No Minced Words & a Few Sniffles Were Detected at UX Speakeasy

Some people were feeling emotional at last night's UX Speakeasy.  If the amazing artwork didn't get you, the starry sky would have done it for sure. It was a lovely outdoor venue at SILO in Maker's Quarter in the heart of downtown San Diego. Perfect setting for this particular event. Last night was primarily a going away celebration for Aaron Irizarry who is one of the founding members of the group.

About 3 years ago, Aaron was one of 13 women and men who decided that San Diego really needed to build community for  UX (User Experience) professionals. I've been told there was a feeling that

something was missing - people worked in UX in San Diego but didn't know each other, didn't hang out together, didn't realize there were quite a few jobs in UX, didn't recognize the opportunities to build a career here in UX.

Clearly they were on to something because in no time the group was maxing out space in larger and larger venues. These days we have to regularly put limits on monthly meetings in the range of 80-100 people because it's hard to find space to fit everyone interested in attending. The original group of 13 put themselves out in pursuit of a vision, and according to a tribute last night, Aaron was in the thick of all the early activities, taking leadership positions sometimes on short notice. In those days, there weren't the teams of volunteers and enthusiastic members there are today.

So when Aaron spoke about his experiences here, and said to the crowd "Be grateful you have a community of people you can connect with on a regular basis" I wasn't surprised to see some people looking almost teary eyed.

A secondary, and related reason for the meetup last night was the coincidentally timed release of Aaron's Book "Discussing Design". An overarching theme of his conversation about it was the importance of learning to have the "right" conversations. By way of example, Aaron explained how community contributed to the appearance of this book. He said that a casual conversation led to a blog post, which led to a conference proposal, which led to the book being written. Things happen when we share and explore ideas, pursue opportunities and do it with others in community.

Sometimes it wasn't clear to me when Aaron was speaking about the book or on a wider scale, but it doesn't really matter because the point is the same: it's critically important that technical professionals learn how to communicate better about our work. When people speak in buzz words or stock phrases no one knows what is really going on.

Aaron said he wanted to vomit - or something to that effect - when someone says "Can you make that pop more?".  Rather...find out: What is working, not working exactly? What is it that makes you feel it isn't going to work for our persona?

Never one to mince words, Aaron continued,

 "We need to set the ground work for those conversations. We need to learn how to talk about our work. It doesn't matter how skilled you are, you'll just be another talented asshole".

Although he was focused on Design, I was thinking more broadly. Conversations are hard; confrontations suck (that's Aaron again being direct about what we all know). I'd like to read Aaron's book because it appears to be about the topic of setting the ground for those hard conversations. I'd like to read Aaron's perspective on the matter. I'd like to see how it is similar and different from other writings on technical and science communication.

Bringing the conversation back around to why all 80+ of us were there last night, Aaron wrapped up his farewell remarks by reminding everyone that they need to understand the value of this community; it's not just a monthly party. It's an opportunity for support and finding new ways to frame important conversations.

SIGCSE2015 Comings & Goings in New Directions

It's that time at SIGCSE, when the sheer volume of coffee and unhealthy food is starting to catch up with me. This morning's egg and cheese on bagel put me over the top. Thank goodness I am not having a cholesterol test any time soon. However, all that protein is good brain food for processing the deluge of activity of the past few days.

There have been some real patterns. I started my teaching career in the community college system and I have never lost a feeling of affinity with them. So I really noticed this year that the Community College contingent is out in force at the conference. The palindromic ACM Committee for Computing Education in Community Colleges (CCECC) has been swooping in to help community college teachers network with one another, work on curriculum development in cyber security, talk about articulation with CS2013 curricular guidelines, host a large networking lunch, and give presentations and workshops in a way that I haven't seen in all the many long years I've been coming to SIGCSE. If you are a community college faculty or know some community college faculty in the computing field, and want to find like minds, I'd definitely recommend dropping them a line. They are active all year, and from what I've been told are planning on ramping up opportunities to stay connected.

There has also been a lot of talk about the enrollment surge at many if not most CS departments in the US. I don't have the full picture yet on what the situation is like outside the US, but all but one person I have spoken to from the US has told me they are experiencing record demand for CS courses. Great on one hand, highly problematic on the other hand because personnel and resources are so strained.

I attended a panel on the subject of the enrollment surge and capacity problems yesterday. The dominant theme was stress and worry. There are many ways to respond to the jump in numbers and many of them are not healthy for students or faculty. The way in which different institutions respond is tied to many things including institutional historical context, what part of the school the department is in (Arts & Sciences, Engineering, Business etc), attitude of administration, budgets, public or private. It is clear however that already there are some short sighted and non sustainable responses such as requiring overloads, increasing class sizes dramatically, enrollment caps and GPA minimums, eliminating non-major classes and electives.

What I didn't hear, and this worries me significantly, were creative think outside the box ideas for strategically tackling the capacity problem. It's hard to think creatively and strategically when you are being pressured from all sides on a daily basis to take on more and more. I also noticed that there was a divide in the audience about whether or not this boom is simply the third Bubble, or permanent as a result of economic changes and the ubiquity of computing. When asked, 1/3 of the audience said they thought this a Bubble, 1/3 said long term/permanent, 1/3 had no idea.

Whether or not you think the boom is a short term phenomenon or not is important because it affects how you react to it. We also have to look at history. We've been here before; if you were around in the 80s you remember the enrollment surges then and similar responses. As a result of historical memory and contemporary experience and research on the subject, we know that diversity is negatively impacted when we blindly fall back on a "best and the brightest" set of class and programmatic filters. Yet another reason to find a way to get the mental space to come up with creative responses. And to be proactive about sharing those ideas.

I'm on an active search to find people willing to speak out about healthy and creative ways to address the capacity surge. If you have ideas, whether or not they've been implemented, especially if your idea is different from the run of the mill ideas, contact me. 

On another note, I'm noticing a generation gap, so to speak, among those at the conference who are plugged in to social media as a mode of communication and those who are not. If you can hold onto your seats until June, you can read in my next ACM Inroads column about why you should pay attention to how communication about our science is taking place on social media. But meanwhile, I'll point out that there is an active Twitter feed going about this conference #SIGCSE2015 and there you can read a somewhat random but interesting and often informative stream of info about things going on. More importantly, you can get a sense of what people consider important, what they choose to share with others. This matters. Taking the pulse of the community is important to understanding what people care about, what their perspective is, where they are headed.

