Click through to see the full size chart and some of the sample “compounds” you can create with these tropes.

 
Over 50 people attended the event and helped build projects on seven different teams ranging in size and scope from a two people team to the supersized thirteen member team I was on. We had 54 hours to build a prototype, then all met up at Original Joe’s Varsity on Sunday night to demo our work for the rest of the groups and the extended community.

For those who aren’t familiar with Startup Weekend, here’s how it works:

• Friday Night: Register, pitch ideas, form teams, make a plan.
• Saturday: Get up early and code, code, code all day long, from morning to late night. Then, after you can’t bear to stare at a computer screen any longer, go for beer until the wee hours of the morning.
• Sunday: Get up early again. Panic: not enough hours! Code and commit changes like a fiend. Then celebrate your new prototype by demoing and drinking more beer in the evening.

My team (Team Victory) came out of two idea pitches that merged into one.

The first idea was to create a social interface that would let you rate developers you’ve worked with on different skill sets, allowing you to recommend them and indicate whether you’d like to work with them again. Sort of a reputation system for IT people.

The second idea was to create a system that let you post your development project and tag it with locations and technologies to let other devs and designers see what projects are happening based on certain tags: for instance, someone involved with Edmonton’s Ruby meetup group would be able to quickly search for ongoing projects in Edmonton tagged with Ruby.

So what did we build? Something that does both! The idea behind LaunchWith.Me is to provide developers, designers and other tech-folk with a place they can show who they’ve worked with, who they love to work with, and what projects they’ve worked on. The current prototype interface isn’t complete but the underlying API is incredibly robust for something built in 54 hours. A lot of the data isn’t yet exposed because we ran out of time, but the core is there. If you’re browsing around the demo we have up keep in mind the data you see is all test data and you can’t actually create an account at this point.

I had a great time, and I learned tons. I’m a designer, BA and PM, but one of the things I loved the most about this weekend was sitting in the midst of a development space: I love to soak up information and learn new things, and boy did I ever learn a lot just by listening to the conversations happening around me. I also had the chance to dive into CSS3 for the first time, and I love how fast you can prototype things without spending hours fiddling in Photoshop.

I’d also like to give a big shout-out to Team Victory: you were a standout group to work with. I got the chance to work with some long-time friends and new people who have now become new friends. The network of amazing, brilliant people Edmonton events like DemoCamp exposes is one of the Edmonton tech community’s biggest success stories. As always, I look forward to the next event.

And if you’re wondering whether or not LaunchWith.Me will keep going, the answer from our team seems to be a resounding yes. So stay tuned for more from Team Victory and LaunchWith.Me! In the meantime, check out Mack’s Startup Weekend Flickr set and catch up with the #SWEdmonton Twitter hashtag.

Read other recaps of Startup Weekend Edmonton:

• Edmonton Journal, Group gathers developers, online designers to make dreams a reality
• Metro Edmonton, Ideas aplenty at Startup Weekend
• Mastermaq, Recap: Startup Weekend Edmonton 2
• Cybera, One weekend, seven startups

I am dismayed and disappointed by the overwhelmingly negative response to the Racisim Free Edmonton Campaign, most of which seems to be coming from white Edmontonians. That’s the first indication we have a problem.

Just to be clear, I’m talking to white folk in Edmonton in this post, as a white person who has in recent years started to come to terms with her own internalized racism and white privilege. I’m not an expert in any of this: I am at best an advanced beginner.

So I have some things to say, as a fellow white Edmontonian:

1. You have white privilege. Not knowing you have it is part of how it works.
2. It’s not your fault. Chance determined the colour of your skin which is a thing you can’t change just like someone of colour can’t change theirs.
3. Because having white privilege is not your fault doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
4. Learning all this for this first time sucks. But so does racism and a world that privileges one group of people over another. Deal with it.

