Take our Daughters to Work Day

Last Monday (July 25th) I participated in the Take our Daughters (and Sons) to Work Day activity.  I am always happy and proud to tell people what I do for a living and to help them get excited about my work.

 

The highlight was supposed to be SteveB (yes, THAT SteveB) bringing his son to Tablet-land for our activity. When I got in though, plans had changed – what? kids who faithfully execute plans? and they went instead to the Microsoft Home, which had to be 100 times cooler than the lame showing we had for Tablet.

 

I got there and there was no handout, no jazzy handwritten background with instructions, no structure at all. We just had Tablets, some drawing apps, and us. Bor-ing!

 

I would have changed it this way:

• Let’s use language the kids can understand. The event was for 7+ yrs of age. 7-year-olds don’t use words like "annotate" or "documents".
• Let’s have some instructions on the tablets, instead of on the whiteboards around us. By it’s very nature, whiteboards in a conference room mean not everybody will be able to see what you’ve written. Besides, handwritten instructions on the Tablet’s background would have been cooler.
• Let’s have some guided activity. I thought I supported the "let the kids have fun, let them play unguided with the apps" but I was wrong. Next time, we take 5 minutes to walk them through some simple school-oriented activities like note-taking, guided art activity (show the kids the different pen properties at least) and then let them go wild. Almost all of the kids at my session (12 kids?) ended up doodling in InkArt aka ArtRage (from the Education Pack).
• Let’s have some interesting giveaways. Water bottles? Frisbees? I know our budget is lean, but that’s ridiculous. Soft, sculpted foam mascots would be interesting and unique. How about a CD the kids can take home with Experience pack, Education pack, and the art they drew? Let’s tie them together and have them Design the CD’s label art in InkArt and then we burn them a unique remembrance of their day at Tablet? That would take what, 5 mins per CD? Cost us $100 for a printer that does CD labels that could later be reassigned to the lab? $10 for 50 blank CDs?

The event could have been so much better, had our organizers put more than spare cycles into it.

 

I enjoyed the girls who came and asked me questions later in the afternoon. What do you do for your job? (I get to play with new stuff on fancy hardware and I have unlimited Internet access) What advice would you give us so we can be successful (in life)? (Learn a language, can be computer language, or spoken/written language. Realize that computers are everywhere and come in all shapes and sizes.) How come your office is so messy? (Because I have a lot of stuff and not enough time to do my work.)

 

I do hope that I am able to continue pursuing my hardware passion on the Tablet PC team for years to come. I aim to make Take our Daughters (and Sons) to Work Day better for when Nathaniel and Elizabeth are able to attend. Heck, I might just have to clean some of my office so more kids can fit in it and ask me questions.