Month: October 2016
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Shared today on Twitter
I love that there are pro athlete geeks now. https://t.co/AaIunkaA1X
@nicwinton Awww, look at Vanya! Miss you guys.
#frocktober day 28: dress by Dangerfield, @welovecolors tights, Blunnies https://t.co/8OGlwuuNZb https://t.co/60raRC3PwT
Don’t forget – you can still donate to Frocktober! (I’m ~$150 short of last year’s total. I’d ❤️ to surpass it!) https://t.co/oHlxLOaLeu
Weekly Meetup Wrap – four events in one week! https://t.co/mPmsX0ye76 #designingproducts @sydphp #equalityhacks @sparkfestivalau https://t.co/s7qtfF1tuv
@nicwinton @nikyoudale He looks like he’s *really* enjoying that.
@darthted 👏
RT @SheStartsAU: .@SheStartsAU will #FindFundAccelerate 10 female entrepreneurs & launch their startups. Applications close 31 Oct! https:/…
@DarrenNolan_ Not quite! Need to get about $1300 to top last year.
@DarrenNolan_ Whoa, thanks! You didn’t have to do that – some others came in too. Now I’ve smashed it!!
Wow, I’ve SMASHED last year’s @Frocktober record! Thanks recent donors: @GRobilliard @_brigita_ @Yarna_ @DarrenNolan_ and @emd3737’s Mum 😀
Five years ago… Gal Gadot’s got nothin’ on me! #heroes #happyhalloween https://t.co/t7m4npLUDY (Photo by @knitterjp aka Princess Leia!) https://t.co/f8iFzqOXem
RT @yow_oz: Need an Introduction to Clojure? @stuartsierra’s upcoming #yow16 workshop is the one for you https://t.co/hNo0rb1s3H
Original Emoji Set Added to MoMA – NEAT! I have a great urge to knit them into a modern fairisle jumper. @glasnt https://t.co/52NDjTKXNW
RT @kcm74: Thought I posted this earlier today, but don’t see it in my feed now, and is worth re-posting regardless: https://t.co/ukrua9gi38
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Shared today on Facebook
#frocktober day 28: dress by Dangerfield, @welovecolors tights, Blunnies
Don’t forget – you can still donate to Frocktober and support the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund. (I’m about $150 shy of last year’s total, and I’d reallllly like to surpass it!)
My second roundup of tech events in Sydney. Four meetups this week!
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Weekly Meetup Wrap
The 2016 YOW! Conference is coming soon. Don’t wait to get your tickets – Melbourne is already sold out!
This week I attended four different meetups in Sydney, all very different! The first was the second Equality Hacks Think Tank, held at the Elabor8 offices. This recently formed group was based on a similar project in Victoria called BoldMoves, with a goal of coming up with “safe-to-fail” experiments to increase diversity in tech. Jody Podbury facilitated as two groups explored ideas (many of which had been fleshed out ideas and experiments.
(Men of Sydney! We need you to join this group! We can’t do it alone.)
The second meetup I attended was Designing Products as part of the Sydney Spark Festival. This was also their second ever meetup, the first one happening two years ago! The meetup was hosted by the fine folks at Web Directions, and it was quite a full house.
The first speaker was Lauren Bedford, Head of Product Design at Expert 360. Lauren talked us through the top five lessons she learned being a product designer at a startup. My favourite was that startups do, in fact, have tech debt! She also talked about the tension between being a designer who likes to get things perfect and a product manager who needs to deliver quickly.
The second speaker was Buzz Usborne, Design Lead at Atlassian. Buzz also walked us through the things he learned over the course of his career. He said that designers all share the same frustrations even in bigger startups: no team is perfect; and there’s never enough time or budget. My favourite quote from his talk: “As a designer, it’s your job to make customers feel AWESOME.”
This meetup is a great new addition to the Sydney community. Thankfully the organisers say the next one is scheduled for January, so we won’t have to wait another two years. 🙂
The next event was also part of the Spark Festival – the Women in Tech Breakfast at Gravity Coworking. It was an early start, but the lovely coffee and catering helped!
