Write/Speak/Code: 10x Myself

I am very active in the Android community, blogging and speaking and sharing code, but I can only do so much as one person. To scale my efforts, I mentor others to do the same, which aligns with the goals of Write/Speak/Code exactly.

During Write day last year I shared my conference report blogging formula, I have seen it being adopted widely. Some examples:

• Big Android BBQ 2015 by Kelly Shuster
• What I learned from Google I/O 2016 by Margaret Maynard-Reid
• Write/Speak/Code 2016 Recap by Annyce Davis

For speaking, last year I met fellow Android developers Yash Prabhu and Danielle Vass at Write/Speak/Code, and I am delighted to see them start their speaking careers shortly afterwards.

This year, I was on the writing panel again, and also moderated the conference organizers panel. I hope to inspire many more women to go forth and share their knowledge. Storify:

• Writing for Developers Panel
• Conference Organizers Panel

Besides mentoring, I took the opportunity of being surrounded by amazing women to level up my own career as well. One of my 2016 speaking goals is to give a keynote, and during Write/Speak/Code I brainstormed and refined a topic that I am super excited about: The State of Android Testing.

The State of Android Testing https://t.co/q9pfkYcEmQ Like this tweet if you'd like to see me give this keynote at #DroidconNYC ❤

— Chiu-Ki Chan (@chiuki) June 26, 2016

I'd love to hear your Write/Speak/Code story. Did you get started on writing, speaking or open source because of it? Let me know!

Droidcon NYC: 22% women speakers

I meet a lot of my fellow Android developers at conferences, but I don't see too many women at these events, especially on stage. Organizers claim that they try to get more female speakers, but it is too difficult. So I thought, hey, let's get all the female Android devs I know to submit to a single conference, and see what happens.

Get organized

I got this idea in March, and started a Google Doc to co-ordinate the efforts. We picked Droidcon NYC as the conference for everyone to submit, because it is a good location for people from North America and Europe, and we will have a lot of time to rally people. At that point the conference date was not even announced yet! I invited everyone I know, and ask them to add more people. Corey also did a LinkedIn search to expand the list to folks outside of our social circles.

No excuses

When I asked people to submit a talk, there are a few common concerns:

• I have nothing to talk about
• No one wants to listen to me
• I have no money to travel to the conference

Fortunately I have answers to all of them.

Brainstorming Hangouts

To help people come up with talk ideas, we met on Google Hangout to brainstorm. The funny thing is, most people has come up with an idea or two before showing up at the Hangout, so there wasn't much brainstorming going on. The Hangout is mostly a commitment device for people to set aside some time to think about what they can talk about.

Feedback on the proposals

To convince people that they have something important to say, everyone post their talk ideas on the shared Google doc.

We offer feedback on how to make the abstract better, and also comments on talks that we want to hear. For some reason most people believe that no one wants to hear from them, so it is very reassuring to know that others actually want to learn more.

There are ways to get funding

Money is always a concern. A lot of people just assume that they cannot afford to speak at an out-of-town conference, but us speakers know it is not true.

While a lot of conferences don't have the budget to cover the travel expense for all speakers, many do have a little bit of leeway to help those in need. Ask for help if you need it. There are ways to make it work.

In the case of Droidcon, Intel has set up a female developer sponsorship program. Having a source of funding helped tremendously - people don't immediately dismiss the conference as unreachable.

Q&A with the organizers

To address any other concerns, I arranged a Hangout with the Droidcon organizers:

It is much more convincing when the conference organizer tells you that, yes, we want you to speak!

Nagging

A huge part of this process is sending reminders: email blast to remind everyone of the submission deadline, but also nagging people individually until they submit. I think this is the part where most conferences fall short.

Announcing call for proposals to mailing lists is only the first step. Most people assume that they are not the target, and you have to repeatedly tell them that you indeed want them to speak, help them along the way, and remind them to take action.

People are busy, and if you want results, you have to insist.

Results

We have 14 out of 64 female speaker froms at Droidcon NYC, making 21.875%. While I was hoping for 50%, this is a respectable result, especially since I was leading a grassroot effort, not an official one.