I also have a couple of things to say about the campaign:

1. It’s not perfect. There are some legitimate complaints about the writing positioning “us” and “we” against “them”. This argument is not wrong.
2. The campaign is over simplified in places. Probably in more places than I realize.
3. In regards to items 1 and 2 above, the campaign has to be oversimplified in some respects because it’s targeted at a general overwhelmingly white public that probably has never heard of white privilege before and so it needs to be simple and short while still getting the main point across. Which I think it does fairly well.

Okay.

Now that you’re all gnashing your teeth at me, before you wade knee deep into a conversation about race and whether or not the campaign is racist please educate yourself first. Google “white privilege”. Learn how racism works.

Here are some resources to get you started. Some of these links I found on my own, some of them have been pointed out to me as “Important, Read This” by various people in a position to know way more about this topic than me, and some of them are well-known resources for anyone who has dared to wade into racism on the internet.

• Here’s a fantastic and fairly comprehensive beginner primer on privilege, what it is and how to deal with having it with literally dozens of links. Many of these primers deal with all different kinds of privilege including white privilege, male privilege, straight privilege and cis privilege.
• Here’s a required reading list for beginners trying to understand racism and privilege, including how prejudice and bias works, how discussions of racism are suppressed, a guide for white people on how not to be insane when accused of racism, and several other excellent resources.
• Watch this talk by Tim Wise, a prominent anti-racist writer and activist. Don’t like videos? Read This is Your Nation on White Privilege.
• Read White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack by Peggy McIntosh. This article deals somewhat in intersections between white privilege and male privilege which is a bit of an advanced topic, but you should read it anyway.
• Claiming to be “colour blind” doesn’t get you cookies: aversive racism isn’t beat by pretending not to see something your subconscious brain has been trained by white privilege not to notice. Learn the linguistics of Colour Blind Racism before you get too attached to the warm-fuzzies you get from being “colour blind”.
• Here’s another resource for the “colour blind”: The Problem with “I Don’t See Color”.
• And definitely read Derailing for Dummies so you can wade into the conversation knowing how to avoid classic derailing maneuvers made by privileged people in conversations where they’re confronting their own privilege.
• Check out the research site for Project Implicit and measure your own implicit bias, which is the bias you don’t know you have. This isn’t a game, it’s an actual study, and a way to start helping yourself acknowledge your own biases. You can’t change what you don’t know.

Comment Policy: If things get out of control I will have to freeze comments on this post because I just don’t have time to moderate the type of conversation this post might generate in the way it needs to be moderated. I almost didn’t publish it for that reason.

It may not be weekly, but it is linkspam.

Feminism & Women

• The good people at Overthinking It created this fantastic Female Character Flowchart that captures a whole lot of pop culture female character cliches in one fell swoop. It’s massive in both size and awesome.
• For the two hundredth and forty-second time, females and males have equal math skills before stereotyping. I don’t know how many more ways scientists can come up with to tell the rest of the world it isn’t that girls are bad at math, it’s that we keep telling and treating them as if they are bad at math.
• Do accusations of sexism spur greater awareness of sexist language? This study thinks so. I had a conversation with a couple of male friends about this not too long ago.
• Nice write up about what we’re really talking about when we measure pop culture with the Bechdel Test. It’s not about that women shouldn’t talk to or about men, it’s about how women presented in pop culture regularly only talk to or about men when they’re even there at all. It’s about the absence of women in our stories as anything other than romantic partners or two-dimensional tokens.
• Linked to from the above, Pixiepalace has won me over with her explanation of the Reverse Jane Austen Principle: “It is a truth universally acknowledged by the entertainment industry that a female character in possession of a name and a ringless left hand must be in want of a boyfriend.” I think this often comes from a belief by the entertainment industry that women won’t want to watch female characters that aren’t somehow involved/tangled in romance, as if it’s central to our enjoyment. This is one of several reasons I love Emily Prentiss and Elle Greenaway from Criminal Minds, two fine female characters without romantic subplots.