The speaker was Lisa Martens, Director of Market Insights at Squiz. Lisa’s talk was nominally about personal branding, but really it was about a time when she realised her internal self-perception didn’t line up with how others perceived her. She was in a funk, and since she didn’t have six months “to quit her job and pull an Eat Pray Love,” she did something else entirely: she signed up for a boxing program and fought an amateur bout.
Honestly, at eight in the morning, the last thing I was expecting was “women in tech Fight Club”! But it was amazing. Lisa told us about her challenges along the way – learning the “systems” that would allow her to survive the training and the fight; dealing with friends and family who were less than supportive; a round of food poisoning that set her back a week; and her nerves as the big day approached. We were all on the edge of our seats until she revealed the outcome – she won her fight! She told us how it affected her self-confidence and her willingness to back herself in her professional life. As she put it, “The things we work hard for – we should celebrate those victories.” It was an amazing and inspirational talk, and judging by the number of questions afterwards, everyone found is just as fascinating as I did.
The last event of the week was SydPHP, held at the Hey You offices in Surry Hills. The speaker was Katie McLaughlin, Operations Engineer at Ambiata. Katie was giving her talk on “The Power and Responsibility of Unicode Adoption” (aka The Emoji Talk), and it did not disappoint! (Slides are here.)
Katie taught us all about the importance of using Unicode and the problems caused by legacy systems that don’t support it. As she put it, there are lots of people in the world who can’t even enter their names in some systems because they involve non-ASCII characters. She also told us about the history of emojis and how new emojis are added to the standard every year. (Yay for the Female Technologist emoji!) We also learned about Zero Width Joiners, and how they allow for emoji to be combined in different ways (like making a rainbow flag or allowing for different skin tones). There were heaps of questions afterwards and a lot of laughter.
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Laughing… tears…
So Twitter is shutting down Vine. And to be honest, I’d never really explored Vine at all. It just wasn’t a thing I ever had time for. But then I found the Metafilter thread about it, and people were sharing their favourite Vines… and these ones made me laugh out loud SO HARD. We’re talking tears. (Make sure you have sound on!)
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Shared today on Twitter
@gilmae @thisismywww *groan* Dad jokes.
@pwcc 😳
@gilmae Cross the Rubicon and never look back. You’ll be happier for it.
RT @BishoyDemian: Submitted my API-as-a-Product talk to @yow_oz #ctosummit . Fingers crossed!
@BishoyDemian Exciting! My fingers are crossed for you too. I’d like to hear that talk. 🙂
#frocktober day 27: retro dress, made by me! On location in @thethinkmill lift. 😂 https://t.co/xJtcem3dLf https://t.co/a6H2nztE1o
Wearing a circle skirt on a windy day may have been a mistake. 💨👗😳
HA! Just saw my meetup blog post featured in the @yow_oz newsletter. That’s fun. 😂 https://t.co/hyvIp1VWXv
HOW EXCITED AM I TO FINALLY HEAR @glasnt’s EMOJI TALK TONIGHT?! 😝 🙌 💃 #sydphp
Heh @developerjack is making @glasnt crack up before her talk. #sydphp https://t.co/ORaBqJdScG
Oh dear god. @glasnt just suggested getting the Party Parrot recognised as an official emoji. Somewhere @TheRealBnut is smiling. #sydphp
@transprogrammer @developerjack @glasnt @sydphp Well spotted!!
@miss_jwo @__debo @humanmadeltd Thanks – I know @pwcc well! Will possibly reach out tomorrow. 🙂
@TheRealBnut @desplesda @The_McJones so will it be Dr_The_McJones?
RT @SydTechLeaders: Only two more days to submit a talk proposal for YOW! CTO Summit. https://t.co/lhNpORR5yn
I bought one! #imwithher https://t.co/Ph7g28ipGT
@randomknits Nice! I was tempted but went the blue instead.