Also, one of the keynotes will be by Corey Latislaw, who proposed the keynote as a part of this effort!

Lessons learned

1. Start early. It takes a lot of time to rally and nurture potential speakers.
2. Provide mentorship. Be ready to answer questions about everything from topic ideas to how to fund the travels. Mentorship can be from experienced speakers, but peer support is very powerful too.
3. Offer to help. I was not an organizer, yet just by telling people about the Intel sponsorship I was able to ease the minds of many people who thought they will not have the money to travel to the conference. For organizers, even if you cannot cover everyone, stating that travel assistance is available on a case-by-case basis can go a long way.
4. Keep at it. Most importantly, follow through! Asking once is not enough. Monitor the whole process to make sure no one drops off. Send reminders. Nag!

Follow-up post for conference organizers: Up the ante.

Fit Cat at Google I/O

One of the most exciting things at Google I/O this year for me was to meet Virginia Poltrack in person.

Online introduction

I wanted to make an Android Wear watch face with a cat that does different things depending on how many steps you took that day. The first order of business is to find an illustrator to draw the cute cats. I posted on Google Plus to ask for recommendations, and my friend Macy introduced me to Virginia. At that point I didn't say anything about a watch face, so I was really surprised when I saw this on Virginia's profile:

Yup, not only that she is an amazing illustrator, she has made watch faces before!

Rapid iterations

Once I explained my idea to Virginia, we both got really excited and started working right away.

Our goal was to launch before I/O, and we did it! Twice, in fact: first with just the cat, and then with pedometer integration.

Women Techmakers interview

At this point we have only worked together online, so we were really looking forward to seeing each other at I/O. Then Natalie Villalobos from Women Techmakers gave us a wonderful surprise: she interviewed both of us about Fit Cat!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26Bma3d0wko#t=208m30s

Fit Cat everywhere!

Google I/O was a perfect place to test Fit Cat since I tend to walk a lot during conferences. I snapped photos of it throughout the day.

Starting #io15 with a fat sleeping cat. How fit it will get by the time of the party? pic.twitter.com/JjcwFaJCui

— Chiu-Ki Chan (@chiuki) May 28, 2015

Fit Cat is slurping noodles for lunch. #io15 pic.twitter.com/wmrYGnfzIN

— Chiu-Ki Chan (@chiuki) May 28, 2015

Fit Cat is fit #io15 https://t.co/SQdR8to6yg pic.twitter.com/2fuUlqzJ0y

— Chiu-Ki Chan (@chiuki) May 29, 2015

My friends started doing the same, and it was so heartwarming to see Fit Cat everywhere!

@chiuki fitcat custom watchface is adorable #androidwear looks great on #lg #urbane gotta get that cat skinny! #io15 pic.twitter.com/DDlNxjllmp

— 5280 Mark (@5280mark) May 28, 2015

@vpoltrack @5280mark @katamutter @niftynei @chuiki FitCat takeover of #pinterest party #io15 #thistook10mintomake pic.twitter.com/1SW1JBB3pw

— Hiedi Utley (@hiediutley) May 29, 2015

Only the beginning

It has been such a pleasure working with Virginia. We are already plotting our next projects together, so stay tuned!

Get Fit Cat from Google Play

Grace Hopper Celebration: Speaking and Connecting

Grace Hopper Celebration is my favorite conference of all times. Every time I go, I learn new things, make new friends, and come home energized. This year I am very honored to be accepted as a speaker, to share my experience as a female software engineer.

Letter to my younger self

The title of my talk is Letter to my younger self: Things I wish I knew when I first started working. I have made so many mistakes in my career that I wish I could go back and point myself in the right direction. Alas, I do not own a TARDIS, but I could pass the information to current students.

Once I came up with the talk idea, I invite two friends, Rupa Dachere and Christina Schulman, to present with me. They have quite a bit more experience than me, and we weave our stories together into the talk.

