Tag Archives: Huawei

May 19, 2011 · 11:24 pm

Amazing Women of Vision

I just got home from the inspiring Women of Vision awards event by the Anita Borg Institute. Huawei was a Gold Sponsor of this WOV and I have worked for months to arrange for 30 Huawei guests to attend from all over the world. Our Senior Vice President John Roese spoke during the opening reception. I should not be staying up to blog about this because I am teaching the first TechWomen Mentor Workshop starting early tomorrow morning but WOV is so exciting, I need to share it.

Today’s award winners were

Leadership Award: Chieko Asakawa, Ph.D., IBM Fellow, IBM Research – Tokyo
Innovation Award: Mary Lou Jepsen, Ph.D., CEO, Pixel Qi
Social Impact Award: Karen Panetta, Ph.D., Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Tufts University

Each winner was impressive in her own way. Each has overcome much to make an admirable change in the technical world. Wow. Going to an ABI event is always worthwhile, if for no other reason than to talk with the remarkable technical contributors in the audience. The Women of Vision event is particularly excellent because of the powerful story of each award winner. I am glad my husband John Plocher could attend the event this year. He has heard me talk about WOV for years.

Picturing Flags

Children and flag are some of the hardest subjects to photograph. Both change unpredictably and fast. I have found that taking many pictures with a small good camera yields better results than trying for that perfect image. I use a Canon PowerShot S95 with a SanDisk 8 Gb flash memory card and two rechargeable batteries. I keep everything in a small zippered case in my purse – ready to take pictures whenever the opportunity arises.

There is something fascinating and alive in how big flags give shape to the wind. The first and second row of pictures were taken after a wind storm ripped the edges off of some flags. The long strips of cloth were rolling around on the ground near the flagpoles.

Getting a picture in which several flags are identifiable is possible but often a challenge. The third row below presents the best of a large number of images trying to picture the flags of California, America, and Huawei all open and pointed in the same direction. Never did happen. The bottom row was taken near Moscone Center on a fair windy day in San Francisco in which nine flags lined up almost perfectly.

Images Copyright Katy Dickinson 2011

Easter Egg Hunt

We had more than a dozen kids – aged 3 to 21 – plus their parents over for our annual Easter Egg Hunt last week here in San Jose, California. There were about 400 plastic eggs filled with candy, plus one gold and one silver egg to find in our backyard. We followed the same rules as last year with a few additions.

Last summer, one of our experienced egg hunters arrived with bags of empty plastic eggs for us. When she saw the eggs at a garage sale, Galena bought them to help support her favorite springtime activity. Following up on Galena’s inspiration, this Easter we said that kids could take home their baskets and plastic eggs if they wanted to but they could also leave them with us for next year. The parents thought this was great idea! I insisted that any eggs left with us had to be empty and whole – with tops and bottoms matched up (no leaving half eggs). We ended up with several cubic feet of empty eggs, plus 8 empty baskets.

This year I again provided “advisors” in the form of ceramic bunnies of different sizes and styles. Each child can pick any basket and advisor they want before the hunt starts. The advisors support the young hunters so that their parents are not tempted to help. I buy bunnies and baskets at garage sales and second hand stores all year so that the children have a wide selection to choose from.

Several of our Huawei co-workers came with their kids. I don’t think they hold Easter Egg Hunts in China so this was a novel treat. They had fun playing in WP668, our backyard caboose. The potluck lunch included a wide variety of dishes which everyone enjoyed eating.

International Women’s Day, TechWomen

I just talked with my husband by Skype at midnight his time, morning my time. He is in Shenzhen China on a business trip, and I am in San Jose California. John said that about about 9 pm, there were celebratory explosions in the street outside his hotel, presumably to honor International Women’s Day. In 2007, I blogged about enjoying Women’s Day in India. John and I both work for Huawei. It will be interesting to see how our China-based company celebrates International Women’s Day today at the R&D center in Santa Clara.

I am hoping that in honor of the day, we will see even more potential mentors applying for the TechWomen mentoring program. TechWomen will pair women in Silicon Valley with their counterparts in the Middle East and North Africa for a professional mentorship and exchange program at leading technology companies in June 2011. If you are a qualified mentor, please apply using the form on http://www.techwomen.org/get-involved/. TechWomen is funded by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA), managed by the Institute of International Education (IIE), and implemented in partnership with the Anita Borg Institute for Women in Technology (ABI).

