2015 Accomplishments

I wrote this around Christmas in 2015, but never published it in blog form. I’m publishing it now for me to be able to look back on. The stats listed were correct at the end of 2015.

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Sarah’s Accomplishments for the Year:

• Gave my first conference talk (“Intro to Hacking w/Raspberry Pi”)
  • Gave that talk 6 times
  • Gave an encore due to popularity
• Was a conference planner for the Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas Women in Computing conference for the second time in a row
• Was a conference planner for the Society of Women Engineers Region i regional conference
• Mentored with Coderdojo KC, Tech sHeroes, Girls Who Code at CRHS, Coding and Cupcakes, Coding and Cocktails, Learn Science and Math Club (FTC Robotics)
• I was on an Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day college student panel
• I moderated a college student panel for the NCWIT Aspirations in Computing award ceremony
• I walked at my commencement
• I left the first round of college when I dropped out with a 1.9 GPA. I left the second round of college with > 3.2.
• I taught an Intro to C++ (CS 201R) lecture class
• I started my first Real World Job™ in June
• At work, I planned and led a career day for a group of high school girls interested in computing or technology
  • I won an award at work for doing that
• I wrote a public coming out blog post that received > 8.3K views and > 3.9K reads
  • Had it reposted with Gender 2.0, The Lighthouse, Life Tips, and Women 2.0 (pending)
• I increased my Twitter follows 8x, and went “baby viral” (viral but for me) 3 times this year
• I planned my first vacation ever
  • I bought my first plane tickets for traveling for fun
  • Rode my first Amtrak train
  • I saw the Pacific Ocean for the first time
  • I met 21 people I had met online in real life
  • I somehow arranged to stay in SF and LA solely by couch surfing with online friends
  • I started speaking in sign language again. AND a deaf person could actually converse with me!
• I took close 1500+ pictures for the first time on vacation, and WELL over 1000 more pictures throughout the year. I went from a few self-pictures a year to 1 or more almost daily.
• I started planning for a women in technology group at my work, and hope to have our first meeting shortly into the year is over
• Encouraged my mother to try to have lunch with me and see me for the first time in 8 years. (The lunch unfortunately didn’t end up happening.)
• I was elected vice-president of PFLAG-KC
• I helped plan a new LGBTQ in Tech podcast, and was on the first episode, and hosted/edited the second episode
• I started work on a personal YouTube channel telling my stories as I transitioned
• Successfully got my legal documentation to correctly reflect my gender
• Made my first pull requests to other people’s repos on GitHub
• Appeared in Google’s 2015 Year in Search video (link)