DIY Hardware Hack Day

Wanted to write about the Hack Weekend we had here in NYC a month-or-so ago, it was my first time putting one together, and I thought it would be good to share wisdom.

My reason for putting the weekend together was selfish, I wanted to learn more about hardware hacking. Our Christmas sweater was my first experience and it was super fun. So, I wanted to take up another project myself. 

I'm lucky enough to live in NYC, there are a bunch of experts that live here. Rick Waldron made Johnny-Five, and Francis Gulotta is Levo League's own pro. I asked them, and a few other people, if they wanted to help put a weekend together.

Basically we just put an Eventbrite page together and charged $30. We spread the word via Twitter and Emails, which sold us about 30 tickets. We charged because we didn't want sponsors, so the $30 was for food. 

Levo League donated the space for the weekend. Day of we ordered some food, and people arrived around 11-12.

Rick gave a great talk about Johnny-five (which is an amazing library that makes JS and Arduino easy as pie) to kick us off and then we went about our weekend. 

An environment where people are creating is awesome. Everyone spent the weekend buzzing. We brought tools and had some extra parts but people made a few runs to the hardware store to pick up some things. 

At the end of the weekend we did demo time to show off what we made, here are some really cool ones. 

Here is what I made, this LED changes colors based on your tweets. 

 

 

Rick made a  robot that that moves when he moves using the Kinect

 

This glove changes the volume on your laptop

 

The coolest thing to come out of the weekend was dorby our Levo League robot that opens the front door via the internet. 

 

Our weekend was a great time, and we plan on doing it again soon. LMK if you are interested in joining. 

style

[COMING SOON]

In which I answer all of the questions

This blog post has been in the corners of my mind and nipping at my ankles for a while. 

Please don't linkbait this, or pick comment fights. This isn't for upvotes, or HN fame. 

Many people I meet ask me a varient on this question "I understand we want more women in technology, but why?" It's a great question, and not at all something we should be offended by. Often men are afraid to ask questions like this for fear there will be backlash, I think that fear can lead to stiffling of an important conversation.

Frankly, the internet is thriving without women building it, why should that change? 

I put together the following answer for a Quora thread, I thought it would be also advantageous to put it here, so I (and maybe you) can reference it in the future. 

I think the reason why we need more women building technology is threefold, I will outline below. 

You will notice I stay away from generalizations like "women are better at xyz," because such generalizations imply that we therefore must be worse at other things that men may be able to do better. I don't think approching the argument that way is productive. 

Diversity leads to better products and results

As illustrated in the Cornell study included below and many more to be found online, diversity improves performance, morale, and end product. More women engineers means building a better internet, and improving software that can service society as a whole. Building a better internet is why I started doing software development in the first place, I think we can all agree this is of utmost importance.

(source: http://web.mit.edu/cortiz/www/Diversity/PDFs/Jehn%20et%20al%201999.pdf)

The internet is the largest recording of human history ever built 

Right now the architecture for that platform is being built disproportionally by white and asian males. You've heard the phrase "he who writes history makes history"? We don't yet know how this will affect future generations. 

How can architecture be decidedly male? I like to refer to the anecdotal story of the Apple Store glass stairs. While visually appealing one unforeseen consequence to their design was the large groups of strange men that spend hours each day sitting under them looking up. As a women, the first time I saw them I thought "thank god I'm not wearing a skirt today." Such considerations were not taken in designing these stairs, I think it's probable, if not easily predictable, that in a few years we will see such holes in the design of the web. 

Women in 10 years need to be able to provide for themselves, and their families

Now, this reason is purely selfish on the part of women, but we all have mothers, and sisters, so I hope we can relate. 

This year there are 6 million information technology jobs in the US, up from 628,600 in 1987 then 1.34 million in 1997. Right now jobs in technology have half the unemployment rate of the rest of the workforce. There is no sign this will change anytime soon. If growth continues at the current rate, it will not be long until women will not be able to sustain themselves if not involved in a technical field. 

We have to start educating young girls about this now, or they may ultimately become the poorest demographic among us. 

(sources: http://www.gao.gov/corresp/he98159r.pdf, http://media.dice.com/report/july-2012-top-tech-talent-gaps/, http://www.bls.gov/ooh/About/Projections-Overview.htm)

I hope this has been educational for you, if this is something that you have debated. If you have any thoughts please share. 

