writing – Jupiter Broadcasting

ANGELA: This is Women’s Tech Radio.
PAIGE: A show on the Jupiter Broadcasting Network, interviewing interesting women in technology. Exploring their roles and how they’re successful in technology careers. I’m Paige.
ANGELA: And I’m Angela.
PAIGE: So Angela, today we’re joined by Jami. She’s a technical writer with a company in Boston. She does a lot of interesting work trying to translate developers and in her position for developers. So we talk a little bit about that and we get into what it means to be a technical write and kind of dig into that whole career path.
ANGELA: And before we get into this interview, I would just like to say that you can support the network and the ongoingness of this show, Women’s Tech Radio, by going to pateron.com/today. And that is where you will find that we put out a podcast specifically to thank the patrons that are supporting the network. It’s Tech Talk Today. It’s a quick show that we do four days a week of the top headlines. And it’s just a thank you. It’s something that we’re able to launch because we are getting funding that way. So, again, you can support Women’s Tech Radio through patreon.com/jupitersignal.
PAIGE: And to get started, we asked Jami what she’s doing in technology today.
JAMI: I’m currently a tech writer. I work for Agency Port Software in Boston. We are a technology company that offers web-based software and tools to P&C insurance companies, and I’m pretty much responsible for creating and maintaining all of their product documentation and as well as the developer documentation site where all that documentation lives. So mostly my responsibilities are related to actual documentation. So I document any updates to the products and the release notes whenever releases go out. And then the other half is I’m actually dealing with the technical aspects of the site. So we make sure everything is up and running, everything is displaying properly, the styles look good, the features looks good. I”m working mostly in a tool called MadCap Flare. It’s an authoring tool. But I also work heavily in CSS and a little bit of Javascript and now learning a little bit more about Bootstrap.
PAIGE: So are you working in MadCap Flare? Is that like your internal program and then you’re also starting to author some of the stuff for the web and that’s why you’re diving into CSS and HTML and stuff?
JAMI: Yeah. So, MadCap Flare, it’s an external software component that you can use to actually build documentation sites. So you kind of organize everything and it builds HTML files that then compile out that you can build an actual site with. But we wanted something a little bit more modern and that we can customize a lot more than what’s built into the product. So that’s why we kind of bring in the CSS and the Javascript and the Bootstrap so that we can make it a little bit more modern and trendy to kind of meet our company’s branding.
PAIGE: So is this something — technical writing is actually — we haven’t had a technical writer on the show yet.
ANGELA: Uh-uh.
PAIGE: So this is kind of fun. What does it mean to do technical writing? I think you kind of grazed over it, but what do you do as a technical writer, like in the nitty gritty?
JAMI: Well, in my position now you’re working with the developers. You’re working with the engineers to find out exactly what is done on a project as related to a product. So whenever they make changes, we have to make sure that we’re relaying that information to whoever the audience is. So in my current case, our audience is actual developers who are customizing our software for clients. So they need to learn how to customize everything. So those updates go in for the content and we also relay the updates as for release notes. So we’re constantly keeping communication to our clients to what we’re being, what’s being done into the product.
PAIGE: So you’re kind of translating developers, and in your position, for developers?
JAMI: Yes. In prior positions where I’ve worked as a tech writer it was kind of the opposite. Where I was interpreting developers notes and trying to decipher it into a language that any man could understand, like they have no technical background but they need to understand. But in my current case it’s, I’m actually relaying developer information for another developer, if that makes sense.
ANGELA: Yeah.
PAIGE: Totally. So are you super technical? Are you a developer yourself? How does that work for you to kind of translate like that?
JAMI: I’m not really a developer per say. I mean, I’m starting to learn a lot more, especially in the past year or so. But I’m more of the content side of it. So I can understand it, but if you give me something to code completely in Javascript, i don’t know how to do that just yet, but I could at least read it and understand what’s going on.
PAIGE: Well, that’s actually a lot farther than some developers I know. So you’re doing really well.
JAMI: Thanks.
PAIGE: Is that something you went to school for? To be — either to understand Javascript or to be a technical writer?
JAMI: Actually, no. I actually don’t have really any formal training as far as even technical writing. My degree was actually in creative writing and journalism and I started working for a small IT company right out of college kind of helping with their help desk and I just gradually made my way up. And now today, I — since working with developers and having to actually look at code, it’s kind of forced me to learn, but also — I’m mean it’s not like a forcing, but — so it’s interesting to finally learn how to do some of this stuff. And then actually to learn more. I’ve been taking classes on Code School and Codecademy and trying to actually dig into code and try to figure it out so that I can understand what they’re talking about.
PAIGE: Very cool. So you’re self-teaching yourself so you can have more understanding at work?
JAMI: Right. Exactly.
PAIGE: And do cool things. Very cool.
JAMI: Right.
PAIGE: That’s actually how I got started.
JAMI: Very nice.
PAIGE: I always like to ask this sort of question, but how does it flip around? Do you feel like you have this creative writing and journalism background and you’re trying to learn code. Do you feel like any of the developers are actually trying to learn how to write more like humans?
JAMI: In some cases, yes. Yes.
PAIGE: Awesome.
JAMI: Or maybe we wish that they did, I guess.
PAIGE: Maybe somebody should write a Codecademy for technical writing so that we could learn how to write better documentation.
JAMI: That would be nice.
PAIGE: Yeah. I think they’re based out of Boston or New York. I think they’re in New York.
JAMI: I’m not sure. Yeah.
PAIGE: They’re very close. How did you get where you are? It sounds like you started out of college and you had the college degree. Have you always had an interest in tech or was it just kind of that random happenstance?
JAMI: Well, I mean, I’ve always been into computers and tech, and I’m really tech savvy. So just kind of, I kind of fit in right away in the department and I just — I love it. I mean, I’m always learning something new. It’s always evolving. So, I just — I’ve kind of found that happy medium where I’m writing, but I’m also getting the chance to actually work in tech.
PAIGE: I think it’s interesting how the tech — like if we look at it from a broad perspective. It really is a very deep field. It takes a lot of disciplines. You know, we’ve had so many different people on the show; artist, developers, designers, and writers now and there’s really — there’s room for all of us in this field to do good things.
JAMI: Right.
PAIGE: So why tech? You said you’re tech savvy. What does that mean to you and is it — what kind of stokes your fire in the tech end of things?
JAMI: Well, I think it’s kind of — because I have this personality where I like to kind of be a detective and try to figure things out. So I think in tech I kind of get that opportunity. Where it’s like, oh I don’t know why this page isn’t showing up right. Let me see why. Let me try to fix this. Okay, that’s not working. Let me try this. And just trying to find the answer. If it’s either online or talking to people. And it’s like you kind of get the opportunity to see what you did right away.
PAIGE: Yeah. We actually had an interview, a couple of weeks ago by now, where we talked to somebody about failing. And I think that willingness to explore and to fail forward, like oh does this worK? And to break it and then fix it is — that’s that mindset for me. It’s super important.
JAMI: Absolutely. Yeah, and it helps you learn because I mean for me I’m more of a hands on person, so actually digging in and trying to do things is how I’m going to figure out how to do it.
ANGELA: Is there anything tech related that you do outside of work, like hobby wise? Like blogging or?
JAMI: I did for a while. I was — I did blog for a while. I did some side freelance work for Bot.com for a while, for like two years. So I had to maintain their — maintain my — I had my own personal site and I had to do all that stuff. I was into photography for a while. So I was editing photos a lot. Right now I just really — I honestly haven’t had a whole lot of spare time to do a lot of outside tech related stuff, but I mean I’ve been using a computer for the past probably 20 years or so.
ANGELA: Yeah.
J; So it’s like attached to me. It’s just a part of our lives now. Tech is always around me.
PAIGE: Yeah, totally. You can’t get away from it anymore.
JAMI: No. It’s like a — it’s literally attached to you hip.
PAIGE: I guess you could move to Amish country in Pennsylvania.
JAMI: Yeah.
PAIGE: That’s about it.
ANGELA: I heard there’s a really good buffet.
PAIGE: Really?
ANGELA: Yeah, really.
PAIGE: I don’t know. I mean, are they offended-
ANGELA: My mom went to it and so did one of my friends.
