The San Diego Women's Hackathon Codes++

Just over 65 young women descended upon several computer labs and their adjoining classrooms at California State University San Marcos on Saturday. Yes, it was the third instantiation of the San Diego Women's Hackathon. The event was organized and implemented so that everything appeared seamless by Dr. Youwen Ouyang, a Professor in the Computer Science Department, and Shauna Ruyle, a marketing consultant and Cal State San Marcos graduate. They were supported by approximately 10 student volunteers and 18 adult mentors, many of whom were themselves technical women.

The Hackathon has been growing at quite a clip since I wrote about the inaugural event a year ago, as witnessed in part by the growing list of sponsors, which included the Gormally family, Intuit Corporation, Equinox Center, Girl Develop IT, 4BoneHealth and CompTIA. Students came from as away as Riverside County and the south side of San Diego proper. Grouped into teams, and given the choice of two coding tasks that aim to make the world a better place, they hit the ground running.

Sporting my "Media" badge I spent the day zipping around talking to the participants, student volunteers and mentors. Much of the time however, I hung out and observed the dynamics of the coders that were so noticeably different from the dynamics in the computer labs I've spent so many hours in over the years.

The coding challenges were supplied by two of the event sponsors: 4BoneHealth and the Equinox Center. The teams that chose the first challenge had to create an app or game to educate their peers about the importance of getting enough calcium - and how to do so. The teams that chose the second challenge had to create an app to help people learn about the current drought in southern California. As if to encourage conversation about the usual lack of precipitation, Saturday it rained all day.

According to the official website, Hackathon participants were age 16 and up. However, I'm pretty sure I saw two girls who looked to be about 9 and 11. They were both firmly attached to mice and keyboards and one of them was right smack in the middle of a group of older participants as they all plotted and strategized. Go Girls! In addition, there were at least a few women who were returning to school to study computer science after having spent some years working in other occupations. They too were seamlessly integrated into their teams. 

So why did these women decide to get up in the dark, drive as much as an hour or more in the rain to hang out on a college campus? On a Saturday? The slightly older ones had a variety of reasons, but many of the younger first time participants said things like this: "I had nothing else to do" "My teacher told me about it" "I'm going to take a class in it". Interesting.

Would they have come today if boys had been participants too? "NO". That much was quite clear. One of them added: "You mean to a normal one?"  Hmmm.

A few hours later, what did these same, younger first time participants have to say? "At first it made

no sense, but now these lines of code make sense". "It's cool". Aha...

Many of the groups spontaneously formed into organizational patterns that closely mimicked a technique known in pedagogical circles as Pair Programming. Well researched, this cooperative approach to learning to code has been shown to have many benefits for learning. Especially in many non-traditional populations. Read: women and girls. Yet, in traditional classrooms there is often resistance to Pair Programming because it defies the stereotypical solo, competitive, programmer behavior.

The vast majority of the groups I observed functioned amazingly well, without overt or even subtle power plays and jockying for dominance. I watched them resolving differences of opinion by sharing

and compromising, rather than having one person aggressively attempt to take control. If you have spent any amount of time in the sometimes anti-social world of male dominated tech, you know just how unusual this can be.

There were poignant moments. I spoke with one participant who seemed a bit sad. She told me she was "passionate about everything" related to engineering and computer science and felt that she should know already what aspect of these she wanted to pursue. Mind you, this young woman was in high school. We talked for a few minutes and I hope that by the end of our conversation she was able to view her wide ranging interests as the valuable and often unique interdisciplinary perspective that it is. In our globally interconnected technical world, we need young women like her.

There is a lesson in that encounter for those of us who have "succeeded" and now want to nurture and mentor those coming along after us.

At the end of the day, everyone piled into a room to eat dinner and watch the project presentations. Each group got up on stage and made a pitch to the audience and the judges. They fielded questions from the judges about their technical choices, most difficult moments, how they resolved team challenges and why they made certain design decisions. Every group had completed a significant portion of a project, even those groups whose members had little to no prior coding experience. They were justifiably proud of themselves. I noted as well how virtually every group made sure each member presented a portion of their pitch. It had been a very long day but energy radiated from the stage.

I asked many of the participants if they would attend another hackathon? Yes...definitely, absolutely, I can't wait. But not if boys are there. Why not? They just looked at me like I was slightly odd for even asking.


