There is a tiny Anna’s Hummingbird sitting on a nest outside of my office window. My window is about six feet off the ground (in the bay of WP668, our backyard caboose here in Willow Glen), so I can see directly into the pear tree where the bird is hiding. Such a delight!
June 14 update: two baby birds!
Images Copyright 2013 by Katy Dickinson
Filed under Caboose Project and Other Trains, Home & Family
John went to the Maker Faire yesterday in San Mateo, California, and enjoyed it so much that he and Paul and I went again together today to see “The Greatest Show and Tell on Earth”.
“Maker Faire is an event created by Make magazine to ‘celebrate arts, crafts, engineering, science projects and the Do-It-Yourself (DIY) mindset’.”
“The maker culture is a contemporary culture or subculture representing a technology-based extension of DIY culture. Typical interests enjoyed by the maker culture include engineering-oriented pursuits such as electronics, robotics, 3-D printing, and the use of CNC tools, as well as more traditional activities such as metalworking, woodworking, and traditional arts and crafts. The subculture stresses new and unique applications of technologies, and encourages invention and prototyping. There is a strong focus on using and learning practical skills and applying them creatively.”
(from Wikipedia)
As you may expect when the technical wizards of the Silicon Valley and San Francisco Bay Area use “do it yourself” tools, methods, and ingenuity, the results are fascinating. There were exhibits by young children, teens, male and female technical professionals, war veterans, and seniors. Maker Faire is summed up well as “Like Burning Man without sex, drugs, or dust!” Themes at this family-friendly event ranged from Steampunk to the slickest High Tech, with a generous assortment of Star Wars and Doctor Who in the mix.
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Images Copyright 2013 by Katy Dickinson and John Plocher
Filed under Home & Family, News & Reviews
We are distributing “Professional Mentoring – Fostering Triangular Partnership”* (by Katy Dickinson and Ravi Gundlapalli) as a white paper here at TiEcon “The World’s Largest Conference for Entrepreneurs” at the Santa Clara Convention Center, in the Silicon Valley, California. The paper is eventually going to be published as a book chapter by MentorCloud customer People to People.
For those who missed the Vinod Khosla mentoring session here at TiEcon yesterday, you can see pictures on my blog entry MentorConnect with Vinod Khosla at TiEcon. Here are my notes from the famous venture capitalist’s session:
Today is the TiEcon Women’s Forum and I am looking forward to seeing the presentation of Jagruti Bhikha of the Anita Borg Institute. Here is some of the team running the TiE Silicon Valley MentorConnect program at TiEcon:
More pictures are on MentorCloud at TiEcon: MentorConnect.
* The paper distributed at TiEcon was dated May 2013. The link is to an slightly revised version dated June 2013.
19 October 2019: Links updated. The conference book version of Triangular Partnership: the Power of the Diaspora is available for free download. For more about MentorCloud business practices, see Collecting a Labor Judgement (15 January 2016).
Images Copyright 2013 by Katy Dickinson
I got to work with famed-venture-capitalist Vinod Khosla again today at TiEcon. “The World’s Largest Conference for Entrepreneurs” is being held at the Santa Clara Convention Center in the Silicon Valley, California. MentorCloud powers the TiE Silicon Valley MentorConnect program:
TiE SV MentorConnect platform, powered by MentorCloud, is an online extension to TiE’s signature mentorship programs that already happen at each of its global chapters. The platform facilitates entrepreneurs to seek and connect with suitable TiE Charter Members as mentors, schedule face-to-face meetings at TiE chapter offices or at mutually convenient locations, and build on that relationship by having ongoing conversations online with each other. Entrepreneurs and Mentors can also form roundtables and have ongoing group conversations on topics of their expertise and interest.
Part of the MentorConnect program at TiEcon is a speed mentoring at lunch, today including two VIP mentors: Vinod Khosla and Kanwal Rekhi. These mentoring sessions were fully booked three days ago – we have waiting lists but conference attendees are still asking to join! Since I had worked with Vinod at Sun Microsystems, I managed his mentoring session today. You can see some of my mentoring session notes on my twitter feed.
Some of the publications Vinod referenced in his talk:
Radhika Padmanabhan managed the session for Kanwal Rekhi. The forty lucky mentees were very enthusiastic about their discussions with these two remarkable men.
More pictures are on MentorCloud at TiEcon: MentorConnect.
Images Copyright 2013 by Katy Dickinson
Filed under Mentoring & Other Business, News & Reviews
The week before the big TiEcon 2013 conference for entrepreneurs in the Silicon Valley, our startup MentorCloud invited Sashi Chimala to talk about mentoring from his perspective as a successful long-time serial entrepreneur. I was asked to interview Sashi and present his long experience in both entrepreneurship and mentoring in the company blog. The result is “Journey with a Purpose”, published on 8 May 2013. I decided to present Sashi’s journey in a series of stories like this…
While an undergraduate in Engineering at JNT University, he created a mail-order cartoon art school. The school was advertised in magazines, offering ten lessons by mail, with exercises critiqued by Sashi and a certificate of completion at the end. The school only ran for a year and served one hundred students (it took much more effort than he had thought) but lead to a profound experience.
Three years after Sashi closed down his cartooning school, when he was at a conference, a severely disabled man approached him. Although the man was impaired in all of his limbs and could only move with difficulty, he had diligently completed the cartooning school lessons and came to that conference specifically to thank Sashi for teaching him to be a successful cartoonist. Sashi never met his student or knew of his disability until that day. Sashi’s only regret is that he wished he had saved his cartooning lesson material!
This remarkable conversation brought home to Sashi how entrepreneurship was not just about making money and having fun but could at the same time be an opportunity to help impact lives. That student showed him the purpose of business in a new dimension.
Usually my composition projects are either creative writing, teaching, or for business purposes. Sashi’s was an interesting combination of these. I plan to write more journey stories as opportunities permit.
Image Copyright 2013 by Katy Dickinson
Filed under Mentoring & Other Business, News & Reviews
I was suggesting images to my artist son Paul for his current animal series of water colors and thought that a blog with pictures of some of our local Willow Glen, California denizens would be of interest. Not pictured is the horrible towhee bird who is flinging himself repeatedly at my caboose office window as I type.
My cockatiels (Nymphicus hollandicus), Guapo and Sparky, eating a dried pepper:
Jerusalem Cricket (Stenopelmatus) in the side yard:
Big garter snake (Thamnophis) in front of our house:
(picture courtesy of neighbor Jamie Lynch)
Alligator lizard (Elgaria coerulea) on neighbor’s sidewalk:
American swallowtail butterfly caterpillar (Papilio polyxenes) on fennel in the front yard:
Redda the dog (Canis lupus familiaris) trying for a lick through her kennel fence:
Beggar dogs hoping for a handout:
Cat (Felis catus) dominating the neighbor’s car:
Garter snake picture Copyright 2013 by James Lynch, other pictures Copyright 2013 by Katy Dickinson
Filed under Caboose Project and Other Trains, Home & Family
Yesterday was Mother’s Day here in the USA and I spent it with family, including two of my favorite artists:
| My mother Eleanor Creekmore Dickinson Professor Emeritus, California College of the Arts |
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| My son Paul Dickinson Goodman Art Student, Foothill College |
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After church and brunch in Willow Glen, the two artists sat on the porch and compared their latest works.
Images Copyright 2013 by Katy Dickinson
Filed under Home & Family
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