RT @TheFoodLab: I’ve been testing the @ChefSteps Joule for months. Here’s what I think of the world’s smallest sous vide circulator. https:…
How great is this? View Source is how I learned web development. // welcome.js https://t.co/hQoELmkweG https://t.co/VJbiRC7Tqj
GifCities – The GeoCities Animated Gif Search Engine. Worth it for this search alone… https://t.co/d0tfPDc5b0
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Shared today on Facebook
#frocktober day 27: retro dress, made by me! On location in @thethinkmill lift. 😂
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Shared today on Twitter
@deepfresh Damn, jealous! Let me know if/when you’re in Sydney – would love to check it out. 🙂
@randomknits Somehow I’d become numb to your relentless progress, but I was just like, WTF 71 DAYS OF MAKING QUILT BLOCKS THAT’S CRAAAZY.
This was a brilliant talk, and you can probably hear me guffawing through it from the front row. https://t.co/v7zeuPcGpk
Aussie women – got an idea for a startup? Don’t delay – #SheStarts applications close soon! CHANGE THE WORLD, LADIES. https://t.co/PwBcqE0SYb
It’s the Knitting + Computers talk, of course! (Seriously, programmers: learning to view your craft in a new way makes you better at it.) https://t.co/WqfigJQi3n
RT @LukeSleeman: @web_goddess Talk at #YowConnected was awesome, hilarious and thought provoking. Definitely worth seeing! https://t.co/SQ…
@mark_sabbatical That’s actually knitted!! 😜 Love that scene…
@mark_sabbatical Well, most of the other pictures on the blog are crochet – the granny squares. So I’ll still give half credit. 🙂
#frocktober day 26: Myrtle dress from @colettepatterns, made by me! https://t.co/sKPvxOnuu7 https://t.co/T7rWBgJtLo
Listening to @diversionary and @ericdot kick off the 2nd ever #designingproducts meetup! https://t.co/UyrBf0v5Lt
Me: “Your hashtag is too long.”
@diversionary: “Post pictures, not words.”
#designingproducts
Lauren Bedford from Expert 360 telling us that startups do, in fact, have tech debt! #designingproducts https://t.co/pLxWrpsx46
@michaelneale @diversionary It’s like a beautiful comet, zooming past once in our brief lifetimes.
“This talk may be quite negative, but that’s just because I’m British.” @buzzusborne gets a chuckle at #designingproducts https://t.co/CEbQcHJzI2
Designers share same frustrations even in bigger startups: no team is perfect; never enough time or budget. #designingproducts @buzzusborne
“As a designer, it’s your job to make customers feel AWESOME.” – @buzzusborne #designingproducts
@auxesis Oh damn. Even more sympathy for the past week then…
@auxesis …assuming that it was personal experience driving the project!
Canva selfie! Just can’t escape these folks. 😁 https://t.co/zYfFc5O06b https://t.co/heTpeg4QVZ
@mark_sabbatical @WID_AUS Wow, nope! Too many great events happening to keep track of them all. 😂
@jeremybrown @phillfarrugia Sadly, due to social media I am eminently stalkable.
Actually, this one’s crochet @mark_sabbatical 😂 https://t.co/alOwBcfk86
@phillfarrugia Sure, go for it!
Kicking off this morning’s XXinTech breakfast at the beautiful Gravity coworking space. #sparkfest @sparkfestivalau @kjr_au @SquizGlobal https://t.co/Is4xCL86XY
Damn. She’s making me want to take up actual boxing. https://t.co/T9d50GwDuH #sparkfest https://t.co/1CipkbrqkA
“The things we work hard for – we should celebrate those victories.” YES. #sparkfest #WomeninTech
@drwitty_knitter I know. But there’s something that appeals at a primal level about going toe-to-toe with an opponent. The physicality.
@drwitty_knitter Maybe I’m just hormonal and irritated. 😂
I literally just uttered the phrase “women in tech fight club” unironically. #WomeninTech #sparkfest
RT @LucindaBurtt: Back yourself, don’t change yourself. Good #personalbrand is a match between your and others perception of you, says @Lis…
@gilmae Heroes of Australian legend Halloween costumes? Been there, done that. https://t.co/lB85jUssRZ
@gilmae *sigh* Me. I stand by that poster. It was really good. Way better than the actual movie.
@thisismywww @gilmae Andy? You lost me.