PAIGE: I’ve had some of the best pancakes ever in Amish country, so maybe it’s relevant. I don’t know. Very fun. So you’re in the Boston community. How is the — kind of the tech community out there?
JAMI: It’s really booming right now, it seems. I mean, I’ve been here a little over a year, but especially in the area we’re in, we’re kind of near South Boston and just companies are moving in, startups and just everything. It’s very tech heavy right now.
PAIGE: I’m from the Boston area, I will admit.
JAMI: Uh-huh.
PAIGE: What is kind of your favorite thing about — I know you just moved up there. What’s kind of your favorite Boston thing so far?
JAMI: I’d say just being in the city to me is just exhilarating. Because I’m kind of from — I grew up in a small Florida town and kind of moved around Florida a lot where we didn’t really have that metropolitan feel. And of course the weather here. And summer/spring is very nice. Winter is a little bit challenging. But I love public transportation so getting on the train everyday to me is exciting.
PAIGE: Boston public transit, I had no idea how spoiled i was until I moved away from Boston, but it’s pretty much, once you get out of the Boston, New York, DC corridor, once you get out of there the rest of the country does not have the kind of public transport that the northeast has, and I had no idea.
JAMI: No. Yeah.
PAIGE: But I’m surprised you say summer. Well, I guess you’re from Florida. Honestly the worst part of New England weather to me is the hot, sticky summers, but Florida definitely takes the cake on that one.
ANGELA: Yeah.
JAMI: Right. Right. Yeah, it’s not that — I mean it’s been high 80s but it’s not that bad.
PAIGE: We also ask a couple of things that people do. So what else do you do with your free time?
JAMI: Well, I have a little dog named Penny so I like to spend time a lot with her. I like to research old train stations, which is kind of silly, but it’s kind of like a new thing since I’ve moved up here to New England. There’s a lot of — obviously a lot of history, a lot of hold history. But a lot of old train stations that have either been renovated into other things or they’re just kind of missing and you just kind of see pieces of them and you want to know why. Like why, what happened? And things like that.
PAIGE: That’s really fascinating. You should blog about that.
JAMI: It’s such a random thing. I don’t know why I’m so obsessed with it.
ANGELA: Yeah, no, seriously. Yeah, if you started a blog I bet you could get-
PAIGE: I would follow that.
ANGELA: Click revenue, because trains and stuff like that is really a popular thing.
JAMI: Probably.
PAIGE: Even if you’re in a for a casual ride, the Rail to Trail project that has happened through most of New England is fascinating.
JAMI: Yes.
PAIGE: And you get to go by a lot of those old train stations and things.
JAMI: Yes, we have one that actually runs right by our house. We haven’t been since fall, but we take the dog and it’s very interesting. Some of the old signals are even still there. And the old crossover bridges. It’s very cool.
PAIGE: New England is a really fascinating place for history. Definitely. Highly recommend. So you’re teaching yourself right now. What are some of the things that are hardest for you, even just learning like — is it jus getting your head around the logic of it? Like understanding terms? Like what is a variable? What is a function? Like what’s your sticking points and how are you getting over them or how are you not?
JAMI: I think it’s more the logic, because I’m kind of still in the midst of doing some of the online courses for Javascript. And it’s just — I don’t know if it’s the math portion or it’s just kind of all of it at once, like the, you know, if L statements and things like that. Sometimes it kind of throws me around. It’s just trying to figure it out. They give you a sample. Okay. Here’s some code, now try to fix it. Or you’ve got to write this yourself. here’s your variables and write it. So it’s just digging in and trying to figure it out is the best way how I get through it.
PAIGE: I like that. I also usually encourage people who are new to programming to write it out in plain English first.
JAMI: Uh-huh.
PAIGE: And then try to make it into code.
JAMI: Right.
PAIGE: Because if you write the logic in a way that you understand it and then translate, it can kind of help that step. Are you just doing stuff online? Are you going to meetups or anything?
JAMI: I haven’t gone to any meetups yet. I know there are a lot in the Boston area. I know there are couple of, especially for women they’re actually creating — there’s a lot of groups that are actually for women that want to code and you could actually get involved in these groups and they do meetups. And basically at any level you could just want to learn and you could get into the groups and start working with them and learn more. And that’s something I’d love to do. I just haven’t had the chance right now, unfortunately.
PAIGE: I definitely encourage you to check that out. I’m actually the director for Women Who Code Portland and I know that we have a Boston chapter.
JAMI: NIce.
PAIGE: And I think Girl Develop It is out there if you want something more workshoppy.
JAMI: Right.
PAIGE: I highly recommend both of those.
ANGELA: Do you have, at your job, are you the only technical writer or is there somebody else that you — that also does that?
JAMI: No, I am the sole technical writer. I was actually hired on last year to help their documentation section. They were using and old Drupal platform and they wanted something more robust and more modern that could actually kind of help users navigate it through better. So that’s kind of where I came along. I’ve had a little over six years’ experience as a tech writer so I kind of brought my expertise in and helped them find the MadCap Flare tool to build their documentation set. So I’m the sole person on that — in that full team right now.
ANGELA: Job security.
JAMI: Yes.
ANGELA: Have you ever met another technical writer? Like with either a partnering company or a client that has a technical writer?
JAMI: Yes.
ANGELA: Yeah? Is that-
JAMI: Yes.
ANGELA: Are you guys able to like share hidden jokes and — I don’t know.
JAMI: Sometimes. Yeah, so my last job before this one I was actually on a technical writing team. We had — I think at one time we had about five writers and a supervisor that we’d all been — you know, we were all tech writers. So we all knew the jokes, whether it be about a specific programmer or just the logic of things. Of, oh like, oh your authoring tool is doing something weird again. Oh no. You know, things like that. It’s mostly just weird little quirks.
ANGELA: Uh-huh.
PAIGE: Did you ever put easter eggs inside technical documentation like we do with programs?
JAMI: Uh, no I haven’t.
PAIGE: You should consider it.
ANGELA: Yeah. You work on that. We’ll check back with you in six months.
JAMI: Okay. Yeah.
ANGELA: No, just kidding.
PAIGE: So, if someone was listening to the show and is a writer currently, they’re freelance or whatever they’re doing, or maybe they’re finishing a degree or something and they wanted to get into technical writing, what kind of advice would you give them?
JAMI: I would just say to get out there and read as much as you can about it. I mean, from my perspective, I didn’t have an actual formal tech writing training. I didn’t go to school for it. So you kind of have to be tech savvy in some sense, and you have to be willing to learn. You have to be open minded that things are going to change and that you have to kind of be up and current and to — you know, whether it be the current authoring tools platforms that are available or the other kinds of ways that you can make your documentation better. And it’s just to get out there and try to create something. Take online courses or tutorials and just do what you can. Because this is just how you can learn.
PAIGE: Do you have any courses you might recommend for technical writing?
ANGELA: Maybe not yet. I think you’re probably in the early stages of figuring out what it is that would have been helpful?
JAMI: Yeah. And I mean, back when I was starting to learn six years ago there wasn’t — I don’t think there was a whole lot free online, you know, tutorials like there are now. But there are books out there that you could look in technical writing. I believe there’s a site called technicalwriting.com, if that’s still available. I”m not sure. BUt I think that’s a community so you can share ideas and things like that.
PAIGE: We’ve had some people give the advice before of people who are even just looking to get into development to — if they wanted to kind of dip their toes in open source that actually doing documentation work for open source projects is valuable. Do you think that would be valuable for a technical writer as well?
JAMI: Yes, definitely. If you really want to just get your experience, get your foot in the door, and if you’re willing to either volunteer your time or something like that, it definitely — definitely find — or a startup. Or something like that, that really could use some documentation help. ANd if you’re open to learning along the way with them.
PAIGE: So just like development, just get your feet in and do the work and it will pay off.
JAMI: Correct.
ANGELA: Thank you for listening to this episode of Women’s Tech Radio. Don’t forget you can find the full transcription either in the YouTube description or on JupiterBroadcasting.com. Find the Women’s Tech Radio dropdown and you can also listen to our back catalogs. We have a lot of amazing shows on there.
PAIGE: So many great women have been on this show. You can also find us on iTunes. If you have a moment, leave us a review. We’d love to hear what you think. You can also contact us by dropping us a line at WTR@JupiterBroadcasting.com or followng us on Twitter, @heywtr. Thanks so much for listening.

