Last week I got a chat from a co-worker, “I assume you already know this, but you’re quoted in this article!”
I was so excited, especially since I had seen the article floating around Twitter and had book marked it to read during my lunch. 😀
Rachel Thomas’ article is really well written and touches on a lot of great points. I’m really honored that I could be a part of it! Check out the full article here.
A few weeks ago I had an amazing time speaking at Droidcon Berlin on Accessibility! I was very excited to visit Berlin for the first time, and to speak at city that started the Droidcon conference series.
The conference started out with a crazy chance meeting with Georgi Knox, who recently spoke on Linux at Women Who Code Denver. Georgi had just finished speaking at Berlin Buzzwords (check out her talk here on NSQ), and we met up at the combo Buzzwords after-party / Droidcon pre-party.
The conference was held at Postbanhof, an old train station converted into event space and concert venue. I spent the conference marveling at all the neat details.
This weekend I was so honored to be featured on the front page of the Denver Post with the Blind Institute of Technology!
I’ve been working with BIT to develop the accessibility program at iTriage for about 8 months. It has been an incredible journey, and I’ve learned so much from them. I was really excited to hear that the Denver Post was planning on doing a feature for BIT, and even more excited when I heard that the Post was also specifically interested in the work they had done with iTriage.
As soon as I heard the article had been published this weekend (and was the front page article!) I went straight to Winchell’s for some celebration donuts!
Taking a page from @lara_hogan 's book and celebrating being on the @denverpost front page w/ #winchells #donuts pic.twitter.com/E9wYMupDMI
— Kelly Shuster (@KellyShuster) July 18, 2015
You can check out the full article here.
I had the honor of being interviewed by Salvador Rodriguez for his IB Times article on diversity in the tech industry. He does a great job of showing that the diversity issue isn’t just a “pipeline” problem, laying out all the things that contribute to an unwelcoming environment, and what companies could do to change that.
I recently went to San Fransisco to attend this year’s Google I/O. I learned a ton, met a lot of phenomenal people, and drank a LOT of coffee. Going into the conference, I had a few items on my announcements wish list:
I got 2 out of 3, which isn’t bad! During the keynote presentation, they announced that they were releasing Android Studio 1.3, which came with an updated Gradle plugin that had improved Gradle speeds. I was excited, but still a bit leery, since the keynote didn’t really dive into any specifics.
"improved gradle build speed" …show me the numbers!!! #io15
— Kelly Shuster (@KellyShuster) May 28, 2015
After the NY Times Article “What Happened When Marissa Mayer Tried to Be Steve Jobs” was passed around the internet I became interested in learning more about Marissa Mayer, the famous Yahoo CEO and ex-Googler. I did a little research and learned that the author of the NY Times article, Nicholas Carlson, had also written a book about Mayer, so grabbed a copy from my local library and dove in.
I thought the book was going to be primarily about Mayer’s time at Yahoo, but it turned out to be a lot more than that. The book is officially divided into 4 parts, but really I felt it contained 3 main sections:
Recently I decided to modify lint options for some projects so that my build would fail if I was missing a content description on Images. I ran into a few interesting items that weren’t documented, so I’ll share them here. Ultimately I knew that my task had 2 components:
The Android Studio documentation for lint configuration, found here, show for the most part how you can change the severity of all lint items. First off, their directory path is outdated. To get to lint settings is now : Android Studio –> Preferences –> Editor –> Inspections (currently on Android Studio). Once you are there you can update severity of any items. I found the item “Image without contentDescription” and changed it to Error:
I had the great pleasure of being interviewed live during this year’s Google I/O by Googler Natalie Villalobos for Women Techmakers! Google I/O is the annual Google developer conference at Moscone Center in San Fransisco. The interview was live streamed on Thursday afternoon, the first day of the conference.
Check out the full interview here!
I found out that I would be interviewed a few weeks before I/O, so had time to prepare. While I am no stranger to public speaking or being on film, it was a little nerve-wracking to think about the fact that the interview would be part of the live-stream for Google I/O… meaning lots of people would be watching real time!
On April 17 I participated in an awesome panel event “The Wonder Women of STEM” hosted by the CU Denver WiSTEM group. My fellow panelists were extraordinary, and all had incredible and diverse careers. The food was also top notch, and I even got a certificate and Wonder Woman magnet. 🙂 I also really enjoyed the panel format. Each panelist got 10 minutes to talk about their career path and advice they would give to their former selves. Then we got up and were stationed around the room, and people could visit our ‘station’ to ask follow up questions.
During my 10 minute talk, I shared 3 main pieces of advice with students:
During my undergrad in Electrical Engineering, I constantly felt intimidated to ask questions because I thought everyone else already knew everything, and asking questions would make me look stupid. Fellow students constantly spouted off in class with “Isn’t it true that… ” type of statements, in attempts to publicly display how smart they were. I even had a professor tell our class that he didn’t think anyone should be let into the EE program if they hadn’t already built their own radio in high school. Ugh. I wasted a lot of time and energy trying to strategically only ask questions that I felt were “complex enough” to be valid, and ended up not asking a lot of questions that I should have.
Last month I had the great opportunity to speak at the GDG Denver Women Techmakers celebration! This event was also a ‘super meetup’ with the Denver Droids. It was a great combination of developers from different areas of the Denver tech community and a fabulous event overall!
The night started off with dinner and some wine tasting with a professional sommelier, which was a lot of fun.
The pressure is on! Johnny from @TheSqueakyBean doing a live blind wine tasting 🙂 #WTM15 pic.twitter.com/5WnDTfSrwj
— Kelly Shuster (@KellyShuster) March 19, 2015
