KatysBlog

July 10, 2010 · 6:36 pm

Lions’ Fundraiser, “Hot San Jose Nights” Car Show

From 7-11 am this morning, the Willow Glen Lions Club served 220 pancake breakfasts during the first half of its two-day charity fundraiser at the Hot San Jose Nights vintage and historical car event (Santa Clara Fairgrounds). We gave away free helium balloons and made balloon lions for the little kids. All proceeds will go toward this summer’s camp scholarships for the Diabetes Society (in Willow Glen). The Willow Glen Lions are also collecting eyeglasses to be recycled – given to needy people at no charge.

The car show features a huge variety of vehicles, including a historic Kenworth truck, sports cars from many eras, a red 1957 Chevrolet, a tank, and a huge motorcycle, the world’s largest, said to cost $300,000.

Here are some pictures from today:

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Tagged as Disabilities, John, San Jose, Willow Glen

July 8, 2010 · 10:24 pm

10th Wedding Anniversary

My husband John and I celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary last weekend. Since our kids are together in Washington D.C., we had more time to enjoy the special celebration. We went out to dinner twice: first, to La Fondue (in Saratoga, California), and then to Teatro ZinZanni (in San Francisco). Teatro ZinZanni circus, cabaret, and dinner theater is also celebrating its 10th anniversary this year. It was great fun!

Here some pictures from last weekend…

La Fondue, Saratoga California

Teatro ZinZanni, San Francisco

Images Copyright Katy Dickinson and John Plocher 2010

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Filed under Home & Family, News & Reviews

Tagged as John, marriage, San Francisco

July 8, 2010 · 6:16 pm

Pancakes & San Jose Metblog Entries

I just posted a San Jose Metblog entry about the Willow Glen Lions Club preparing to serve up Pancakes for Charity, at “Hot San Jose Nights” this coming weekend at the Santa Clara County Fairgrounds.

The Lions practiced cooking eggs, bacon, sausage, and pancakes at last night’s meeting – it was good!

My other recent San Jose Metblog posts:

25 Technical Girls Win Awards, 6 Jun 2010
Sweet Mango Replaces Siam Square, 27 May 2010
Plants vs. Zombies, 26 May 2010
Lions in Egypt, 5 May 2010

You can see the index to all 13 of my San Jose Metblogs postings on: Authors – Katy Dickinson.

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Tagged as Egypt, San Jose, technical women, Willow Glen

July 2, 2010 · 12:11 pm

Advancing Your Career Through Awards (GHC2010)

Registration is now open for the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing conference, to be held in Atlanta, Georgia: September 28 – October 2, 2010. GHC is an amazing event and sells out early – so register and get your hotel room soon!

I will be presenting a panel for GHC2010 called “Advancing Your Career Through Awards”. The panel is scheduled for Thursday, 30 September at 11:15 am. This will make six Hopper Conferences at which I have presented. I am honored to have an impressive group of panelists. The panel description follows…

Advancing Your Career Through Awards

Abstract

There are hundreds of awards available to women in computing, from the TR35 (MIT’s award for top young innovators), to the ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award for outstanding young computer professionals, to Senior Member or Fellow of the ACM, IEEE, or National Academy, to the Anita Borg Institute Women of Vision awards. In industry, promotions and high-status titles such as Fellow or Distinguished Engineer serve the same function as awards.

Awards are a public acknowledgment of success and excellence. Awards are good for both the honored individual as well as their company, institution, or university. Award winners serve as role models for women entering the field. Moreover, awards build on each other: award winners are more likely to be noticed and considered for additional awards.

However, despite this importance, awards often go begging for lack of good nominations and a great woman is often overlooked because no one mentioned her name or took the time to carefully craft an effective nomination package. This panel will discuss the value of awards and encourage the technical community to develop an increased focus on awards for great technical women at every stage in their careers. Our goal is for more remarkable technical women to consider how to prepare for and pursue awards early in their careers.

What difference does it make if you get awards? What awards are appropriate for your career? How do we ensure that more women students, professionals, and academics will get into the queue and on the lists of those honored? Come and find out!

1. Audience
Women of any age who are students, faculty, or in business, who want greater public acknowledgment of their accomplishments and who want to understand how awards will help their career, will find this panel of interest

2. Panel

Katy Dickinson: Chair of ABI External Awards Committee, Panel Chair, Sun Microsystems Director, https://katysblog.wordpress.com/
Frances E. Allen, IBM Fellow Emerita (1st Woman IBM Fellow), 1st Woman to Win ACM Turing Award, IEEE Fellow, ACM Fellow, Computer History Museum Fellow, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_E._Allen
Marcy Alstott, Hewlett-Packard Vice President, Sun Microsystems Vice President, Purdue University Distinguished Engineering Alumna, YWCA Women in Industry TWIN award winner, https://engineering.purdue.edu/ME/People/DEAs/alstott.ht ml
Lucy Sanders, Co-Founder and CEO, National Center for Women & Information Technology, Bell Labs Fellow, Distinguished Alumni Award from the Department of Engineering at the University of Colorado at Boulder,
http://www.ncwit.org/about.team.lead.php?action=detail& biosID=18
Manuela Veloso, Professor CS Department, Carnegie Mellon University, President, International RoboCup Federation, Fellow, American Association for Artificial Intelligence, Senior Member IEEE, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manuela_M._Veloso
Robert Walker, Professor and Chair, CS Department, Kent State University, Awards Coordinator for ACM-W, Outstanding Contribution to ACM Award, http://www.cs.kent.edu/~walker/