Fortunately, the next San Diego Women's Hackathon in October is a mere 6 months away.

Geek Girl Tech Con - Getting Out There and Doing It

As I wrote in my last post, there were 13 different simultaneous events going on at any one time for most of the day during the San Diego Geek Girl Tech Con. There was of course the Sharkette Tank, (see that last post), but also a slew of workshops, a Hackfest, the Vendor Marketplace, Demos, and a few other interesting odds and end (which I'll get to shortly).

The Technical Help Desk At the Ready

Workshops were what most people were after and the number and variety of them was staggering. At any given time there were on average 10 workshops, changing every hour on the hour. They ranged from beginning technical topics (e.g. HTML and CSS for Beginners) to intermediate (e.g. JavaScript) to advanced (e.g. Programming with Python III). There were also workshops to help advance your career such as Resumes 101: Leverage Your Strengths to Land the Job and Job Seekers: Learn the Secrets to Being Discovered by Recruiters, and for running your business such as How to Write About Your Business Online and Social Media Analytics: Yes, they Really are Important.  As I staffed my post at the T-Shirt table in the main lobby, more than one attendee lamented to me (while picking out their spiffy T-shirt) they were having a really hard time deciding where to go!

Despite my best intentions (and the lure of the Sharkette Tank) I didn't make it to any of the workshops, but I did visit the Hackfest where I had an interesting experience. The Hackfest was a drop in as you like event with people popping in and out all day. Teacher/tutor/speakers addressed various coding topics. During the afternoon, when I popped in,  there was a large group in the back of the room learning how to create iOS apps. In the front of the room I found June Clark, lead teacher for the "League of Amazing Programmers"*. As there was no one with her at the moment, we compared notes about the importance of providing explicit and ongoing encouragement to girls who might be interested in coding so that they don't feel marginalized. We talked about the research that clearly shows how important events like the Geek Girl Tech Con are for contributing to the creation of an ecosystem where girls will feel empowered to pursue coding.

Just then, two girls came running into the Hackfest room and practically flung themselves into chairs in front of open laptops at our table. Their fingers took off on the keyboard. As I peered over and saw the Java code appearing on the screen, I asked, oh so casually, about their prior programming experience.

Way to Go!

None. Absolutely None. They had come in to the Hackfest room earlier that day, never having coded before and with June's help had learned enough to create simple animated programs - which they proudly showed me. No fancy IDE layered on top of code to do it for them - they wrote their programs line by line in a no frills editor and then ran them. They had enjoyed it so much they were back for more. They barely glanced up to tell me how cool this was. I was momentarily at a loss for words. What a great example of everything June and I had been talking about.

It was hard to beat that experience, but I would be remiss not to mention the fun adults were having at the Con. Next to my T-Shirt distribution table in the lobby was the free headshot station, where attendees could have a formal or not so formal photo taken by professional photographers. On the not so formal side I could have sworn I saw Princess Leia (aka one of the Geek Girl staff) , and two members of Star Fleet (two of the workshop instructors) offering to pose with anyone who wanted to - as many did.

Live Long and Prosper Geek Girls

All in all, the Con was a nicely balanced blend of high energy learning and fun. If the Mission, as Geek Girl Tech Con founder Leslie Fishlock said in her opening remarks, is to get more girls into tech, what I observed all day is that things are moving in a good direction. But we have a long way to go, as anyone in the tech world knows. We have to keep on working to build that equitable ecosystem.

Leslie also said that it's about doing it; taking the time to get out there and do it. Geek Girl is more than a conference; they have a Meetup (San Diego incarnation here) and do a variety of activities throughout the year and around the country. Hopefully the momentum generated by this day will keep those girl's and women's fingers coding joyfully.








*June told me the organization has been known as Wintriss Tech, and is in the process of transitioning to the new name and a new URL (although not functional as I write,  the new URL will be jointheleague.org) 

Bounding Along Towards Geek Girl Tech Con

Warming up my best shoes for the Con

Approximately 10 days from now I'll be writing you about the San Diego Geek Girl Tech Con. I'll be zipping around here and there, helping out as a Volunteer, and taking lots of notes for you. I suppose I just might send out a Tweet or two along the way (get your devices ready to receive). In perusing the latest conference schedule updates I find myself hopping up and down enough that I want to share a small preview. Cool stuff is more cool when it is shared; besides which, I'd rather you were forewarned and had the opportunity to think about signing up rather than hearing about it only after the fact and banging your head on the wall with regret.

