9 reasons why you should go to SXSWi

SXSW Interactive. What’s the big deal? Why should you go?

Here’s the story in pictures. They should explain everything.

1. You can hear great presentations.

InterAct

2. You can meet people from around the world.

between sessions

3. You can hear experts explain how they do what they do.

HTML 5

4. You can chat with everyone and find contacts.

in the hall

5. The keynote speakers are awesome.

Valerie Casey

6. Geeks and tech toys are everywhere.

charge me

7. People like to do what you like to do – be nerdy.

Connecting Education and Industry

8. Some of the panels are really great.

SXSWi Open Source panel

9. AND, there are parties!

Amanda Coolong - Cogaoke Party - SXSWi 2010
Party Photo credit: (CC) Randy Stewart, blog.stewtopia.com.

How I Use Tumblr to Help with Writing

You can do many things with Tumblr, but I use it for something very specific. When I’m researching a topic and want to gather up a set of links over a period of several days or weeks about that topic, I save the link on Tumblr. When I’m ready to put the information together in some other form, I go to my Tumblr page and quickly find it all.

For quite some time, I’ve been researching the topic of HTML5 and accessibility. I thought I’d share the list of resources I’ve amassed on this topic at Tumblr. Here are Virginia’s HTML5 and accessibility resources.

All this studying and collecting on the topic of HTML5 and accessibility is going to be put to use soon in a workshop at AccessU West 2011. Hope to see you there.

HTML5 opportunities at AccessU West 2011

AccessU West 2011 is a Knowbility training event January 10-12, 2011 at San Jose State University. There are two days of sessions, with a full day of post conference workshops that go even more in depth with accessibility information.

As part of the normal two-day conference schedule, I’ll be teaching HTML5 and Accessibility. My class is a 3 hour, hands-on, lab session.

The other HTML5  event is a post conference day featuring a whole day with Derek Featherstone. Derek’s topic is Real World Accessibility for HTML5, CSS3 and ARIA.

If you’ve been looking for more information on HTML5, this is the place to get it. Registration is now open.

AccessU West 2011

AccessU West

AccessU West 2011 is a Knowbility training event January 10-12, 2011 at San Jose State University. There are two days of sessions, with a full day of post conference workshops that go even more in depth with accessibility information.

AccessU West offers classes on how to make electronic information technology accessible to everyone – including people with disabilities.

  • Does your organization believe the web should empower ALL people?
  • Do you want to learn how accessibility ties into your usability goals?
  • Are you a developer or designer who wants to understand emerging best design practices for the web?
  • Do you want to build innovative AND accessible websites using cutting-edge CSS techniques?
  • Is your company ready to comply with the pending expansion of the Americans with Disabilities Act that will ensure people with disabilities have full access to the Internet and television?

There’s a Design/Development Track featuring about 30 classes for people creating content, software, web sites and multimedia. I’m an instructor in this track, along with others like Glenda Sims, Sean Keegan, W. Mei Fang, and Kelsey Ruger.  I’ll be teaching HTML5 and Accessibility. My class is a 3 hour, hands-on, lab session.

The Policy and Administration Track is for administrators, managers and policy makers. There are 8 classes in this track.

The Specialized Usability Track is for anyone who would like to make sure that their sites are not just accessible, but also usable. This track emphasizes usability techniques you can use informally, at minimal cost, to get started quickly and easily.

The post conference day features either a full day with Derek Featherstone, a full day on universal design for learning, or a usability testing day.

You can register now. Knowbility training for accessibility is the best you can get. Go get some.

My Week Watching Grace Hopper from a Land Far, Far Away

The Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing is over for 2010. There was considerable enthusiasm for the event coming out of Atlanta in the form of tweets, blog posts, and photographs. Here’s a taste of what I saw from afar. If you were there and can provide additional links and photos, please leave a comment.

GHC10 banquet

Attendance was good as you can see in the banquet room photo. Summer tweeted the stats.

GHC 2010 stats: 960 students, 2147 attendees, 280 schools, 29 countries, 630 speakers, and infinite fun! #ghc10Wed Sep 29 22:28:50 via Twitter for iPhone

Grace Hopper 2010-30 dance party

They had a dance party. And they loved it. Gail Carmichael took photos and wrote about it in Dancing with Hundreds of Technical Women at Grace Hopper.

When I tell someone about the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, I start by explaining the dance parties. I tell them, “You wouldn’t think that an all-female dance would be fun… but you’d be wrong. There’s nothing like dancing with hundreds of technical women who let loose because there’s nobody around to feel stupid in front of.”

Not to make less of the dance party fun, but I’ll be happy to see the day when technical women can dance like nobody’s watching at a conference where there are men with everybody dancing to the same techno tune.

Reports on some of the sessions and panels made it into the Grace Hopper Bloggers blog. In addition to posting some bloggers on the site, there is a page called GHC Bloggers that lists blog posts from everyone blogging about the event on their own blogs. Cate posted a summary of what she did at CompSciWoman.

There’s a group pool on Flickr for photos. You can find additional photos on Flickr from Gail-Carmichael, geeklinda, and Terriko. Professional photos by US Event Photos are on Flickr. Musicword put her photos in a Picasa Album.

Grace Hopper 2010-11 free and open source table

As you might expect, there was representation from the Open Source community. In fact, there was an Open Source Codeathon. Read The Open Source Codeathon for Humanity (a blog post in pictures) by Terriko.

. . . building on some success last year, we had a codeathon at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. This year, we were working on Sahana Eden, a free and open source disaster management system.

There was some doubt at Geek Feminism Blog prior to hearing the keynote by Duy-Loan Le from Texas Instruments. After the speech, vaurora posted Grace Hopper 2010 keynote update: Now “Cross-boundary Collaboration” with a more favorable opinion about it.

Kami from Nuh Likkle Bickle was Excited about the poken

Cool feature: Poken! They’re futuristic business cards, you hold them up to each other and they exchange sort of your business cards, but even more if you add social networks to your profile.

Kimberly Blessing gets the last word.

How does #ghc just get better and better each year? Because of @anitaborg_org and this awesome, GROWING community of women and men! #ghc10Sat Oct 02 02:40:21 via web

Additional information:

Photo credits: Gail Carmichael (Gail-Carmichael on Flickr), Linda Goldstein (geeklinda on Flickr)

Cross-posted in slightly different form at BlogHer.

Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing begins today

GHC10 is the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing for 2010. It runs from Sept. 28 to Oct. 2 in Atlanta. The conference is sold out, which is a wonderful thing to hear. This video from 1986 lets you learn something about Grace Hopper — like why she deserves to have a conference named after her — and be entertained at the same time.

For complete details on how to follow the conference events, see my post GHC10: Going? Watching? Here’s where to watch from home at BlogHer. I also created a daily paper for the #ghc10 hashtag at The #ghc10 Daily Newspaper.