now there has been no clear way to measure mentoring and program effectiveness in an objective, comparable system, and there has been very little data published by mentoring programs. Mentoring Standard is a new venture with the vision to create an international norm and assessment of quality and achievement for both mentors and mentoring programs, with an associated system and process for accreditation and certification.

Kathy Jenks and I are Founders of Mentoring Standard. I announced this during my “Mentors and Role Models” talk earlier today as part of the Global Tech Women Voices – 2015 virtual conference. You can learn more about Mentoring Standard on our new website: mentoringstandard.com.  We look forward to your inquiries!

Thanks to Jessica Dickinson Goodman who designed and created the Mentoring Standard branding and website.

IMG_0424

20150130-EP-visit-TechWomen-22

Photo of Kathy Jenks Copyright 2015 by Katy Dickinson.
Photo of Katy Dickinson presenting in Muizenberg, Cape Town, South Africa by Max Mogale

1 Comment

Filed under Mentoring & Other Business, Mentoring Standard, News & Reviews

Tagged as , , , , ,

March 6, 2015 · 1:11 pm

More Photos of TechWomen with Cards

IMG_0345

Thanks to the honorees and supporters of the Notable Technical Women Project – particularly the amazing and talented TechWomen community! Here are new photos of TechWomen Director Arezoo Miot with a “TechWomen Emerging Leaders from Africa and the Middle East” deck in San Francisco, and four honorees in Lebanon holding their individual cards: Adla Chatila, Nisreen Deeb, Sukaina Al-Nasrawi (birthday girl!), and Maysoun Ibrahim.

More pictures of TechWomen honorees with their cards are on Notable Technical Women Project (27 February 2015).

Arezoo Miot, TechWomen 2015

Adla Chatila, Sukaina Al-Nasrawi, Nisreen Deeb, Maysoun Ibrahim, TechWomen 2015

Images Copyright 2015 by Katy Dickinson and Nisreen Deeb

3 Comments

Filed under Mentoring & Other Business, News & Reviews

Tagged as , , , , , ,

March 4, 2015 · 11:36 am

Mentors and Role Models – Voices 2015

As of 11 March 2015, the recording and slides are available for viewing on Mentors & Role Models – Voices 2015.

Screen Shot 2015-03-04 at 11.29.35 AM

Please Register to join Voices 2015!

I am honored to be celebrating the week of International Women’s Day 2015 as one of the Global Tech Women Voices virtual conference speakers. My topic will be “Mentors and Role Models – Best Practices in Many Cultures”.  My talk will start at 8:30 am on Wednesday, 11 March 2015.  I will present many illustrations from the Notable Women in Tech project!

The week of International Women’s Day, March 8th 2015 technical women from around the globe will convene virtually and in-person, following the sun, across every continent. Representatives present individually and collectively to discuss, collaborate and celebrate the contributions of technical women.

Last year over 26,000 people visited the Conference or the conference recordings.

Benefits of attending:

  • Participate in technical discussions
  • Network with technical women on a regional, national and international platform
  • Be inspired by women like you, who are changing the world.

Thanks to my friend and role model Deanna Kosaraju (Global Tech Women – Founder and CEO) for her inspiring work – and for including my voice in this exciting conference!

Leave a comment

Filed under Mentoring & Other Business, News & Reviews

Tagged as , , , ,

February 28, 2015 · 4:22 pm

WP668 Caboose in Spring Rain

WP 668 Railroad Caboose, February 2015

Lovely to sit in my office in WP 668 (the 1916 railroad caboose in our San Jose backyard) and listen to spring rain.  Lovely to have spring rain in the middle of California’s big drought!

Inside WP 668 Railroad Caboose, February 2015

Images Copyright 2015 by Katy Dickinson

Leave a comment

Filed under Home & Family, News & Reviews

Tagged as , ,

February 27, 2015 · 11:07 am

Notable Technical Women Project

IMG_0026

I am happy to report that the Notable Technical Women Project – creators and distributors of the “Notable Women in Technology” and “TechWomen Emerging Leaders from Africa and the Middle East” educational playing cards and posters – is thriving!

Keep our history
Women have been leaders in tech from the start, but not enough of our contributions are remembered.
These cards can help.