3. Bibliography

Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology Technical Advisory Board, “Award-Winning Career Timelines” (web pages to be published soon on http://anitaborg.org/ )
Frey, Bruno S. “Awards as Compensation” European Management Review (2007) 4, 6-14
Frey, Bruno S., Susanne Neckermann “Abundant but Neglected: Awards as Incentives” Economists’ Voice, The Berkeley Electronic Press, http://www.bepress.com/ev, February 2009
Neckermann, Susanne, Reto Cueni, Bruno S. Frey “What is an award worth? An econometric assessment of the impact of awards on employee performance” Institute for Empirical Research in Economics University of Zurich, Working Paper Series, ISSN 1424-0459, Working Paper No. 411, May 2009
RAISE Project (lists of awards) – Recognition of the Achievements of Women In Science, Engineering, Mathematics and Medicine, http://raiseproject.org/

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Filed under Hopper - Anita Borg Institute, News & Reviews

Tagged as technical women

July 1, 2010 · 11:10 pm

Together in Washington D.C.

As of tomorrow morning, my kids will be together in Washington D.C. Jessica and her fiance Matt are working there this summer as interns (for different organizations). She bravely and kindly invited her younger brother Paul to fly from California to visit her for ten days. This is Paul’s first time traveling by himself, so he is being brave too.

We visited the capitol as a family two years ago when Jessica was singing in Mozart’s The Magic Flute, so Paul knows something about the place. He has been researching what he wants to see and adding his ideas to our family calendar: the National Museum of the American Indian, the National Air and Space Museum, the mall, the National Zoo, Colonial Williamsburg (near where his to-be-brother-in-law Matt goes to college), and other sites.

I am pleased that my kids have such a good relationship and I hope that their adventure will go well.

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Tagged as Jessica, Matthew, Paul

July 1, 2010 · 5:22 pm

Cursillo – De Colores!

My husband and I made our Cursillo weekend in May 2010, hosted by the Episcopal Santa Clara Servant Community. My father became a Cursillista while I was in High School. I remember what a profoundly moving and joyful experience it was for him. I felt that way too.

Cursillo is structured as a short course in Christianity and functions to strengthen the faith and encourage the leadership of both the participants and the presenters. It is hard to explain other than to write that during the three days, the team did everything possible to make God’s love as clear and present as possible. Whether it was walking on the beach, listening to talks, or making up silly song lyrics, we had a rich and transforming experience.

The symbol for Cursillo is a rooster and among the many songs we sang, the favorite was “De Colores“, which is about rainbows and chickens. I bought the little rooster below for my desk as a reminder…

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Tagged as Episcopal church, John

June 30, 2010 · 10:36 pm

Weaving in Harrania, Egypt

Because our daughter Jessica is a weaver, John and Paul and Jessica and I made a point to visit the amazing Ramses Wissa Wassef Art Centre in Harrania, near Giza, during our recent trip to Egypt. We had to insist that our guide take us there (Wissa Wassef does not give the guides kickbacks) but it was well worth making a fuss to see. We went back a second time later! Here is a description of how Ramses Wissa Wassef started this impressive craft center:

Ramses’ interest in tapestry weaving began in 1941 when he was asked by a social welfare organisation to design a small centre in Cairo. While designing the building he asked permission to teach a small group of the children to weave, thus beginning his “experiment in creativity.” Weaving seemed the perfect medium to bring together his appreciation for traditional craftsmanship with the innate creativity of children, which he believed was damaged by routine and formalised education. After apprenticing himself to a weaver to master the basic techniques and exploring natural dyes Ramses began to pass on these skills to a small group of the schoolchildren. Using a high-warp loom, similar to those found millenia before in Ancient Egypt, the children began to weave in local wool dyed with natural dyes such as indigo, cochineal, madder, and reseda. Encouraged by the success of these experiments in 1951 Ramses and his wife Sophie began building a workshop near the small village of Harrania, ten miles from Cairo. At that time no weaving was done in the area, although since the success of the Centre imitations have become widespread. [From About the Art Centre]

We bought two books, some postcards, a ceramic sheep and a bowl, and a delightful small woven tapestry at Wissa Wassef. The larger statues in the gardens were remarkable but there was no way we could get one home. The weaving is so tight on our tapestry that I cannot put my fingernail between the threads. Most of the tapestries in the Wissa Wassef museum were very large; I am pleased to have a small but lovely sample of this work. The books are:

Egyptian Landscapes: 50 Years of Tapestry Weaving at the Ramses Wissa Wassef Art Centre, Cairo by Hilary Weir, Suzanne Wissa Wassef, Yoanna Wissa Wassef, Opus Publishing Ltd (2006)
Threads of Life: A Journey in Creativity by E. A. De Stefano, Ramses Wissa Wassef Art Center (1991)

We also toured two commercial rug factories while we were in Harrania. One place was producing some very good work – the El Harrania Factory. The owner generously gave my daughter some of his wool as a souvenir and said he trained at Wissa Wassef. The second factory we went to was unremarkable for either quality or creativity (but the prices were very high) – that was the one our guide wanted us to go to!

Wissa Wassef Art Centre