Process for Online Video Services

Since 2014, my husband John Plocher has been running the Video Ministry for St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, Saratoga, CA. What started out needing a few hours a week using spare equipment has grown vastly since the Covid-19 pandemic took over our lives this year. John now routinely spends 12 or more hours a week creating and editing videos of music and worship services using sophisticated software and hardware. (Some of which were paid for by a 2018 St. Andrew’s Opportunity Fund grant.) John has been mentoring Youth Group members for over a year to develop their technical skills and extend the Video Ministry. In the hope that recruiting and training even more helpers will reduce his own load, John has written these process documents.

Online Worship Services and Music

• An Overview
• The Structure behind our Online Ministry
• Online Service Recording Process
• Postlude Slideshow Guide
• Virtual Music Recording Guide

John has developed a chat and video best practices exchange group – contact me if you want to join. He publishes stand-alone videos of the classical and folk service music on  Saint Andrew’s Sings. Go there to hear “All Things Bright and Beautiful,” the “Navy Hymn,” a folk Taizé “Jesus Remember Me,” “Rest in the Lord,” “Hail the Day that Sees Him Rise,” “We’ll Meet Again,” and other favorites. Or, hear the music as part of the weekly worship service videos. (More in my blog post New Music for Quarantine Times.)

I have been helping John by reviewing videos during development, finding memes for the end, and providing photos for preludes and postludes:

• Trinity – Images of God (7 June 2020 Prelude, 3 minutes) – based on my 2017 “Images of God” Katysblog post for EfM
• Stations of the Cross, Harare, Zimbabwe (14 June 2020 Prelude, 5 minutes) – with pictures I took during the TechWomen Zimbabwe Delegation, 2016
• Tocatta on Amazing Grace, Photos from Lalibela, Ethiopia (14 June 2020 Postlude, 4 minutes) – with pictures I took in Lalibela, Ethiopia, 2014

If you want to receive Katysblog posts by email, please sign up using the Sign Me Up! button (upper right on Katysblog home).

Images Copyright 2020 by Katy Dickinson.

New Music for Quarantine Times

My husband John Plocher is not musical but during the COVID-19 quarantine, he has been helping others to sing. John has been recording and broadcasting our regular church services from the St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church choir loft for years (with backup from the talented teens of the Youth Group whom he has been mentoring). During the quarantine, John used the skills and equipment he had put together to help St. Andrew’s clergy shift into a weekly service online. Music has always been a huge part of our parish community life, so John has created online music with choir directors Leroy Kromm, and David Howard-Pitney, and the inspiring parish symphony and folk choirs, singers, and instrumentalists.

John recently published a new website: Saint Andrew’s Sings – where the classical and folk music videos are posted each week. Go there to hear “All Things Bright and Beautiful,” the “Navy Hymn,” a folk Taizé “Jesus Remember Me,” “Rest in the Lord,” “Hail the Day that Sees Him Rise,” “We’ll Meet Again,” and other favorites. (I am very proud of John – can you tell?)

“St Andrew’s Episcopal Church, in Saratoga, CA has a strong musical tradition that continues even as we isolate ourselves during these Inside Times. This is a collection of instrumental and choral works, folk music, meditations and solo performances – all recorded “solo” during the corona virus quarantine and produced virtually, for your enjoyment and the glory of God.”

Other choirs and singers around the world have also been creating new music for quarantine times. Some of those I have enjoyed:

• “Singing Through the Storm” by Steven Franklin Harris
• “Let Your Light Shine with Keb’ Mo'”  Virtual Choir – Boston Children’s Choir Online
• “The United Kingdom Blessing” Churches sing ‘The Blessing” over the UK
• “Longest Time” – Quarantine Edition, Phoenix Chamber Choir
• Genuine Fake Russian Choir “How Australia’s ‘fake genuine Russian choir’ Dustyesky went viral during the coronavirus pandemic”
• “Parting Glass” – The Choir of Man
• “The Bay Area Blessing” — Churches sing ‘The Blessing” over the San Francisco Bay Area

If you want to receive Katysblog posts by email, please sign up using the Sign Me Up! button (upper right on Katysblog home).

Image Copyright 2020 by Katy Dickinson.

