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Lights flashed on the stage.These are real life rock stars. 12,000 women computer scientists and engineers gathered for the Grace Hopper Women in Celebration. Women or not already during day one I learned valuable career advice anyone can benefit from. What's Your Niche? Take a moment to think about what other people think about you. No, not what they think about your clothing or how you shoved that piece of pizza in your face. What they think about you as a whole. Like it or not, everyone has a niche or brand that people identify you with. Are you a trail blazer? Approachable? Efficient? Ally? Approachable? Ask someone how they see you, however, you may not like the results... but there is a solution. There was a women in the workplace who was described to have career ADD, meaning she would purposely take on projects in disarray, fix them and move on to the next crumbling project. Transforming her weakness into a strength she used her talent to reorganize lost causes becoming a strategist. Co-workers could go to her for help with theor projects adding value to the team. Crucial Conversations In Your Career Unavoidably there will be times in your career when you have to practice conflict resolution, stick up for yourself and simply communicate with others what you are working on. Various social norms can debilitate folks from communicating effectively. Here are charactierstics that ensure effective communication: Be Direct, Be Specific, Be Proactive & Be Confident Advice From a CEO As an NCWIT (National Center for Women & Information Technology) collegiate member peers and I had the opportunity to have lunch with the CEO and engineers from Qualcomm. The CEO happened to sit at my lunch table and we got to ask him career advice. One of my favorite questions was, "What are characteristics that got you to the position of CEO?" His answer... 1) Communicate: speak confidently, convince others of your idea, be a good public speaker. 2) Trust: know your employee's are competent, they are the technical experts. 3) Motivate: Be a cat herder, convey the importance of the task effectively.
Looking Forward to Grace Hopper 2015
Unsure of whether to call it the Grace Hopper Conference or Celebration I’m going to postulate that it is both. Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (GHC) is a collection of conferences where computer scientists can learn about the latest technology, participate in tech workshops, network and build soft skills. The Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology and the Association for Computing Machinery initiated GHC named after the computer scientist Grace Hopper. Hopper coined the term debugging, after picking bugs out of her computer and invented the first compiler, allowing programming languages to be more human-like.
Aspiring or seasoned computer scientist GHC sounds like the place to be, described by my peers in NCWIT (National Center for Women and Information Technology). In high school I became one of NCWIT’s MN State Affiliate Aspiration in Computing Award winners and since then have heard of networking stories, tales of learning experience and good times from GHC goers.
As a current Co-Op at NASA’s Johnson Space Center I have been sent on a mission to learn as much as I can and share with my department how these acquired skills will help them. As an NCWITer I will be able to connect with other like-minded women and attend their networking events. I have been browsing through the conference schedule and crafted a comprehensive itinerary filled with keynote presentations, professional development, and hands on tech projects.
Sessions on my itinerary I am most excited for include “Communicating for Impact and Influence”, “Design and Development Considerations in Serious Games”, “Bank of America Technical Women Luncheon”, “Speed Mentoring Breakfast with Microsoft”, and “Data Science: NASA”.
WAYS TO GET INVOLVED
I will be live tweeting and live blogging the event
Check out this year’s sessions and think about joining in next year
Watch keynotes from past events
Are Apps Worth Our Time? Defrag Day 2
Our obsession of technology has amounted to 11 hours of action yesterday at Defrag 2014. A theme throughout all of the conference is determining if this obsession is worth while. Speaker Anil Dash, from Think Up, explored if technology is a good use of time. How often you scrolled through your Facebook newsfeed, sent a tweet, or Snapchated a pic? In fact, you are using a form of social media right now. Social media is a tool used to connect others, yet there may not be much to show from all of our time on apps. Dash recognizes that companies will do their best to "steal your time" and keep you on their apps longer. As developers and innovators there exists a level of responsibility since what is created will use people's precious time, therefore should be worth a user's while. Tech creators, in Dash's words, must "earn (a user's) time. As a user, be aware of who creates your apps and social media tools . Is it a "ma and pop", giant company's, or 20 something year old from silicon valley's app? Reflect if you are getting anything out of your time. Thankfully, I can reflect and see that through the power of social media I have been able to make connections with others who share similar interests with me and opened doors to many opportunities. However if your time is spent racking up "likes", a rearrangement of priorities may be in order. Time is the most valuable resource, use it wisely.
Defrag 2014's Take On Data Security
As reflected by our year of high traffic social media platforms, large scale company hacks, and increased amount of data, security of that data has become a top priority in tech. Defrag had a series of break out sessions that featured security. Hot topics highly discussed this afternoon have included the slippery slope of "who owns your data?" presented by Lorinda Brandon from SmartBear, "what's in your trash" explored by Rory O'Rouke, and online security challenges revealed by Rami Essaid of Distil Networks.
The biggest lie on the internet, according to Brandon, is that "you read the Terms Of Use". Let's be honest, we all quickly check the "read" box, and do not bother to even open the privacy policy. Why? To even understand the ramifications of what you are agreeing to would take hours and still be missing details. Brandon shared her hours long experience picking apart Samsung's privacy policy and found that Samsung "Share(s) information for purposes of business and ecosystem". Our data and how businesses use it for their own profitable benefit can be unclear. As innovators in tech it is necessary to be mindful of other's data and be transparent with users.