Pop Culture

• Another great post from Overthinking It, this time about Fixing Season 5 of Doctor Who. It’s a long post that only the most dedicated meta readers are likely to finish, but it covers most of my problems with the plot and themes of the latest incarnation of Doctor Who. I’m not sure I necessarily agree with all the proposed fixes, but I do mostly agree with the general through-line here. Season Five of Who left me firmly in a “meh” space, and this post articulates some of the reasons why.

I love language. Most specifically I suppose I love English since it’s the only one I know how to use, but I do try to use it well. And when I say “well” what I mean isn’t always “correctly” or “properly”. Sometimes “well” means “creatively”. Or “uniquely”. Or even “colloquially”.

Not too long ago I inadvertently got into a bit of a Twitter argument with a surprisingly number of people on whether or not the Oxford comma was a necessity. Should it always be used? Is it necessary? And ultimately somewhere in that long, surprisingly passionate argument was a discussion about the merits of “proper” language as critical for the sake of communication. Stephen Fry’s comments on the nuance between “disinterested” and “uninterested” most perfectly embodies that argument: in particular my side of it.

The nuance of words is and can be important in the right context. In a political speech or poem the difference between disinterested and uninterested could be of great import. But that doesn’t mean it always has to be of great import. The great flexibility of language is that can stretch or shrink as we require it, and as the culture that uses it changes, so too can language.

I know some writers dislike the way texting, tweeting and online chatting has distorted language in ways that are leaking into the vernacular — both written and spoken — but I delight in it. I enjoy the eyerolling nuance writing “LOL” adds that the word “laugh” doesn’t in itself contain. I love how changing “the” to “teh” modifies the entire tone of a sentence, how emoticons clarify intent in two or three characters, and how Twitter hashtags can be functional, thematic and humorous all at the same time.

There is absolutely a place for proper language, just like there is a place for the Oxford comma. But the language we use today is as fluid as it has ever been, and in a world that changes as rapidly as ours I want a language free to adapt and change with it. Language can’t and shouldn’t remain static.

New Shows I’m Gonna Check Out:

The Whole Truth: September 22
Courtroom drama, which is so close to a crime procedural that it’s probably no surprise to anyone it’s on my list. It sounds interesting in part because it seems to be focusing on both the defence and the prosecution rather than picking one side or the other. This “both sides” feel is one of the many things I loved about Boston Legal, and while this show is unlikely to rival that one for my affections I’m interested enough to watch the first couple of episodes.

Undercovers: September 22
Spy show from JJ Abrams that promises more awesome action-packed spy-win and less wacky Rambaldi nonsense. Also, the leads are a married couple which intrigues me: so many other action-centric shows feature and rely on sexual tension of star-crossed lovers, and the idea of one that centres around a couple that already is is fascinating to me.

No Ordinary Family: September 28
Family crashes into a mysterious lagoon and get super powers. The premise is promising, but this one will be all about the delivery.

Boardwalk Empire: September 19
Period drama from HBO set in the prohibition era. From Martin Scorsese. Yeah, I’m definitely gonna try this one on for size.

Returning Shows I’ll Be Watching:

Chuck: September 20
I devoured the first three seasons of this show over the summer and am eagerly anticipating the next season. I’ve heard there are currently only 13 episodes bought and paid for with the option for another 9, but I kinda hope it sticks with the 13 episode format. I find shorter seasons are usually tighter.

I’m a little leery about the ongoing angst of the Chuck/Sarah relationship. Their dance was great while it lasted, but I think that horse has been flogged well enough now, and rather than retreading that ground over and over (and over) again, I’d really like to see the show allow Chuck and Sarah to grow into their relationship and transition into a space where they are firmly together, yet still struggling with the day-to-day realities of being a couple. Relationship drama doesn’t need a constant breakup cycle to be interesting.

I’m also wondering how the show will change now that all the major characters know about Chuck’s involvement with the CIA. His secret keeping and lying was an integral part of the show, and while I’m sure there will still be secrets kept — because Chuck is an almost compulsive liar in some ways — I think this is going to be a hugely transitional year for Chuck in a lot of ways. We are in prime shark-jumping territory here.