But when I meet the twitter folk, they are almost always the younger contingent of the SIGCSE conference crowd. Sure, perhaps predictable, and I can only say "YES KEEP COMMUNICATING!"

For the rest of you, those for whom social media is not your best friend and constant companion, consider coming up to speed with some aspect of it. If you want to be plugged in to current and future thought leaders and decision makers and rabble rousers alike, this is a place to go. There is a whole aspect of SIGCSE going on virtually. I've met several new and interesting people via SIGCSE twitter exchanges the past few days. We've then met in person. People I'd never have met and perspectives I would never have heard. I value all these perspectives. I can, and do, plan on bringing what I have heard into the in person meetings and committees I attend.

Meanwhile, I'm going to get out of this chair and go to...lunch. I hope there is lots of leafy green salad.

Who thinks Computer Science is less relevant than Physics?

Find all the interesting Computer Science in this picture

Computer Science is different from Physics; we don't have examples that we can bring to a presentation that will be relevant to a large population.

If that's the case we're screwed. 

Recently, I heard someone say that. If I believed him I might as well hang it all up and go live on a dairy farm. I wanted to do that after I graduated from high school but my parents had other ideas in mind. I still have a soft spot for dairy cows but I'm in computer science for the long haul now and I don't believe him.

  

Computers are ubiquitous; they hold together our global economy. What aspect of your daily life does not depend in some way upon computer systems or software? Hmm? Let's see...brain dump...

Get up in the morning, eat a banana, eat a bowl of cereal, answer email, have a conference call with a client, take part in a virtual meeting, drive in my car to another meeting, work out of a coffee shop for a while, take part in a twitter conversation, brainstorm a conference presentation, respond to an email from my mother, pay some bills, make a doctor appointment, remind clients that they need to send out the surveys I created for them... is it lunch time yet?

Which of those activities ARE NOT tightly connected to the global computing infrastructure and which of those types of activity ARE NOT relevant to a large population? Let's say YES for connected and NO for not connected.

Get up in the morning: if I use my smart phone to set the alarm: YES

Eat a banana: that banana arrived from Ecuador in the San Diego harbor on a boat that was almost entirely loaded and unloaded by robots: YES

Eat a bowl of cereal: the bowl was hand thrown by an artist in Texas, so perhaps: NO; the cereal was grown, harvested, packaged and shipped efficiently (or perhaps not) using vast software tracking systems: YES

Answer email: YES (need I say more?)

Have a conference call/take part in a virtual meeting: Skype, Google+, the beep beep beep of telephone software: YES

Drive my car: The vehicle would gather dust in a nearby canyon without that little chip the mechanics charge an arm and a leg to plug into for diagnostic purposes: YES

Work out of a coffee shop: Free wi-fi: YES. Computerized receipt generation: YES

Twitter conversations, answering mom's email, online bill pay, annoying automatically generated paper bills anyway, making appointments via the tangled electronic phone tree: YES

Creating surveys, and emailing clients... ditto conference call note above. YES

Now, is any of this relevant to a large population listening to our hypothetical presentation? In other words are these types of activities interesting beyond my and my clients' and colleagues' worlds? Of course. Why wouldn't they be? Let's give people credit.

If one thinks that economics, history, communication, relationships, nature, biology, and caffeine aren't relevant to a large swath of the population, then we aren't thinking very creatively. We all eat, drink and communicate. Most of us drive, make appointments and (however regretfully) pay bills. 

The issue of relevance is more than an intellectual exercise, it is a communication exercise. 

If computer scientists, educators, researchers, want to make our field relevant, first we have to see for ourselves that computer science is relevant and interesting. 

We must believe that computer science is, can be, should be, relevant and interesting to a large population. 

We have to get out there and tell the story of the relevance of computer science in a way that speaks to our audience.  

 Or else we're screwed.

Having a Technical Impact Goes Beyond the Bits

Technical Communication Failure

I'm contemplating the human and personal side of science, particularly computer science, more than ever. Both of the courses I taught this past Fall at Harvey Mudd College, Computer Science Education Research (co-taught with Colleen Lewis) and Great Papers in Computer Science, had a pervasive emphasis on the human and the personal along with the technical. I posted about the CS Ed Research class earlier this year, tweeted about it regularly, and my next column in ACM Inroads Magazine (March 2015) will be about that course.

The Great Papers class was perhaps a poster child for the how and the why we need to understand the non-technical factors swirling in and around computer science, and our need as professionals in the field to be able to communicate well about them to diverse audiences. We should talk more about how scientific and technological advances are communicated, understood, accepted or rejected. I suspect most of us recognize that those seminal articles we may take for granted had a significant impact only partially because of their technical merit.

It's about being the right person, in the right place, at the right time, saying the right thing. That last point (saying the right thing) is where we find the technical most heavily, although even there, the "right thing" is more nuanced than the bits and bytes of the matter. If we pause and take a look at the contextual big picture of any one of the technical innovations that have shaped our field, we see the truth of the matter. A range of social, historic, economic and psychological factors either inhibit or increase the visibility and impact of any technical work.

For example, in the domain of computer architecture, Howard Aiken's  "The Proposed Automatic Calculating Machine" (1937)  deservedly takes a spot in the annals of the most impactful papers in the field. Yet the paper that led to the creation of the Harvard Mark I was not a shoo-in; if not for a complex series of historical and economic factors the ideas presented in the proposal might well have languished in the "Don't call me, I'll call you" dustbin.  Then there was Aiken's ability to assemble a rock solid team. Grace Hopper, herself no intellectual or personal pushover, was on that team. Aiken did not succeed in a vacuum.

Psychological factors leading to technological change are blindingly obvious in the infamous 1968 Dijkstra Letter to the Editor of the Communications of the ACM entitled "Go To Statement Considered Harmful". Dijkstra effectively and efficiently communicated the potential negative technical consequences of an unbridled use of the "Go To" statement. However, he used arguably tactless language, upset a lot of people, and his comments went viral 1960s style*.  Dykstra wasn't the first person to argue against using Go To statements but he often gets the credit for the ideas that led to eventual changes in coding practice.

