Category: Events

Mighty Events: Old School Meetup, NYC

Will you be in New York on Saturday, August 7? Us too. Let’s grab a beer.

Lots of us will be at the The Volstead (125 East 54th St.) from 6 p.m. until we leave.

There will be no sponsors, there will be no schwag, no one will make you drink a sickly sweet purple martini with hunks of dry ice. In fact, you can drink whatever you want, because you’ll be paying for it. That’s why we arranged for happy hour specials. Come raise your glass with us.

Cheers,
Maggie Mason, Laura Mayes, Karen Walrond, Susan Wagner, Holly Burns, Zan McQuade, Chris Jordan, Helen Jane Hearn, Alice Bradley, and Jenny Lawson

Mighty Events

I have big, big news. This year, Mighty Girl is teaming up with a couple of very smart publishers, Laura Mayes and Helen Jane Hearn, to bring you the Mighty Life Events Series. I have happy, fluttery, enthusiastic feelings about it.

Here’s what’s coming up:

September 17-20, 2010: Mighty Summit in Russian River Wine Country, CA
“Create your Mighty Life.”

The Mighty Summit is an annual retreat weekend for a small group of industry leaders in social and mainstream media. We’ll gather in the wine country to work on life lists, relax, and talk about what’s next. This event is an offshoot of the Broad Summit, a retreat for bloggers hosted in the same spot last year. This year, we’ve left some spots open to applicants, so if you think you’re a good fit, head to MightySummit.com for more information.

February 4, 2011: Mighty Jobs in San Francisco, CA
“Do what you want.”

Ever wonder how someone scored such a sweet gig? So have we! We decided to round up them up and ask them. Join us, and several hundred of our closest friends, as we talk to some of the coolest job havers around, and learn how to pursue our dream professions. We’ll fill you in on details as they become available.

Mighty Socials, Across the USA
“Hello there, Internet.”

We’re planning lots of meet-ups across the country, and the first one is in New York City this August. Stay tuned for the gathering list, and let us know if you have a suggestion for a sweet spot near you!

We can’t wait to see you.

Fun Thing: Maker Faire Preview

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Have you been to Maker Faire? You should go.

Maker Faire is an annual DIY bonanza with a focus on science and technology, though there’s an excellent crafts hall as well. Essentially, if you make something cool with your own hands and brain, you can apply to be one of the “Makers” the Faire hosts each year. It’s so huge in the Bay Area that it always seems to be sold out by the time I get my act together.

But this year! This year was different, because of Margaret. Margaret is the kind of friend who ends up with spare tickets to movie previews, or coronations, or space shuttle rides. It’s seriously uncanny. So last week she called to say that she had an extra ticket to preview night at Maker Faire, which means all the cool stuff with none of the lines or parking conundrums. So I made out with her. You would too if someone took you to see a fire-breathing snail car.

SxSW 2009

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My greatest regret was not attending the “Why is Professional Blogging Bloodsport for Women?” panel, so I could stand at the back of the room and yell “FAIL!” every few minutes.

Ah well, next year.

If you’d like to see all my photos, the rest are here. Somehow, I failed to photograph the two pregnant women I pretty much flew to Texas to see. The hell? I guess we were too busy drinking.

Julis Rothman and Caitlin Keegan at Rare Device

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My fun thing for yesterday was stopping by the Julia Rothman/Caitlin Keegan opening at Rare Device. There were so many women there who I’ve admired at a distance online but had never met in person, and every one of them was exactly as charming as I’d imagined them to be. Strange, no? You’d expect at least one of them to surprisingly catty, or awkwardly silent, or falling over drunk — something. But no! They were just fun, and well scrubbed, and generally happy with life. It was nice.

Among the pleasant run ins was Elizabeth from Browner Brown and Apartment Therapy San Francisco, Natalie who makes beautiful things for her shop Miss Natalie, and Evany who always makes everything better than it was before she got there.

I was especially thrilled to see Grace of DesignSponge, who was out from Brooklyn for the show. I’ve been wanting to meet her for years, and it turns out she’s aptly named. I refrained from grabbing her by the shoulders and cheering, because I’m so excited about everything she’s done in building her business. I held back mostly because I was wearing shoes that made me four feet taller than her, and I thought yelping in her face might be a little much on first meeting. Perhaps next time.

I also ran into Shoshana, the founding editor of ReadyMade Magazine, whom I’d never met — despite working on the ReadyMade blog, exchanging emails about cool old houses for sale, and having lots of friends in common. We started talking because I was making faces at her baby, and it took us a few minutes to figure out that we already knew each other.

All that, and I was in bed by 10:30. What a great night.

Start Conference

So, my alarmingly capable husband Bryan Mason and his partner Jeff Veen are putting together a conference for people who want to launch their own start-ups. It’s called Start Conference, appropriately enough, and the speaker lineup is killer.

Also? It’s only $200 for the day, which is ludicrously cheap for something like this. Then again, I suppose it would be tough to expense a conference that teaches you how to successfully leave your job. Anyway, spaces won’t be available for long, so go have a look if you’re a company-starting type.

UX Week 2007 Roundup

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I’ve already mentioned the One Laptop Per Child presentation. Here’s my UX Week roundup of other presentations that I found moving:

The Charmr
Adaptive Path introduced its product concept for how a diabetes management device should look and function.

Clear Rx
Deb Adler presented her revolutionary redesign of prescription pill bottles, which was later purchased by Target. She noted that 60 percent of Americans don’t take their prescriptions correctly, often because instructions are so confusing and bottles look so much alike. She also said that the toughest logo to design was “for external use only.” So if you have a lightening-bolt idea, let her know.

Yahoo Teachers
Bill Scott and Karon Weber are creating a new tool that helps teachers collect web research and share lesson plans. It is unbelievable. You can drag and drop any element of a web page while you’re researching, then search for other people’s lesson plans by grade, subject, and state standards. You can even locate nearby teachers who have to teach around the same local events (Chinese New Year in San Francisco, for example). It shows you top-rated, most recent, and most copied lesson plans, and lets you build a network of teachers whose work you trust. Holy crap, it’s going to rock your world, teachers.

Also, Andrew Hinton from Vanguard said something that I’ve been mulling over lately, “An individual is not defined by any one practice, but we do typically want to identify with one.” In other words, “What do you do?” can be a tough question for some of us

UX Week: One Laptop Per Child

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So, as I mentioned, Adaptive Path’s UX Week was amazing this year — so inspiring. These photos are of the One Laptop Per Child Operating System presentation. If you’re not familiar with the project, their aim is to make sure that every child in the world has access to a laptop. Their first large scale distribution is in September, and the computers are amazing.

Details:

-They work in direct sunlight and have hand cranks to power them.
-The icon on the front of the computer represents a little person, and can be color customized to suit a kid’s preferences.
-The operating system is awesome. It’s based on the idea of a community of people participating in activities. When someone in your network is doing something (playing a music game, making a drawing, writing something), and they want others to join in, they make their activity public. That activity icon appears on everyone’s desktops. You can see at a glance which activities are popular, because the xo icons gather around a task in which they’re participating. You click on your preferred activity icon to join the fun, and clicking puts you into an interface with the tools you need to play or learn. A “journal” feature automatically records (saves) everything you do, so you can go back and see what you did, when you did it, and who else helped.
-About 2,000 developers around the world are developing activities for the laptop.
-The laptops are tied to a leasing system that immediately deactivates a laptop if its reported missing or stolen.
-School participation is way up in communities where kids get these laptops, and for many families, the laptop is the brightest source of light available in their homes.

You can learn more at the One Laptop Per Child site. It’s a genius project.