Two of the twelve newly-embroidered chairs dedicated at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church (Saratoga, California) today were donated by my husband and me in honor of my parents: Wade and Eleanor Dickinson. The replacement chair seats were created as part of the Sacred Threads project. The new chair seat designs are inspired by the 1957-era stained glass church windows by Mark Adams. I think my mother was pleased to sit in a chair with her name on it!
Images Copyright 2013 by Katy Dickinson
Filed under Church, Home & Family, News & Reviews
My husband John Plocher contributes to many open source hardware and software products for model trail enthusiasts (aka “Train Nuts”). JMRI is an example of one of the software projects on which John has worked. One of his hardware projects is the DCC Brakeman – still on sale at The Train Shop (Santa Clara, CA). All of the schematics, PCB layouts, and technical details are on our family website: SPCoast – Electronics.
John frequently orders custom bits and pieces from China during development. In checking shipping status this morning on UPS, he was presented with the surprising image above. Note the icons:
A truck?
Image Copyright by John Plocher and Katy Dickinson – with thanks to UPS
Filed under Home & Family, News & Reviews
Larissa Shapiro (Mozilla) and I are mentoring Imen Rahal from Algeria during this month as part of the TechWomen program of the US State Department. Last weekend, we cooked dinner together at my house on Friday night, then on Saturday and Sunday went on two cultural tours (with Imen and other TechWomen friends), to see unique California sites such as:
We are enjoying our time together!
Images Copyright 2013 by Katy Dickinson
Today was the big orientation day for the 78 TechWomen mentees from 16 countries in Africa and the Middle East, and the 106 mentors from 160 Silicon Valley companies. TechWomen is an Initiative of the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs – for professional women working in STEM from Algeria, Cameroon, Egypt, Jordan, Kenya, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Nigeria, Palestine, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Tunisia, Yemen, and Zimbabwe.
Juniper Networks hosted the event in their “Aspiration Dome” building in Sunnyvale, California. Larissa Shapiro (Mozilla) and I are mentoring Imen Rahal from Algeria during this month. Larissa and I are among about a dozen mentors enjoying our third year with TechWomen. Barbara Fittipaldi (CEO at the Center for New Futures) lead the group in discussions on how to develop and fulfill our visions. It was an inspiring day!
Images Copyright 2013 by Katy Dickinson
Filed under Mentoring & Other Business, News & Reviews
My TechWomen mentee Imen arrived from Algeria last week. We had fun this weekend touring San Francisco. We started at the Women 2.0 – Founder Friday event, together with all 78 mentees from 16 countries in the Middle East and Africa, plus many of the Silicon Valley mentors. Yesterday, we visited Golden Gate park. Today, we saw the last American Conservatory Theater performance of the 1776 musical, then went on a night drive through San Francisco. Tomorrow is the TechWomen Welcome Orientation.
Images Copyright 2013 by Katy Dickinson
Filed under Mentoring & Other Business, News & Reviews
I came home yesterday after an inspiring day at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. I joined 4,600 other technical women at the sold-out GHC13 in Minneapolis, MN. My GHC13 day started at 6:30 am switching my bag to a downtown hotel (all hotels near the convention center were sold out for the day I arrived), then to breakfast hosted by Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, followed by a keynote panel with Maria Klawe (President, Harvey Mudd College), Sheryl Sandberg, and Telle Whitney (President, Anita Borg Institute). Then, Trish Tierney (of the Institute of International Education) and I presented on “Empowering Technical Women Through Global Mentoring” and later I presented a poster on the “Lifetime Value of Mentoring“. My daughter Jessica Dickinson Goodman also presented her poster on “The Arduino Dress“. The poster next to mine was “Girl Scouts: An Analysis of STEM Activities and a Call to Action” by Maria Ebling of IBM Research. Jessica and I got back to our hotel room by 10 pm with bags of loot and tshirts from GHC’s wonderful sponsor companies, universities, and organizations.
I flew back to the Bay Area yesterday in time to have dinner with my new TechWomen mentee from Algeria. She and I are going to another event together tonight and plan to tour San Francisco this weekend, as well as seeing the musical 1776 at the American Conservatory Theater.
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Images Copyright 2013 by Katy Dickinson
For the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (“GHC-13″) this week, I look forward to presenting a poster (“Lifetime Value of Mentoring to Technical Women”) and also a Student Opportunity Lab (SOL) topic: “Empowering Technical Women Through Global Mentoring” (with Trish Tierney of the Institute of International Education). Since I was at the People to People (P2P) conference last weekend in Washington DC and am traveling to GHC in Minneapolis tomorrow, my husband John Plocher generously managed the printing of the big poster and the SOL panel handouts. While I was in Washington DC, our daughter Jessica Dickinson Goodman tweaked the poster graphics for better effect. John posted the final versions on our website:
The “Empowering Technical Women Through Global Mentoring” material was developed in collaboration with four TechWomen co-presenters from the Middle East who regretfully are unable to attend GHC13 in person. Thanks to Sukaina Al-Nasrawi of Lebanon and Maysoun Ibrahim of Palestine (TechWomen Inaugural Class 2011), Adla Chatila of Lebanon and Heba Hosny of Egypt (TechWomen Class 2012) for their welcome support and valuable advice. Thanks also to Trish, John, and Jessica! I am blessed to have so many talented people supporting this work!
Images Copyright 2013 by Katy Dickinson
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