Tag Archives: Jordan

April 19, 2013 · 11:59 am

Portland Covers

IMG_6852

John and I came into San Jose, California, this morning on Amtrak after a quick trip north to Portland, Oregon. John was at the OpenStack open source conference and I was working for MentorCloud remotely from the comfortable and friendly Kimpton Hotel Monaco.

Walking to meals in downtown Portland, I followed up on my hobby of collecting manhole cover designs. I have been posting pictures on my Pinterest board Civic Ironwork – Manhole Covers. Searching other photo collection boards in Pinterest, it turns out I am not alone in noticing the variation and design of these humble urban elements. The pictures of manhole covers in Japan are certainly the most colorful.

So far, I myself have posted manhole cover images from Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, and the USA. In downtown Portland alone, I saw 26 unique designs and inscriptions – the most variety I have seen in one place.

IMG_6849

IMG_6905

Images Copyright 2013 by Katy Dickinson

2 Comments

Filed under Home & Family, News & Reviews

Tagged as , , , ,

April 11, 2013 · 5:02 pm

Building a Community Through Mentoring

IMG_5817

In my Katysblog entry yesterday “Sheryl Sandberg, Leaning In on Mentoring“, I included a quote from Ms. Sandberg’s March 2013 book Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead:

Many companies are starting to move from informal mentoring that relies on individual initiative to more formal programs. When taken seriously, these formal mentorship/sponsorship programs can be remarkably successful.

One of the sometimes-unexpected successes of formal mentoring programs is the development of a strong long-term community of mentors and mentees who have come to know and respect each other through the program.  These communities can continue far beyond the boundaries of the company or program that created them.

Some examples:

  • I have written frequently about the Sun Microsystems mentoring programs participated in by over 7,000 employees from 1996-2009. Over 630 of those who joined my Sun Engineering mentoring program (SEED) chose to join a private LinkedIn group to stay in communication after Sun was purchased by Oracle in 2009. I am sure more continue to work and learn with each other through through professional and private connections.  The initial match between one mentor and one mentee quickly becomes the base for more complex and lasting relationships: the mentor introduces the mentee to associates or recommends him for a position, the mentee becomes a mentor herself and introduces her new mentee to her own mentor, etc.  In 2010-2011, when I was the Process Architect for the U.S. State Department’s TechWomen mentoring program, many of the potential mentors I contacted to join the new program were former Sun mentoring program participants.
  • In July 2011, toward the end of the first TechWomen term, I wrote a Katysblog entry called “37 Sisters – TechWomen“. That feeling of family, of a strong and growing US-MENA-based sisterhood, has only increased since then. The photo above was taken after our Successful Panel at the October, 2012 Grace Hopper Conference in Baltimore, Maryland, when several dozen TechWomen mentors,  mentees, and staff from the 2011 and 2012 terms met to celebrate. Fifty of us gathered again in February 2013 to join the TechWomen delegation to Jordan.  The photo below shows us at Injaz, one of the many schools and programs we visited in Jordan to talk with local girls and young women about STEM, TechWomen, and TechGirls.

The worlds of STEM and the Silicon Valley in particular are small places.  Even though there are over seven million people in the San Francisco Bay Area, after a few years working here, it becomes hard to to go anywhere without meeting folks you know.  Professional trust and connections, such as those built and supported by formal mentoring programs, enhance both reputation and effectiveness.

Last Import-109

Images Copyright 2012-2013 by Katy Dickinson

Leave a comment

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

Tagged as , , , , , , , , ,

March 25, 2013 · 12:55 pm

Virtual Choir

IMG_4210

My daughter Jessica is the musician in our family: she sings folksongs and opera and frequently writes about music on her blog. In February 2013, during long bus trips through the Jordan mountains as part of the TechWomen delegation – to pass the time, Shahryan and I traded earbuds back and forth, each playing favorite songs stored on our smart phones. Although I am no musician, this blog entry is a gift of music for my friend Shahryan – who lives almost 9,000 miles away in Yemen.

American conductor Eric Whitacre is one of the most popular and performed composers of this generation. His Virtual Choir projects are both inspiring and amazing technically – and also present very good music. The projects are successful artistically and organizationally: for example, in 2012, Whitacre’s “Virtual Choir: Bliss” project was funded on Kickstarter at $122,555 (122% of asking).

