Tag Archives: John

May 14, 2014 · 4:13 pm

Women of Vision, King Abdullah of Jordan, TechWomen

Last week, I sat with the Anita Borg Institute Advisory Board at a gala celebrating Women of Vision, and in particular, the well-deserved award for Leadership honoring Dr. Maria Klawe, President of Harvey Mudd College here in California. I am dating myself to write that I remember when Mudd was an all-male institution. Maria and her team have grown Mudd from 10% women in Computer Science to 40% – and have kept that 40% stable for years. This unique accomplishment deserves some celebration! Maria is amazing – she is also #17 on Fortune’s list of the world’s 50 greatest leaders.

The other inspiring winners were Tal Rabin (Research Staff Member and Manager cryptographic research, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center) for Innovation; and Kathrin Winkler (Senior Vice President and Chief Sustainability Officer, EMC Corporation) for Social Impact. Bank of America won as the 2014 Top Company for Women in Computing. Also attending the event were many of my sister mentors who have served in the U.S. State Department’s TechWomen program for scientific and technical women in the Middle East and Africa, including: Jameeka Aaron (of Lockheed Martin), Larissa Shapiro (of Mozilla), Andrea Leszek (of Salesforce), and Rahima Mohammed (of Intel).

Yesterday, my husband John and I drove to Berkeley to see His Majesty, King Abdullah II ibn al-Hussein of Jordan speak at International House on the University of California campus. I was pleased to see the slide saying that 30% of Jordan’s tech industry workers are women – better than the 26% in America as of 2013.

I have never seen the King in person before, although last year I was honored to meet his cousin, Her Royal Highness Princess Sumaya bint El Hassan. Also, when my daughter Jessica and I were on the bus to Petra in Jordan, we watched “The Royal Tour“, a video featuring King Abdullah riding his motorcycle to show off his country. Yesterday’s talk is yet-another event that entered my life because of TechWomen. Mentor Lucie Newcomb (of NewComm Global Group) posted information about the event – including how to get tickets.

TechWomen 2014 mentor sign ups open soon! Please consider expanding your mind, experience, and heart to join us!

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

Tagged as Africa, Geeks, Jessica, John, Jordan, Mentoring, Middle East, San Jose, teaching, technical women, TechWomen, University of California

May 11, 2014 · 3:44 pm

Happy Mother’s Day

Today is America’s official celebration of motherhood – when flowers, candy, greeting cards, and brunch are practically required. John and Paul and I took my mother with her bouquet of roses to St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, followed by Indian buffet at The Mynt Restaurant in Saratoga, CA. We squabbled over who got to eat the caramels out of the box of chocolates she gave me. We missed Jessica and her husband Matthew but hope to talk with them by phone later today.

One of the benefits of my being the keeper of the photo repository is that I have a pictorial record from birth for almost every member of the family, including those below. This is a beautiful day to celebrate my wonderful family, of whom I am very proud!

Eleanor Creekmore Dickinson and baby Katy Dickinson, 1958

Katy Dickinson and baby Jessica Dickinson Goodman, by Jeffrey Davila, 1988

Grandpa Wade Dickinson, Grandma Eleanor Creekmore Dickinson, and baby Paul Dickinson Goodman, 1992

Katy Dickinson and Jessica Dickinson Goodman, at Petra Jordan, 2013

Matthew Holmes and Jessica Dickinson Goodman, at the Lair of the Golden Bear, Pinecrest CA, 2013

Katy Dickinson and Paul Dickinson Goodman 2014

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Filed under Home & Family, News & Reviews

Tagged as Eleanor, Jessica, John, Jordan, Matthew, Middle East, Paul, Wade

May 1, 2014 · 10:37 am

Katy on People to People Radio: 1 May 2014

Tonight (1 May 2014), I will be on People To People Global Radio Show talking with US Doctors for Africa Founder and Chairman, Ted Alemayhu, about Triangular Partnership, and the Pan-Africa Medical Doctors and Healthcare Conference, to be held 21-23 May 2014 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Our segment of this weekly radio program will be hosted by Dr. Anteneh Habte, Chairman of People to People. Join us Thursdays at 9:00 pm Eastern Time (6 pm Pacific Time). Access the weekly show online http://www.blogtalkradio.com/p2pglobalradioshow/ or phone 646-595-4742 each Thursday evening.