Dexter: September 26
So apparently Julia Stiles will be in this season. Huh.

I really, really hope this season deals with Dexter dealing with Rita’s death well, especially since Rita’s memory cannot be so simply cast aside in this show given Dexter has been left with three young children to care for. I love that they had Dexter kill Arthur Mitchell before he discovered Rita, because it leaves him without an outlet for vengeance that might ease his guilt.

I hope for more awesome with Deb, and wow do I ever want her to be the primary external stressor for Dexter this year. The possibilities and multiple potential paths for her character if she discovers Dexter’s serial killing secret are all fascinating and I can’t yet pick which one I want more.

Criminal Minds: September 22
Obviously I’ll be watching Criminal Minds. I’m heartbroken AJ Cook is leaving and Paget Brewster only has 10 episodes this year however. All my wonderful, awesome women! Who will Garcia have to keep her sane in that pool of testosterone once JJ and Emily aren’t there? D:

Castle: September 20
Yeah, there’s no way I’m not gonna watch a show that is A) a crime procedural, which we all know I am incapable of resisting; and B) contains Nathan Fillion, Edmontonian, Joss-veteran and wisecracking wisecracker.

Bones: September 23
After last year’s epic moment between Booth and Bones where Bones has to admit out loud how broken she is and why she can’t allow herself to love Booth even though she very clearly does already, this show has killed me even more than it did before. I love this show for so many reasons despite that fact that sometimes it is full of fail and just a little bit awful. I love it because of the fantastic women it contains, I love it because — for once — the wrangler is the male while the eccentric genius is the woman. Not cold, not cruel: broken. She’s detached without being icy. How often do we get that with female characters?

And? The chemistry between Booth and Brennan is just too good to ignore.

NCIS: September 24
This is one of those shows I tend to watch in bursts. When everything is on a two or three week break, I tend to bulk download whatever episodes of NCIS have aired since the last time I watched it.

Merlin: September 12
Yeah, this one already started but I’ve yet to watch it. Like NCIS this is one of those shows I watch when I have time. I’m kind of meh about the whole thing overall, but it’s entertaining enough to keep up with when things are quiet.

Returning Shows I’ll Probably Watch But Are On Notice

How I Met Your Mother: September 20
Okay, last season was almost entirely disappointing. Remember all that character development that happened? Yeah, if we get some of that again this season I’ll hang on. But the thread is thin.

Barney is hilarious, often even when his character is static. But he’s so much more interesting when given a little bit of real meat to cling to around all that corn and sausage.

Also? A return of awesome Robin would be nice, too.

The Big Bang Theory: September 23
Sheldon is too hilarious for me to completely avoid this show, and almost everything about the friendship/stalemate between Sheldon and Penny is gold. Everything else about this one is completely forgettable, irksomely irritating, or completely maddening.

I know it’s hip and cool right now to use all lowercase letters in your brand names, menus and whatnot. Heck, I do it too — just look up at my header and you’ll note a lack of proper case.

But!

This does not mean you should completely abandon reason in your quest to appear youthful and edgy. Capitalization serves a legitimate purpose in the English language: it helps us decipher proper nouns and names from other words, especially when a word could be either. On the internet correct case performs an even more important task: proper use of capital letters helps us scan content quickly. Capitalization often indicates important keywords like place and name. It also helps us quickly identify and digest those clever informational chunks known as “sentences”. Without capital letters, periods get easily lost and sentences blur together visually, making it difficult and frustrating to read quickly.

Blog post titles and any website body content that is longer than six or seven words should always use proper case. At least, they always should if you’d actually like people to read the stuff you’ve written. Branding is great, but when it gets in the way of what you’re trying to say you’re probably doing it wrong.

Missing those capital letters,

Chelle

SheThought, a blog for, by and about women and critical thinking, is fast becoming one of my most favourite places on the Internet. The contributors include a variety of people from different backgrounds from science to arts and varying exposure to the online or offline feminist movement. The one thing they all share is a desire to think rationally, to be thoughtful about issues and ideas, and to embrace open discussion and civil, constructive conversation.