In past projects, Eric Whitacre used a worldwide virtual choir singing recorded parts. For the just-released “Cloudburst”, he combined live and virtual choirs.

The lyrics are from “Cloudburst” by Mexican poet Octavio Paz. I hope you enjoy this music as much as I do.
Last Import-61

Images Copyright 2013 by Katy Dickinson

Leave a comment

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

Tagged as , , , ,

February 28, 2013 · 11:23 am

Honoring Our Own Generosity

IMG_5648 . IMG_5647

LORD POLONIUS
My lord, I will use them according to their desert.

PRINCE HAMLET
God’s bodykins, man, much better: use every man
after his desert, and who should ‘scape whipping?
Use them after your own honour and dignity: the less
they deserve, the more merit is in your bounty.
Take them in.

– William Shakespeare, Hamlet Act II, Scene ii, 1600

I recently returned home from my fifth trip to the Middle East, visiting Jordan and Lebanon. I was in Jordan as a member of the TechWomen delegation – TechWomen is an initiative of the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA). I visited Lebanon to see my friends, the TechWomen program alumnae and to talk with Al-Makassed (the Makassed Philanthropic Islamic Association of Beirut).

As the Vice President for MentorCloud, I talked a great deal about mentoring during my trip. I traveled with my daughter Jessica. She and I were welcomed with world-class generosity and open hearts and minds. In discussing the motivations for mentors, I often use the phrase paying it forward. That is, mentors often say that they are giving back the wise and generous advice and support that they themselves were given during their development. I was surprised and concerned when discussing these motivations for mentors not once but twice to be told that in Arabic, the saying is not “Give and Take” but “Take and Give”. This seemed to reflect doubt among some audience members that mentoring would work in their culture. I have been thinking about these discussions for the two weeks that I have been home.

During one of our long bus trips in Jordan, our tour guide played a video for us in which His Majesty King Abdulla of Jordan gives a Royal Tour of his country. “Jordan – The Royal Tour” is a 2002 tourism promotion piece but a good overview nonetheless. During the tour, King Abdulla tells a story from his youth. His uncle (then heir-apparent to King Hussein) and he were traveling in the desert and met an old man on a white horse. The man wanted to give them lunch, so he sold the stallion, his only possession, to buy fifteen sheep for a feast. Of course, when this became known, the white stallion was repurchased with fifteen more sheep as a present in return. King Abdullah calls this tradition of generous welcome the “code of the desert”. My experiences in the Middle East have been consistent with the King’s story – I have been honored by extraordinary generosity.

So, why would my Middle Eastern audiences doubt their community’s welcoming of mentoring – a relationship based on long-term generosity? As a life-long fan of William Shakespeare, I thought of the interchange above between Hamlet and Polonius – about the merit in treating others according to our own honor and dignity. Coming to terms with our own generosity and motivations is part of the journey that leads many of us to become mentors.

Recommended additional reading: “Is Giving the Secret to Getting Ahead?”  by Susan Dominus, 13 March 2014, _New York Times_

IMG_4380

Images Copyright 2013 by Katy Dickinson

2 Comments

Filed under Mentoring & Other Business

Tagged as , , , , , ,

February 25, 2013 · 2:31 pm

Encountering Wild Cyclamen in Jordan

Last Import-95

When the TechWomen delegation visited the northern Jordan mountains near village of Koura, I was surprised to see a wild Cyclamen flowering in a limestone field.    The surprise was that a pretty flower I have always considered as a delicate indoor table decoration would be someone else’s wildflower.

As a lifelong gardener and long-time reader of Pacific Horticulture, I am familiar with much of the native and ornamental flora of California and the American West. Many of the plants and trees I saw in Jordan and Lebanon were also familiar – since the climate is not too different from my home. Except for the overwhelming amount of limestone, the parts of Jordan I saw look like California’s Gold Country or the mountains and desserts of the State of Nevada where my family has often gone exploring. I understand that Jordan’s Wadi Rum has more of the granite that is so common here in the western USA.

My unexpected encounter with a wild cyclamen gave me a better understanding of how the biologist felt who identified the thought-to-be-long-extinct Coelacanth in a fisherman’s net in 1938.