Me, Christina and Rupa

Speaking to a full house

When we got to the conference, we were rather surprised by the room assigned to our session. It was quite big, with 350 chairs (yes we counted). We anxiously watched people slowly filling the room, until all the chairs were all taken. Every single one of them. The ushers were actually turning people away!

View from the stage

We divided the talk into three parts: career, networking and negotiations. For negotiations, we lightened the mood quite a bit by demonstrating the techniques with skits. People loved it.

We were ruthless in cutting material from the talk to make sure we leave plenty of time for questions, for I always felt that is the best part of GHC sessions, the interaction at the end.

All in all the session went really well. It was a pity we didn't record the whole talk, but our session blogger, Lexy Holloway, types unbelievably quickly. She has a very comprehensive session report that is practically the transcript!

For more information on our talk, here is a collection of links: http://bit.ly/ghc12-letter

Data science and cats

I was busy rehearsing all the way until our presentation, so I missed quite a lot of sessions. Now that I think about it, I only attended a single one during the whole conference. It was Short URLs, Big Data: Learning about the World in Realtime by Hilary Mason. What an outstanding talk! It was a great balance in technical details, insightful anecdotes, and humorous slides.

This slide, for instance, had me laughing uncontrollably. Hilary used it to illustrated that what we share is not what we click. People share links that reflects well on them, but privately they read very different things. Just like the cat dressing up as a chicken, we use sharing to groom a public appearance.

Hallway Track

Although I only went to a single session, I felt I benefited a lot from the conference nonetheless. I love to hang out in the hallway, wave at people I knew from previous conferences, and reconnect. We met over breakfast, lunch, dinner, drinks, even in the swimming pool. Each of us brought friends, made introductions, and expanded the circle of camaraderie.

I am actually very glad that I spent the majority of my time on the hallway track, to connect with women from all walks of technology, to support each other, to celebrate our achievements. This is the best part of Grace Hopper Celebration!

Women 2.0 PITCH Conference 2012

Today I attended the Women 2.0 PITCH event. Even before I arrived I knew the event was popular, for the traffic at the 101 Shoreline exit was horrendous!

Shaherose opened with introductory remarks on the history of Women 2.0, the purpose of PITCH, and how the day would go. Then we went into the first keynote speech by Caterina Fake.

Caterina shared with us her thoughts on keeping technology humane, how we need to preserve and treasure individuality. One thing that really struck a chord with me a quote from the Amish:

"Is this technology pulling us together or driving us apart?" That's what the Amish ask when they decide if they should adopt a particular technology, and we should be constantly reminding ourselves of the purpose of technology as well.

Next keynote was by Robin Chase, founder of Zipcar and buzzcar. She told a really compelling story of building Zipcar, how they went with the absolute minimum product, and then less. I really liked the early key hand-off technology - the car key was hidden under a pillow in her back porch!

The main event of the day was the pitches, and there were nine of them. My favorites were by Prosperity and Tiny Review.

LeAnne from Prosperity was full of energy. I really enjoyed her presentation. Some say that her coaching approach is not scalable, but if she can develop common course material for all her couches and set a high hiring bar, it should be possible to train a fleet of coaches.

Melissa from Tiny Review really honed her speech. I did not even realize she was not looking at her screen until one of the judges pointed it out. Impressive! But what made her presentation so powerful was the stories. She did a really good job picking examples to really showcase the strengths of her app.

There were quite a few sessions in the afternoon. I, however, regretted that I went to all of them. Don't get me wrong, they were all excellent. But I go to conferences to meet cool people, and sitting in back-to-back sessions was not the best way to engage with other conference attendees. In other conferences, after I was inspired by a particular speaker, I usually walk up to the stage and have a quick chat after the talk. This time, however, they quickly retired to backstage. So I was disappointed that I did not get to talk to the speakers, and I did not talk to as many fellow attendees as I'd like.

This reminds me of what my mother used to say to my brother when he was a kid, "just because there is food on the table does not mean you have to eat it." Just because there are sessions on the program does not mean I have to sit in them! Next time I will make a point to leave some time for mingling with others.