Transcribed by Carrie Cotter | Transcription@cotterville.net

The post Technical Writing | WTR 37 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Nerd Nest Media | WTR 32

chris — Wed, 24 Jun 2015 03:35:52 +0000

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Breanne is the owner & web developer for Nerd Nest Media. It provides web design, development, SEO work, brand consulting & social media marketing!

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Transcription:

ANGELA: This is Women’s Tech Radio.
PAIGE: A show on the Jupiter Broadcasting Network, interviewing interesting women in technology. Exploring their roles and how they’re successful in technology careers. I’m Paige.
ANGELA: And I’m Angela.
PAIGE: Angela, so this week, my friend Breanne joins us. She is a solo founder for the company Nerd Nest Media, and she talks about her journey in technology, what’s like to be a solo founder a little bit, and just kind of the many hats that she has worn in her journey.
ANGELA: Awesome. Before we get into the interview, I want to DigitalOcean. They are the sponsor for this week. They are a cloud housing provider dedicated to offering the most intuitive and easy way to spin up a cloud server. And let me just tell you, I was faced with a situation a couple months ago where my son turned six and was really into MineCraft and had been playing the pocket edition on his iPad. But it just quite wasn’t enough. And of course I — well, I think I might have been able to find a way to play with him via my iPad, but I’m not sure. But regardless, I wanted to get a dedicated server up and running so that he and I could play on the same maps. So, I used a DigitalOcean droplet to spin up a MIneCraft server that will always be up and running. They have locations for their data centers in New York, San Francisco, Singapore, Amsterdam, and London. I don’t have to worry about if our house has a power outage. Well, I wouldn’t be able to play at that point, but anyway, wherever the server is hosted, I don’t have to worry about a power outage, because the server will always be up and running in the cloud. And it’s only $5.00 a month. And if you use the code heywtr, you can get a $10.00 credit, which is a two month credit. So, think about the projects that you could use DigitalOcean for and use heywtr promo code for it.
PAIGE: And don’t forget, if you already have a DIgitalOcean set up, but you haven’t used one of our codes, go ahead and pop it in there. Sometimes it just might work.
And out question for Breanna when we got started was to kind of give us a overview of what she does in Technology.
BREANNE: Hi. I’m Breanne Smith. I am the current owner and web developer for Nerd Nest Media. My company provides web design development, SEO work, brand consulting, social media marketing. And that is my current role in technology.
PAIGE: So, you’re kind of a many hat wearer? Would you consider yourself an entrepreneur?
BREANNE: I would. The entrepreneur side of me has definitely been coming out as each day progresses. But I really love technology, so I’ve just been kind of one of those closet nerds, if you will. Just researching, doing things on my own. And then it’s kind of given me the love for wanting to provide these services for people to get them to understand what the web is and how it can help their business.
PAIGE: So, it was kind of the journey for you learning to understand that made you want to kind of help others do the same?
BREANNE: Yes and no. You know, I went back to school later in life. I’m in my 30s now and just graduated in 2012. When I first went to college back out of high school I thought I wanted to write for Rolling Stone magazine. So, I was doing journalism, music theory stuff back then. Which is great, because now I still get to use my love writing and creativity, but just in a totally more technologically advanced way. So, that’s what I started doing. And then I moved from Indiana to Austin Texas and I started working for a nationwide property maintenance company. So, I was managing like 20 people at the time and had a portfolio of like 7,000 foreclosed homes all over the country that I was maintaining. So, it taught me a lot about professionalism, completing tasks on time. really kind of prepped me for that real world situation. And then, from there, I, we moved out to Oregon and I really didn’t have a job or anything going on. So I thought, you know what, I am going to take my love for technology and see what I could do with maybe going back to school and starting a business of my own. My parents owned a couple of furniture stores in Indiana and they’re actually who really catapulted me into wanting to start my own business, because as a small company themselves, they were paying this “web company” that was really not doing much for them, $350.00 a month to maintain their website, do social media posts, things like that. And my parents were getting frustrated and not understanding why they weren’t getting results and this web company was helping them. So, I asked, you know, hey I know a little bit about a little bit. Can I talk with them and maybe see what they’re doing and use the big technical terms and kind of coxe out of them what they’re doing. I called these people and turned out, they were just a marketing company who said they can do web work and were outsourcing this web work.
ANGELA: Oh my goodness.
BREANNE: To other people who knew nothing about my parent’s business. They knew nothing about their business practices. And so, getting off that phone call, I was the most frustrated I’ve ever been in my life for my parents. You know, that they’re this small company, they’re older, they don’t understand the value of the web and what it can do for you. They know, just from me harping on them, that they needed a website. And a the time, I didn’t have my degree so I didn’t know all the ins and out of it. So I literally went back to school solely to-
ANGELA: Help your parents?
BREANNE: Kind of negate these people. Yeah. Well, no. I actually don’t like to do business with my family.
ANGELA: Right.
BREANNE: Because it can — I don’t want to mix business with pleasure there, but it really kind of made me see what type of people are out there saying that they can do the stuff for small business and build their brand and build their company, but in reality they’re not doing anything. They’re just taking money and saying that they’re going to put this post up. And the post, you know, even on their social site, has nothing to do with what their business is.
ANGELA: Yep.
BREANNE: So, once my husband I moved out here to Oregon I thought, okay I’m going back to school. I’m getting my degree in web design and development, and I’m going to start company that has morals, wouldn’t treat people the way that these so called web companies were treating my parents, and really pride myself on kind of hand holding a lot of my clients through this process of understanding how their business can actually grow with putting a little money into the web side of it.
ANGELA: Right. That sounds-
BREANNE: I know that’s a little long winded but-
ANGELA: No, no, no. It sounds exactly like what I went through with my mom. Because she’s self-employed. She’s owned a restaurant in downtown Seattle for 20 years now. I think.
BREANNE: Oh wow.
ANGELA: Anyway. Yeah, and she recently was on the, I need to, I need the social media aspect. I was the one that forced her to do a Facebook page and she’s really popular on there. She post her specials there every day. But then a social media company, just like you said, came along and was like we can build your brand and whatever. And she went for it. ANd it’s really not yielding anything.
BREANNE: Oh man.
PAIGE: It seems like a market that seems so easy to take advantage of people, because you just have to use some jargon.
ANGELA: Yep.
BREANNE: You’re exactly right. And they think, oh wow, they’re using all these great buzz words. I’ve heard that word before but I don’t really understand it. And so, it took a lot of me sitting down with my parents and getting them to understand how they were taking advantage of my parents. Because they didn’t even really understand what they were or weren’t doing, to be honest with you.
ANGELA: Uh-huh.
BREANNE: I was so frustrated. Seriously. I was just horribly frustrated for them and knowing that there’s hundreds of companies, probably thousands of companies like that out there, where there’s outsourcing everything. It really doesn’t give that personal touch. And it really just makes me feel like all these small businesses are just giving away money and not getting anything in return, and then getting a sour taste in their mouth about what the web can do for them.
ANGELA: Right.
PAIGE: I’m going to pick your brain then. What’s a good thing to watch out for? If I can’t necessarily work with you, how do I know, if i own a business or something, like what’s the difference between working with someone like you and someone who is going to take advantage of me? How can I tell the difference?
BREANNE: A big thing is reading the name of their company. If they have the word marketing in their company, nine times out of ten they are a marketing company. If they can offer web services that’s great, but I would, as a small business I would talk to them about what their services provide and who is providing those services for me. Is there a point of contact I can call and talk to that person who is building my site and have them explain to me why it looks this way or talk to them about how I want it to look differently. If they’re impersonal with you and, oh I have to get back with you, and 13 emails later they’re still not answering your questions, if they’re dodging questions, dodging answers, things like that, those are big signs really, for me at least. And knowing that they’re just solely in for marketing and that hundred to $400,000.00 whatever it is montly fee that they’re getting. And honestly, it’s a gut thing too. You know, if you’re not getting the right service from somebody and you’re not feeling like they’re really being helpful, that’s another big key point that they’re probably — they probably don’t know what they’re talking about.
PAIGE: So you started out hoping to do music journalism.
BREANNE: Uh-huh.
PAIGE: And you ended up in web design and development, essentially, right?
BREANNE: Uh-huh.
PAIGE: What does that transition look like? Why? have you always been nerdy? Were you the kid with the Commodore 64 hacking away at the keyboard? What does that look like for you?
BREANNE: Well, for me I wasn’t — you know, I was always int, you know, we always had, my dad actually has always been very much so up on the technical side of things. Like, we always had the latest, greatest TVs and radios and as soon as the computer came out we had the computer, desktop in our house at the time. So, which was huge, mind you. So, you know, I always have been interested in it, but I don’t think I really grasped the understanding and really the power of technology until I was working for that management company, the property management company. And we had such a cool system we used on the back end and I saw just really how it helped their business. That kind of pushed me forward and shifted my gears. Like I said, I’m in my 30s, so I’m, you know, it really shifted my mind into thinking, okay how can this benefit every company out there. And so, I really, you know, I’ve always dabbled. I love video games. I always played video games as a kid, but I really don’t think it was until I got older and understood how it could compute to business that made me really want to start doing this as a career.
PAIGE: All right. So, I”ve got to ask. What was your favorite video game as a kid?
BREANNE: I mean, I’m old school though. I didn’t do, like I got a little bit-
PAIGE: We’re equally old school in this room.
ANGELA: Yeah. We’re your age too.
BREANNE: Okay, cool. So I was more in, I mean I loved Mario and Duck Hunt and, you know, all of that stuff too, but I love-
ANGELA: Donkey Kong. Say Donkey Kong.
BREANNE: Yes. Yes. I was going to say Donkey Kong, but I just am aging myself here, but yeah Donkey Kong. All those little games I loved to play. Mario Bros of course was my — I mean, that’s true to my heart. I always played it.
PAIGE: You know, I still know how to get all the warp zones, right?
BREANNE: Me too.
PAIGE: Yeah. Totally. Yeah, Mario, Legend of Zelda and original Tetris on the Gameboy for me. Those were the big ones. Especially in competitive mode, because I still have yet to meet anyone who can beat me on Tetris in competitive mode. Which is not normal mode people, it’s different.
BREANNE: What about Punch Out? Did anybody play Punch Out all the time?
ANGELA: Nope.
BREANNE: No?
PAIGE: I like the, we had the Olympics. We had the power mat and so you do the olympics thing. That was definitely better than (unintelligible).
ANGELA: Yeah, i remember that now.
BREANNE: That’s way cooler.
PAIGE: I learned very quickly, as did my little sister, that running on the powermat was not nearly as fast as sitting next to the powermat and hitting it with your hands like bongos.
BREANNE: Oh my gosh. Yeah.
PAIGE: Much, much faster. You can get way farther, and then you can jump infinitely because you just lift your hands and on the long jump you just win.
ANGELA: Oh my gosh.
BREANNE: Oh my gosh, that’s amazing.
PAIGE: Right. Yeah, it’s cheating.
BREANNE: Where were you growing up?
PAIGE: Massachusetts.
ANGELA: VIdeo game hacks.
PAIGE: Yeah. Well, you know, when you can’t go outside in the sun because you’re a ginger you have to do something in the summer. So, do you still pay video games?
BREANNE: Yeah, I do. I mean, and of course I’ve stayed true to Nintendo, so I just have a Wii, because I literally, like that’s how much I love Mario Bros. Like, I will play every single one that comes out.
PAIGE: Have you played the new Mario titles where you can play like four players simultaneously?
ANGELA: What?
BREANNE: I don’t have a Wii U, so I’m not sure if that’s new with the Wii u?
PAIGE: No. No. It’s a Wii title.
BREANNE: It is? Okay.
PAIGE: Yeah. You’ve got to check it out.
BREANNE: I haven’t played it.
PAIGE: Yeah. You can play four players simultaneously, and when you have a Yoshi you can eat the other players and then spit them.
BREANNE: Oh my gosh.
PAIGE: It’s amazing.
BREANNE: I”m typing this right now so I don’t forget.
PAIGE: So if you folks at home haven’t tried it out, it’s old now, but, and i think they just put out another new one, but I don’t have a Wii U either. So what do you use as tools to get your job done? Like, you — I know, because we’ve talked before, that you use WordPress, but either what do you use in WordPress, what sort of text editor do you use? What helps you get your job done?
BREANNE: So, text editor wise, I mean I love Sublime Text and Notepad ++. Those are both my go to text editors and things like that. But I do love WordPress and I love to work on content management systems, especially for my clients, because it really helps them be able to feel like they have a grasp on their website. And even go in, if I teach — I can teach them how to go in and make their own blog posts, their own changes. And then they don’t have to utilize me or pay me money. Especially if they’re a little bit on the tech savvy side, so thats’ why i use WordPress and why I love WordPress.
PAIGE: Yeah. I totally agree. I like to tell people, I’m like, if you can post on Facebook, you can learn enough WordPress to help yourself out.