Added 4 December 2014 – November photo of TechWomen’s Seham Al Jaafreh of Jordan with cyclamen in Washington DC:

IMG_2979

Images Copyright 2013-2014 by Katy Dickinson

2 Comments

Filed under Mentoring & Other Business

Tagged as , , , , , ,

February 21, 2013 · 3:36 pm

Mentoring vs. Coaching vs. Sponsorship

Last Import-1

During recent weeks while I was traveling with the TechWomen delegation in Jordan, and then when I was talking about MentorCloud and mentoring with  Al-Makassed (the Makassed Philanthropic Islamic Association of Beirut) and TechWomen participants in Lebanon, my frequent explanations about professional mentoring got shorter. In particular, my differentiations between mentoring, coaching, and sponsorship got more crisp through repetition. I understand clearly these three words are often used interchangeably and that each of the three kinds of relationships often contain elements of the other two. However, I have found it helps to distinguish the three.  Key differentiating elements are:

  • Power (positional or hierarchical authority, degree of control)
  • Topic (specific tasks, life change)
  • Duration of the relationship (short-term, long-term)
  • Reward (benefit or pay, particularly to the senior member of the relationship)

Sponsorship or Patronage

In this relationship, the patron or sponsor is in a position of authority and intentionally using their power to advance the interests or career of their favorite, client, or sponsee. Sponsorship can be positive (as in the development of a successor or talented junior associate) or negative (as seen in destructive favoritism or political corruption). The favorite may be a long-term political or organizational dependent. A sponsor or patron may protect and support the favorite over time while they grow their abilities or advance within an organizational structure. The patron may directly control the work of the favorite, takes responsibility for the favorite, and may benefit directly by their work – or indirectly by accepting credit for their success. The favorite’s own capabilities may be questioned because the patron is seen to be responsible for their achievements. This is a limited relationship – that is, a patron will have only one or a very small number of favorites. See Wikipedia’s article on
Patronage for legal and illegal examples.

Coaching

Coaching is a relationship or kind of communication with the primary goal of conveying specific knowledge, training, or skills. A coach is more knowledgeable and experienced than their client or student, at least in the target topic or task area. The coach may be paid to be in the relationship as the student’s work supervisor, master craftsman, or teacher. A coach may have many students but the relationship is often limited to the time it takes to transfer the specific information or deliver expected results.  The coach may or may not have longer-term hierarchical authority over the student.

Mentoring

Mentoring is a longer-term relationship focused on larger professional or life issues. The mentor is usually much more experienced than the mentee but may or may not be an expert in the same professional area. The mentor and mentee should not be in a supervisory relationship; that is, the important power difference between them is one of wisdom rather than positional authority. Mentor and mentee often work together long-term and become friends. The mentor may advocate for the mentee but does not control the mentee and does not take responsibility for the mentee’s success. Mentors may have many mentees, sometimes in one-to-one or one-to-many structures.  Mentors are usually unpaid professional volunteers who get satisfaction from “paying it forward” – that is, giving back some of the guidance that benefited them during their own development.  Mentoring is a personal relationship in a professional setting.

Key deliverables from the mentor are:

  • Introductions to experts or wise people who can help the mentee.
  • References to key resources, training, experiences which will expand the mentee’s understanding, experience, or context.
  • Feedback – the mentor acts as a sounding board for the mentee.  The mentor may offer specific advice or may only provide enough guidance for the mentee to figure out his or her own way.

Additional Reading:

Last Import-16

Images Copyright 2013 by Katy Dickinson

1 Comment

Filed under Mentoring & Other Business

Tagged as , , , , , ,

February 20, 2013 · 4:15 pm

Goats Happen

Last Import-297

In one of the many long bus trips that the TechWomen delegation took around Jordan recently, our guide told us the story of being awakened one morning in the middle of the capital city Amman by the sound of a goat herd being driven through the streets, to which his neighbor remarked “Goats happen”. From the ruins of Jerash, to the streets of Petra, and alongside every highway, we did indeed see sheep and goats (and occasionally camels) everywhere we went. Sometimes the herds were associated with the flat tents of transient families or refugees but more often they were just moving along the road. Most of us mentors are city girls, not used to the urban goat.

Last Import-145

IMG_4089

IMG_4190

IMG_4096

IMG_4380

5 April 2013 – Goats even happen in in Palo Alto, California: herd clearing weeds (the fence sign says CAUTION / Electric Perimeter – Area Closed / Do Not Feed Goats / Keep Dogs on Leash):
IMG_6531

Images Copyright 2013 by Katy Dickinson

1 Comment

Filed under Mentoring & Other Business, News & Reviews

Tagged as , , , ,