By spending a semester delving into issues such as these, I hope that students will come away with more than increased intellectual breadth and depth in the field of CS. I hope they will have a greater understanding of the deep connections between society and technological success and failure. I hope they will appreciate the importance of successful communication about complicated technical subject matter to technical and non-technical audiences alike. It's not just for people in Marketing - it's for them too.

I just got back my teaching evaluations - feedback to me about where I successfully communicated all these things to them and where there is room for work. It cuts both ways - I'm feeling good about that.



*In class I make a point to spend a few minutes discussing why, in spite of Dijkstra's technical brilliance and fame, pissing people off is not professionally wise.

My Spider Plant Made Me Write This.

Now what? An Outer View

I can't blame the foliage, but it's because I want to stop dictating blog posts to a piece of greenery at 4am that I'm breaking my unplanned silence. I've been dictating blog posts to the Spider Plant. Ok fine, but they haven't been getting from there to here. What gives?

In a recent Twitter message, someone pointed out that science bloggers write when they just can't stop thinking about something.* But I have been thinking non stop, at speeds that defy measurement, for months now. I have been radiating ideas, any one of which could have become, but haven't become, a great blog post. For example:

The Computer Science Education Research class I'm teaching this Fall provides endless opportunities to discuss what happens when you have undergraduate CS students conducting real, not toy, research on real, not toy, human beings. The qualitative research methods we use cause the computer science  and social science worlds to collide. No number crunching here. One of my favorite quotes from a student discussing his experience conducting a research interview "...and then my brain exploded". Hearing what people are really thinking in an unfiltered way can do that to you sometimes. It's one reason I love qualitative research. It's one reason I love this class.

My other class, Great Papers in Computer Science, is no less stimulating. Unlike a traditional "Great Papers" class, we wrap our heads around the non-technical factors that aided and abetted a seminal paper having the impact that it did. Just yesterday, when someone asked what an example of a psychological factor would be, we found ourselves discussing how McCarthyism bred fear, and  speculating how that fear likely led to certain kinds of research and publications being supported while others were suppressed. On a lighter note, and in another era, someone jested that Hippies might have had a connection to the development of Unix. Maybe not Hippies per se, but I can envision formulating an argument that there was a direct relationship between the Civil Rights Era mindset and the later Open Source Movement.  I love that class!

In my work as a Independent Evaluator for education research projects, I have been crisscrossing the country quite a bit recently and each trip fills my head with ideas. For example, just last week I found myself thinking, not for the first time, about how early childhood development relates to the ability to acquire computational thinking skills. How early can children learn to code? What constitutes coding anyway? How does teaching computational thinking morph eventually into teaching computer science? What role do teachers play in this transition? What do teachers need the most to succeed? What are the critical leverage points?

Those examples from my teaching and research are only for starters. Why hasn't it all come out in blog posts?

For the past few months I have been focused on People and Process. Relationships. In itself nothing new, but perhaps more than ever; it's like a fire under my feet and burning up and out. Among other things, ever since I stumbled on the Science Communications community a few months ago I have wanted to know where computing and technology fit in. Can fit in. Should fit in. Why aren't we there? 

My mind was like this

Yesterday in class, one of my students said something to the effect that it could be hard to speak up in class when there was so much going on, so much being discussed, so many stimulating ideas, that you could get lost in a sea of potential.

That's it! My radio silence wrt blog posts hasn't been about writer's block or lack of ideas. The process of writing, assuming there ever was "a process", is, yes, about being unable to stop thinking about something, but that something isn't always directly a technology or science issue. Perhaps I thought I had nothing to say to my predominantly tech audience because I was being consumed by thoughts of the importance of people, process and relationships.

What ever was I thinking? I'm going to go fertilize the Spider Plant right now.


*Thank you Paige Brown Jarreau @FromTheLabBench for aiding and abetting the foliage

Science Communication Team Building - with Paint. Seriously?

How do you tell a male or female scorpion?

The idea of having to sing in public or play an instrument made my stomach flip. I usually feel that sensation only when landing in the turbulence that seems to always surround the Dallas/Forth Worth airport. However, here I was, feet planted firmly on the Arizona sand, and that sick almost pukey sensation wouldn't go away. I didn't know anyone - how could I possibly say anything?

Along with 35 or so others, scientists and engineers, a philosopher, someone from theatre and several artists, I was newly arrived at the C.O.D. Ranch for  Sonoran SciComm. We were here to work on communication and team building and we had been warned (promised) that we'd be pushed outside our comfort zones. We all wanted to be there, some of us (ahem) having almost fallen all over ourselves at the opportunity. I think it safe to say everyone had a passion for the environment and was working one way or another for sustainability.

But at that moment I thought I might be ill. Try as I might I couldn't bring myself to choose the Music activity. The mere thought that I might suffer a panic attack in front of dozens of people I had never met before was intolerable. Ever since the summer after my Freshman year, when I had an ill fated on-stage encounter with Cole Porter's Anything Goes while working at a Lake George NY resort, I have preferred my singing take place at 75 mph with the windows rolled up. They said they were letting me go because I couldn't make hospital corners. True, I wasn't cut out to be a chambermaid, singing or otherwise.

So, 30 odd years later, back at SciComm, I opted for the Painting. A nice, reasonably solitary activity with which to get my feet under me. So I thought. A dozen of us stood ready to wield our instruments against the canvas: Let us at it!

Then they told us to give our tightly gripped (favorite) painting tool to our neighbor. Bummer. They teamed us up and let us loose with the acrylics. My new friend Liz and I hit it off immediately; she a marine biologist by training and me a fan of all things small and wiggly in the water. We happily created waves and little tadpoles and oceanic abstractions together.We negotiated each other's styles, learning about one another as we had a running conversation about our emerging masterpiece.  Perfect.

Until they told us to pause, move to the right and continue painting on someone else's canvas. But, but... ok, don't get attached to material things. I tried not to look (too often) at what was happening to our abandoned Work of Art. Instead, Liz and I discussed what to do with the canvas left to us (no doubt with an equal level of regret) by another team. We started off tentatively, trying not to change their vision. Whatever it was. Tippy toeing around the edges. Wider ranging discussions developed between the two of us as we not only figured out what to apply where (which by this point had started to include some artifacts stuck to the canvas), but tried to psych out what the whole exercise was really about.