I will be traveling to Africa later this month (3rd time this year – a personal best!), with my husband John Plocher (his first trip to Africa). I have been working on the Triangular Partnership panel (moderated by former US Ambassador to Ethiopia David Shinn), as well as with the very helpful staff of US Ambassador Patricia M. Haslach of the US Embassy in Addis to prepare for the conference.

I edited and contributed a chapter to the People to People book Triangular Partnership: the Power of the Diaspora (published in September 2013) so this is a topic of great interest for me. There has been much written and discussed about Twinning. I believe that adding the diaspora – people who have a past and a future in both developing countries and western institutions – is a stronger model for successful development.

1 May 2014 Archived Recording

19 October 2019: Links Updated.

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Filed under Home & Family, News & Reviews

Tagged as Africa, Ethiopia, John, writing

April 20, 2014 · 10:19 pm

Easter Egg Hunt 2014

This morning was our annual backyard Easter Egg Hunt – a very popular event among our friends, family, and neighbors. About 15 children (ages 18 months to 21 years) joined the search for hundreds of plastic eggs filled with chocolate candies. For the adults, there were two specially hidden eggs: gold and silver. Only the following poems gave clues to their locations:

I know a bed where the wild thyme blows,
Where iris and nodding rosemary grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious lemondrops,
With sweet musk-roses and with nasturtium:
There sleep sweet bees sometime of the night,
Lull’d in these flowers with dances and delight;
And there snake throws her cold enamell’d skin,
Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in.

I have 3 guards for my home-place
The same number of eyes and legs between them
They keep for me in a safer space.
One would walk if he were fitted for a mind-Chem
but instead keeps me in the cool.
One is anxious but smiles except when asleep
One at ball’s drop can only drool
One was born only to be buried down deep
Can you find my comfy ark?
Or will you get lost in the barks?

Thanks to the Associate Easter Bunny, my daughter Jessica for her contributions to the poems (from Washington DC), and thanks to Paul and John for helping create today’s festivities! Clara and Paul and Dan teamed up to find the gold and silver eggs – and were rewarded with Peeps Chocolate Eggs for their hunting prowess.

Each Spring, I work for weeks to make our garden a demi-paradise for this event – full of flowers and rock borders suitable for hiding eggs. Easter coincided this year with the seed storms of the cottonwoods on the Guadalupe River in San Jose. Fluffy white seeds blow over everything like dry snow – so much spiderweb removal was needed, especially on WP668, our backyard caboose.

It is such a joy to watch the children filling their baskets, then re-hiding eggs for each other once the hundreds of eggs hidden in the morning by the Easter Bunny have been collected. A delightful celebration of new life and renewal!

21 April 2014 – On the day after the Easter Egg Hunt, I am still finding eggs in the garden (some after the dogs have chewed them)…

Images Copyright John Plocher and Katy Dickinson

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Filed under Church, Home & Family, News & Reviews

Tagged as garden, House Work, Jessica, John, Paul, San Jose, Willow Glen, WP668

April 7, 2014 · 1:33 pm

Happy Birthday John! Congratulations Paul!

Our family is celebrating John’s birthday and Paul’s progress towards graduation from Foothill College (and anticipated transfer to San Jose State University). Paul just received news of high grades on his second-to-last Foothill report card, and today started his final quarter there.

In honor of John’s birthday, Rev. David and Naomi Plocher (his parents) sent a card featuring what may be the first picture showing John with a model train. At four years old, he was already fascinated by railroads. Below is a recent photo of John with his current N-scale layout in what used to be our garage.

