Speaking

I love public speaking, whether it’s speaking at conferences, teaching, or doing literary readings. I also love to bring interesting people together for discussions, organizing and moderating panels, talks, or entire conferences. Here’s a list of some of my talks and readings, as well as conferences I’ve been to.

Facilitor/organizer, DIFxTech Community Conversations series. 2023.

Queer Open Mic, Strut, 2023

Interviewed for 6-part CBC podcast, 2023

Reading, SF Writers Workshop event, 2023

Zinemaking workshop, DWeb Camp, 2022

MC / Auctioneer for the Otherwise Award at WisCon, 2022

Zinemaking workshop, DWeb Camp, 2021

Make a zine workshop, Double Union, 2014, 2015.

She’s Geeky. “Bugs! Bugs! Bugs!: Beginning bugmastery”. January 2013.

Noisebridge 5 minutes of Fame. “Bad Inventions”. January 2013.

Circuit Hacking Monday, co-instructor, Noisebridge. 2010-2013.

Ethical Hacking for Kids, Redwood City school district, 2013.

Writers with Drinks, reading (Poetry/translations), 2012.

Geek Girl Con. “A Fate Worse than Death: The Last “Outsider” in Popular Culture – Disability”. August 2012.

The Story, London. 2012.

Keynote speaker, KiwiCon, New Zealand. “Bootstrapping InfoSec for Hacktivists”. 2012.

Knight Foundation/MIT Future of Civic Media Conference. “Civic Fictions” panel with Ethan Zuckerberg, Dan Sinker, and Andy Carvin. June 2011. http://www.knightfoundation.org/blogs/knightblog/2011/6/24/civic-fictions-opportunities-and-limits-online-personas/

Noisebridge Five Minutes of Fame (5mof). “Lesbian Sockpuppets”. June 2011.

Foo Camp 2011. “Sockpuppet Detection” and “How to Suppress Women’s Coding” discussions.

BlogHer ’10, New York City, August 2010. Gave a talk “Fight Spam and Hackers” on online privacy, anonymity, free speech, and protecting your blog from getting hacked — for an audience of women bloggers. Also did a Community Keynote, “What Is Geek?” on gender and geekiness.

Open Source Bridge, Portland, June 2010. “X Marks the Spot: Applying Open Street Map to the High Seas“. Using the Geospatial Data Abstraction Library (GDAL), OGR, Python, and the OSM API to put NOAA nautical chart data into Open Sea Map.

She’s Geeky, Mountainview, March 2010. Gave two talks on installing, maintaining, and modifying WordPress at an unconference for women.

linux.conf.au, January 2010, Wellington, NZ. Gave a talk for the Haecksen mini-conference, “Code of Our Own“. Gave a talk called Hack Ability (summarized nicely in a writeup in Linux Weekly News). I was able to go to this conference because of sponsorship from Google’s Diversity in Open Source fund and support from linux.conf.au.

DrupalCon South, Wellington, NZ. Gave a keynote, “Abandonment Issues: Your Drupal Clients, and What Happens When You’re Gone”.

Blogalicious Weekend, Oct. 2009.

Tech Soup, Aug. 2009. I gave a talk for non-profits who are developing an online presence: “Women & Disability Online: the GimpGirl Community”. In the discussion after the talk we focused on the idea of using multiple channels and registers to reach a diverse audience, and on maintaining online presence beyond “a summer intern on Facebook”.

BlogHer ’09 Geek Lab, July 2009, Chicago. I gave two tutorials: “Love Your Command Line” and “A Tour of Dreamwidth”, as well as providing on-demand tech help with WordPress, Typepad, and Blogger back ends and helping people learn about buying domain names and setting up their own web host.

Ignite OSCON, July 2009, San Jose. “Your Flying Jetpack.” Lightning talk on social constructions of disability and what we can do as proponents of Free/Open Source Software to change technological approaches to “medical” devices.

WisCon, May 2009. “Something is WRONG on the Internet”. Panel on the philosophy and ethics of Internet drama and controversies. We discussed the positive aspects of Internet drama as activism.

Maker Faire, May 2009, San Mateo, CA. “Disability and Access Hacks.”

SFinX, Manifesto Overload!, Modern Times Bookstore, SF, CA. Organized with Steven Schwartz. 8 readers and the audience performed a nested series of excerpts from over 30 manifestos. I wish you all had been there, because it was beyond fantastic!

Sex:Tech, April 2009, San Francisco. “Access Sex” panel on women, disability, and sexuality with Bethany Stevens and Jen Cole. Notes from the panel.

SXSWi, March 2009, Austin TX. Hack Ability: Open Source Disability Tech. Talk and facilitated group discussion. Coverage from the Austin Chronicle.

ETech, March 2009, San Jose, CA. “DIY for PWD: Do It Yourself for People with Disabilities.”

Potlatch, February 2009, Sunnyvale, CA. Moderated and spoke on panel about John M. Ford’s science fiction novel, “Growing Up Weightless.”

She’s Geeky, 2009, Mountainview. “Tour of WordPress Code.” Also gave a brief talk that was a code tour of a simple web scraper written in Python.

BlogHer DC, October 2008, Washington DC. “Blogging Basics: personalize, polish, and promote your blog.” Focus on getting into your blog’s back end, coding, and debugging. Co-hosted Geek Lab with Sarah Dopp.

BlogHer Boston, October 2008, Boston, MA. “Blogging Basics.” Liveblogged notes of the talk.

BlogHer ’08, San Francisco, July 2008.

OpenTech, London, UK, July 2008.

Global Voices Summit, Budapest, July 2008. Reported on several panels and speakers.

WisCon 32, Madison, WI.

She’s Geeky, 2008. Gave a tutorial on How to Install Drupal on your Mac with MAMP. Also ran a workshop called “Show and Tell your Development Environment”.

SXSWi, March 2007. “Blogs, fiction, astroturfing, and hoaxes.” Outline of talk. This session was extended by an extra hour at the audience’s request. Related further thoughts: Sockpuppets and astroturfing in disruptive political blogs. Coverage of the panel from the Austin Chronicle.

Wiki Wednesday – I organized a series of talks by people doing interesting wiki work; daylong hackathons, and helped coordinate and promote Wiki Wednesdays in several different cities around the world.

BarCamp Block, 2007. Co-organizer of a huge BarCamp of over 1000 people at 9 locations in downtown Palo Alto.

SXSWi, 2006. “Increasing Women’s Visibility on the Web: Whose Butt Should We Be Kicking?” Talk on blogs and women blogging and the importance of being able to find other women online.

Potlatch, 2006. “Apocalypse Now: Welcome to the Dystopia They Used to Imagine.”

WoolfCamp, 2005-2007. Sleepover weekend. Women, feminism, tech, art, writing.

BarCamp, 2005, Palo Alto. All-day think tank session with nearly all the women at BarCamp.

Potlatch 14, 2005, San Francisco. “Education in Science Fiction.”

Poetry and literary readings

– Writers With Drinks
– SFinX
– Rebel Girl
– Can I Sit With You? readings in Seattle and San Francisco
– Open mics and groups: Waverley Writers, the Barbershop, Art 21, San Jose Poetry League, 3 Dollar Bill, Sadie’s Flying Elephant… Lots more…