First of all, looooook at all the cool women speaking and presenting. I mean oy! I may need a clone or two of myself, because when I mentally take that picturesque 2D matrix and overlay it with the array of workshops (from programming through UX and design to entrepreneurship) I realize that I face a looming temporal  anomaly.

Coder alert: Yes, there will be a hackfest. Just in case you were wondering. The last female hackathon I attended was so much fun to watch that I'm pondering whether I'd prefer to be there, or OR OR OR

AT THE SHARKETTE TANK PITCHFEST!!!!!!!!!!!! I can't begin to tell you how psyched I am about this. "Default Font" just doesn't carry the communicative weight of emotive body language. Ever since last Fall when a good friend of mine and woman start-up founder up in the Bay Area told me I should check out Shark Tank on TV, I have been hooked on the idea. Even more so here because of the focus on tech girls and women entrepreneurs.

So yeah, this is serious business. There are going to be more techie girls and women in one place than I've seen in a very long time. There are going to be years of wisdom and experience to network your happy way through and along. Techie stuff to learn. Fascinating people to meet and speak with, share ideas and plot and plan. I love to plot and plan.

This conference (did I mention the date: June 21) is bound to be mind blowing and transformative. How can I be so very confident about that? The very first time I went to a women in computing conference oh so many years ago, (I cut my geeky girl teeth at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing),  I was blown out of the water by the vibe that emerges when you have technical women congregating en masse. I was also blown out of the water the second time. The third time. The fourth time. (instantiate While (TRUE) loop)

I expect no less this time. So I hope that many of my women tech friends and colleagues will attend. Especially, especially if you are already here in the San Diego area. For those of you living in the nether reaches of the universe I'll be writing something to fill you in on whichever portions of the day I manage to teleport myself in and out of.

Girls Coding: The International Women's Hackathon

This past weekend I had the privilege to attend the International Women's Hackathon, held simultaneously at  50 universities around the world with approximately 2500 young women taking part. The San Diego regional contingent was held at California State University - San Marcos. Approximately 70 high school and college

students registered and then arrived from all over the region. My informal poll recorded 6 colleges and universities and 6 high schools. One set of students came up on a bus from close to 100 miles away and two high school students came all the way from Tijuana, Mexico. Many sleep loving students must have risen and hit the road well before dawn to arrive for the 8am check-in.

During the welcoming and introductory portion of the morning some interesting information came out. For example, when asked, not one of the participants had heard of The Hour of Code. I was somewhat suprised, because here we had 70 girls who are interested in coding, yet none of the massive celebrity laden publicity had reached any of them.

Here is another interesting piece of information: only 2 students raised their hands to say they had participated in a hackathon before. I was intrigued. So later, I asked around about this. Some girls told me they had never heard of hackathons; one told me she had no idea what one was, thinking perhaps it was an opportunity to hack into computers - apparently one of her parents cleared things up on the drive over. Perhaps most telling, one 16 year old told me 

"if it [the hackathon] was both genders most of the women would not have showed up".

Considering that, though officially open to everyone, most hackathons are attended primarily by males, this may have been the most important response to my question. One worth thinking about by everyone who wants to make a positive difference for women in computing.
 
The range of prior computing experience on Saturday was huge. Some students had never coded at all and some, within a few minutes of gathering into their teams, were talking about appropriate uses of recursion

and how different class hierarchies functioned. Some participants had formed teams in advance and others were helped to form compatible groups first thing in the morning. No one was left out.

I trotted around, trying to pop in on every group of students (13 in all) several times during the course of the day. It was amazing to observe how events unfolded, the students' skills and confidence evolving and growing in tandem. 

For example, the first group I dropped in on, at about 9am, was a high school team with zero coding experience. They were clearly nervous and unsure how to get going (in case you worry they were completely on their own, 16 adult mentors circulated around all day, but were not allowed on the keyboard). These team members didn't know each other ahead of time. None of them had taken a computing class, none of them had plans to study Computer Science or a related field. So why were these girls there? One wanted to run her own business some day and thought it would be useful to know something about coding; one had taught herself about robotics from watching YouTube videos and had then joined a robotics club; one didn't know what a hackathon was but thought it sounded interesting. Interesting sounding enough to give up her entire Saturday. Talk about a motivated trio!