Updated with new link 30 May 2020

Congratulations on EfM Graduation, Joel Martinez!

EfM Class Meeting Online, April 2020

Since we could not honor Joel Martinez in-person while under COVID-19 quarantine, we celebrated online. Congratulations to Joel Martinez for his graduation after four years of study from Education for Ministry – so proud of him! In addition to taking the regular EfM program, Joel was my Co-Mentor for three years at Elmwood Jail. To do this work, he became an accredited EfM Mentor and volunteer for the Correctional Institutions Chaplaincy. Joel took Year-1 at our home church (with me and my Co-Mentor, Karen LeBlanc), Year-2 and Year-3 in jail while serving as a volunteer chaplain with me as his Mentor, and Year-4 back at our home church (with Karen and me as Mentors).

2017 Elmwood Jail: Bishop Mary Gray-Reeves, Rev. Peggy Bryan, Joel and Katy

As his EfM Administrative Mentor, I would usually make this presentation in front of the whole congregation of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church but thanks to technology and my geek husband, John Plocher, we were able to celebrate together in a video segment during the regular weekly service. John even created this stand-alone video.

Contact me if you want to learn more about the EfM class that starts in September. More about EfM in the Episcopal Diocese of El Camino Real. Our 2019-2020 EfM class held its closing session last night but we are taking signups for the seminar that starts in September 2020. We will meet in person or online as appropriate. More about EfM:

Education for Ministry (EfM) is a program of the University of the South – School of Theology, a unique four-year distance learning certificate program in theological education based upon small-group study and practice. Since its founding in 1975, this international program has assisted more than 100,000 participants in discovering and nurturing their call to Christian service. EfM helps the faithful encounter the breadth and depth of the Christian tradition and bring it into conversation with their experiences of the world as they study, worship, and engage in theological reflection together.

If you want to receive Katysblog posts by email, please sign up using the Sign Me Up! button (upper right on Katysblog home).

Images Copyright 2017 – 2020 by Katy Dickinson.

4th Edition: “Notable Women in Computing” Playing Cards Listing

Jessica Dickinson Goodman, Susan Rodger and I have just updated the Notable Women in Computing playing cards – publishing the 4th Edition since 2014. These will be available for sale at the Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education – SIGCE 2019 event, and (as always) on Notable Technical Women. The cards have been updated to reflect some of the new honors for these remarkable leaders – and this is the first version in which each of the 54 honorees has a photo, plus a link to her Wikipedia page. In the first edition, 25% of the honorees did not have a Wikipedia page.

Notable Women in Computing playing cards are associated with the long-term “CRA-W and Anita Borg Institute Wikipedia Project – Writing Wikipedia Pages for Notable Women in Computing” project.  We encourage you to use this information to inspire students and teach computer science, and write or improve Wikipedia pages – especially creating new pages about remarkable women who have none. Please watch our 2014 Kickstarter video about why we picked these 54 women from among all of the remarkable technical women.

All 54 cards:

Suit	Honoree Name	Position, Honors, Awards	Wikipedia Link
Joker	Maria Klawe	Harvey Mudd College President, ACM Fellow, Canadian Information Processing Society founding Fellow, ABIE Award – Leadership	Linked Here
Joker	Mitchell Baker	Exec.Chair Mozilla, ABI Woman of Vision, Internet Hall of Fame, Webby Lifetime Achievement	Linked Here
Hearts	Queen– Frances Allen	IBM Fellow Emerita, Turing Award, Computer History Museum Fellow, IEEE Fellow	Linked Here
❤	King– Barbara Liskov	MIT Professor, Turing Award, ACM Fellow, SWE Achievement Award, National Inventors Hall of Fame	Linked Here
❤	Jack– Shafrira Goldwasser	MIT Professor, Turing Award, ACM-W Athena Lecturer, ACM Fellow	Linked Here
❤	Ace– Hessa Al Jaber	Qatar ICT Minister, Chair CS Department – Qatar Univ.	Linked Here
❤	10- Mary Jane Irwin	Pennsylvania State Univ. Professor, ACM Fellow, IEEE Fellow, NAE Member, ACM-W Athena Lecturer	Linked Here
❤	9- Irene Greif	ABIE Award for Technical Leadership, IBM User Experience Group, ACM Fellow, AAAS Fellow, Formed Lotus Research 1992	Linked Here
❤	8- Duy-Loan Le	Senior Fellow-Texas Instruments, WITI Hall of Fame, ABI Women of Vision	Linked Here
❤	7- Grete Hermann	Univ. of Göttingen mathematician, 1926 foundational paper for computerized algebra	Linked Here
❤	6- Manuela Veloso	IEEE Fellow, AAAS Fellow, ACM Fellow, JPMorgan Chase AI Research head	Linked Here
❤	5- Lila Ibrahim	COO DeepMind, CBO Coursera, Founder Team4Tech, ABI Woman of Vision, Purdue University-Outstanding Electrical and Computer Engineer	Linked Here
❤	4- Padmasree Warrior	Former Cisco and Motorola CTO, WITI Hall of Fame, Distinguished Alumni Award from IIT Delhi	Linked Here
❤	3- Genevieve Bell	Australian National University Director – Autonomy, Agency and Assurance Institute, ABI Woman of Vision, WITI Hall of Fame	Linked Here
❤	2- Marilyn Wescoff	ENIAC computer programmer team 1946, WITI Hall of Fame	Linked Here
Diamonds	Queen– Anita Borg	Founder Anita Borg Institute, WITI Hall of Fame, Fellow ACM, EFF Pioneer	Linked Here
♦	King– Deborah Estrin	MacArthur Fellow, IEEE Internet Award, ACM, AAAS and IEEE Fellow, ABI Woman of Vision, ACM-W Athena Lecturer	Linked Here
♦	Jack– Yuqing Gao	Former IBM Distinguished Engineer, ABI Woman of Vision, IEEE Fellow	Linked Here
♦	Ace– Susan Graham	UC Berkeley Distinguished Professor, ACM, IEEE, NAE, AAAS Fellow	Linked Here
♦	10- Cristina Amon	Univ. of Toronto Dean-Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, IEEE Fellow, SWE Achievement Award, Canadian Academy of Eng., Spanish Royal Academy, Royal Society of Canada, US NAE	Linked Here
♦	9- Betsy Ancker-Johnson	1st observation of microwave emission without the presence of an external field (1967), Fellow Am Physical Society, Fellow AAAS, IEEE Fellow, Member NAE	Linked Here
♦	8- Arati Prabhakar	Former head US DARPA and NIST, IEEE Fellow	Linked Here
♦	7- Sophie Vandebroek	COO IBM Research, former CTO Xerox, IEEE Fellow, WITI Hall of Fame, Royal Flemish Academy for Arts & Sciences Member	Linked Here
♦	6- Ruzena Bajcsy	UC Berkeley Professor, NAE and NASIM Member, Fellow ACM, IEEE, AAAI, and AAAS, IEEE Robotics and Automation Award	Linked Here
♦	5- Laurie Hendren	Professor McGill Univ., ACM Fellow, Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada	Linked Here
♦	4- Lixia Zhang	UCLA Professor, ACM and IEEE Fellow, IEEE Internet Award	Linked Here
♦	3- Betty Snyder	ENIAC computer programmer team 1946, WITI Hall of Fame, Augusta Ada Lovelace Award, IEEE Computer Pioneer Award	Linked Here
♦	2- Kay McNulty	ENIAC computer programmer team 1946, WITI Hall of Fame, National Inventors Hall of Fame	Linked Here
Spades	Queen– Grace Hopper	US Navy Admiral, 1st compiler for a programming, Computer History Museum Fellow, Dist Fellow-British Computer Society, Fellow AAAS, Presidential Medal of Freedom, Hopper College at Yale University	Linked Here