Recently, contributor Ben Radford had some thoughts on the reactions to a poll on girls and what they think about Photoshop and fashion photography. I had time to participate and ask questions in comments — which is not something I usually do — and though I haven’t had the opportunity yet to look up some of the studies he pointed me to, it’s on my To-Do list.

The idea that being surrounded by images of unrealistic female bodies has impacted the female gender’s collective cultural body image is one of those things that everybody “knows” in the same way that everybody “knows” images — especially fashion and celebrity photos — are heavily altered and Photoshopped, but where did these ideas come from? Is there valid data to support these “known” facts? This is a legitimate question I hadn’t spent much time thinking about: I assumed somewhere, someone had done the legwork and filed it away as fact before disseminating it to the masses. As I become increasingly interested in the skeptical movement I’m discovering this isn’t always true. I’m still learning what differentiates a good, scientific study from a less solid one so I can be better equipped to spot faulty methodologies that lead to incorrect assumptions. The last thing women need is to put our efforts into fighting the wrong battles, and if this is potentially one of them I think it’s valid to look critically at.

Having said that, I still think there is value for everyone in our culture in seeing a broader representation of body type and beauty in all media, from fashion magazine to movies to television. I have no studies of my own to back up that thought, only the anecdotal knowledge that TV characters like Criminal Minds’ Penelope Garcia who illustrate happiness in life and love isn’t dependant on your waist size can be important cultural role models that we can use more of. And while I’ve always thought the fashion industry gets too much blame when it comes to body image issues, I also believe there’s no downside in people of all shapes, sizes and colours seeing themselves represented there more often. If fashion is art, then the bodies that wear it are canvases, so why stick to a one-size mentality? Wall art comes in sizes that vary from hand-held to house-sized, so why can’t haute couture?

I definitely recommend adding SheThought to your reading list: there hasn’t been a post yet I haven’t found interesting, and while I have focused here on a feminism-related article, I love that this is a place for women to speak and be heard on topics that aren’t necessarily “women’s issues”. It’s a place for and about women, but it’s not all “about women”. Women think and have opinions about everything from science to politics to comedy, and not all of our online spaces have to be about the experience of being a woman all the time.

Feminism & Women

• Feministe asks why, when asked to cover Reshma Saujani’s New York Congressional campaign, the reporter chose to write, not about issues, but about shoes. This is a long-standing debate about the way things should be and the way things are, and how and when females do or should respond in which way. A female Congressional candidate shouldn’t have to worry about the message her shoes are sending any more than a male Congressional candidate worries about his. The reality, however, is that women in politics will be judged on their appearance and fashion choices in the current cultural climate and have to deal with it and all its maddening mixed messages if they want their opinions heard. Fair is not always synonymous with reality is the point I think Susan Dominus was trying to make in the origina New York Times article, though in a roundabout, meandering sort of way. In the end, the article seemed to be more about the shoes than it was about anything else, which is probably a pretty good example of exactly what we’re talking about here.
• On Livejournal, Karnythia talks about the challenges of being pretty. Society does privilege attractive people, but as a woman and a person of colour the intersections of misogyny still cause problems, some of which can be exacerbated by being pretty. More opportunity, but also more grabbie hands (and sometimes actual hands, because being female means your body is public property to some people).
• In news about women being just as bad as men when it comes to sexism, Caster Semenya’s competitors are still flailing about her gender. Outstanding talent and ability in athletes — male and female — should be praised, not vilified. Regardless of whether or not this issue should have ever even been an issue (much less a public one) it has been officially settled. Calling her a “man” at this point is a cheap shot. How can women ever expect men to treat us better if we don’t treat each other better?