BREANNE: Exactly. That’s exactly right. And I’m actually just — I just got done before this walking through my last client with his blog and getting him up to speed with everything. And he made his first blog post and uploaded the images and everything himself. So, and knows how to change the sidebars to what it needs to be. So it’s really empowering for me to see them get it and smile and understand they’re in charge. It’s not just me, it’s them. So, that’s why I love WordPress so much. I mean, it’s got it’s faults as far as security sometimes, but other than that, I mean, as long as you have a good security plugin in place, you’re good to go. But then I love Illustrator and PhotoShop and stuff. I do all — I love those for design and doing mock ups and things like that. That’s about all I use.
PAIGE: Did you learn most of that in your school program, self-taught? Did you have online resources?
BREANNE: I’m mostly self-taught. I loved school. I am — I think that’s where my nerdiness comes from is because I always loved school as a kid. I never missed a day of school from kindergarten to my senior year. Got a special nerd award for that at the end of my senior year.
PAIGE: That is a very special nerd award.
ANGELA: Yep.
BREANNE: I still have it. But, yeah, so I think my love of school really carried me through, you know, getting through college this time and helped me be more successful. I don’t want to tell someone who is in school that they shouldn’t be in school, but honestly, the type of work that we do, a lot of it is self-taught. ANd you have to continually educate yourself aster school even, you know, to keep up with the latest trends and keep your ear to the ground with technology. So, it’s not say that I didn’t — that I’m not glad I didn’t — went to school and got my degree, but, you know, to be honest with you, most of the stuff I’ve learned as been self-taught. I used Lynda.com a lot for things that — I don’t like to tell my clents no, ever. So if i don’t know it, I don’t tell them I don’t know it, I just research and learn and try, you know, and charge them less for that since I have to do more education time on my end. So that’s kind of how I feel. I’m more successful in this industry, because I am so willing to learn — so much more willing to learn all of the new technology that’s out there.
ANGELA: So, do your clients basically use you to get up and running or — do they do that and then they’re on their own and you also have continuing customers where you actually do the stuff for the?
BREANNE: Yes. I kind of am a one stop shop. I think Paige said, you know, I’m a woman of many hats. I can do a full service as far as if someone just comes to me and they’re like , I don’t want to understand this. I don’t care to understand this. I need a new website. I can do their hosting for them. I do hosting reselling. And also set up their domain, buy their domain, set up everthing from scratch. And then I can either help them maintain that every month if they want me to, or like I said teach them how and they can do that, and I take a back seat unless there’s an emergency I”ll come back in. But then, there’s that flip side of things where someone is already up and running. My main client that I have, I’ve had her for two years and when she came to me two years ago she had had a web designer who was getting frustrated with her. I love her with all of my heart, but she’s more into the pretty side of things and not the technical side of things, which is fine, but I don’t think it translate well if a web person isn’t able to kind of speak to her in those layman’s terms and get her to understand it and why she has to pay this money.
ANGELA: RIght.
BREANNE: So that web person left her and took her entire website down. So she was stranded with no website and she runs a very high end salon and so she was completely stranded with no website. So, I came in, got it back up, because it was a WordPress site. I was able to recover it and since then has helped maintain her site and am rebuilding that one plus a new one for her for a separate salon she’s doing currently. So, I’ve been working with her for two years and it’s been great. So, I love the ongoing stuff, but am able to just do one quick fix for clients and then they can about their business if they don’t need me anymore.
ANGELA: Sure.
PAIGE: Yeah. It think it sounds, I don’t know what (unintelligible) this is, but I think that if you have a small business working with other small businesses for your other services is really beneficial for both parties usually. As a small business, you can do things that as a giant business someone might not be able to, because they’re tied up in red tape or corporate policy or whatever . Like some marketing company that has all these standards and SOP and jazz.
BREANNE: Exactly. I really like it, because you can really, you know, dive into their culture and kind of really get to understand their company. And so, I think I do better work when I understand the business, obviously, and understand what they’re mission is and what they’re goals are. It helps me to really format the site to help their end user a lot better.
PAIGE: Yeah. I agree with that. Even as a developer, people think you’re just making computer stuff work, because I don’t really do design or when I do it’s terrible, but even understanding what the user experience is supposed to be or –and necessarily, the client doesn’t always know what they want in the experience. They’re just like, this is what we do and these are the customers i have, and being able to kind of craft that. I can do so much better when I can sit down and have talk time with them and get to know their business, or stop by their business, or whatever.
BREANNE: Exactly. I really love that so much more than — because I do — I have lived in many states so a lot of my clients are out of state. And so it’s — there’s something to be said about sitting down and having a cup of coffee or tea with somebody and explaining their business, versus being on Skype or something like that. Because there can be distractions and they’re not really into it. So if I can get somebody to focus with me it goes a lot easier.
ANGELA: Have you ever been to a sewing retreat?
BREANNE: I have not, but I do love sewing.
ANGELA: I recently went to a sewing retreat and it was so much fun. It was just two full — well two and a half days of sewing and it was just amazing. But what do you like to sew?
BREANNE: I like to sew anything. I love to make clothes. That’s what i started doing as a young girl. My mom made all my baby clothes when I was kid and so — and then she made these awesome dolls that she would sell to get more fabric to make my clothes.
ANGELA: Wow.
BREANNE: So, I learned from a very young age. Yeah, she’s really awesome. But I learned from a young age how to sew and to work around a sewing machine. But in more recent years I’ve been teaching myself to knit and crochet a little bit. It’s not my strong points but the sewing machine is my strongest point. And I love to sew anything. From pillows to clothes to anything.
ANGELA: Cool.
PAIGE: I have a love/hate relationship with sewing and crocheting. I’m amazing at sewing and crocheting in straight lines.
BREANNE: Yeah.
PAIGE: But not turning. So, if you have a pattern that is straight lines, I actually sew very well. It was — part of theatre degree is that you have to do costuming. I know how to do all the seeming and all the edging, but if i have to turn, not as good. Pillowcases, awesome.
BREANNE: Yep, just a square.
PAIGE: Oh yeah. Yep. No problem there.
BREANNE: Well you’ll have to tell me more about the sewing retreat. That sounds really cool. Can you bring whatever type of sewing stuff or is it-
ANGELA: Yeah. You just — in this case you — it was about 25 women and we went to Warm Beach, which is here in Washington, and we rented out a bunch of rooms and we just set up and we were able to keep out setup in this banquet room all weekend, and the beachfront was right there. It was amazing.
BREANNE: Sounds awesome.
ANGELA: And all the meals were catered. Yeah. I ate so much, I thought that I would literally weigh five to 10 pounds more when I was done, but I actually lost a couple pounds because I would walk. I would go for a walk on the beach after eating, which speeds up your metabolism. It was awesome.
PAIGE: I just wanted to ask one more thing.
BREANNE: Yeah.
PAIGE: If there is one thing in technology that kind of is either coming down the pipe or gets your really jazzed now what is it?
BREANNE: Wearables. I’m all about wearables right now and the power that they have.
ANGELA: So how is your Apple Watch?
BREANNE: I don’t have an Apple Watch.
ANGELA: I’m just kidding.
BREANNE: I’m an Android fangirl.
ANGELA: Ah, okay.
BREANNE: I have been Android from the start. We do not even have any Apple products in our house until my husband had to get a work phone and I said, well get an iPhone so I can test my websites on it and stop using emulators.
ANGELA: Perfect. Perfect, right? That works.
PAIGE: So, do you have an Android watch?
BREANNE: I do. But I started out with like Fitbit then other things like that, but I really love the blending of the fitness side of things with the nerdy tech smartwatch side of things.
ANGELA: With the practicality. Yeah. So, do you have the Pebble? Is that Android? I don’t even –
BREANNE: Uh, yes. Yes. It’s actually what I have. Yeah, I’m waiting for the two to come out though.
PAIGE: The Pebble is (unintelligible). That’s very cool.
BREANNE: I’m waiting for the Pebble 2.
ANGELA: Uh-huh.
PAIGE: Nice. I am a little intimidated. So, Angela, in studio, has the Apple Watch and I keep watching her flip it and it looks really shiny and stuff, but I’m a little intimidated because I have found in my life right now, where I’m trying to get a lot of high volume work, high quality work done, like the less notifications I can have in my life the better off I am. Like, how do you balance that, the two of you?
ANGELA: I have certain people disabled for notifications and Telegram, it can only tell me so much on my watch and i can’t respond to it, so mainly it’s come in handy like if I”m at the bus stop and trying to get Dylan off the bus and put a stroller, I can just look at my watch real quick and see a notification or know that somebody is available.
BREANNE: Yeah, I agree with you on the integration of the watch with my phone. I think, you know, especially for me the working out more and stuff, I just my phone , or excuse me, my watch a lot more for that than i do my phone. I can keep it nearby but not have to carry my bulky phone around.
ANGELA: Uh-huh.
BREANNE: And then as far as, I use my phone more for like long winded emails. But if I just need to send something really fast I can use my watch. Or just notify my husband really quick, I”m on my way. Anything like that. It’s a lot easier on my phone to just reply with a little emoji or something than it is to pull out my phone, like you were saying, and mess with that. It’s just an (unintelligible) of use type of things for me. Anything to make my life easier I’m all for it.
ANGELA: And I was wearing a Fitbit as well up until I got the Apple Watch. And in fact, I wore both of them for two weeks on the same wrist, because I just didn’t want to let go of the social aspect of Fitbit.
PAIGE: Well, you can still use the phone for Fitbit.
ANGELA: Yeah. Oh, I don’t know, yeah, okay. Well it still had — so I still use my Fitbit at night for sleep though.
PAIGE: You can use both.
ANGELA: Really?
PAIGE: Uh-huh.
ANGELA: Okay. You’ll have to show me how to set that up.
PAIGE: I will show you that.
ANGELA: Because I have no idea.
PAIGE: Yeah. I like FItBit, but I don’t own a Fitbit device anymore, because I never got the wrist one and they’re small and I lose everything.
ANGELA: Yeah.
PAIGE: Well, so you guys have me interested. I have one other question. Were either of you watch wearers before you got your smart watches?
BREANNE: I was not at all. I literally only, I don’t even wear earrings anymore. I just wear my wedding ring. So it is like the only other thing besides my wedding ring I wear.
ANGELA: I wanted to be, but I am one allergic to nickel, I believe, and two I have very acidic skin. So any watch I’d wear it would literally corrode the metal. It’s weird. It’s not like the metal would wear away. The metal would explode from inside. It would, like a barnacle. You know, it was so weird. And it would cause rashes and stuff so I stopped wearing. but I have the sports band Apple Watch, which isn’t metal at all. And so far I”ve had no irritation from the back of the watch where it’s metal.
PAIGE: Yeah, I’ll be interested to see if your Apple Watch explodes.
ANGELA: I know, right?
PAIGE: If it does, we need pictures.
ANGELA: Well, it doesn’t literally explode. You know what I mean? So I would, I love having a watch.
PAIGE: Interesting.
BREANNE: A friend of mine has the Apple Watch and he has tattoos on his wrist, and they’re very dark as it gets down to his wrist, so he actually has to wear it on his other wrist, because it won’t read his wrist.
PAIGE: Yeah. It can’t read through the-
BREANNE: Because there’s dark. Yeah.
PAIGE: Because it’s an optical heart rate monitor, so it literally can’t read through your skin.
BREANNE: Yeah.
PAIGE: I think that they’ve adjusted so that people of darker color are okay, but tattoos are too much.
ANGELA: Wow. Yeah, I didn’t even think about that.
PAIGE: The ink is still too much in the way.
ANGELA: Huh.
PAIGE: Yeah, because it’s based on the same technology that the use in hospitals where they clip the little pulse monitor to your finger.
ANGELA: Right. Right. But I didn’t think about people of people of darker color. It’s kind of like Band-Aid coming out with skin tone, but only for Caucasian.
PAIGE: And correct me, audience, if I’m wrong, but as far as I know it works for skin but tattoo ink, especially in the very dark colors is too much, because it’s several layers of problems.
ANGELA: Oh.
BREANNE: And I’m pretty sure you’re right. That they’ve fixed the darker skin, but just not the tattoos. And his are like two big, huge black lines that come down towards his wrist. Not good. But I just — I actually read this morning that Google is actually trying to get this tiny, tiny little radar system that actually and sense your hand gestures and stuff, because I guess in their mind smartwatches and stuff aren’t taking off as well as they should be. And so, you know, it’s more like early adopters and stuff like that. Like us, that really, really want new technology and stuff that are getting it, not so much the general population. And so they’re trying to — and I guess Google’s thinking behind it is that they’re such tiny little touch screens that it makes the device difficult to control it, I guess. And so they’re developing this radar system that can sense hand gestures instead of having to just put your finger on the screen.
ANGELA: Thank you for listening to this episode of Women’s Tech Radio. Remember that you can find the show notes with full transcription over at jupiterbroadcasting.com. Just go to the shows dropdown and select Women’s Tech Radio.
PAIGE: You can also use the contact form on the web page to select Women’s Tech Radio to get in touch with us, or shoot us an email at wtr@jupiterbroadcasting.com . You can also find out show on iTunes and you can follow us on Twitter @heywtr. Thanks for listening.