Teaching a Man to Fish With a Computer

Last week I had the privilege of traveling to the Dominican Republic with the organization Handfuls

 of Hope. We went down to bring food, clothing, and care to some of the poorest villages about an 

hour outside of Santo Domingo. We also built a roof, and did a lot of painting (photo above is me 

after a full day's work painting).

 

The trip was an amazing experience, it was incredibly humbling how helpful and happy the 

children were at the village. We think that all our stuff provides us with happiness, but in reality it 

provides us with stress and obligation. After months planted behind my machine it was lovely to

 be able to spend my days working outside. I even did construction and help put a roof on one of 

the buildings in the village. 

The folks there live without running water, mostly (a few homes had it). They only have electricity 

for a few hours a day. I was spending some time chatting while painting a fence, and I learned 

from one of the women that put the trip together that in the school (a small school with several 

classrooms holding 10 or so students) there was a computers class that was held weekly. 

Excited, I asked if I could see it. So, I stopped by and saw 10 adults in a classroom with 1 

computer that a teacher was working with. There was a larger monitor they were all watching on 

and learning from. From what I could see, a specific program was being taught on a Windows box,

 it could have been anything, I didn't get to ask. I got to say "Hello," the experience was wonderful

 and it was great to see that even in this place, where many people don't own much more than

 their clothes, and this is their Wikipedia:

and they were being taught how to use a computer. 

All that got me thinking, what is the most important thing to teach to adults who are seeing a 

computer for the first time? What is the fastest way to get them from illiterate to a place where 

they can be making money from the web like the rest of us? 

The internet is a perfect environment for them to thrive. The decentralization of 

commerce means that you don't have to own a storefront on Park Ave to make serious cash, or 

ideally, feed your family. There are many organizations that take homemade crafts from third world

 areas and put them online, however, what about empowering the people to do this themselves? 

I immediately did what I do and broke things down into steps. Step one: find the tools to supply

them.  The first place I looked to send help to this class was One Laptop Per Child to see if I 

could buy some laptops and send them, from their site it appears you can only donate laptops to

the areas they designate (that makes perfect sense for their organization, just doing some 

research). I could buy some netbooks and send them, but would need to come up with a strategy 

to make them provide value, especially with no clear way to get them online. As much fun as 

MS Word and Solitaire are, what could you show them that would turn them into tools that could 

help feed a village?

That brings us to the second step, and that's teaching folks how to fish. The Kahn Academy has 

an offline version of their site (I bet for this very reason), so that's a great place to start. Giving

them the ability to teach themselves the higher maths and sciences is key. In this village, it's 

extremely rare to have anything higher than a middle school education as going to HS costs 

money that they don't have. There is a lot that has to happen after that, and that's where I am lost.

 

Computing played a big role in my trip in general. Below I'm going to post some pictures of the kids

 I hung out with there (taken with my iPad). I was able to communicate with them through this 

offline app from Lonely Planet (and broken HS spanish). They loved my iPad, we played a lot of

Checkers and other games. It was a real study in how technology brings the world together.

 

In the end Girl Develop It donated money to their class to buy tools for the short term. I hope to

 go back next year to teach and by then I'd like to have a helpful strategy, I'm going to continue 

doing research on my end, but if anyone has seen anything like this out there it would be greatly 

appreciated. 

Teaching a Man to Fish With a Computer

Last week I had the privilege of traveling to the Dominican Republic with the organization Handfuls

 of Hope. We went down to bring food, clothing, and care to some of the poorest villages about an 

hour outside of Santo Domingo. We also built a roof, and did a lot of painting (photo above is me 

after a full day's work painting).

 

The trip was an amazing experience, it was incredibly humbling how helpful and happy the 

children were at the village. We think that all our stuff provides us with happiness, but in reality it 

provides us with stress and obligation. After months planted behind my machine it was lovely to

 be able to spend my days working outside. I even did construction and help put a roof on one of 

the buildings in the village. 

The folks there live without running water, mostly (a few homes had it). They only have electricity 

for a few hours a day. I was spending some time chatting while painting this fence, and I learned from one of the 

women that put the trip together that in the school (a small school with several classrooms holding

 10 or so students) there was a computers class that was held weekly. 

Excited, I asked if I could see it. So, I stopped by and saw 10 adults in a classroom with 1 

computer that a teacher was working with. There was a larger monitor they were all watching on 

and learning from. From what I could see, a specific program was being taught on a Windows box,

 it could have been anything, I didn't get to ask. I got to say "Hello," the experience was wonderful

 and it was great to see that even in this place, where many people don't own much more than

 their clothes, and this is their Wikipedia 

 they were being taught how to use a computer. 

