My friend and teammate says to me, "do you make a habit of spending your birthdays on planes... after breakups? It's only the second time. It's really how the dates worked out. With the timezone change, it means my birthday is going to last for 40 hours... I can celebrate on two continents! In two hemispheres. It is ...
Abstract: In a world where computing power doubles roughly every two years, the goal is no longer efficiency, but effectiveness. The education system prepares students for efficiency, but to be successful when we go out into the world (or before!) we need rather to learn to be effective. In this workshop, we'll discuss more useful things ...
My first proper day on my new project, and our PM says to me - "Cate, you seem to like to travel. How about you spend time in New York?" - I'm tasked with helping another team out, and being the bridge between that team and my team here. Initially I was a bit... thrown. Part ...
Currently, I'm reading Tim Harford's Adapt (Amazon). It's a fascinating book, quite different from the Undercover Economist (Amazon) - which is also excellent. He writes about the importance of experimentation and feedback, and the insanity of centralized military planning - where an individual soldier can shoot to kill, but the General running the base can't approve ...
Last week, in California, I met the amazing Meggin who leaves such astute and beautiful comments here. It was great - or terrible timing - depending on how you look at it. Terrible timing, because, one of the first things I said to her was: In a while I'll spin this into a really positive sounding ...
It's been a mixed week. Some successes - Awesome Foundation! Girl Geek Dinner! Getting my visa sorted! And then a number of things that made me wonder why I was bothering. Mostly stupid things, and you could say that I shouldn't worry about them - but that is easy to say, and hard to do. Telling ...
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A while ago I got into a slightly drunken argument. I'd had two martinis, so not what you're thinking - I was mostly tipsy and mellow. But I was sitting next to someone whose position I thought was intellectually bankrupt, and I didn't pretend to have any respect for it. Nor did I walk away. That wasn't ...
Slides and commentary for the talk I gave at Ignite Waterloo, June 15th. Missing two slides - title slide and end slide (with my twitter handle and website on it). Ignite is a tough format - 5 minutes, 15 seconds a slide, the slides auto-advance. The *'s are where I expect the slide to change ...
My friend AY and I were out for dinner, and we got to talking about authenticity, and correspondingly, inauthenticity. It was interesting, because we were talking about how everyone seems to see through people who are fake, and how it ultimately comes back to bite you. A while ago, I subscribed to this blog, about, being ...
Recently, I was at an event. A colleague was giving a talk, which I'd worked to set up. Someone "important" at the location, who I've met, who in fact once signed a thank-you note to me and was, I'm told, part of a (positive) conversation about some of my work days before came down. I approached ...
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