Transcribed by Carrie Cotter | Transcription@cotterville.net

The post Nerd Nest Media | WTR 32 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Reformed Litigator | WTR 24

chris — Wed, 29 Apr 2015 14:56:20 +0000

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Darci is a former health attorney that is now assisting in the healthcare extraction of rules and regulations to the electronic age.

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Full transcription of previous episodes can be found below or also at heywtr.tumblr.com

Transcription:

ANGELA: This is Womens’ Tech Radio.
PAIGE: A show on the Jupiter Broadcasting Network interviewing interesting women in technology. Exploring their roles and how they’re successful in technology careers. I’m Paige.
ANGELA: And I’m Angela.
PAIGE: So, Angela, today we’re interviewing Darci Freedman and she works at the same company as me. She’s actually my bosses’ boss, so it’s pretty fun to get her on and talk about the awesome ways the company was founded , and how we’ve involved women right from the get go and all the kind of cool things we do as a company.
ANGELA: Yes indeed. It is a good interview. But, before we get into it, I just want to mention that you can support this network and this show by going to Patreon.com/today. I think our lowest subscription, and you might be able to go lower, but our lowest subscription is $3.00 a month, and that supports all the shows on the network. It keeps us up and going. We have a lot of technology podcast, other ones, that you can check out in addition to Women’s Tech Radio, and just show your support for the show there.
PAIGE: And we got started with the interview today by asking Darci what her role is at the company.
DARCI: I manage a team of about a dozen people who handle the acquisition of content for a proprietary platform that is targeted towards non-legal regulatory professionals in the compliance arena. So, a lot of big data.
ANGELA: Wow, that is a title. That’s great.
PAIGE: Yeah.
ANGELA: That says a lot and nothing at the same time.
DARCI: I know.
PAIGE: And it’s so beautifully jargonized.
ANGELA: It is, yes. That’s exactly.
PAIGE: So, for full disclosure for everybody on the show, Darci is actually one of my bosses, and so we work for the same company. And I am one of those people that she managers in her awesome way to help acquire this content — although, you make it sound like we’re pirates. I know of like it. We’re going to acquire content.
ANGELA: Arrg.
PAIGE: Which we’re not.
ANGELA: I know.
P; We use open government data to do this awesome work.
DARCI: Yes.
PAIGE: So, I know Darci, that you have kind of an interesting non-traditional story. You are actually not a technical person by background. What is your actual background?
DARCI: All right, here it is. It’s interesting. I’m an attorney. I am a former litigator. Actually, the way I say it is I’m a reformed litigator. Which, if you were a legal audience you’d be laughing hysterically at. But, I was a health lawyer, and basically I had the corporate job where the hours were enormous and the time commitment was just huge, and it just took a huge chunk out of me personally to do that. And I was, you know, I really enjoyed it, but after I had my first child I just really didn’t see how it was going to jive practicing and that level of commitment, and kind of the drain on me personally and in my personal life with how I wanted to raise my child. So, I actually stopped working for eight months after I had my first child. And I didn’t do anything. And that wa really weird.
PAIGE: Except be a parent, which is a full-time job.
ANGELA: Which is enough.
DARCI: Well, right. Yes. I didn’t do anything for air quotes “work”. Of course, I was doing a ton at home with my son and I had a kind of extreme situation with his birth, but when I started thinking I would like to get back to my intellectual pursuits and start something professionally, I had a relationship with somebody and he had a startup company. It was in the health arena. He said, why don’t you come work for us and start doing some writing. You know, you’re a subject matter expert in this area, come on and do some writing. And so, that’s how i started. I actually worked with a couple of other attorneys at this startup and anybody in startup experience knows, it’s kind of all hands on deck. You go in, you’re not in a defined role. You throw in any help you can render in any way that is needed at the given moment. And so, I started learning about the platform. How we acquired content for it. And things just kind of snowballed from there.
PAIGE: So this was a tech startup that you got involved with?
DARCI: Yes, and then it was later — I think it was 2007 we were acquired by a large Dutch based publishing company and, you know, I’ve been at the company for almost a dozen years now, and it’s been really interesting time to watch publishing and traditional print-based communications and tools, and the transformation of that into electronic products and workflow tools. So, we kind of — we were this startup that was acquired by this big publishing company, and we really pushed the envelope, because we didn’t have this huge project plan with dates planned out for ten years. That’s just not how we operated. And we really kind of were — we were known in the beginning as a bit of rabble rousers, because we didn’t conform to this kind of corporate ideal, and the normal way that a publishing company did things.
PAIGE: It’s almost like you got to come on — you know, we talk about technical debt, and it’s almost like the other company had publishing debt.
DARCI: They did, and they still do. I think most publishing companies are still working to move towards electronic, but to me print was something that I had only done in my legal background and it was not something that I did at this startup. We were all electronic. Indeed, the person who founded the company had another company — another startup at a different point in time, and he was the first person to put the federal register, which is this huge daily document that the federal government puts out that says here are the laws, and rules, and regulations from all of these agencies for the day. And that used to be only in print. I mean, just huge rainforest that were killed publishing that. And he put that federal register online in electronic form, and so he was very innovative. And he had this fabulous model, which was exactly in tune with what I wanted. He thought, there are all these really, really talented technical and non-technical women that want to raise families, and want to have a great work life balance, and he hired them. And he hired them into all of these different kind of scenarios. You could work from home, you could be in the office, you could work at night, you could work during the day when your children were sleeping if you were at home watching them. And he really capitalized on a lot of talent that otherwise really didn’t have an outlet or a place to go.
PAIGE: I didn’t know that actually. That’s really fantastic. So, do you think that made a huge difference with the way the company was kind of founded and got started, like to have that flexibility, but also to have that female talent onboarded so easily?
DARCI: It absolutely did. And I benefited from that model, and it is exactly how I operate today. In fact, I think when I came on board, other the actual founder of the company, I don’t think that there was — there was only one other man. Everybody else was a woman, and they were all over the country. At that time I think it was Denver Colorado, Maine, New Hampshire. Texas, and that is still the way I operate today. I just want people that are really talented. And there are a lot of really talented women out there, but here are these kind of barriers that we bump into.
ANGELA: Right, Paige briefly kind of talked to me about what you guys do, and it definitely applies to me, or applied to me, I guess. I worked in the medical industry for a while and I got to learn the retail side of it. What we would do is we would go onto like the DSHS website and print out these massive fee schedules, like you said, a forest, you know?
DARCI: Yes.
ANGELA: And everybody would have one at their desk. We had these desktop things where you could hole punch and then slide sections in, and it would be about 12 inches long full of all these different things. And we’d have to tab the pages, and of course, they release a new one almost every quarter. How does what you guys do change that?
DARCI: Well, in the beginning, because your example is right on. Fee schedules, code boos, that’s right up our alley. We have a whole line of coding and reimbursement products. I actually have to fight against that type of historical perspective on a daily basis. This just happened to me yesterday. I will literally have people that scan and PDF pages of the hard copy code book and send it to me and say, it doesn’t look like this. We need to make it look like this. These are people that I work with in the products that we’re developing. And I have to say, no we’re not trying to make — the online electronic experience in looking at a book, you have to move away from the antiquated notion that all you’ve done is take the book and put it up online. I mean, that’s a PDF.
ANGELA: Right.
DARCI: That’s very different from a workflow tool. A book that is in electronic format that you can actually use. So, that’s something we’re constantly struggling with. And the way that we kind of get — I push the envelope. We ask those questions. Why? Why would I reproduce exactly what’s in the book?
ANGELA: Right.
DARCI: I mean, unfortunately I have to buy — I buy those books so that I can say, but yeah look, this is — it doesn’t work the way they’ve set it up. Let’s restructure or modify some of the meta tagging so that we get search results in a certain way, and kind of get people away from the notion of, oh the book is electronic, it’s online, but it should be exactly the same as the hard copy.
ANGELA: Right, well to support that, what we’d have to do, specifically if we were shipping diapers. There’s a lot of age restrictions and quantity restrictions on that on a monthly basis. But also ,certain ICD-9 codes have to be used with it, and then that determines — and then also HCPCS codes. So, you have to use the fee schedule, the ICD-9 book and the — you know, so having an online resource — none of them say — the ICD-9 code doesn’t say, you also need to choose this HCPCS code with it, or this quantity limitation. What I did, which is like sudo what you guys do, is I modified our proprietary software so that it had identifier codes that would automatically tell the customer service rep, hey it has to be this diagnosis, or hey it’s this quantity. You know, you can’t have more than 150 or whatever. So, I tried and I made a cheat sheet that combined all three of those resources that really helped streamline then. But, I am super excited. I really want to check out your product now, because I think it could really help. I still have a relationship with that former employer.
PAIGE: That’s hilarious. You just named three of the things that make my head hurt, because I go in and I’m the person that does all the interlinking between ICD-9 codes and HCPCS and our current regulations.
ANGELA: Oh my gosh, yeah.
DARCI: It’s a lot. We do have a set of tools and a set of reimbursement calculators that we’ve developed that work, as Paige just indicated, in conjunction with the more explanatory material you might read out of the code book.
ANGELA: Right.
DARCI: ANd so, we put in different elements in the UI that flag things for folks.
ANGELA: Exactly. Right.
DARCI: So, you know, a little red flag, literally. If you want to code this, you have to think about this. It’s extremely complicated. I will tell you, I had — this is something that I fight against a lot. It’s really interesting. I have really, really talented developer types that we work with and we’re doing a revamp of some of those tools and calculators. We have a database fellow that, I mean, he knows the ins and outs of Medicare and Medicaid and all of — you know, ICD-9, ICD-10, HCPCS, CPT. I mean, he just knows it. He has a subject matter expertise, and then he’s a database guy. We hired him specifically because of that expertise. He was getting in pulled in all of these other directions and I kept hitting a wall. I kept saying to these folks, you know, we need this fellow back to work on these products. He was hired for this. Oh, we have other database folks. They’re used to working with really complicated data. They can dig into it. And we exposed it to them and they were like, wow the health care Medicare, Medicaid, medical coding, reimbursement payment is extremely complicated, and they backed right off and said wow you really do need to oftentimes have some underlying subject matter expertise in order to handle this type of data.