All that got me thinking, what is the most important thing to teach to adults who are seeing a 

computer for the first time? What is the fastest way to get them from illiterate to a place where 

they can be making money from the web like the rest of us? 

The internet is a perfect environment for them to thrive. The decentralization of 

commerce means that you don't have to own a storefront on Park Ave to make serious cash, or 

ideally, feed your family. There are many organizations that take homemade crafts from third world

 areas and put them online, however, what about empowering the people to do this themselves? 

I immediately did what I do and broke things down into steps. Step one: find the tools to supply

them.  The first place I looked to send help to this class was One Laptop Per Child to see if I 

could buy some laptops and send them, from their site it appears you can only donate laptops to

the areas they designate (that makes perfect sense for their organization, just doing some 

research). I could buy some netbooks and send them, but would need to come up with a strategy 

to make them provide value, especially with no clear way to get them online. As much fun as 

MS Word and Solitaire are, what could you show them that would turn them into tools that could 

help feed a village?

That brings us to the second step, and that's teaching folks how to fish. The Kahn Academy has 

an offline version of their site (I bet for this very reason), so that's a great place to start. Giving

them the ability to teach themselves the higher maths and sciences is key. In this village, it's 

extremely rare to have anything higher than a middle school education as going to HS costs 

money that they don't have. There is a lot that has to happen after that, and that's where I am lost.

 

Computing played a big role in my trip in general. Below I'm going to post some pictures of the kids

 I hung out with there (taken with my iPad). I was able to communicate with them through this 

offline app from Lonely Planet (and broken HS spanish). They loved my iPad, we played a lot of

Checkers and other games. It was a real study in how technology brings the world together.

 

In the end Girl Develop It donated money to their class to buy tools for the short term. I hope to

 go back next year to teach and by then I'd like to have a helpful strategy, I'm going to continue 

doing research on my end, but if anyone has seen anything like this out there it would be greatly 

appreciated. 

On Fashion and Developer Conferences

 

If you have met me in person you know that I tend to wear traditionally girly clothing. Dresses, skirts, sweaters, headbands and the like. 

I have, like, four Zuckerburg costumes. Jeans, sneakers, teeshirt, sometimes hoodies. I never wore them unless I was going to a developer conference or a user group somewhere, that's what I bought them for. I never consciously thought "Sara you are changing who you are in order to fit in," however, that was essentially what I was doing. 

Once I realized what I had been doing I had conflicting emotions. On one hand I wanted to stay true to myself, on the other a girl in a dress at a software conference was going to stick out like a sore thumb. 

Part of getting older for me has been getting more comfortable in my own skin. Part of maturing as a software developer has done the same for me. Sometime around the middle of last year I felt confident enough to start wearing my normal gear to developer events? 

What changed about my experience? Absolutely nothing. No one treated me differently, or made me feel uncomfortable. I've had outstanding conference experiences since. It was all in my head, and I wanted to write about it in case it's in yours too. 

 

 

My Fluentconf Talk and a GMail keyboard shortcut Extension

 

Fluentconf was great for quite a few reasons, the first being that I love SF, the second being that I had such an amazing time with the people there. It's rare that you get to be around so many people like yourself, and to break off with people you admire and get a concentrated amount of great mentorship is such a great recharger. Super happy for the experience.

I was sad about the fact that I learned from Rebecca Murphey the keynotes were for sale. That's a diservice to the community. Developers get sent to these conferences by their employers to learn more. If the things they are learning are expensive advertisements masked as organic learning opportunities we are swindling them. 

However, besides that, the conference organizers are awesome folks, and the conference in general was well done. Peter Cooper and Brady Forrest were lovely, and it was great to meet them in person. I was on the selection committee, and it was great being able to help choose the talks at the conference, super grateful for the experience. 

I did a talk about browser extensions in GMail. I used Thomas Fuchs' library for keyboard shortcuts keymaster, and I mapped them to some GMail shortcuts. I was able to make an extension that allowed me to email a group, sort my inbox, and highlight certain messages just by hitting a key. I hope you find it useful. https://github.com/SaraJo/SpaceXGMail, intructions on how to personalize it are in the README. Otherwise you can just keep my settings and become very close with my family and coworkers. 

After my talk, I spoke with a gentleman named @wshaver who wanted to make an extension to make Github code repos full screen. He did it! It's here: https://github.com/ws-emberex/GitHubWider, check it!

Also, for your pleasure, I made sure to optimize the slide/cat ratio in this deck.