By 4pm, when I revisited them, this team was seated in the lab, each on her own computer, writing html code

and confidently talking back and forth about how to integrate their individual web pages onto one site about  encouraging more women to go into STEM. 

At the other end of the prior experience spectrum was a team of college women, who told me they
were 4 of only 12 females in a department of 500 Computer Science majors. How did they know? There were so few of them that they all knew each other; on the rare occasion when they saw they weren't the only woman in class they immediately gravitated across the lecture hall to meet their compatriot. This foursome was incredibly enthusiastic about the hackathon, and within less than 8 hours had created a complex web platform that blew even the judges away.

In chatting with them earlier in the day, one of the things these women told me was that they felt it was very important to to get the word out that women in Computer Science are intelligent, social, have a wide variety of interests, are attractive, have a fashion sense, and are equally as competent as all the guys (and a few other things I didn't write down fast enough). They were also one of several groups who told me they wanted to change the world.

As I circulated between PC labs and the Mac lab, up and down the hallways, I  was impressed with the nearly universal lack of overt competitiveness within groups or of jockeying for leadership position. Cooperation was the name of the game. Often, as I sat off to the side for extended periods of time, I observed an amazing dynamic in which these young women worked together, discussing ideas, deferring to one another, trying to bring others along when they had
questions, dividing tasks based upon interests and experience. This is not to say the groups were unambitious; definitely not. They aimed high, worked incredibly hard and, once they had settled on a mutually agreeable plan, they focused, focused, focused on developing the best possible contest entry. Everyone had a part to play. Yet even then, the focus was on building the best app or web page or game to solve the task - I didn't hear anyone worrying aloud about what the other groups might be doing.

The day was incredibly inspiring. So many of these young women taught themselves to use platforms they had never heard of before. So many of them produced incredible results. They were energetic and enthusiastic and fun to be around. In fact, having watched all of the presentations made to the judges, I can confidently say that all of the hackathon participants were amazing. Every team had something concrete and unique to show for their efforts.

We need more events like this. Lots more. And follow up to keep the ball rolling after the day ends. Lots of follow up activities to hold the excitement and enthusiasm and continue the unique dynamic that girls and women clearly bring to Computer Science.

That Was Then, This Is Now. Can Coding Improve Reasoning Ability?

Reasonable?

Back in the 90s when I was starting my teaching career we used to talk in the CS Ed community a lot about the importance of math as a prerequisite for computer science. More precisely, I recall discussions about what level of math and what kind of math. I was working at a community college at the time and had perhaps the most diverse students I have ever had since.

Some were fresh out of high school, some were recent Veterans, some had been laid off from a dying  industry, some were re-entering the workforce after taking time to raise kids, some were in workforce retraining programs, some were retired. Some students had a prior Bachelors degree, some had barely made it out of high school. I encountered home schooled students, immigrants from war zones (one particular student from Cambodia comes vividly to mind) and those seeking to leave lives as migrant farm workers.

They shared a desire to obtain a computing degree and enter the computing workforce. The majority were highly motivated and great to work with. Yet many had limitations placed on them by external agencies or other equally firm obligations that restricted how long they could be in school and how many courses they could take - especially courses considered pre-college level, and thus remedial.

Thus the arguments about what math and how much math to take had very real consequences. Tell a student they had to take x courses before they could start college level CS and this could set them back a year or more that they did not have. As a result, in our college, as in others, the question of what math to require became in great part one of what the reason was to have the math.

The most common argument of the time, one I haven't heard as much recently, was that math, algebra in particular, trained you to think logically and sequentially. The extent to which this was true was taken as a given; I didn't have exposure to the math ed literature until some years later. However, I did learn pretty quickly that, although correlation does not equal causation, those students who had survived college algebra were less likely to look at 20 lines of sequential code and suggest executing them by bouncing back and forth around the screen like a ping pong ball. And of course, the bottom line was that if they wanted to transfer from a 2 year computer science program into a 4 year computer science program they were going to need that math.