As I talked out of the auditorium, I was greeted by rows of napkins:

One of them looks really familiar:

Yup, that's my application napkin, back when I just figured out the grading algorithm, before I found my graphic designer. It seemed so long ago!

Bay Area Systers Dinner

I've been on the Systers mailing list for a while, and I've learned a lot from all the wonderful tech women on the list. 2012 marks the 25th Anniversary of Systers, and there are worldwide meetups in celebration. I volunteered to organize the dinner for the Bay Area, which was quite a ride.

Initially we were going to Amarin Thai for dinner. I was happily watching the RSVP number go up on the meetup page, until it hit 35. That's the capacity of the private dining room at Amarin. At that point I was really torn. On one hand I wanted to meet as many cool women as possible, on the other hand I didn't know how many no-shows I can count on. It would be bad if we had to turn people away at the door, so I started looking into Plan B, which involved asking Amarin to cater to a larger venue. Getting Amarin to cater was easy, but where do I find a place to host the dinner?

The solution came to me after I went for a swim at Eagle Park Pool. On my way out, I saw the Masonic Center, and I remember seeing people going there for a folk dance night some other time. Maybe they have a meeting hall for rent? I checked their website afterwards, and indeed they do! A phone call later I confirmed that the 100-person dining hall was available on Jan 26, so I knew there would be a Plan B.

Once the RSVP number crossed 40 I decided to switch to Plan B. Since the cost of the dining hall was fixed, the more people came, the cheaper it would come out. So I started sending emails to my friends at different companies to invite all the women engineer to join us for dinner. At the end we had 80 RSVPs!

55 Systers showed up for dinner tonight, and we had a wonderful time. Robin Jeffries, Her Systers' Keeper, shared with us the history of Systers, Grace Hopper Celebration, the Pass-It-On Awards, and other interesting tidbits on Systers and women in computing. BJ Wishinsky then told us the different ways we can be involved with the online communities around women in technology.

Robin

I also gave a little speech, but that's because I forgot to include gratuity in the initial calculation of the cost of the food, and came short on money. Fortunately everyone was very generous in chipping in, and we ended up with extra money for the Pass-It-On Awards Program.

I'm exhausted from all the excitement right now, but I'm very glad that I did it! I made some awesome new friends tonight, and I hope that there will be more meetups to come!

Grace Hopper Celebration: It's all about connections

As I am sitting in the Portland airport waiting for my flight back to San Francisco, I look back at the great times I had at the Grace Hopper Celebration last week. This is my third time attending GHC, and I always come back fully energized. What makes GHC so wonderful? It's all about connections.

Connecting to others like you

It can feel lonely being a woman in a male-dominated field like computer science. Simply being in the same venue with almost 3000 other women sends a very strong signal: you are not alone. As you sit in various sessions, you get to meet people in the same situation as you. You realize that you are a victim of the Imposter Syndrome, that everyone in the room also thought they got to where they are because they are lucky, not because they are good. You chat with the woman sitting next to you at lunch, making a deep connection because both of you are a few years into your job and unsure what to do next. You swap tips, you hear great advice, you share your stories, and you immerse yourself in the solidarity of your fellow women in computing.

Connecting to others unlike you

While it is energizing to meet people just like you, it is also empowering to see women thriving in so many different ways. You see a young professor doing groundbreaking research. You see a mother of six going back to school for a PhD and loving it. You see an executive taking the helm of a large corporation. You see an undergrad leading a non-profit project and making an impact. It shows you that success comes in many different sizes and shapes, and opens your eyes to the possibilities of greatness for yourself.

Connecting to yourself

When was the last time you took time to think about yourself and your career? At Grace Hopper Celebration, you step away from your daily responsibilities and think about the big picture. What I want to do? How do I get there? You are surrounded by amazingly supportive people, helping you recognize your achievements, hearing your fears and concerns, giving you tips and advice, and urging you to take charge of your future. You feel energized because you got to lift your head above the daily grind and see what's out there in the horizon. Your newfound connections let you know that you are not alone, that others before you have struggled and succeeded, and wherever you want to go, you will get there. It's a wonderful feeling.