“TechWomen Emerging Leaders from Africa and the Middle East” was the first publication of the TechWomen Alumnae group, and is the first daughter of the “Notable Women in Computing” project. Between them, we are distributing information to the world about 108 technical role models! You can get involved in the project through the Duke University “CRA-W and Anita Borg Institute Wikipedia Project – Writing Wikipedia Pages for Notable Women in Computing” website: http://www.cs.duke.edu/csed/wikipedia/

Recent Notable Technical Women Project developments:

  1. Dr. Susan Rodger (Duke University) offered “Notable Women in Computing” cards to about 1,300 SIGCSE (ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education) conference registrants – and 800 placed orders (in both regular and jumbo size – for classroom use).  The conference starts next week.
  2. Great Press from Julie Bort of Business Insider on 12 February 2015, including all of the Notable Women cards: 54 Women Who Rocked the World – thanks for your many retweets!
  3. Reach and Teach bookstore in San Mateo CA is the first to put our “Notable Women in Computing” cards on their physical shelves. Thanks to Craig Weisner and Derrick Kikuchi for their support!
  4. Internet sales are brisk at  http://www.notabletechnicalwomen.org/ – We had enough interest to place a big production order for the “TechWomen Emerging Leaders in Africa and the Middle East” posters and cards.
  5. Jessica Dickinson Goodman is minding our online store and recording photos of educators and students all over the world using “Notable Women” cards and posters.  You can see photos of cards and posters in the wild at: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jessidg/notable-women-in-computing-card-deck/posts.
  6. We have distributed over 3,000 cards since October 2014 (they were originally sold at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women and Computing -aka GHC14- conference). Our first full production shipment of TechWomen cards just arrived today! The first thirty decks were printed last month through the generous donations of TechWomen mentors – and Symantec sponsored the first poster printing. Today’s shipment is being paid for by actual customers.
  7. Eileen Brewer (Symantec) and I took cards and posters on the TechWomen Delegation to South Africa last month and will take them on the Delegation to Tunisia next month also.

Thank you for your ongoing support!

IMG_0117

Zimkhita Buwa, Seven of Diamonds, South Africa . Nomso Faith Kana, TechWomen Eight of Clubs, South Africa

IMG_0175

Images Copyright 2015 by Katy Dickinson

1 Comment

Filed under Mentoring & Other Business, News & Reviews

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

February 27, 2015 · 10:16 am

Dumping the Landline

IMG_0072

Northern Californians who lived through the Loma Prieta Earthquake of 1989 often have a fondness for landlines – phones that use a metal wire telephone line for transmission rather than a mobile cellular line, which use radio waves. After Loma Prieta, only the landlines worked.  Nonetheless, this week, we are dumping our landline phones. Beside that our family uses our personal iPhones much more frequently – even within the house as an intercom, the number of daily telemarketing calls have become overwhelming.

Our energy company Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) is proud that they “…have helped customers connect more solar systems than any other utility in the country”. However, that means we get far too many landline calls from companies aggressively wanting to sell us solar systems.  While I support the installation of home solar power in general, our house in Willow Glen has a beautiful 80+ year old ceramic tile roof in good condition – not appropriate for solar panel installation. We only receive about six landline calls a day and usually four or more of them are telemarketing calls from solar vendors. I called PG&E and they say they are not responsible. We are on the Do Not Call Registry and routinely ask the companies to “Take Us Off Your List!”.  Nothing has helped against the relentless tide of telemarketing.  Enough!  

The calls that we get that are not from solar power shills are often from companies trying to sell us new construction or carpet cleaning.  Only one or two calls a week on our landline are from friends and family. Now that I am working from my home office daily, I would rather take my chances that the cell phones will work after a major earthquake than talk to six telemarketers every day. At least on an iPhone, I can easily block unwanted callers.

John is now transferring our home phone number to Google Voice on our temporary ZTE phone. In a week, we will have reduced our daily frustrations, saved $71/month in payments to AT&T, and have more space on our desks where the landlines used to be. Hooray!

28 Feb 2015 Update:
Our house is old enough to have a niche for a wall telephone. What do I do with that now that the landlines are dead? Maybe a sculpture niche? The birds are not sure if they want to share their corner with a cat sculpture…

IMG_0159 . IMG_0164

Photos Copyright 2015 by Katy Dickinson

2 Comments

Filed under Home & Family, News & Reviews

Tagged as , , ,