Nowadays the CS Ed community is discussing equally energetically the usefulness of learning to program and the doors coding can open. Coding: the typical entry into a computing degree and a constant throughout. And, as we know from lots of hard data, computing degrees can lead to exciting and well paying careers. There is also an enthusiastic conversation going on about the useful things that can result from learning to code and getting that computing degree even if you ultimately decide to enter a seemingly unrelated field (ref: computational thinking and computational XYZ from art to geology and on through the humanities)

In one of those "that was then, this is now" moments, I'm wondering...wondering if learning to program, supports a general ability to reason. Before you say "of course - duh!" ask how you know. I'm  talking about more than low level step by step logical/sequential reasoning. I'm thinking about a more holistic reasoning ability.  Have we studied this? This would be so cool to study.

I suspect that the answer will be yes or no - it depends. As with so many things, such as with math and logical thinking, it depends. Context matters for one thing. For example, I posit that if we teach coding in the context of well chosen societally relevant challenges and follow through on the social impact of every stage of project development...hmm, yes, I think so. Holistic reasoning ability could well improve. (Who wants to fund the study?)

A belief in the importance of societal considerations throughout computing is one reason why the CS2013 curricular guidelines (pdf file) include an expanded section on Social and Professional Issues. Good technical decision making assumes results that ack and respond to complex problems requiring complex reasoning. We as a community are starting to get with the program (ow) and to value integrating societal consciousness into our technical projects as never before. I bet, that many of my former community college students, wherever they are, get it loud and clear.

For the Cause of Coding in K-12: Let's Collaborate++

To address the myriad challenges involved in getting high school kids interested in coding, and even more importantly in Computer Science, we need to draw upon a variety of perspectives. A variety of experiences. A variety of skills. A lot of people out there are interested in tackling this problem and we need to listen to all of them. Many people have been working for a long time, and very hard, on drawing attention to the need for Computer Science, and coding as a subset of that, to be widely available in high schools and for students to be encouraged to try it out.

I had an interesting conversation this week with Jeremy Keeshin, one of the founders of CodeHS, a Silicon Valley tech startup that is working on this problem. I met Jeremy last November when he was one of several

Photo Courtesy of CodeHS

tech company presenters at a meeting of the ACM Education Council (I wrote about that meeting Here). Sure, a lot of companies, startup and not so startup, have jumped into the K-12 coding fray. But there was something particularly interesting here that I wanted to learn more about, so I tracked Jeremy down and we had a nice long chat.

CodeHS's approach has a lot going for it, and is worth checking out, but it isn't so much the specific details of their model I want to talk about right now, but the perspective and attitude that feeds that model. Jeremy apparently caught the pedagogy bug while working as a Computer

Photo Courtesy of CodeHS

Science Teaching Assistant in college, and understands more about "what makes it work" (or not work) than I might have expected when I first met him last Fall. He is committed 100% to contributing to the success of introductory coding in K-12, not as a teacher but as an industry entrepreneur.  At the same time, he hasn't turned his back on what academia has to offer. He sees the merit of both worlds.

In our most recent conversation we spoke at some length about the challenges and excitement of trying to build bridges between two very different worlds that ultimately share the same end goal: kids that like coding and see it as a first step towards further computing studies. We speculated on what collaborations could look like and how they might work. A key factor in any such collaboration is that all parties must clearly see something in it for themselves and their perspective on how to improve educational outcomes. It turns out that, in addition to their current core work with high schools, high school teachers, and students, CodeHS is in the preliminary stages of two such collaborative projects.

In the first project, they are talking with a current Stanford PhD student about conducting research on high school students' code and evaluating it in relation to problem solving pathways those students subsequently take in their coding*. This project sounds to me like it could develop into an excellent "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" scenario, providing knowledge on a theoretical and applied level; providing eventually, potentially, depending how far they run with it, lots of data that informs rapid tool development and pedagogical practice.

In the second exploratory project, CodeHS is in discussion with several Computer Science faculty about how they can work directly together in high schools. Now, each group can, and already does, such work on their own. But according to Jeremy in this case there has been a meeting of minds and a recognition that each of their respective groups has the ability to assist the other in overcoming barriers and making the experience for students, to put it in his words, "a whole lot better".

To pull off projects like these, especially the second one, requires a certain mindset, a willingness to be flexible and open to different ways of knowing and doing. I hope both of CodeHS's collaborations continue and are successful. I'm going to keep in touch and see how it all goes.

Inspired by all of this, I'm percolating on what might happen if we got the right  group of dedicated, passionate, committed "bridge people" together in a room for a few days. Add good coffee, stir...