ANGELA: Yep. And I know, I worked on a federal grant in King County for a little while, here in Washington, called New Freedom. I was actually the pioneering purchasing agent for that. I would meet with the people going on to the program and try to figure out what they should their government dollars to make them more independent. That was the new freedom part. It was really hard, because I had come from mainly the retail side of things. Not necessarily services. And now I could offer a wide range of, you know, they could hydrotherapy or massage, different things. And it was so hard to find the fee schedules and know that I had the right one and figure out what they could get covered and not have to use their dollars for.
PAIGE: We’ve kind of talked about two different angles of your job. You work with a publishing company and you work in the medical field. Which of the two do you think it’s been harder to drag into technology?
DARCI: I would say publishing, without a doubt. And the reason for that is simply financial. For Medicare and Medicaid, the government has — generally, when they make a change and they want a program or a payment system to go electronic and be more modern in that sense, they do incentive programs. So, we will pay you more if you move in this direction. And then, they have a period of time that’s kind of — then the incentive payment goes away and if you aren’t where you need to be from an electronic perspective, you will get a penalty. So, that’s how they do it. So, they’ve been — providers and folks in health care industry payers/payees, they’ve been motivated by dollars. Publishing, I think it took them a long time to wake up to the fact that they weren’t going to be able to sale books on paper forever. I mean, really.
PAIGE: Yeah, I have to say, being in some of the meetings I’ve been in, it was really surprising to me that meetings this year people are still talking about growing the print publishing business.
ANGELA: Mm-hmm.
DARCI: Mm-hmm. I know that our company has made it a decisive part of their BDP to move from print to electronic. The dollars show that that’s where you need to be. And not just electronic, right? So, we need to move beyond, you know, I tend — we all fall prey to using these terms, but not just electronic, to workflow tools. Things that you can — that just integrate into your job and make it easier. So, that’s where we hope to be headed. There are a lot of barriers there, but there are some really good things that have been going on too. We — Paige, not on the team you’re on directly, but on some of the other teams that I manage, we have started with agile scrum and that’s helped a lot. That’s helped a lot and brought us a lot forward with development activities, but you still run into some walls with management who want a nice waterfall timeline.
ANGELA: Speaking of, what is Paige’s work ethic. No, I’m just kidding. I thought I’d slide that in there somewhere.
PAIGE: That was very subtle.
ANGELA: Yeah, I know, right?
DARCI: Well, you know, so here, I will kind of indirectly respond to that. We are a thin and trim team of people, and we handle a huge volume of data compared to some of our counterparts in other parts of the company. We may have been rabble rousers initially, but when you look at our bottom line in terms of the number of people that we have on the team and the actual content that they process, the volume of data is just huge compared to some of the other parts of the company that really get bogged down in process. So, to that end, we are a highly producing team and it’s because of the people. I really think it’s because they have a lot of flexibility. I always say when I’m hiring somebody, you need to have some core business hours that you’re available for meetings and whatever else, but I’m flexible. You can work when you want. You can work the hours that you want. We have some of those mad programer types who are working at 2:00 a.m. and that’s when they’re beautiful stuff is outputted. And then we have others who keep to a more traditional schedule, but I think that in part it’s that flexibility. That recognition of creativity. Which, I think people don’t often think goes along with a tech role or a tech background. I think they think of some person in front of a keyboard and all these white numbers running up on the screen, but there’s a lot of creatively in tech and I think you just kind of have to let that happen and out of it these amazing things come. That’s what I think of my team and everybody who’s on it.
PAIGE: Yeah, the flexibility at the company is what keeps me creative, keeps me going, so I totally agree. I think being a modern facing company and having a remote workforce and managing it so well has been an amazing experience for me to be part of. I wasn’t sold on remote work before, but now it’s part of my life.
DARCI: I think ten years ago, I mean I was working remotely ten years ago. I think that now — ten years ago people used to say, working you have to manage that and not everybody can work remotely. Everybody can work remotely. You just have to have management and a team that are in communication and that’s all you really need. There’s a lot of to-do that’s often made about remote teams. A lot of that is logistics, and I don’t really think that people need to be in an office, as long as you’ve got the open lines of communication going. I think then you’re good.
ANGELA: What tool do you use most to keep in communication with your team?
DARCI: For development purposes we use VersionOne for all of our tracking of our backlog items. It has a conversation tool and we use that, I would say primarily.
PAIGE: And VersionOne, for people who don’t know, is an agile software development process management tool.
ANGELA: Is it the number 1 or spelled out? Do you know? Number 1?
DARCI: Oh, it is spelled out.
PAIGE: It is spelled out, yeah.
ANGELA: You had a 50/50 chance there Paige.
DARCI: I think it’s all –
PAIGE: It’s bookmarked on my browser.
DARCI: I think it’s all one word too with the –
PAIGE: Yeah, VersionOne.
DARCI: And then, of course, we use some of the other chat type of tools. But I would say in VersionOne there’s a lot of conversation that happens in that tool. There’s a dedicated kind of team meeting room that you can design and we use that quite actively.
PAIGE: My team uses Skype a lot.
DARCI: Yeah.
PAIGE: So, Darci, we’ve talked some about being the small lean machine team inside the bigger company, and being kind of originally founded as a women’s centric company. Have you found transitioning into the bigger company with kind of it’s more traditional setup with gender norms difficult or have you had any pushback there?
DARCI: It’s a yes and no answer. The head of our company is a woman. The head of the business unit that I’m in is a woman, but those aren’t per se the tech parts of the organization. So, from that perspective that’s really heartening that I work for a company where the CEO is a woman, and the lead in my business unit is also a woman. And there are several other women in key roles. Not as much in the technical part of the company. And that’s been a little bit disheartening. We had kind of a restructuring in the last few years, and I remember my first exposure to the more kind of technical unit that kind of came out of that. And going into a meeting and being very exciting and having the head of that put up a slide deck so that we could see who all of his people were. And I just remember thinking, wow that’s pretty white, and that’s pretty male, and middle aged. It was really a little off-putting. So, we’re working to change that. I have a lot of really talented people on my team that I can see moving up through the ranks that I try to get a lot of exposure to. I think that’s one of the things that I really try — I try to do it for my entire team, is really get them exposure to the other parts of the company and other technical groups and organizations in the company, so that they can hopefully rise up through the ranks. But I think there are unfortunately some barriers there. I’ve experienced them myself. Sometimes they’re really subtle. Sometimes they’re more overt, like an org chart that reveals that it’s just all men.
PAIGE: What would an example of a subtle one look like?
DARCI: Actually, it just happened fairly recently. Basically we had — there was a technical issue with a resource and he was being kind of cross-utilized and we needed him on something, and he was supposed to be a dedicated resource to our project. Myself and my business counterpart, who happens to be a woman, reached out to our appropriate chain of command and flagged the issue. Ended up in a telephone call with a bunch of other senior level managers and myself and the other person who had raised the issue. And I got on the phone and it was just one of these conversations where it started — you know, it’s a very subtle thing. It’s actually been in the news a lot lately, this notion of subtle prejudice or subtle sexism. The Google conference that they had where their CEO kept interrupting their CTO, and he did that much more than he interrupted anybody else on the panel. It was kind of one of the things like that. They weren’t aware of the nomenclature and the tone with which they were handling the conversation. And it was — instead of it actually being an issue, it was let’s get on the phone ladies and let’s talk about the facts. Let’s try to tone down the emotion. It was that kind of tone to the whole conversation.
PAIGE: Wow.
DARCI: And I just kept getting angrier and angrier as the conversation went on, because I thought, I don’t understand what’s going on here. I have a valid issue based in hard numbers that I can show to you. I”m not being emotional. You know, it was that kind of thing. And i called them out on it. I instilled a lot of panic in the few moments that I called them out on it, but I just said I need to raise your attention to an issue, and I don’t know if you’re aware of what you’re doing here. Here’s what you’re doing. You’re starting the conversation off saying that we need to talk in facts. Somehow suggesting that the two women on the phone and the issue that they have raised is not fact based, it’s more emotion based. And then you’re using language like that. I think we were described on the phone as acting like the walking wounded and needing to tone things down and rachet back the rhetoric. All of these kind of phrases and terms that you would — I just was like okay, it’s not 1920.
ANGELA: Right, meant to knock you down a peg.
DARCI: Right. Do you realize what you’re doing? And I had calls — of course they freaked out right, because I called them on it. I had a couple of good calls afterwards with the individuals that were on the phone. One, who was very thoughtful and said I didn’t realize what I was doing, but I have four daughters and they’re just starting their careers, and I want to understand where you’re coming from and what you’re thinking, explain it to me. And we had a really great conversation. The other person, I think, that i had a conversation with, he thinks of himself as a lot more involved than he actually is — tried to tell me that that’s how he always runs his calls.
ANGELA: Oh my goodness.
DARCI: And if I’m on a call with other folks, I will see that they are run indeed the same way.
PAIGE: Well, either way, regardless of if you’re a woman or not, that’s not a great way to handle a call.
ANGELA: No.
DARCI: I agree. I agree, but it definitely had that related to kind of patronizing and you guys are emotional and you can’t really handle this kind of thing. I was like, whoa what is going on here? So, even in a company that is trying to evolve, those kinds of things happen. To me, the most important way to handle those things is to call people out on it. I think we have developed in some way this culture that — where you get this negative backlash for saying anything, right? And I’m just not going to be a part of that. If I feel uncomfortable with the way something is going down, I’m going to let you know.
PAIGE: If you see something say something, right?
DARCI: Yeah, exactly.
PAIGE: No, I totally — it’s the biggest problem with privileges. You don’t understand that you have privilege if you have it.
DARCI: Right.
PAIGE: The only way to see it is to not have it.
ANGELA: Right. Or to be called on it.
PAIGE: Yeah, that’s — exactly.
DARCI: Yeah.
ANGELA: Perspective shift.
PAIGE: It’s our responsibility too to participate in the conversation. We can’t just sit back and say we wish things were different.
ANGELA: Right.
DARCI: Absolutely. I think it’s really important — I have these two little — I ended up with two sons, and a male dog, and two male cats, and my husband.
ANGELA: Oh my gosh.
DARCI: So it’s like the alpha-male. I work really hard in trying to call their attention to these kinds of things. Even if it’s just really simple language things.
ANGELA: Thank you for listening to this episode of Women’s Tech Radio. Remember, you can go to jupiterbroadcasting.com and from there you can do the show dropdown and find all the Women’s Tech Radio shows. You can also use the contact form to contact us directly, or you can email us WTR@jupiterbroadcasting.com.
PAIGE: The Jupiter Broadcasting website also has our RSS feed or you can find us on iTunes. We’re also heywtr.tumblr.com for transcripts of the show, or you can follow us on Twitter @heywtr.

