11 AM PST
I am sitting at my gate in LAX waiting to board with a roomful of people. We must be flying a 767 or similar aircraft. I’m in row 30.
Yesterday was such a blast and so full. I bailed at 3 pm and went to the aquarium. Not the best day with all the kids, but I did get to touch the rays, sharks, starfish and sea cucumbers. That was a first for me.
Saturday started with working the Outreach Expo. There were a lot of really cool SWE partners and section displays. WGBH was there with Design Squad, the Boston Museum of Science brought their Engineering Is Elementary curriculum and 4-H showed off their new engineering activities. And that’s just a sample.
My WOW! That’s Engineering workgroup mett over lunch to discuss goals and schedule. After that, I went up to the 60th Anniversary Gallery. They had some posters, artifacts, video histories running and horror of horrors a 1956 episode of Father Knows Best called “Betty, Girl Engineer”. It didn’t end well by our standards. Apparently one of the northwest sections led a protest campaign at the time.
Celebrate SWE was great fun. Our skit – The ‘i’ of the Tiger – was one of the best! Thanks Heather and crew. This year all the sections won some kind of award. Ours was most entertaining, or something like that.
On a more serious note we won 2 membership awards and a program award for the Dondi meeting. Region I also won a membership award and….Region i won the SME Bowl!!!!!
Great job girls!!!!!

5:00 PM PST
Wow, this day has gone fast! It started at 7 AM because I had promised to help esc2ort 2 young ladies to the Girl Scout program. Once they were setup and off to the Tech Team Challenge (a collegiate event), I was free to do my thing. My first choice was the Oral History Project presentation. Our SWE archivist gave an interesting talk on the how and why of doing oral histories. She even did a demonstration with one of the SWE senior members to show us how it’s done. This project is the next step in the preparations for our 60th anniversary next fall.
Next stop was the Career Fair and lunch. There were a lot of exhibitors there, but things were different. For example, Ford and GM were recruiting, but their booths were on a much simpler scale. The loot was also less extravagant.
My focus at the conference was outreach, so I had two workshops on my afternoon schedule. The first was “Engineering is Elementary” an elementary school program developed by the Boston Museum of Science3. Their goal is to integrate engineering into the science curriculum. It was very well presented. The next session was supposed to be on “Promoting Engineering to Teens & Tweens.” Unfortunately the speaker never showed. There was a room full of disappointed people for that one.
I decided to call it a day and headed back to the hotel and its roof top pool. I didn’t bring a suit, but sat on the edge of the pool with my feet in the lovely cool water and watched a dirigible float above the harbor below.
There is a half hour left before we have to meet for the Awards Banquet. That is always a long evening. No one in our section is being recognized. There might be someone in Region I who is. Guess I’ll find out.
I should have decided to go to Bubba Gump’s Shrimp House!

Today was my first day at the SWE conference and it was fabulous. The sun was out and everyone was enthusiastic and ready to go. I’ll try to blog about the things Barbara hasn’t talked about… she came armed with a fabulous netbook so it might be tough to keep up, but here goes.

After the breakfast and keynote speaker, I went to the session on Men as Diversity Partners. It featured a panel of great male executives from Kellogg, Genentech, the US Navy and others speaking about how to be an ally and get men involved in diversity efforts. They all stressed the importance of keeping employee interest groups open to everyone, working with groups like SWE and NBSE, and learning together about the importance of diversity. One of them said that even though we’re frequently told to do our best at work, the majority of employees surveyed don’t feel like they’re allowed to do their best. Being an ally means enabling all of your employees, regardless of your own potentially hidden biases.

I ate lunch with some of the Spirit girls, then sat in on the Region I section meeting. Communication was a big topic. We keep looking for ways to improve the region i website and make sure it’s got what every member needs. If anyone has suggestions, let me know!

The next session I went to was about networking, lead by some fabulous ladies from Northrop Grumman. They went over basic DOs and DON’Ts of networking and talked about places and ways to make contacts. Then we played Networking Taboo! Taboo is a party game where you talk about a word without saying what it is. In today’s game, we were given cards with job descriptions. We couldn’t talk about what job we were looking for, specifically. One person was given the CEO card, responsible for hiring people in various positions. Guess who drew that one? Me! I didn’t do too well… I had thirty people to talk to about skills to fill ten positions, all without revealing that I was the CEO. I accidentally hired a janitor as HR director because she said she liked “making a nice place for people to come to work.”

Tonight is hospitality rooms, it’s like a dozen parties and another great chance to meet more engineers! I’m really looking forward to it.

1:00 PM PST
It’s noon and Marsha and I are finishing lunch in the Irish Pub across the street from the convention center. We need to be back at 1 PM for the Region I meeting.
This morning was awesome. Darlene Solomon , Chief Technology Officer for Agilent Technologies, shared her strategies at the Keynote Breakfast for advancing the World of Technology. She was a captivating speaker. She used some of Agilent’s current products to illustrate her strategies. They have moved out past purely physical measurements into chemical and life sciences measurements. One of their new technologies is now being used to evaluate breast cancer cells to determine the risk of metastasis. This allows physicians to decide whether or not extreme therapy is required.
The first session I went to was on the PBS series Design Squad©. This is a cool PBS program that pits two teams of teens against each other to engineer the solution to a specific design problem. They just started their 3rd season. The online site has all the materials available for download, as well as lots of cool videos that we can use. All this material eliminates the need for us to redesign the wheel every time we have an event or a request from an educator.
After lunch we stopped by the Lava Lounge to make SWE 60 buttons. Then on to the Region Meeting.

Hooray! The sun is shining!

10 PM PST
Hi everyone.
It’s been a busy day and the conference hasn’t officially started. My Outreach meeting was more interesting than I expected, based on past years. We actually worked on getting more people doing more things. Share the wealth. I’m excited. I hope that things follow through. In past years, about all the involvement I had was for a week or two before conference and at the official meeting. There never seemed to be anything that anyone wanted me to help with. Now we are assigned to work groups and expected to set and meet goals.
The SWE Committee Dinner was pizza, salad and big cookies. The rest of the group went out along the bay. It finally stopped raining – in Kansas we would say it finally stopped misting – they have a different scale out here. We all met up at the Ice Cream Social. There were lots of goodies this year. Kimberly Clark handed out Kleenex packs, Conoco Phillips gave everyone flash drives and 3 people won iPod Nanos, and Kellogg’s gave away cereal bowls and snack packs. All this and ice cream too!
An added bonus was seeing Karla, a former section president. Kellogg snatched her away to Micighan about 3 years ago. The good news is that they just transferred her to Omaha. That’s only 5-6 hours away.
Well it’s time for me to quit. A bunch of the ladies are downstairs networking in the lounge, but this old lady needs her sleep.

11:00 AM PST
We awakened to gray skies and light rain. Where is all the California sunshine they brag about??
The group has divided up with several people on technical tours and at least 2 working SWE business. Cindy has a Region Gov. meeting and I am going to the Outreach Committee meeting. They are trying something new in Outreach this year – national workgroups. We are going to try to figure them out today.
Most attendees will be arriving today. Our hotel said that they have 100 check-ins scheduled. The competition for the 2 elevators is going to heat up!
I had some time, so I went out exploring the harbor again. !t was misty and all sorts of birds were sitting around on rocks and floats waiting for it to let up. Apparently gulls and pelicans don’t like to fly when the VFR minimums are so low. On the way back to the hotel, the rain got harder so I ducked into Borders to dry out and get online.
Cindy and I are planning to hook up for lunch and then go to our 1:00 PM meetings. More later…
ICE CREAM SOCIAL TONIGHT!