 |
. |  |
Yesterday I taught at the well-received Mentor-Mentee Workshop, generously hosted by Symantec. Mark Bregman (EVP and CTO for Symantec) welcomed us. Today is the first day of work for the 37 TechWomen Mentees in the Silicon Valley. Our three Mentees at Huawei are settled into their office – we are still getting everything sorted out but they seem happy and pleased with their first day.
Images Copyright 2011 by Katy Dickinson
For the last three years, my husband John and I have been after-school teachers on Thursday afternoons for the Santa Maria Urban Ministry (SMUM) Studio program. There is another group of volunteers who offer Studio on Tuesdays. During the summer, the Studio kids enjoy monthly activities.
Last week was our final session for this school year. My daughter Jessica is home from college so she was able to join us. We had a party with cake and pizza. The kids posed with backpacks for a picture for the SMUM Canticle Newsletter. In 2010, over 800 backpacks were distributed at the end of the summer to grade school, middle school, and high school students in the SMUM community of inner city San Jose. Backpacks and their contents are donated by churches and community service groups like the Willow Glen Lions.
 |
. |  |
Images Copyright 2011 by Katy Dickinson
Filed under Lions, News & Reviews
The TechWomen program staff have been working for about nine months to get ready for 38 Mentees from 6 countries and territories who will be arriving soon from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) to work in the Silicon Valley in June 2011. We have already held the Mentor Training and are getting ready for Mentee orientation. After that, I will be one of the teachers for the Mentor-Mentee Workshop, to be held the day before the Mentees start work.
I have been answering questions for weeks from Mentors and other company representatives about Export status, non-disclosure agreements, Human Resources policies, laptop usage and security, project plans, plus all of the other details we need to sort through so that the companies will be ready to host their Mentees.
I am eager to meet the Mentees that Huawei will host. We have an office for them. I have seen their pictures. I know their backgrounds but I still have no idea if I am pronouncing their names correctly…
Filed under Mentoring & Other Business, News & Reviews
I was one of the teachers for the first TechWomen Mentor Workshop today. HP Labs in Palo Alto generously hosted the event. We were joined by most of the 38 Technical Mentors and more than a dozen Cultural Mentors from over 40 Silicon Valley companies. These impressive professional women will coach the 38 Mentees from 6 countries and territories who will be arriving in June from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). It was a day full of good questions, excitement, and anticipation.
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 and Technology (ABI). I have been the Mentoring Process Architect for TechWomen since September 2010, working with ABI. It is a joy to see the program finally starting!
Among many topics, we discussed schedules and expectations, technical and business competencies, vocabulary, learning goals, mentoring and community resources. The TechWomen program team put together a Mentor Guide which included many of these materials. Additional community resources which came out in discussion:
Some elements of the TechWomen program were inspired by the SEED mentoring program I created and managed for Sun Microsystems for 10 years. Details on SEED are available in the free Sun Labs Technical Report “Sun Mentoring: 1996-2009” (published in 2009).
 |
. |  |
Images Copyright 2011 Katy Dickinson
 |
. |  |
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
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.
 |
. |  |
 |
. |  |
Images Copyright 2011 Katy Dickinson
I love TED Talks. I was in a church leadership retreat last weekend during which several of us talked excitedly about how powerful these short web-based videos can be for encouraging new thinking. Others at the retreat had never heard of TED Talks. So, I collaborated with my expert daughter to came up with the following list of favorites.
What are TED Talks?
TED is a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Since then its scope has become ever broader. Along with two annual conferences … TED includes the award-winning TEDTalks video site, the Open Translation Project and Open TV Project, the inspiring TED Fellows and TEDx programs, and the annual TED Prize. More on http://www.ted.com/
Some Favorite TED Talks
Other videos of great talks (non-TED):
Filed under Church, Home & Family, News & Reviews
One of my favorite books is Moby Dick or The Whale by Herman Melville (1851). I have been enjoying listening to this classic novel on my iPhone while driving to work. (My Smart Car has an iPhone holder and charger which connects into the speakers, so the sound is very good.) I have noticed that a number of the chapter titles are mis-typed in the Recorded Books, LLC version. Some of the peculiar errors include:
One problem with listening to an audio book while driving is that sometimes the recording will jump around from chapter to chapter. Earlier this week, it lept 30 chapters ahead and there was no safe way to reset it without being distracted from driving through heavy traffic. I don’t know whether it is the iPhone application or the recording itself which is causing this problem.
I am a fan of Peet’s Coffee but seeing a Starbucks sign always reminds me that the coffee chain was named after the first mate of the whaling ship Pequod in Moby Dick.
 |
 |
Images Copyright 2010 by Katy Dickinson
Filed under News & Reviews
KatysBlog 