As a result, we weren't particularly surprised when we were told to change canvases again. And then again. Eventually  it was IMPOSSIBLE not to "mess up" prior work. There simply wasn't that much untouched canvas on these easels. Our original work was by now unrecognizable. However, Liz and I had decided we weren't messing it up, they weren't messing it up, but that we were contributing to a group project.

It was only 10am. My attention span was starting to wander. This activity was supposed to continue until noon. I was feeling like I was done. DONE. I think Liz was having similar thoughts. I said something to one of our activity organizers. His polite but firm response was "You must continue!". It wasn't an order; in fact we had been explicitly told the evening before that nothing was mandatory and we didn't have to do anything we didn't want to, so no one would have said a word had I taken a break - and never come back.

I sucked it up. I had a little conversation with myself "I'm not going to sulk. I'm not going to slide out of the room". "As much as I want to go off somewhere and stare meditatively at a cactus, I'm not going to do so. That would mean abandoning the group" .

Yet I was feeling a tad irritable. My cognitive state told me one thing but my affective state was not cooperating. Liz had wandered off somewhere, also feeling a need for change and some time apart. It turned out she was doing something really nifty with the paint out on the porch, a la Andy Warhol, to a series of magazine pictures of stuffy old men .

For myself, I reasoned that no one had said we had to paint on the canvas, so I proceeded to pour long trails of blood and guts black and red down the side of a supply box. It was very satisfying. And you know,  after a while it started to look kinda nifty. Not long afterwards I was back with Liz, sharing the box desecration together and watching her deface the stuffy old men.

Things went on from there. We covered the box, and still an hour remained. So we picked up the paint bottles, threw aside the tools and proceeded to sling great blobs of drooling oozing highly satisfying paint all over the canvases. Other people joined in and soon many of us were smearing, swiping, pouring, and slithering paint all over the place. Attachments were Bye Bye. Interpersonal shyness was a thing of the past. Conversations were as fluid as the running paint.

In hindsight, I think that was the point. After three and a half hours, we had gone from being self conscious, protective of "our" art and ways of doing things, carefully negotiating perceptions of other people's preferences, to happily smearing paint every which way and learning to at the very least appreciate what each other was doing no matter what it looked like or how it got there.

The whole weekend was like that. In case we'd thought we were "done" after the morning's Painting, we were wrong. I never went within range of the musical group, but I did get a chance to scream at the top of my lungs during the Improv Session which was most cathartic.

So began Sonoron SciComm. So continued Sonoran SciComm. So... no, it isn't over. This wasn't just a solo weekend event but a community building activity among a bunch of people who might very well, perhaps now more than before, work together effectively on some very serious and important (and no doubt fun) science.

I'm not ready to belt out Stevie Nicks in public, but perhaps some day. Maybe. With a good team.

Growing Pains for Inroads and its Fans

Transitions can be painful even when you realize that the eventual outcome will be a good thing. We tend to get comfortable with how things are and we understand how to operate in that world. Sometimes change catches you by surprise and it feels like the rug has been pulled out from under your feet. There are several unhelpful ways we sometimes react to changes that push us out of our comfort zone, including ignoring the situation and operating as if nothing has changed, becoming defensive, and invoking passive aggressive behaviors.

What Makes A Magazine a Magazine? (only 1 is by ACM)

A few years ago Inroads became ACM Inroads Magazine, and as both a columnist and Associate Editor, I have had the opportunity to watch the growing pains inflicted upon all involved. It is a wonderful thing to be a magazine. ACM has just a few magazines, and joining the ranks of those high quality publications brings many benefits. These include greater exposure for computing education, more diverse articles, more diverse readers, more diverse authors, and more interesting articles.

That last item is really where the rub is. By saying "more interesting" I am not saying that articles were not interesting in the past. (Trying to fend off any rotten tomatoes before they are launched). What I want to say is that a magazine has a rather unique kind of mission. What makes a magazine?

Ask yourself: What do the likes of Wired and People have in common? Seriously. Pretty darned extreme differences (and quality) but between them, and along the whole spectrum, there are some commonalities. How about (feel free to suggest non-snarky additions): articles that grab your attention and suck you in - I mean really suck you in, if well written and if you have even the remotest interest in the subject matter. Articles that don't require in depth subject matter expertise just to get beyond the abstract. What a minute: what abstract? Toss out the abstract. And for heavens sake toss out almost all citations. Perhaps include a few bibliographic references for the interested reader at the end. Toss in visually appealing pages - color! Photos? Diagrams? Toss in engaging relevant pictures that may or may not have data involved....

Which brings me to a bottom line: A magazine is not a research journal. Or a conference publication. Nor should it be approached as one.

That fact can be hard to adjust to for authors and reviewers and readers who are used to publications requiring the setting of a theoretical base, providing a literature review, citing prior and related work, defending every opinion (wait, there aren't supposed to be "opinions" except perhaps in the Discussion section - but even then they had better be thoroughly grounded one way or another), presenting data data and more data, drilling the point home and leaving the reader convinced (if the article is well presented) that no other reasonable conclusion is possible [here I smile, because there is always room for disagreement, even if only on a matter as significant as whether Power was reported]

It isn't that we don't know what a magazine is on an instinctive level. It is just that if we aren't used to reading and writing and reviewing for professional magazines, but for research and conference journals, it can be difficult to adjust. This is what I have been seeing in some cases. It doesn't matter how many times the Editor in Chief points out that Inroads is a magazine: heads nod, but when it comes time to read, write and review...some revert to a way of thinking based on the academic model of evaluating publications. Depending upon the personality involved, this can mean a wide variety of reactions to what is clearly not, nor intended to even come close to, a research article. That is what I have been observing.

It's hard to adjust to change. ACM Inroads Magazine (as I am supposed to refer to it when being official) is breaking new ground, reaching out to the wider computing community (Computer Science, Management Information Systems, Information Technology, Informatics, and others), as well as industry readers and leaders who share an interest in education. ACM Inroads Magazine is moving towards articles that grab your attention, don't require a PhD with a specialization in security to be engaged by an article on security, aren't littered with citations, and trade nailing down every statement of opinion or philosophical viewpoint for thoughtful and sometimes intentionally open ended provocative assertions.