Bounce.io utilizes digital waste by finding treasure in trash, taking data on what kinds of emails "bounce back" to a user and why it was kicked out. A cool idea O'Rouke of Bounce.io mentioned was a user comparing emails in their spam about penny stocks to the actual performance of that penny stock in the market. If information about a stock ends up in your spam, does that indicate that the stock is a poor investment.
2014 has been filled with a "storm of security attacks" as pointed out by Essaid with the security hacking of Target, Sears, and Home Depot. Unfortunately, hacking has become a profession where it pays to be bad; easy, cheap, low risk, and a big payoff. One of the biggest factors that companies are missing is the idea of prevention accompanied by a plan for reaction if an attack occurs. An attack is inevitable, as the data illustrates with the thousands of bots in existence, so not having a reaction plan is foolish. An interesting scenario Essaid pointed out your website may not be the one that is initially hacked into, yet another website's user names and passwords can be hacked and then bots use these stolen usernames and passwords to access your website's accounts.
How to get involved...
- Become aware of your data footprint and who shares your data
- Advocate for transparency about how companies use your data
- Check security settings on your social media
- If in the tech industry, ensure your company is prepared for security breach
First Impressions of Defrag 2014
In just a few hours attending Defrag 2014 my skepticism about drones has been eliminated, early computing has become extremely interesting, and I now believe that the vacant/occupied bathroom indicators on airplanes are genius. Experiencing Defrag starts by being welcomed into an idea intimate environment with tech "swag" (goodie bags), refreshments, and an imitate establishment that we are here to share ideas and grow ourselves. These ideas are first shared via keynote presentations by professionals from across the spectrum of tech including Chris Anderson from 3D Robotics, George Dyson author of "Turning's Cathedral" and Amber Case from Esri.
When the word "drone" is mentioned initial things that come to my mind include military drones that are used in combat and the seemingly foolish idea to use drones to deliver packages from Amazon. A word that didn't come to mind was Orangutans. Orangutans... you mean the primate? Yes. Anderson shared a unique and useful application of drones is to track wildlife and their well being. Primates make nests daily and can be identified from imaging captured by drones. In industry, a practical application for drones includes surveying of farm land. From an aerial view farms can get real time feedback in their crops and react accordingly without wasting money on chemicals and waiting to see a result.
"Imitation Game" is a motion picture releasing on November 28th which follows Alan Turning's challenge reverse engineering the Enigma Machine. Dyson provided an excellent crash course in computing's journey, including Turning's contribution, from analog to digital. He shared most importantly the unbiased vision of the future of computing that was imagined before computing was born. A way computing can grow is by letting the computer make mistakes and learn. Reliability isn't necessarily ideal. In conclusion Dyson shared his vision for future of computing... 1) 3D computation 2) Template-based addressing 3) Pulse-frequency coding 4) Analog Computing
Technology can be overwhelming! Bells, whistles, and features galore. Sometimes we just want something to accomplish a task when we want it and not give annoying notifications. Amber Case spoke about Calm Technology that promotes "Great design (which) allows people to accomplish their goals in the least amount of moves". Airplane bathroom vacancy indicator is a calm technology approach to alert a user of information they need in an un-invasive manner. "A person's primary task shouldn't be computing but being human."
How you can get involved...
Drones: Imaging of the future is surprisingly affordable and even available in toy stores! They can be picked up for easily under $500 and programmed to your will.
History of Computing: Often neglected in education, history of computing and technology is a way to look back in order to look forward farther. Research about the history of technology and find unbiased inspiration.
Calm Technology: Case mentioned a fun exercise where you design the most overly complicated piece of technology and try to "calm it". Get your product to be as efficient in helping reach the end goal as possible.
Looking Forward to Defrag 2014
Drones, APIs, and Raspberry Pi, Defrag 2014 is a unique tech conference which the coordinators describe "explores the frontiers of technology's intersections with society". Recently I was granted a scholarship, sponsored by True Ventures, to attend Defrag in snow capped mountainous state of Colorado. Thousands of the scientifically savvy will be gathered at Omni Interlocken Resort to take part in a two day tech intensive filled with keynote speakers, break outs, and networking galore. Representatives of big name companies like IBM, Microsoft, Google, Dell, and AT&T will be attending. Aside from from my anticipation of the innovative atmosphere, I am excited to attend keynotes with the names "Robots Take Flight", "Monkey Selfies and Other Conundrums: Who Owns Your Data?", and "Can you Handle the Big Data Explosion?" name just a few. With pen, legal pad, and ideas to contribute I am ready for Defrag 2014 to blow my mind.
Where does the word defrag come from?
Defrag is short for defragmentation. When a file is stored in memory, space which that file takes up may not necessarily be continuous. Meaning, pieces of the file could be stored in chunks separate from each other. Defragmentation matches the pieces that correspond to one another and puts them next to each other. This makes retrieving files faster.
How can I get in on the action?
Throughout both days I will be blogging about my experience which you can follow here. Defrag has their own Twitter tag #defragcon which will provide updates on happenings during the conference. Check out Defrag: http://www.defragcon.com/2014/