♠	King– Chieko Asakawa	IBM Fellow, ABI Woman of Vision, Japan Medal of Honor with Purple Ribbon Member US NAE	Linked Here
♠	Jack– Denice Denton	Univ. California Santa Cruz Chancellor, AAAS Fellow, IEEE Fellow	Linked Here
♠	Ace– Radia Perlman	Intel Fellow, IEEE and ACM Fellow, 1st ABI Woman of Vision award winner, National Inventors Hall of Fame, Internet Hall of Fame	Linked Here
♠	10- Clarisse de Souza	Professor PUC Rio de Janeiro, CHI Academy, Scientific Merit Award of the Brazilian Computer Society	Linked Here
♠	9- Linda Petzold	Univ. California Santa Barbara Professor, ACM Fellow, AAAS Fellow, NAE Member	Linked Here
♠	8- Jennifer Widom	Professor Stanford Univ., ACM Fellow, AAAS Member, NAE Member, Dean-Stanford School of Engineering, ACM-W Athena Lecturer	Linked Here
♠	7- Jean Sammet	IBM Researcher, 1st woman ACM President, ACM Fellow, Computer History Museum Fellow, NCWIT Pioneer Award	Linked Here
♠	6- Helen Greiner	CEO of CyPhy Works, Founder iRobot, ABI woman of vision, WITI Hall of Fame, Presidential Ambassador for Global Leadership	Linked Here
♠	5- Anuradha Annaswamy	MIT Senior Research Scientist, IEEE Fellow, Hay Medal, Indian Institute of Science	Linked Here
♠	4- Qiheng Hu	Founder, China Internet Network Information Center, Internet Hall of Fame, Research Professor – Chinese Academy of Sciences	Linked Here
♠	3- Ruth Lichterman Teitelbaum	ENIAC computer programmer team 1946, WITI Hall of Fame	Linked Here
♠	2- Fran Bilas	ENIAC computer programmer team 1946, WITI Hall of Fame	Linked Here
Clubs	Queen– Katherine Johnson	NASA Mathematician, calculated the trajectory of early space launches, NCWIT Pioneer in Tech Award, Presidential Medal of Freedom, Katherine G. Johnson Computational Research Facility, Subject of movie “Hidden Figures”	Linked Here
♣	King– Augusta Ada Lovelace King	Mathematician, 1st computer programmer 1843	Linked Here
♣	Jack– Jennifer Chayes	Microsoft Research Distinguished Scientist, ACM Fellow, ABI woman of vision, Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, von Neumann Prize	Linked Here
♣	Ace– Vicki Hanson	CEO of ACM, Former RIT Distinguished Professor, Professor Univ. of Dundee, ACM Fellow, SIGCHI Social Impact Award, ABI woman of vision, Fellow Royal Society of Edinburgh	Linked Here
♣	10- Ellen Ochoa	NASA Astronaut and Johnson Space Center Director, 1st Hispanic woman in space, NASA Distinguished Service Medal, Harvard Foundation Science Award, San Diego State Univ. Alumna of the Year, Astronaut Hall of Fame	Linked Here
♣	9- Tova Milo	Professor Tel Aviv Univ., ACM Fellow, Academia Europaea	Linked Here
♣	8- Valerie Taylor	ACM Fellow, Director of the Mathematics and Computer Science Division of Argonne National Laboratory, IEEE Fellow	Linked Here
♣	7- Kathleen McKeown	Professor Columbia Univ., ACM and AAAI Fellow, Founding Fellow Association for Computational Linguistics, ABI Women of Vision	Linked Here
♣	6- Susan Landau	Professor at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, ACM Fellow, AAAS Fellow, ABI Woman of Vision, National Cyber Security Hall of Fame	Linked Here
♣	5- Mary Lou Jepsen	Founder OpenWater, former Google X Head of the Display Division, ABI Woman of Vision, WITI Hall of Fame, One Laptop Per Child Designer	Linked Here
♣	4- Kristina Johnson	National Inventors Hall of Fame, Former Undersecretary US Dept. of Energy, IEEE Fellow, Member NAE, ABI Woman of Vision, SWE Achievement Award	Linked Here
♣	3- Sophie Wilson	Broadcom Director IC Design, Designer Acorn Microcomputer, Computer History Museum Fellow, Fellow Royal Society-London	Linked Here
♣	2- Jean Bartik	ENIAC computer programmer team 1946, WITI Hall of Fame, Fellow Computer History Museum, IEEE Computer Pioneer Award	Linked Here