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Dream Job Awards | FauxShow 102

chris — Wed, 08 Aug 2012 21:26:19 +0000

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Angela and Chris share the dream jobs of FauxShow viewers! From space, to gaming, and some downright silly ones.

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Show Notes:

Links from Awards:

Jewkesman: https://www.youtube.com/jewkesman
mininessie: https://mininessie.deviantart.com/gallery
Remy: https://raymii.org
stnet: https://www.stnet.nu
Nean: https://www.youtube.com/neanrts
rikai: https://www.youtube.com/rikailp

Mail Sack:

Will you do some more Beer is Tasty episodes? So many beers, so little time! Thanks guys.
Past and current supporter,
Tim

Not to sure if you\’ll use it but i made a jupiter broadcasting youtube background, its modeled after the home page of jupiterbroadcasting and i hope you\’ll enjoy it, feel free to not use it if you want https://i.imgur.com/2o6qp.png
ps: change the background html notation to #efefef if in use
pss: this was created on linux, with gimp
-ilikepie

Perhaps there should be answering questions only episodes of Techsnap. i <3 Technsap
-John

I have three points I want to make:
First, I just got caught up with the last couple Faux Shows this evening, since I wasn\’t able to catch them live. I will have you know that I\’ve already read eight books this year, thank you very much! To clarify, the ones shown for the award is the second half of the Dark Tower series bought for me by my then-girlfriend/now-fiancée cougha while agocough, so I\’ve made it a particular project to read them.
Which brings me to my second point: Do you know how frustrating it is to watch a Faux Show not live? I keep thinking about what I would say in the chat, but it would be totally without context and people there would think I\’m totally crazy (crazier?). Faux Shows live, with the best lower third on the Internet, is a far superior viewing experience! (Now shamelessly plug the live stream ).
Third, and totally unrelated, people have mentioned in casual conversation before that it would be awesome if you guys could do a LAS from the Ubuntu booth at CES. I know finances are a little tight, but if you\’re even thinking about it in any way, here\’s a tip: You can register for the show for free until August 31. That\’s right, totally free! Now, you\’d still have to come up with lodging, food, and any other accommodations, but this would be one thing not to worry about. Even if you don\’t decide to go, you can still register and get all your info into their system so that in future years it will alert you to the free registration period (as well as their emails and anything else you may or may not be interested in).
-cbojar

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Olympic Science & Red Bull Stratos | SciByte 56

chris — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 21:48:53 +0000

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We take a look at olympic science, an innovative writing technique, morse code, music, an update on the Red Bull Stratos mission, spacecraft update and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

Show Notes

Olympic Science

_{Credit: International Olympic Committee for 2012 Summer Olympics}

Measuring times
Time is measured in 1,000th of a second that has to be that close to both actual time and consistent
Races are started by electronic starter guns, with starting blocks that indicate when a runner reacts faster than humans can respond, making the runners re-start the race
More than 2,000 digital frames a second aid the timing system for the most accurate and precise system possible
For longer racing event with a lot of competitors RFID, Radio Frequency Identification, attached to shoes or bicycles allow accurate timing and tracking for each competitor
Technology
Some Long Jumpers utilize stereoscopic cameras, from BMW, to measure speed and angles of launch
Swimmers usitize fluid dynamic measurements so that they can train and compete in the most aerodynamic way as possible to
Runners can also use treadmill technology that provides support to minimize the weight of the athlete affecting the legs by creating a pressure bubble that can support part of the athletes weight
The Olympic pool utilize a number of different technologies to minimize waves including adjustable depth, gutters along the edges of the pool and lane lines
Mechanical engineers analyze top athletes to be able to both help athletes improve their technique and expand knowledge that could help provide information to be used for people with movement disorders, it can also used design more realistic and stronger robotic arms
Changing Technology Rules
The LZR Racer Suit is a line of extremely high-end swimsuits manufactured by Speedo using a high-technology swimwear fabric composed of woven elastane-nylon and polyurethane.
Swimmers wearing the LZR suit at the 2008 Beijing Olympics consisted of : 94% of all swimming races won, 98% of all medals won, and 23 out of the 25 world records broken
By 24 August 2009, 93 world records had been broken by swimmers wearing a LZR Racer
These results prompted FINA to reevaluate suit policies making the LZR banned for use in competitions
Fédération Internationale de Natation (FINA) is the International Federation (IF) recognized by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) for administering international competition in the aquatic sports
**Oscar Pistorius
South African sprinter Oscar Pistorius is the first double-amputee athlete to compete at the Olympics.
Pistorius is competing in the regular olympics using prosthetics Carbon fiber spring-like prosthetics designed for sprinter
Although the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) deemed him ineligible for the 2008 Summer Olympics based on the belief that he held an unfair advantage further scientific studies have shown he hold no advantage or able-bodied athletes
Safety Equipment
Safety headgear in different for each sport it will be used in dependent upon the specific needs for the sport
Helmet safety foam comes in both the stiff and flexible to maximize the needed protection and comfort
Paralympics
Paralympic wheelchairs are specifically designed for each sport. With designs for speed, mobility, toughness, etc.
Of Note
A google search for “London 2012 _” will show a display of the schedule and results of competition on the right side of the window
Multimedia
Video Gallery Science Of The Summer Olympics: Engineering In Sports | Science360
Social Media
London 2012 @London2012
Further Reading / In the News
2012 London Olympics official page
Science Of The Summer Olympics: Engineering In Sports | Science360.gov
Fina extends swimsuit regulations | news.bbc.co.uk
High-Tech Swimsuits: Winning Medals Too | time.com
Fast Times: Speedo, Like Michael Phelps, Goes For World Domination in an LZR Suit | The Wall Street Journal: Sports
Phelps secures his place in the history books after landing his eighth gold medal! | Speedo.com
Best Inventions of 2008 | TIME

