Driving west of Pinecrest and the Lair of the Golden Bear on California Route 108, you will find the shoe tree. I don’t know why people have thrown dozens of adult-size sports shoe pairs around the branches of this large pine tree on a mountain highway far from any town… but there it is.
Images Copyright 2014 by Katy Dickinson
Filed under News & Reviews
Last night, we celebrated Paul’s 22nd birthday at the University of California’s Lair of the Golden Bear Camp Blue. We have been Lair campers since before Paul could walk! We started in 12th Week and have slowly moved to earlier weeks as school start dates crept back into August. This is our second year as 9th Week campers. My niece and nephew start classes on Monday. Paul starts at San Jose State University in a few weeks.
My brother Pete, sister-in-law Julie and kids, with friends Steve and Olivia and their son are also with us. This week, other members of the family have been going on hikes, running, and swimming in Pinecrest Lake. We also went rafting on the Stanislaus River out of Knights Ferry. Our immediate family has mostly been playing board games and enjoying Advanced Lounging with Electronics. Jessica and Matthew celebrated their 3rd wedding anniversary with pinatas full of candy and little plastic dinosaurs.
Jessica and I have been in email communication from Camp Blue Lodge with Susan Rodger (Professor, Computer Science at Duke University), collaborating on the design and content of our Notable Women in Computer Science and Wikipedia poster for the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, to be held in October 2014. GHC14 is almost sold out – as it has been every year since at least 2009.
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Images Copyright 2014 by Katy Dickinson
Filed under Home & Family, Hopper - Anita Borg Institute, News & Reviews
This week my family has been playing “Moby Dick, or, the card game” almost daily at the University of California at Berkeley’s Lair of the Golden Bear Camp Blue. This game was a Kickstarter project by King Post that I invested in last year. I gave it to my son-in-law Matthew, who loves games of all kinds. “Moby Dick” is great fun – we plan to buy more copies! The card graphics are interesting and well-executed. The game play is fast and dependent on both luck and strategy. An added benefit is that the classic 1851 whaling story Moby Dick by Herman Melville is one of my favorite novels.
Matthew, Jessica, Paul and I made some rule changes to improve play:
Images Copyright 2014 by Katy Dickinson
Filed under Home & Family, News & Reviews
I grew up in San Francisco and live in San Jose, California, two relatively-old cities – for the American west. SF was founded in 1776; SJ was founded in 1777. Both were incorporated in 1850. I have recently returned from an Everwise business trip to run a Mentoring Design Workshop in Brasilia (Brazil). Brasilia was founded in 1960 and had a population of 2.8 million in 2013. A few years ago, I worked for Huawei in Shenzhen (China). Shenzhen was founded in 1979 and had a population of 10.4 million in 2010.
Besides being new cities, Brasilia and Shenzhen have in common that their quick creation is associated with a great leader. I was last in Shenzhen in 2010, the 30th anniversary of the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone. During that time, there was much honoring of Deng Xiaoping. Deng lead China 1978-1992. In Brasilia, we stayed at the Kubitschek Plaza hotel – whose name honors Juscelino Kubitschek de Oliveira, Brazil’s President 1956-1961.
Both Brasilia and Shenzhen are still in a skeletal stage of civic development. That is, I saw big buildings and well-developed districts like good bones providing form and identity but also large areas of open land that were marked with actual or virtual/mental “Under Development” signs.
My son and son-in-law like to play the virtual land development game Minecraft together. Minecraft in multi-player survival mode has the concept of identification/ownership “waypoints” to mark areas someone plans to build on – even if nothing is there now. I think Brasilia and Shenzhen are full of waypoints where development is under long-term consideration. It will be fascinating to watch the flesh of mature cities grow up over the coming decades around their lovely young bones.
Images Copyright Katy Dickinson 2010-2014
Filed under Home & Family, Mentoring & Other Business, News & Reviews
Ilana Robbins Gross, Colman Lydon and I from Everwise just got back to the USA from a week-long trip to Brazil. In Brasilia, Ilana and I managed an InovAtiva Brasil Design Workshop. We were joined by Colman to discuss the new mentoring program with stakeholders and potential mentors in São Paulo. You can watch some of our discussions in the new YouTube video “Webinar – A Mentoria (reinventada) Para Empreendedores” – an hour-long discussion between me, Rafael Campos (Wenovate), and Felipe Gasko (Endeavor). Note that only the video introduction and closing are in Portuguese – the rest is in English.
Our InovAtiva Mentoring Program Core Team is remarkable and diverse. It was an honor and pleasure to work with them during our trip:
Images Copyright 2014 by Katy Dickinson
Filed under Mentoring & Other Business, News & Reviews
Ilana Robbins Gross and I were joined by Colman Lydon of Everwise this morning in Sao Paulo for our mentoring discussions with InovAtiva Brasil, Endeavor, Wenovate – and with InovAtiva stakeholders and potential mentors. I have been in meetings all day (except for half an hour to see a craft and snacks fair in the park across the street from our hotel). I am very much enjoying presenting and answering questions about mentoring. So far, the most interesting feature of Sao Paulo is the graffiti and street art. All of my photos are about groups of people meeting and eating – because that is what we are mostly doing.
Images Copyright 2014 by Katy Dickinson
Filed under Mentoring & Other Business
Ilana Robbins Gross and I arrived this morning in Brasilia to run a mentoring program design workshop with Everwise customer InovAtiva Brasil. Marcos Vinícius de Souza and Maycon Stahelin generously showed us some of the lovely Niemeyer buildings of the federal capital. We start work tomorrow!
Images Copyright 2014 by Katy Dickinson
Filed under Mentoring & Other Business, News & Reviews
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