No, ACM Inroads Magazine is not turning into People Magazine. Although it occurs to me I could have a great deal of fun writing a tongue in cheek column about what that might look like. We aren't turning into Wired Magazine either. We aren't sacrificing quality; we are applying standards for top rated magazine quality (most decidedly not People magazine). The magazine format provides us a platform to become incredibly useful to a broad audience interested in computing education. That is a good thing, isn't it?

Is the Internet for Introverts? or Extroverts?

Many interesting things baking in the interdisciplinary computing oven, which, one can only hope, I will be able to report on later this summer. Meanwhile, if you see a snorkel going by feel free to wave.

As the pages turn, I am reading the book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking on my Kindle. Generally a physical book person, I decided that in honor of Global Tech Women's upcoming inaugural book study group meeting this Friday, I would go all out and follow the bits where they might lead. I wasn't sure I was going to like this approach until I discovered simultaneously the ability to highlight, add notes and the best part of all, to write without picking my fingers up off the screen. Now I have become a writing fiend on my Kindle and my Nexus (and I finally have something easy to explain that I can tell my non techie iPhone friends about why I like my phone better than their phone and why my phone is easier to use than their phone).

But I digress. I want to talk about what "Quiet" has to say about the Internet as a haven for extroverts. Society at large, along with its other mis-perceptions of computing people, often tends to stereotypically think about the Internet as favored by introverts, those sad, sorry souls who can't communicate F2F and prefer to type late at night, with only the green glow (dating myself here) enabling them to see the stale pizza they are gnawing on.

If this stereotype wasn't so embedded in the cultural psyche, it might be easier to convince society at large that computers and computing is cool, and can be used in the service of social change.

But wait a minute...once the Web was overlaid upon the Internet (how many people today realize that the Web and the Internet are not one and the same?) we began to see the power of collaborative activities. How come, with all the global attention that has gone to the power of social media, in particular Twitter and Facebook, in such arenas as spreading word of the Arab Spring, of getting the word out when authoritarian governments would prefer otherwise, how come we don't think more about the Internet as a haven for socially adept action oriented souls?

It seems to me, that when you stop and think about it, there are a lot of not so pasty-faced, not so shy and retiring people out there fomenting all sorts of things on the Internet, in teams, in groups, collaboratively. An argument can plausibly be made that the Internet (not just the Web) has become the haven of extroverts.

There is a dark side of course, which "Quiet" discusses at some length, and that is the power the Internet has lent to the creation and perpetuation of Group Think. Collaboration on a grand scale, social movements and... the hive mind. Yeah...just think about all those cross postings on Facebook that your friends share without having hardly read, or have skimmed and taken at face value just because everyone else is saying so. Have you ever found yourself feeling momentarily guilty or ashamed because you don't agree with the latest post from "your group"? It is easy to just jump on board, isn't it?

Is the Internet attractive to Introverts? Sure... Is the Internet attractive to Extroverts? Sure...

Who spends the most time online, head buried in the screen?

Who gets most energized about taking control of the pipes and what flows through them?

Online Traffic School Insights

First Study Break: Hulling Pistachios

I spent yesterday doing online Traffic School. After talking with friends and colleagues I realize that it is not at all uncommon for even the best of drivers to at some point in their motoring careers find themselves in possession of a ticket that can only be purged by going to traffic school. As I soon learned, most traffic school (at least around here) is done online. Even if one wanted to attend in person, those classes where you can mingle with your fellow alleged violators are few and far between. Not to mention in-person traffic school costs twice as much as online traffic school. Given the gouging financial nature of even teeny weeny tickets, I quickly dismissed the idea of coughing up even more cash.

It is possible that online traffic school is designed to bore you into never doing again whatever it was you are alleged to have done. Thus, as I fulfilled my obligation as a law abiding citizen and trudged my way through the do-it-yourself class, I was all the while musing on various related and unrelated topics. Which is probably a good thing because if I divulged the course materials I would no doubt be tracked down and cited.

Have you ever thought of driving a car as a means of communication akin to email and social media? I bet you haven't. I hadn't, and by the way, neither has the DMV (Division of Motor Vehicles) or anyone else in law enforcement I am aware of. As I was learning about all the ways people get into trouble with their cars and the reasons they get into trouble, and how they react behind the wheel of the car (you'd be amazed. or maybe not) it dawned on me that: people behind the wheel will communicate with other people in ways they would never dream of doing in person. 

For example, I have often watched people tear down a freeway at speeds far beyond the speed limit, cutting across lanes in front of other people no doubt scaring the daylights out of them. God forbid you should drive too slow (the speed limit) because you might find someone riding right up your tail giving you a subtle hint to GET THE HELL OUT OF THE WAY. Or if you don't accelerate into an intersection fast enough when the light turns green some Type A personality may HONNNNNK at you LOUD ENOUGH that you can hear it over your cranked Classic Rock station. They might even flip you the finger as they tear around you and burn rubber down the 100 feet to the next intersection. Which, apparently, leads to many nasty accidents in which your internal organs are splattered around against one another in a way you don't really want to think too closely about. But perhaps should.

Have you ever been on the receiving end of an anonymous teaching evaluation that referred to you in ways that are not printable here? I bet you have read a venomous review on Amazon or in the Comments section of an online newspaper. The kind of comment that makes you cringe.  Hiding, of course, behind a pseudonym along the lines of "Righteous Ralph" (or Ronda, not to show gender bias). If you have been using email long enough you have surely found yourself on the receiving end of a message that makes you want to cry or scream in outrage depending upon your personality. Or, just as likely, you have yourself contributed to email or online chat conversations that would *never* have happened could you but have seen the other person's pained face as you spoke.

People often need to be in the same physical space with another person in order to most effectively modulate their communication. There has been plenty of research about abominable online behavior and the psychological factors behind it. But, as I think about aggressive driving, road rage, and just a general tendency for people to be oblivious of their effect on others when behind the wheel, I hypothesize that we as a society sometimes hide behind the wheel much the same way we sometimes hide behind the computer monitor. Thesis topic anyone?

By the way, what does FTP stands for?

In most contexts  "File Transfer Protocol" would be the correct answer. However in the context of the Court System, FTP means "Failure To Pay".