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Filed under Hopper - Anita Borg Institute, Mentoring & Other Business, News & Reviews

Tagged as China, Huawei, John, Mentoring, Middle East, technical women, TechWomen

February 3, 2011 · 10:27 pm

Happy Year of the Rabbit

Working for Huawei means that I am much more aware of Chinese holidays and traditions. Happy New Year! This is the first day of the Year of the Rabbit in the traditional Chinese zodiac. Yesterday, Huawei had a big party for staff and their families, complete with dumplings, seeds, sweets, balloons, plus a dance and variety show from China TV on the big screen in the cafeteria. Today, many people wore their dressy clothes to work.

In honor of the new year, here is my favorite rabbit story:

My mother used to have two large pets in her San Francisco art studio: a rabbit and a six foot long iguana lizard. Both were vegetarians and they loved carrots for their leafy green tops. One day, my mother put a large carrot on the floor and both animals started for it. They stopped on either side of the vegetable and eyed each other.

You need to know that rabbits show aggression by growling and thumping their back legs. A combative iguana jerks its head up and down and turns its skin from green to orange. So, the grey rabbit was on one side of the carrot growling and thumping, and the lizard was on the other, bobbing and changing color. Fortunately for the peace of the studio, both animals were very stupid. Eventually one wandered off and the other sat on the carrot.

Here are pictures of the food at the Huawei New Year’s Party:

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Filed under Home & Family, News & Reviews

Tagged as China, Eleanor, Huawei, San Francisco

December 27, 2010 · 6:50 pm

Very Busy Christmas

Christmas has been particularly busy this year because my daughter Jessica and son-in-law-to-be Matt are home from college and there is much to do to get ready for their marriage next summer. She will be returning to CMU in ten days and not back until May. Matt will be returning to Willam and Mary. They are both in their Senior year.

Jessica and Matt visited Mount Madonna Park where they want to be married. We bought her wedding shoes and had the first fitting for her wedding gown – the second fitting is next week. (She will be wearing my gown.) Jessica and Matt are shopping for rings and scheduling tastings at the various candidates for wedding caterers. This is in addition to our usual holiday activities and John going to rehearsals for his role as the Magus Melchior in the Epiphany church pageant next Sunday. Some of what we have been doing:

Shopping in San Francisco’s Chinatown with Sally and Lorene for our 28th year – including our annual visit to the Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Factory in Ross Alley
Going to craft fairs, seeing holiday lights, and going to parties hosted by other people
Silicon Valley Lines model train club holiday party at our house. The highlight of the party is the guests creating a model layout on our living room floor with my G-scale track and trains.
Christmas caroling on the cable car in San Francisco
Huawei’s holiday party
Visiting the Dickens Christmas Fair
Christmas eve service at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church (Saratoga)
Christmas dinner at our house
Ladies’ Christmas tea at our house

Paul enjoyed his first quarter at Foothill College. He made us large ceramic Christmas presents, including a large and charming Hedwig the owl which Paul made for Jessica and Matt. Some pictures:

Chinatown

Silicon Valley Lines holiday party

Dickens Christmas Fair

Singing on the San Francisco Cable Car

Wedding Dress Fitting

Christmas Eve at St. Andrew’s

Christmas Day

Ladies’ Christmas Tea

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Filed under Caboose Project and Other Trains, Church, Home & Family, News & Reviews

Tagged as CMU, Foothill College, Huawei, Jessica, marriage, Matthew, St. Andrew's Episcopal Church

November 23, 2010 · 11:11 pm

Huawei Ping Pong Tournament

This week was the start of the 2nd annual Ping Pong tournament at Huawei’s Santa Clara California research center. There is just one table but it gets heavy use for several hours a day during this very popular indoor sporting series. The teams represent different management groups and competition is intense. I joined the spectators after lunch today and had fun watching technical staff, administrators, Human Resources and Engineering executives (and one guy from Marketing) enjoying themselves thoroughly. One of the Vice Presidents brought a small tambourine to add to the clapping and cheers for particularly flashy moves or scores.