Strange Loop 2013 was amazing. There were so many parts that, in and of themselves, made the trip worth it. David Stutz’ performance based on the ideas that appear in the works of Douglas Hofstadter; Hofstadter himself; a keynote with a Nichelle Nichols theme; yet another performance by the amazing Friedman and Byrd. I could go on and on. (City Museum, so many great talks, old and new friends…)
What really blew me away, though, was that more than half of the talks I went to were given by women. Awesome, brilliant women. Great talks. Honestly, I didn’t think it was possible to do this with a conference in 2013. But Alex Miller did it. He made diversity (by gender, at least) a goal, and he did the work to make it happen. Bravo. There were multiple times during the conference where I would have been moved to tears by what a watershed moment this was for me professionally, but I was too busy having an enlightening conversation with yet another brilliant technical woman. The Devchix happy hour was full of those.
This year: do something interesting enough to talk about. Next year: present.
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