I don't think they intended that to be funny, but I almost choked and I'm still grinning.

Wow...maybe Traffic School wasn't as much of a snoozer as I thought.

Many Study Breaks Later: A Stuffed Grape Leaf Casserole

What is the Future of Design? (Part 2)

What should we be pursuing in mobile design right now? That question was the beginning of yet more interesting and sometimes bizarre conversation at last week's UX Speakeasy meeting (see the previous post for Part 1 of this conversation). An innocent question and a sincere one, given that in 2010 mobile sales

surpassed computer sales and this year mobile devices in use are predicted to surpass the number of computers in use.

I was interested to hear Phil Ohme state that the future of mobile is not in apps or touch screens but in the extension of those items. In other words you don't need to carry it to use it. Just what is "it"? This is where it gets interesting. You can, for example swallow something and carry it around with you. Reputedly in prototype, the idea is not at all far fetched. After all, little medical cameras that travel around in your body have been used for some time, and then there was that guy who was featured years ago in a well known technical magazine after he implanted a device in his arm and used it to open doors, turn on lights and, if I recall correctly, to somehow enhance sex? Or perhaps he was just planning to do that or hypothesizing about that. (I'm not making this up.)

Where was I...so, if we develop the ability to swallow a little computer of sorts, and it sits inside your body somewhere on a more or less permanent basis, what kinds of interesting things will result? Packaging itty bitty highly sophisticated sensors is quite possible; packaging those little sensors in such a way as to survive the human gut is already being done. We know how to send signals through the human body - piece of cake. People already swallow pills that monitor if they have taken their medication during the course of the day.

Will we someday hear our phone ringing from our stomach? (Tap your belly button once to take the call)

Amber Lundy proposed a really fascinating idea. What if someone designs the ability to swallow a news event. For example, in the morning, as you are heading out the door, coffee in one hand, bagel in the other hand (dripping butter between your fingers), you pause to swallow the morning news.

As the day wears on, the news automatically streams into your brain. Perhaps you receive the morning news; the equivalent of having picked up and read the paper. Alternatively, you have plugged into a live stream, and are updated throughout the day with headlines, breaking news, entertainment.

If you are being streamed the news, will it be entirely cognitive or will it also be experiential? Amber suggested that it could be both. Cognitive: you get the knowledge. Experiential: you get the experience. But...then...what do you think about being experientially tossed into a story about the civil war in Syria? Is that a good idea? From a societal perspective perhaps it would be. If we really understood what was going on in war zones, in natural catastrophes in remote parts of the globe, in the developing world, would we make different decisions?

Design customization will be a key component of product success or failure. One of the big topics at the meeting, mentioned in the last post, was a growing demand by consumers for customizable micro-niche media. People want to hear, see, experience, communicate on their own terms. One of the panelists commented that Facebook is experiencing a mid-life crisis.  The power of the internet and our ability to search, dig, refine, and, an often narcissistic need for instant gratification, are driving consumer demand for "I want it my way". Whether you consider this good or bad (there are valid arguments on both sides) product development is increasingly having to listen to what all the "me"s out there want.

Greg Zapar was an optimistic voice throughout the meeting, as he kept pointing out the potential for designing for "better and efficient, not just more". Something very important to keep in mind. Those of us in who work in the technical world have the opportunity to have an impact on how all this deluge of data is gathered, presented and used.

We haven't even begun to talk about ethics. Designers and developers make choices with societal impact all the time - experiential product design is, and will continue to be, no different. Someone asked if we should approach design from a "science is for science's sake" perspective and let someone else worry about how our products and systems are used. One fatalist in the crowd suggested it was pointless to think about such things because we are just small cogs in a big machine.

You probably know by now what I think about that.

What is the Future of Design? (Part 1)

I know by now that when the UX Speakeasy San Diego group gets together to discuss an issue, bizarre things will inevitably come up. We had a panel of three speakers last night (Phil Ohme from Intuit, Amber Lundy from Websense, Greg Zapar from Tenfold Social Training) and an enthusiastic audience who jumped right in to ask the tough questions and make some ... um, interesting... suggestions.

But first, I want to pass on an observation. There was a balanced mix of men and women at the event which is always a nice thing in a technical setting. At one point I was looking around and realized that in general, the men dressed super casually (lots of jeans and tshirts, rumpled collared shirts, and our trusty moderator was wearing his usual s**t kicker boots) and the women were dressed more, shall I say: stylishly? A few months ago I wrote a blog post in Global Tech Women about technical women and clothing in response to a New York Times Op Ed on the subject. Hence my alertness to this contextual issue. Everyone in the room last night was a designer of  one sort or another - what do you think their clothing choices mean? What messages were being transmitted?

Which brings us to one of the big themes I heard last night. As Phil Ohme put it, the future of design is going to be about "sharing our life bits" i.e. we share, and will be sharing more and more, what our body wants to say. Not just what we choose to say, or choose to do behaviorally. It's what we unconsciously say and do and it's going beyond the usual subliminal cues we may think of. It's not going to be just the people in the room with you who pick up on your current mood, or what pheromones you are exuding.

Whether you want to or not, you will be porting wearable computers. We are evolving at breakneck speed in the direction of global sharing of The Personal.

Think about it - we already share a ridiculous amount of information, either intentionally or otherwise. We use that GPS feature on our smartphones to check-in and alert our entire online community that we: had a cheese steak in Philly, landed at the airport in Sydney, went shopping at a mall in suburban Colorado. We use Google Wallet to buy things and at the same time share a lot more than that one purchase with Google. As Ben King (panel moderator, from Qualcomm) pointed out, both Google and our banking institutions know about our financial purchases because we do everything online, but they have completely different motives for obtaining and analyzing it.

If you decide to wear Google Glass, it will be like having Google Street View on your face (suggests Phil). Soon, will everything you see, hear, and perceive, become archived and searchable in the Cloud? Now that's a scary thought. Who owns, has rights to, can use, that information? Privacy is going to be an even huger design issue than it is now, according to Amber Lundy. People will want to turn it OFF - to pull the plug. Will products and systems be designed to allow this? Easily?