*Information corrected/clarified from an earlier version of the post

2014: Historic Opportunities for Computer Science

Sun Set; Sun Rise

At the end of the year it is natural to think back about the past year and forward to the coming year. 2013 has been a huge year for computer science and 2014 looks like it could be even more important. After years of effort by many people, that seemed at times to fall on deaf ears, suddenly it seems everyone is talking about one important aspect of computing: coding. Who would have thought?

Coding is not all there is to Computer Science obviously, but it is central to a computing education and the fact that coding has become a subject of widespread conversation is nothing short of fantastic. Not only that, the conversations about coding are putting computer science into a very good light and people are getting enthusiastic about it.

What really excites me about that is the positive fallout of this enthusiasm. I am seeing more and more attention placed on what computing technology can do for people. For society. For the environment. As attention is paid to computing at the level of introductory coding, attention is also being paid to what people who persist in coding, then further computing studies, can do in the world with these skills. That is where the big picture rubber hits the road. Today you code a few lines; a few years from now you can... your imagination is your only limit. 

For example, "entrepreneurial thinking" has taken on the status of buzzword. Every other advertisement for something seems to find a way to toss in "entrepreneurial". As with commercials in general, some use of the word is more plausible than others. Such is the nature of the media. But you know, we have the opportunity to leverage the moment, and the media attention, to make the clearest connection possible between computer science education, computing workforce opportunities and the positive opportunities stemming from technology entrepreneurship.

In the past year we have begun to see widespread STEM education conversations more often recognizing the ubiquity of computing and the opportunities for mutual gain from working together across disciplines. More people have been talking about the goals shared by STEM educators. I have been reading more papers and proposals advocating for, and conducting, cross-disciplinary computing research. Systemic challenges in the K-12 and post-secondary arenas are being examined and we are increasing horizontal and vertical bridges within computing education. I am seeing more and more fascinating uses of computing in support of important issues such as disaster relief, disaster prevention, ecological prediction, and raising global standards of living.

Another area that is receiving (finally!) increased media attention, is the very real economic impact of computing jobs and the need for increasing the number of highly skilled computer science graduates. We are also starting to hear a lot more outside of traditional computing education communities about the need for students with deep knowledge of computing in all sorts of fields. These include the humanities, the arts, the social sciences. The conversations in the so-called "soft fields" about the role of computing are just starting to happen, but they are starting. This conversation is long overdue and it is exciting to see it begin.

Much of what I just touched on wasn't happening a year ago. We are on a roll.

2014 is going to be a critical year for computer science education and computing jobs. We have work to do in all arenas: K-12, community colleges, 4 year colleges and universities, broadening participation and addressing pervasive equity challenges. All is not roses and light. We have our work cut out for us.

In fact, one of the results of all the attention on computer science has been a resurgence of attention paid to some of the pervasive sexist behavior that takes place in areas of the technology industry. Some of what I have read is truly horrible and disgusting. It would be hard to believe that this stuff happens in the 21st Century, except that with social media providing instant and precise transcriptions of people's words, this stuff comes out in the open. The good news? More and more people are recognizing just how destructive, on all fronts (personal, professional, educational, economic, you name it), discriminatory words and behavior are. We have before us an unprecedented opportunity - and obligation - to institute cultural change where it is needed.

I am excited about the opportunities for computer science, and computing in general,  in 2014. We made giant leaps forward in 2013.  Enthusiasm is growing for computer science, computing, computational thinking. Many more people are sticking their toes in the waters of coding and discovering it can be fun! We are talking about curricular opportunities all through K-12 and up through graduate school. New connections and collaborations are being formed between academia and industry in support of increasing the numbers and diversity of highly successful, well prepared computer science graduates. People who never thought about computer science, or who didn't think they had a reason to think about computer science, are checking it out.

What are we going to do with all of this enthusiasm and opportunity? Big ideas are brewing; creative minds are pondering; entrepreneurial spirits are breaking new ground.The onus is on all of us to take part in this historic opportunity. There are so many ways you can help keep up, speed up, the roll we are racing along on, set the direction.

Whatever you are already doing to improve the planet through computing: 

keep at it in 2014. 

Whatever ideas you are percolating on to improve the planet through computing: 

resolve to put them into action in 2014. 

Have a Safe and Happy New Year