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

Tagged as Foothill College, John, Paul, San Jose State University

March 26, 2014 · 4:44 pm

Announcing katydickinson.com

Announcing the new website for Katy Dickinson Consulting: katydickinson.com

Katy Dickinson Consulting creates measurably effective long-lasting infrastructure and processes in a professional and technical environment. Successful large programs have included global mentoring, innovation and product life cycle, and corporate intellectual property management systems.

I have been developing website content and choosing among my photos for the pages: Clients, Contact, Key Publications and Best Practices, and About Katy Dickinson. A side benefit of this work was discovering online a 2003 patent application I thought was never filed:

Dickinson, Katherine V.G., Jos Marlowe, James Gosling “Method and apparatus for automatically archiving and clearing intellectual property” US Patent Application 20030055848 (20 March 2003)

I also discovered that my 2000 ecommerce patent was cited by 43 later patents!

Gandel, Deborah E., Katherine V.G. Dickinson, et alia, “Method and apparatus for implementing electronic software distribution” US Patent 6,167,568 (26 December 2000).

Much appreciation for great support from my clever daughter Jessica Dickinson Goodman and from my husband John Plocher helping to create my company’s new website. Jessica designs websites professionally as the Digital Communications Specialist for Polaris Project. John is the Principal Storage Architect for EVault. I am blessed to have such experts in my own family.

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Filed under Home & Family, Mentoring & Other Business, News & Reviews

Tagged as Jessica, John, Mentoring

March 23, 2014 · 6:32 pm

Triple Time: CalTrain, BART, VTA to SFO

Because I travel a great deal, in December 2013 I applied to GOES (Global Online Enrollment System) for a card that will allow me to get through US airports faster.

What is Global Entry?
Global Entry is a U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) program that allows expedited clearance for pre-approved, low-risk travelers upon arrival in the United States.

GOES is popular, so I had to wait until this week for my in-person interview at SFO (San Francisco International Airport). I decided to accompany my husband John on his morning commute to SFO for my interview. Driving from San Jose to SFO would have taken about two hours round trip and cost $22 in gas (40 miles x $0.55/mile) plus about $4 to park. By public transit, it cost $30 and took six hours round trip (not counting the time in SFO). My route was complex because there is no single public transit system and no direct route San Jose – SFO – San Jose:

San Jose Tamien to Millbrae by CalTrain ($8 day pass)
Millbrae to San Bruno by BART ($20 – minimum ticket available)
San Bruno to SFO by BART (same BART ticket)
SFO to San Bruno by BART (same BART ticket)
San Bruno to Millbrae by BART (same BART ticket)
Millbrae to San Jose Diridon by CalTrain (same CalTrain ticket)
San Jose Diridon to Convention Center ($2 VTA ticket)
Convention Center to San Jose Tamien (same VTA ticket)

I still can use the balance on my BART ticket and it does not expire – but I only ride BART about once every five years so I will have to carry it until then.

CalTrain does not seem to have a Mission statement but is developing a strategic plan this year that may include one.

Here is the BART Mission statement:

Provide safe, clean, reliable and customer-friendly regional public transit service that increases mobility and accessibility, strengthens community and economic prosperity and helps preserve the Bay Area’s environment.

Here it the VTA Mission Statement :

The mission of VTA is to provide the public with a safe and efficient countywide transportation system. The system should increase access and mobility, reduce congestion, improve the environment and support economic development, thereby enhancing quality of life.

I note that neither of these say anything about Convenience, Value, or Speedy Travel. So, my triple time traveling experience may be what they expect for their customers. I like riding trains and I enjoyed the lovely exhibit “Lace: A Sumptuous History 1600s-1900s” while at SFO so the day was not a total waste (but next time I will drive). I hope that using GOES will save me the time I just spent…

3/24/2014: My GOES card just arrived in the mail – impressive turnaround time!

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

Tagged as John, San Francisco, San Jose

Tag Archives: John

Women of Vision, King Abdullah of Jordan, TechWomen

Happy Mother’s Day

Katy on People to People Radio: 1 May 2014

Easter Egg Hunt 2014

Happy Birthday John! Congratulations Paul!

Announcing katydickinson.com

Triple Time: CalTrain, BART, VTA to SFO

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