On the other hand, here is a really cool, more positive design direction suggested by Amber. As micro niche networks continue to increase in popularity - a big conversation topic in itself last night - how about creating the ability to package a .tar file of your social world and ship it to someone? Let's say you want to share with your lonely friend in Argentina a slice of your life. So you pull together a variety of information, images, data, conversations, and video into a living digital collage. Without needing a Master's degree in anything to do so. And off it goes to your friend. Customize it slightly differently and send it to your mom. Design that I say!

Chew on these ideas for a while.

There were many other mind bending topics and I'll share more of them next time.

SIGCSE 2013: Swimming in Social and Professional conversations

SIGCSE continues and as usual brain cells are becoming a bit challenged in many people I meet. All for a good cause - input much data for many good ideas and opportunities and there are bound to be a few neural casualties along the way.

Yesterday afternoon the panel I am a part of took place and went off swimmingly. Three colleagues and I (Beth Hawthorne, Flo Appel and Carol Spradling) spoke about the new curricular Social and Professional recommendations in CS2013 - curricular guidelines document for undergraduate computer science education. We dove into what the guidelines have to say and discussed with an enthusiastic audience some of the approaches, benefits and challenges. One of the most exciting aspects of our presentation for me was learning that several faculty in the audience that I had not yet met were already implementing modules or complete courses revolving around sustainability. Sustainability in the CS curriculum was my focus on the panel.

So many people are doing good work and flying quietly under the radar. They aren't tooting their own horns but given the opportunity to share what they are doing with interested colleagues they are all over it. In terms of sustainability, I was particularly enthused because we are looking for additional exemplars to include in the final version of CS2013.

We'd love to hear from people willing to share their work with others in the community. 

The Ironman Draft of CS2013 was officially released just as SIGCSE opened, and the comment period will last until June. If you have comments, thoughts, contributions on this final draft please, send them along using the contact information provided on the Ironman Draft site.

There is a lot of synergy around issues of computing and social good these days. Without having planned it, our panel complemented the morning special session on computing and social good that I discussed in my last post. Lots of exciting future projects are being discussed (things I overheard or participated in). There are working group reports, case studies, a growing collection of exemplars....what next?

Today, I participated in many discussions about computer science in the K-12 curriculum in the United States. This is another very important topic and a lot of momentum is building around it. There are an increasing number of state and national initiatives and, as Jan Cuny from the National Science Foundation stated in her lightening talk yesterday:  

"We will need all hands on deck. It  is not 'what can you do' but 'What will you do' ".

More and more people in and out of computing education are realizing the importance of doing something about the lack of computer science opportunities in our primary and secondary schools. Not only that, more and more people are realizing they can play a part, sometimes small, sometimes large, in moving towards inclusion of CS in K-12.

Have you thought about what contribution you can make, given your experiences, areas of expertise and connections?

Late this afternoon I had a small window of unscheduled time and decided to take advantage of it by getting some exercise. The pool at this hotel is an outdoors pool. Considering this is Denver, Colorado and it is early March, and a snow storm appears to be on the way, it was an opportunity to obtain a particularly rapid and effective chilling out session. The pool was heated, so this was no suicidal event, but 82 degrees isn't exactly a hot tub. As I tore up and down the lanes and was forced to focus on the moment and only the moment, I obtained the mental space to remember once again just how grateful I am to be here surrounded by so many people who are passionate about teaching and learning and making a difference.

Sketch ... Everything.

Why would you want to sketch? Why professionally would you want to sketch? Continuing the conversation started in my last post about the goings on at the San Diego Sketchcamp, the next thing on the docket after "yes I am perfectly capable of sketching" is of course: WHY?

There are so many reasons to sketch. One of the most fascinating experiences of the day-long workshop was listening to one speaker after another illustrate how they use sketching in their work - and why you should too. Especially if you are a User Experience (UX) professional, which most of the audience was.

Sketching is a great way to capture ideas on the fly and problem-solve together in a meeting with peers or a client. You can capture much more information via pictures than with text. Sure it takes practice, but so does note taking or any other skill. But the end result is a memorable visual description of the conversation as it evolved. Not to mention the fact that the faster you write the worse your handwriting gets, and if you are like many people in this digital age (self included) your handwriting is fairly illegible to start with. Even being familiar with your own handwriting, you may find yourself scratching your head later trying to figure out what on earth those words are. I know I do. Whereas with a zippy picture the meaning doesn't disappear just because some of your lines get sloppy. Remember - we aren't talking about creating "art", we are talking about capturing ideas, impressions, observations.

One speaker in particular blew many workshop attendees out of the water by literally walking and drawing the talk. Amber Lundy spent 45  minutes discussing why she sketches, how she came to sketching from a start in computing (she is a self-described nerd) and and how one can benefit from sketching on the job. She calls it resocializing the interface.

But here's the kicker. As she spoke, the colorful highlighters never left Amber's rapidly moving hand. As she spoke, Amber moved back and forth, along a room-length sheet of paper pinned to the wall, drawing what she was saying. So not only did you hear her talk via your ears, you watched her her talk with your eyes. Talk about an impressive display of multi-tasking.

"Anything you can say you can sketch" according to Amber. Hard to argue with that when you are watching it unfold before you. At the end of her talk she went back and added boxes and additional arrows to show the flow of her talk even more clearly. Imagine sitting in a room with peers or clients and at the end of an intense and productive meeting you find yourself in front of a detailed visual representation of everywhere the conversation went, the points covered and the conclusions you mutually reached. In living color. Wow.

Perhaps anticipating the response ("I can't do THAT!"), Amber made a point of saying that she didn't take a bunch of classes to learn how to sketch so fluidly in front of a group. She said she practiced. And practiced. And practiced. She forced herself to sketch all sorts of things. For example, Amber advocates sketching meetings, not only as good practice, but because you will pay better attention. Remember some deadly dull meeting you have been in when all you could think of was how much you desperately wanted a roving espresso cart to appear in front of you. Then think about how entertaining and productive it could have been to instead have sketched the players in the room and what they were saying. Fun, no? Lasts longer than a latte too.

Sketch things you might not think of scheduling just to stretch yourself - rise to the challenge and think about things when you have time to build the habit. Why? These are the people and objects you interact with on a daily basis, which can come in handy later when you are in a fast paced situation and don't have time to ponder what something should look like. Like what? Sketch your schedule. Instead of a linear To-Do list, how would you lay out your day visually? As a die-hard list maker and organizer, I'm having serious fun pondering that one.