— NEWS BYTE —

Writing with your eyes

_{Credit: YouTube channel h2so4hurts | Credit: Lorenceau et al., Current Biology}

The low down
People “locked in” by paralyzing disorders have long relied on blinks or facial twitches to build sentences one letter at a time
Jean Lorenceau of the Université Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris may have a new technology might allow people who have almost completely lost the ability to move their arms or legs to communicate freely
Significance
Eye-writing technology tricks the neuromuscular machinery into doing something that is usually impossible: to voluntarily produce smooth eye movements in arbitrary directions
Smooth pursuit, this eye motion is different from saccadic motion, in which we rapidly shift our eyes to, say, skim lines of text or scan a crowd
Smooth movements are normally impossible to control those movements smoothly in any direction
Lorenceau found by accident with another experiment that he was able to learn to do so.
To determine if other people could learn to do this he designed his own reverse-phi display with 200 disks that switch between black and white and are projected on a gray background.
When we see two images that are the photographic negatives (dark to light & light to dark) in rapid succession our brain sees the object in the image moving away from the negative image
This gives us the impression of motion when there is none
Over three 30-minute sessions, he was able to trained six volunteers
For the volunteers, who couldn’t see what they were writing, it was like writing with a pen that had run out of ink
Although some participants had a harder time of learning to control their eye movements than others by the end of the sessions most could freely draw legible letters and numbers
Of Note
This technology might also help to improve eye movement control in people with certain conditions such as dyslexia or ADHD and/or for experts, such as athletes or surgeons, whose activities strongly rely on eye movements
Now working on a better version of his eye writer, tests should start next year
Multimedia
YouTube Writing in Cursive with Your Eyes Only | h2so4hurts
YouTube Reverse Phi Motion | porrophagus
Further Reading / In the News
Writing in cursive with your eyes only | MedicalXPress
Write to Me Only With Thine Eyes | ScienceMag.org

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

Morse Code in space

_{Credit: fit.ac.jp}

The low down
Satellite is a 10 cm cube, weighing 2.9lb [1.33kg]
The main mission of the satellite to demonstrate the high speed transmitter
developed.
It can send a jpeg VGA-picture(480×640) within 6 seconds, and will write messages in the night sky with Morse code as
The beacon signal is a standard Morse code CW signal starting with “HI” with telemetry data following
Multimedia
YouTube Deployment of small satellites from the ISS and F–1 CubeSat mission version 2 | FSpacelab
Further Reading / In the News
FITSAT–1 (NIWAKA) : A Small Artificial Satellite Developed at the Fukuoka Institute of Technology
Tiny Japanese Satellite Will Write Morse Code Messages in the Sky | Space.com

Musical Variety

The low down
The Million Song Dataset is a freely-available collection of audio features and metadata for a million contemporary popular music tracks.
The songs come from nearly 45,000 artists with only 2,650 songs released between 1955 and 1959 and 177,808 songs released between 2005 and 2009.
Quantitative analysis for this study examined three aspects of those songs; timbre, pitch, and loudness of nearly half a million songs
Timbre accounts for the sound color, texture, or tone quality
Pitch roughly corresponds to the harmonic content of the piece, including its chords, melody, and tonal arrangements
Timbral variety peaked in the 1960’s and has been in steady decline to the present day and implies a homogenization of the overall timbral palette, which could point to less diversity in instrumentation and recording techniques
While it may be no surprise that music has gotten louder the same notes and chords that were popular in decades past are popular today
Musicians today seem to be less adventurous in moving from one chord or note to another, instead following the paths well-trod
Of Note
The Million Song Dataset, huge as it is, may not provide a representative slice of pop music, especially for old songs
The database draws on what’s popular now, as well as what has been digitized and made available for download
The older digitised music may not be the same that people enjoyed when those songs first came out.
Million Song Dataset

— Updates —

Red Bull Stratos dives again

_{Red Bull Stratos}

Last time on SciByte
Meteorites & Lasers | SciByte 38 – Skydiving at the orbital extreme [March 20, 2012]
The low down
On July 25, 2012, Baumgartner completed the final milestone before his attempt of jumping from 120,000ft [36,500 meters]
The test launch had twice been delayed due to bad weather
Significance
The helium-filled balloon for this test flight was over four times as large as the one that carried Baumgartner for the first test flight in March and took about 90 minutes to reach the desired altitude
Baumgartner rode his specially-made pressurized capsule via the helium balloon and jumped from an altitude of over 29,455 meters (96,640 feet),
He was in freefall for 3 minutes, 48 seconds, reaching speeds of 862 km/h (536 mph), then floated down on his parachute for about 10.5 min
Of Note
He landed in the New Mexico desert, just about 15 minutes by helicopter from his launch site
His final jump will break the current jump record held by Joe Kittinger a retired Air Force officer, and Baumgartner’s current adviser and mentor, who jumped from 19.5 miles [31.5 km] in 1960.
There is no official date for the record-setting attempt, since it is subject to favorable weather conditions and critical post-jump assessments of the capsule and equipment
For his final jump he hopes to not only break the sound barrier with his body, but also break the record for the longest freefall
Multimedia
YouTube VIDEO : Felix Baumgartner’s Test Jump Teaser
YouTube VIDEO :Jump testing in Roswell New Mexico – Red Bull Stratos
YouTube VIDEO : The Capsule – Red Bull Stratos 2012
Social Media
Red Bull Stratos @RedBullStratos
Further Reading / In the News
Home | Red Bull Stratos
Skydiver Baumgartner Takes Test Jump from 30 kilometers | UniverseToday.com
Skydiver Leaps from 18 Miles Up in ‘Space Jump’ Practice | Space.com

— Spacecraft Updates —

Curiosity Rover lands on Sunday … stay tuned next week for more

Next time on SciByte …
Next week’s SciByte will be 2 days after the landing, expect me to say a few things
The low down
NASA’s Mars Odyssey orbiter will relay near real time signals the moment that NASA’s Curiosity rover touches down onto the Martian surface
Multimedia
[NASA TV online live coverage of Curiosity landing](https://mars.jpl.nasa.gov or www.nasa.gov)
Social Media
Curiosity Rover @MarsCuriosity
Further Reading / In the News
Mars Science Laboratoty, Curiosity rover
GetCurious
T Minus 9 Days – Mars Orbiters Now in Place to Relay Critical Curiosity Landing Signals | UniverseToday.com

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

August 1, 1774 : 238 years ago : Oxygen : Joseph Priestley, British Presbyterian minister and chemist, identified a gas which he called “dephlogisticated air” – later known as oxygen. Priestley found that mercury heated in air became coated with “red rust of mercury,” which, when heated separately, was converted back to mercury with “air” given off. Studying this “air” given off, he observed that candles burned very brightly in it. Also, a mouse in a sealed vessel with it could breathe it much longer than ordinary air. A strong believer in the phlogiston theory, Priestley considered it to be “air from which the phlogiston had been removed.” Further experiments convinced him that ordinary air is one fifth dephlogisticated air, the rest considered by him to be phlogiston

Looking up this week

Keep an eye out for …

Wed | Aug 1 | Full Moon
Wed | Aug 1 | Before Dawn | Jupiter will the the
Fri | Aug 3 | Evening | The Summer Triangle approaches its greatest height. Face east and look almost straight up after nightfall. The brightest star there is Vega. Toward the northeast from Vega (by two or three fist-widths at arm’s length) is Deneb. Toward the southeast from Vega by a greater distance is Altair.
Before Dawn | Jupiter & Venus are in the East they are now about the distance of you pinky finger to your pointer finger stretched out at arm’s length, 14*. Venus is the brighter of the two to the lower left, making Jupiter the higher of the two.
Before Dawn | Betelgeuse, the red giant star, is still to the lower right of Venus by about the same distance apart as Jupiter and Venus
At Dusk | Mars & Saturn are low in the west-southwest. Saturn is above Spica, by about three finger widths are are nearly the same brightness
Further Reading and Resources
More on what’s in the sky this week
Sky&Telescope
SpaceWeather.com
StarDate.org
For the Southern hemisphere: SpaceInfo.com.au
Constellations of the Southern Hemisphere : astronomyonline.org
Royal Astronomical Society of New Zealand : rasnz.org.nz
AstronomyNow
HeavensAbove

The post Olympic Science & Red Bull Stratos | SciByte 56 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

PAX Prime 2011: Guid Wars 2 Lore Panel

chris — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 08:52:21 +0000

Join four of ArenaNet’s core writers and loremasters as they take us a behind-the-scenes look at the processes involved in fleshing out the world of Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2.

The post PAX Prime 2011: Guid Wars 2 Lore Panel first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

writing – Jupiter Broadcasting

Lucas’ Arts | BSD Now 329

Show Notes/Links: https://www.bsdnow.tv/329

Booking Jails | BSD Now 293

Show Notes/Links: https://www.bsdnow.tv/293

Technical Writing | WTR 37

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Nerd Nest Media | WTR 32

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Reformed Litigator | WTR 24

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Dream Job Awards | FauxShow 102

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Olympic Science & Red Bull Stratos | SciByte 56

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Show Notes

Olympic Science

— NEWS BYTE —

Writing with your eyes

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

Morse Code in space

Musical Variety

— Updates —

Red Bull Stratos dives again

— Spacecraft Updates —

Curiosity Rover lands on Sunday … stay tuned next week for more

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

Looking up this week

PAX Prime 2011: Guid Wars 2 Lore Panel