Privilege

• This post is called The Myth of White Male Geek Rationality but it’s valid reading for everyone. This is about the realities of implicit bias, of unconscious -isms, of invisible discrimination and naïvety. The tricky thing about -isms is how subconscious they are, how they set into our brains without our knowing it and create rules we don’t consciously know about. Think you’re “colourblind”? Think you don’t treat women differently than men? You’re not and you do. This isn’t something we should feel guilty about, but it is something we must awknowledge in order to change. We are all biased: no one is exempt. Some people are just more aware of our biases than others, and actively try to catch and correct them.

Clothing & Costuming

• A fantastic primer on menswear, with special emphasis on suit styles and cuts. I cannot begin to express my glee at this. I love menswear, and wish more of my male friends would let me go clothing shopping with them. As much as I didn’t enjoy the cut-through culture of working at Tip Top Tailors years ago, I do miss the deep satisfaction of matching men with just the right suit, shirt and tie. This tutorial may appear to the uninformed to be comprehensive, but menswear lovers will know this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Feminism & Women

• What does the word “sexualization” mean, how is it being used, and how is it affecting girls and teenagers? I think this is an entirely valid commentary on how slut shaming has become an integral part of our culture. “‘Sexualization’ is a troubling piece of cultural shorthand. It suggests that sexuality is something that is done to young women, rather than something that they can own and control: that they can never be sexual, only sexualised.” It’s easier to take girls and women to task for dressing provacatively than to address rape culture and violence at its core. This is a word with cultural nuance that both makes females the victim and simultaneously blames them for it.
• I asked the wonderful Heidi Anderson for some sex positive links on Twitter, and she responded by creating this fabulous sex positive link roundup! Includes dozens of sites and blogs, with clear indication of which includes SFW and NSFW content. So far I’ve only had the time to go through a few of these, but what I have is excellent. Thanks Heidi!
• There’s been a lot of response to this comic from Penny Arcade, including a post on the Geek Feminism Blog about Classic Conditioning and how it affects rape culture on why this comic is problematic. While I grant the point, I tend to agree more with this article on Pandagon that takes greater offense on the follow up non-apology apology comic which absolutely does makes light of rape.
• Feminism helps everyone, not just the women, and men are affected by patriarchal ideas too.
• What does a “real” feminist act like? The idea that all feminists are the same, think the same and act the same makes being a feminist all the more frustrating sometimes. We don’t all agree — in fact, some of the biggest feminist battles are being fought between women who identify as feminists. Look. You can’t pick us out of a line up. We don’t dress a certain way or act a certain way or believe in the same things. We are, as all people, individuals first and our individual experiences make up who we are, including our feminist perspective. Also? In my experience there is a direct correlation between people who use words like “feminazi” to describe feminism and the lack of knowledge they actually have about feminism, its history, and the myriad of different opinions and degrees of opinions it manifests.

Science & Technology

• Melinda Wenner Moyer talks about how women aren’t properly represented in many scientific studies and how that endangers women and limits our scientific knowledge.
• Science is showing that differences in male and female ability is more to do with socialisation and social expectation instead of genetics. I have long suspected our highly gendered culture makes up most of the difference: if we are surrounded by a culture that teaches us explicitly and implicitly from birth that boys have better spatial skills and girls are more emotionally intuitive, it isn’t a wonder expertise in those skills tend to break down by gender. We learn who we are by living in the world and taking cues from the culture around us, and mostly we do what we’re taught we’re supposed to be good at.
• The plural of anecdote is not data, and good science often isn’t sexy. Great article in the Edmonton Journal on how anecdotes make lazy research and aren’t often a good basis from which to make important decisions.
• Interesting article on how Star Trek: The Next Generation imagined the iPad 23 years ago. It’s fun to think that choices made by a television props department largely on the basis of cost have inspired actual technology, from the flip phone to the iPad.

Politics

• The Canadian federal government is getting rid of the compulsory long-form part of the Canadian census. I have not done as much reading on this issue as I would like. I also don’t know what specific questions the long form covers that the short does not and where those questions have been useful in the past. Hmm….

Usability

• Here’s a great and informative article about designing websites to be friendly for colourblind users that includes a little of the science behind what being colourblind is and isn’t. Informative and helpful.