If you want to receive Katysblog posts by email, please sign up using the Sign Me Up! button (upper right).

TechWomen Team Morocco – Connect to Impact

I have been proud to team up with Mercedes Soria and Fatema Kothari for a third year as TechWomen impact coaches, to work with five remarkable leaders from Morocco: Safaa Boubia, Nisrine Oukacha, Fatima Zzahra Meziane, Fatima Zahra Oumenni, and Imane Nassif. We have been working together since the ladies arrived in September to create Connect to Impact – a new online platform offering resources for nonprofits in Morocco to showcase their actions plans, increase their awareness and access to donors, and in time, improve their skills through fit-for-purpose training. Connect to Impact will provide a bilateral matchmaking algorithm between donors and nonprofit organizations.

Team Morocco presented about Connect to Impact at TechWomen Pitch Day yesterday. We find out at the Community Event on Monday, 22 October 2018, which of the twenty country teams won.

What is TechWomen?
TechWomen empowers, connects and supports the next generation of women leaders in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) from Africa, Central and South Asia, and the Middle East by providing them the access and opportunity needed to advance their careers, pursue their dreams, and inspire women and girls in their communities.

TechWomen is an initiative of the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA). TechWomen, launched in 2011, supports the United States’ global commitment toward advancing the rights and participation of women and girls around the world by enabling them to reach their full potential in the tech industry.

Part of the joy of TechWomen is its large and supportive community. My daughter Jessica Dickinson Goodman is also a TechWomen mentor, again coaching Team Palestine, which also gave an excellent pitch yesterday.  During the intermission, we got to see videos from TechWomen Fellows of prior years, including Solve24, created by our own 2017 Team Lebanon. Wish us luck in winning the pitch competition!

If you want to receive Katysblog posts by email, please sign up using the Sign Me Up! button (upper right).
Photos Copyright 2018 by Katy Dickinson

Extra Gear? Gifts for Sierra Leone

My daughter Jessica and I will be visiting Families Without Borders in Sierra Leone next week with Terri Khonsari. If you have any extra laptops or smart phones we can bring – no matter how old or dead – the students will be delighted with your donation. Please contact me soon!

I have visited the inspiring and fascinating continent of Africa at least once a year since 2010. With TechWomen Delegations, I have been to Morocco and Tunisia in North Africa, plus participating in Delegations to Rwanda, Zimbabwe, and South Africa below the Sahara. With People to People, John and I visited Ethiopia. My only actual vacation in Africa was to Egypt in 2010 – a much longer trip than planned since our family was stranded there by the eruption of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull volcano.  This will be my first trip to West Africa.

I bring gifts on each trip for our generous hosts and for new friends and colleagues. For my first TechWomen Delegations, I had custom pencils made but more recently, I have brought San Francisco keychains and geeky pens and toys given away at events like the Grace Hopper Conference.  For this trip, I bought keychains, the Willow Glen Wells Fargo Bank branch gave me a big bag of red pens, and I am also bringing packages of stickers for the children.

However, the best present for the students in Sierra Leone would be empowerment and greater connection to the wider world.  Your outdated computer gear can help them.  I hope to hear from you!

If you want to receive Katysblog posts by email, please sign up using the Sign Me Up! button (upper right).
Image Copyright 2017 by Katy Dickinson

Being the Only Woman in the Room

This week I met the Rev. Liz Milner, new CIC Chaplain for Elmwood Jail where I hold a weekly Education for Ministry (EfM) seminar in a men’s medium-security dorm. During this introductory conversation, I mentioned to Liz that I was comfortable working as the EfM Mentor in a men’s facility. After so long working as an executive in Silicon Valley technical companies, I would have to be comfortable being the only woman in the room!  NCWIT reports that only 25% of US professional computing jobs are held by women, with numbers much lower at senior levels.

For decades I designed and managed programs for Sun Microsystems such as the TAB – Technology Advisory Board, pictured above. It was an honor to work with world-class innovators and leaders like Ivan Sutherland, Greg Papadopoulos, and Danny Hillis, but with very few exceptions, they were all male.

Women in technology meet each other at conferences, like the annual Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (over 15,000 attended in 2016 – about 90% of whom were women), or in professional programs like TechWomen or Technovation.  We keep aware of our accomplishments as a group by means of projects like the Notable Technical Women cards and posters, and by awards such as Women of Vision. Women geeks are often the only female in the room – but there are many rooms!

If you want to receive Katysblog posts by email, please sign up using the Sign Me Up! button (upper right).

Images Copyright 2008-2016 by Katy Dickinson