thinking about thinking

Hello to everyone from the Grace Hopper Conference in balmy Orlando! I'm a bit of a heat fiend, so I'm loving the warmth, even with the super-size humidity included. So is my wavy/curly hair. It's all soft and happy in spite of the fact that I only spent about two minutes on it before heading out the door in the wee hours of the morning. Loving. It. I think another reason why I'm feeling pleasantly at home here is the weather reminds me of Maui. Now that my sisters are back on the mainland there are no more frequent and lengthy visits for me, which is very depressing. Today I realized just how much I miss it, and I'm doing my best to soak up the hotness while I can. I'm tempted to scrap this whole conference business, toss on the bathing suit and just lounge by the pool for hours and hours in manner of tropical vacation. But...

Yes, I'm attending a women in computing conference even though I'm not really a woman in computing. I work with them, though, and care about issues related to education, so here I am. I have to say that since women are still so underrepresented in this field (the CRA Taulbee report shows that only 14% of CSE bachelor's degrees in 2005-2006 were granted to women), it's pretty inspiring and fun to be at an event that brings over 1400 of them from school and industry together.

Plus, I get to learn cool stuff. I've been to this conference once before, and I like that for a few days I'm immersed in a world that is actually pretty foreign to me. It's fascinating and mildly uncomfortable in a good way. This morning's keynote given by Donna Dubinsky, founder of Numenta, among other big things, was titled "Thinking About Thinking" (already my brain was like, Huh?) and focused on--at least in my understanding--creating computing platforms that recognize complex patterns to identify objects similar to the way the brain does. For instance, she gave looking at a hierarchy of characteristics that defines catness as her primary example. It's easy for the brain to observe a picture of a cat, or parts of a cat, or a really rough drawing of a cat and still identify it as a cat, but how can you get a computer, which operates under rigid rules, to do that? Well, I can't tell you how, but apparently Numenta is figuring all this out. :) It was a really interesting talk.

One of the lines I appreciated on Ms. Dubinsky's slides was "The brain does lots of stuff." This coupled with the cat examples made me smile, because when Kitty is harassing me, which is often, I like to say bossily, "Stop it, Kitty! I'm doing stuff!" I figure that's the best explanation I can give since her brain is the size of a walnut.

In addition to all this learning, I'm also thinking about thinking about Disney World! Disney World! Disney World!

More soon.

Bacon R.

P.S. My work sent about a dozen of us off to the conference with long sleeve t-shirts touting our logo. The idea is that we'll "represent" at GHC. I don't really like wearing anything with logos or brands displayed, but I'm dutifully wearing mine today. However, I have rebelliously paired said shirt with a short skirt and sassy sandals, so I can "represent" with my own personal flair. That's right!