KatysBlog

Tanya Jankot and I have started work on our next SEED pilot term.
The mentor matching
for the last three terms has gone very quickly so we are going to see
if it is possible to run five terms starting in 2006:

1. January-June: Dublin, Grenoble, Hamburg, Prague participants
2. March-September: St. Petersburg and Tel Aviv participants
3. June-December: pilot term now in development (not yet announced)
4. September 2006-September 2007: Recent Hire (regular world-wide term)*
5. September 2006-March 2007: Established Staff (regular world-wide term)*

* to be announced in May 2006

I am putting together the Selection Commitee now. I have talked with the
excutives of the target group and drafted the term’s web page. Each pilot
term has its own web page to address its particularities. Each such
page has a “Reference” section with excellent advice from amazingly successful
and interesting people in science and technology. Some of my favorites:

• “Engineering a solution: Bring women into the fold” by Carol Bartz, CEO
  of Autodesk and former Sun executive, The Mercury News, San Jose,
  California, 24 March 2005

• The Mythical Man-Month / Essays on Software Engineering by Frederick
  P. Brooks, 1995, Addison Wesley Longman; ISBN: 0201835959

• 
  “Things I Wish I Learned in Engineering School” by Rick Cattell, Sun
  Distinguished Engineer (article by Janice J. Heiss, 22 October 2004)
  
  
  Rick’s book web site

• Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing by Jane Margolis, Allan
  Fisher (former Dean of Undergraduate Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon Univ.),
  The MIT Press; 2003, ISBN: 0262632691

• “The Citizen Engineer”, Sun CTO Greg Papadopoulos delivered this commencement address to graduates of the University of California, Irvine, School of Engineering, on June 18, 2005.
• Alternative Careers in Science: Leaving the Ivory Tower (Scientific Survival Skills) by Cynthia Robbins-Roth, Academic Press, 2005, ISBN: 0125893760
• “The Unwritten Laws Of Engineering: Revised and Updated” (2001) Edited by: James G. Skakoon and W.J. King (ASME)
  
  Available through:
  http://www.asme.org/catalog/

• 
  “Technology and Courage” by Ivan Sutherland, Sun Fellow, Perspectives-96-1
  (April 1996), Sun Labs (33 pages, PDF)

• Edward Tufte
  (Professor Emeritus at Yale University) on information design

The
Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing is always an
inspiring and exciting event. The 4-7 October 2006 Hopper conference
in San Diego is of particular interest because this is the first time since
1997 it has been held on the West Coast of the USA. Several of
us at Sun are preparing panel and presentation proposals, due on
15 March. I had fun setting up the “Mentoring and Leadership Grooming:
Technical Women in Industry” panel on mentoring for GHC 2004
and I hope to get a new panel proposal accepted for this year too.

Sun is a Partner of the
Anita Borg Institute which runs the Hopper conference.

Yesterday, we selected 33 new SEED Engineering mentoring program
participants from Israel and Russia. The selection was difficult
because this was a very accomplished and highly recommended
group. We ended up picking 11 from Tel Aviv (Herzliya) and
22 From St. Petersburg from among the 45 applicants. As usual,
about a quarter of the participants are women. Unusually,
all of this group works in Sun’s Software Group.

Since the selection meeting, Tanya Jankot and I have been very busy indeed.
We have sent out announcements, started the Mentor Wish List building
process, set up email lists, and done all of the electronic and
management chores that go along with setting up a new SEED term.
I have also been communicating with disappointed managers of staff
who were not selected.

Today, Tanya created an internal individual web page for each
participant to help show them off to potential mentors. The
participants will now have until 22 February to personalize those
web pages and send us their Mentor Wish Lists.