Here is the best (bizarre?) suggestion Amber had -sketch your grocery list.

Be careful however. Perhaps the first few times you should go to the store with both a sketched list and a traditional list. Until you learn what your own sketches mean.

Otherwise you might come home with ... things. Really odd things.

What Do You Mean "I Can't Draw"?

You don't have to "be able to draw", that's the joy of it. It's about sketching. Whether or not you think sketching == drawing doesn't matter. Don't get hung up on the words. Hey, what happened to the joy that almost all of us had as kids when someone tossed a pen, pencil, marker, crayon, chalk, white board marker our way? When did it go from "YES!!!" to "I can't do that".

Close to 100 people attended the first San Diego Sketchcamp this past Saturday to learn more and put pen or pencil to paper. Some attendees were devoted doodlers, scribblers, designers, artists. Other attendees were initially rather timid. By the end of the day I'd dare say everyone was trying it out. That is the joy of a workshop: interactivity.

Eight different speakers, some running in parallel session, walked the talk by not only showing the audience how they approach sketching but challenging the audience to try it - right now! As one speaker pointed out:

 "no one is going to die if you make a bad sketch". 

The day's keynote speaker, Jeannel King, was the first of several speakers to point out the mysterious change that typically takes place as we grow up. We lose the exuberance and lack of fear, and won't even try because "I can't draw the way I think I should" or "I can't draw the way I would want to". As King pointed out however, nothing has changed from when we were kids in terms of ability. We just get all self-conscious.

Another theme of the day, initiated by King, was to shift your mindset to:  

"What I draw is Good Enough". 

Send your inner critic out for coffee.

I appreciated King's reference to Buddhism to illustrate this point.

There isn't just one Buddha, there are many Buddhas. Everyone has a Buddha inside. Just as everyone is a Buddha so is everyone a stick figure strategist. We are just at different places along the path.

Thinking Crazy - Do It!

"So much of coming up with great ideas is allowing yourself to think crazy" spoken by someone in the film "Design & Thinking" which screened last night at the Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego. But can the corporate world accept this idea on a widespread basis? Can it be done without busting budgets? Important questions, addressed both directly and indirectly throughout this interesting film.

The film opened with scenes from the Occupy Movement and spent the next hour and fifteen minutes roving back and forth between New York City, San Francisco and Toronto, speaking with and observing a diverse and eclectic group of people in the design movement. I'm not sure why I'm calling it a movement, but after watching these people passionately describe what they do and what they think about the term Design Thinking, "movement" seems fitting.

There was the PhD candidate in Biology who had never heard of the term but described how he designs experiments with frogs (it seemed that no harm comes to the frogs - at least I hope so) and evolves his work through an iterative process that might sound familiar to someone from a classical design background. When he described the process of needing to be flexible and creative, it sounded rather like the many conversations during the film with people affiliated with classical design schools. These designers also spoke about following their intuition and being willing to shift course when development of a product produced unexpected feedback and results.

Moving from scientists to artists, along with CEOs, CTOs, and university faculty, one of the emerging themes in the film was: learning to be comfortable with taking risks. Realizing that you can do so at low cost. Taking risks and being willing to fail doesn't necessitate a huge budget. One of the challenges addressed throughout this film, both directly and indirectly, was how to "get a place at the table", i.e. in a number crunching bottom line world that wants algorithms for achieving success, how do you get the message across to all the relevant decision makers?

It can be done and the film showcased some wonderful examples. I loved the segment when the founder of Code For America was interviewed (was she was in her pajamas?) and spoke about the fear public officials have of putting anything up online that isn't "perfect". She made the very good point that the reason public officials are so risk averse is because we, the voting public, have made them afraid to make even the smallest mistake. No wonder they are afraid to innovate and experiment in the same way as firms in Silicon Valley. The good news however, is that organizations like Code For America are fostering cultural change in small incremental steps.

There is a lot more to say about the film's point of view on multi-disciplinarity, social entrepreneurship and having an impact. For now, consider how this might apply in your world:

"So much of coming up with great ideas is allowing yourself to think crazy"

Professional Communication & Sustainability in the CS Curriculum?

You still have a few weeks left to comment on the Computer Science Curricula 2013 (CS2013) Strawman Draft (which can be found here). If you haven't looked at it yet and have any interest in providing input on the next stage of joint ACM/IEEE curricular recommendations now is the time. Sure, there will be another version (Ironman Draft) to comment on, but things are in their most formative stage right now and there are interesting items in the Social and Professional Practice Knowledge Area.

Technical Communication Snafu

Some of what you will find in this section include Professional Ethics, Intellectual Property, Privacy and Civil Liberties. Also included are two of my favorites, and not because some people have surprisingly strong opinions on them: Professional Communication (p. 169) and Sustainability (p. 170).

Professional Communication has to do with, well, you might guess: writing, making presentations, human to human interaction, and collaboration (for starters). Critical soft skills that employers often say are so important. In my former role as a faculty member and in my current participation on the ACM Education Council I have heard this need brought up so many times; it seems as if no one could possibly dispute the importance of including communication skills in curricular guidelines for any computing program. Nevertheless, the issue is more complex than at first seems because some people believe these particular skills do not belong in the computing curriculum at all; some people believe they should be taught outside computing departments; some people think they should be required and some people think they should be optional.

Sustainability. Oh la la (I still have one foot in France). When I was part of the ITiCSE 2008 Working Group on Sustainability and Computing, I learned firsthand how controversial this topic can be. The strength of the flames from some of my colleagues in computing education was enough to stand my hair on end as if I had sprayed it with tight-hold super gel. One anonymous survey respondent talked about not wanting to have sustainability shoved down his throat. With multiple exclamation points (!!!!!) and underlines. On the other hand, there were colleagues who practically hugged the working group members for "finally" bringing this topic into a serious discussion forum. Thank you, thank you, some said, for encouraging us to think about the environmental effects of our professional work.

Do you have an opinion about Professional Communication or Sustainability in the computer science curriculum? Yes, no, not sure... You have until September 15 to submit comments on any aspect of the Strawman Draft. If you have been meaning to do so and haven't, now is the time.