Our name is a play on the Black-Crowned Night Heron, the City Bird of Oakland, who can be seen perched on a dumpster at Broadway and Franklin in my banner photo :D They're cute and curious and have been observed to engage in bait fishing! If they find food but prefer a fish, they go fishing with it!
You can support my team, the Aight Herons, with a flat donation OR (imo more fun) by pledging a certain amount per bird species spotted and identified!
You can pledge support here: charity.pledgeit.org/f/nmh6n0e51s and see more about the event here: charity.pledgeit.org/baybirdingch... #fundraiser
This Saturday during @northbaypython.org I'm going to be counting the bird species I spot at #ReisRiverRanch as part of the Bay Birding Challenge, which raises money for the Golden Gate Bird Alliance in addition to generating some cool conservation data about the 9 bay area counties' birds!
There's a key technical problem over at @civic.band. I have blogged about it, and would appreciate reads and shares.
It's the most #CivicTech and #OpenData problem I've ever worked on.
meta.civic.band/archive/the-...
To my non tech normies, PSA: when you share a link, everything after the ? is tracking. Those “query parameters” tell companies exactly how you arrived, what app you clicked, which ad or email sent you, sometimes a unique identifier tied to you. You can delete everything after the question mark.
If anyone is still looking for a team for the Bay Birdathon, I think we have some extra room on my team, the Aight Herons! Today is the last day to sign up, but lmk if you'd like the link! Some of us will be birding from @northbaypython.org , which always has incredible birds to spot during breaks!
NEWS YOU CAN PROBABLY MAKE USE OF (can I phrase that any snappier?)
Hotel Petaluma found some more rooms for #NBPy attendees over the weekend, so if you want to stay in Petaluma during #NBPy, now you can!
Yay! Congratulations to everyone, especially my county librarian, Deb Sica, who I've been very fortunate to get to know through my work with our Library Advisory Commission. Her dedication to patron access, privacy, and inclusion ensure that our unincorporated areas are as supported as our cities.
This week in "the library is the real everything app":
I just learned that they now also have pet adoption support??? waived adoption fees from Oakland Animal Services in March with your Oakland Public Library card and they'll be hosting bilingual "pup-ups" soon to help you find a new friend!
The BsidesSF keynote on a movie screen. The screen is divided into four unequal parts. The top left has the title "Let's do the timewarp again! a look back to move forward" and presenter name Anna Westelius. At the top right, you can see Anna, a white woman with straight Auburn hair wearing a crisp white blouse. Below Anna's video is this year's BsidesSF logo. Across the entire bottom is a partial caption fragment that wasn't super accurate but ended up in the photo visibly-accidentally. At the bottom left is Anna's slide, with her name and the talk title again as a header. The slide title is "A call to actions!" and the slide has four actions in white text with red numbers on a black background. The actions are: "1. Pick one thing you can do, in your sphere of influence, that nudges us towards that next, better state - and start that work here, this weekend. 2. Don't just go to the talks that confirm what you already know; pick at least one that stretches how you think. 3. Connect with others. All what inspires them - but also what they are worried about, or what's surprised them this far. Ask blunt questions. Take notes. Let people see you. 4. Write down one concrete thing you're going to take back with you."
Loved the #bsidessf opening keynote by Anna Westelius this morning! I was still too much in the process of waking up to post more, but hopefully I made up for it with this wall of alt text.
Watch the video when it's out!
Hello from #BsidesSF ! I'll be around through #RSAC2026 too, but today I'm wearing a Day of Shecurity T-shirt, a jacket with many pins, and a ponytail held by a Clippy scrunchie.
Please say hi if you see me!
hello friends
have you considered coming to our conference? It'll be good I promise. pretix.northbaypython.org/nbpy/nbpy-20...
p.s. how do you make people pay attention on bsky? usually it's just enough to be mildly weird on mastodon but this place is just incomprehensible
Tonight I caught myself thinking "I wish I actually knew these Korean words instead of just having a feel for what the right answer should sound like" as if that's not just what knowing words is 😅
This week my students had a special career presentation on imposter syndrome as a software engineer, and instructors were asked to give an example of a time we experienced imposter syndrome but now I'm noticing it EVERYWHERE.
At this point the geographic associations of area codes serve mostly as a fun fact for future people you meet to go "ohmigosh, I love that place! we went for vacation once" or "I've never been but I want to, where should I eat" 😅
was just discussing “AI” with a coworker and realized this:
if i had wanted to use english to program complex systems that run nondeterministically, i would’ve gone into law
I had to file a complaint last year about a pharmacy that had no way to request refills for months, and when I called in the regulator had gotten over 100 reports but nobody had the documentation he needed to follow up. He was PSYCHED to get all my time-stamped notes and had it fixed in two weeks.
Yeah, plus I can arbitrage some privilege here... lots of people don't know they can file a complaint or how, and I've got a compliance background. Tech skills are more common for disabled people than baseline, but still definitely not universal.
I'm really not sure who handles that for my area, but now that I'm not running late I'll dig into it a bit later. I did give up and say "operator" then wait until it gave up and transferred me (30 seconds ish?), so I eventually managed to tell someone I was running late this time
A photo of Robin, a new library commissioner, and Lisa, the commission assistant, signing the oath of office. The photo is overlaid with this quotation from Robin: "Libraries represent so much of what is right in the world at a time when it's hard not to be scared or overwhelmed by all that's wrong. They are a material commitment we make to each other, to inform, connect, inspire, and help us grow into our best selves – at every stage of life."
I remain so chuffed to have joined the Sonoma County Library Commission.
Libraries are the best example of why we have a society in the first place, and why it's worth putting our backs into the work of building a better world. Let's commit to one another.
Surely, running late for an appointment isn't a thing anybody calls their medical provider about, right? I'm definitely the first person ever to miss a train because of elevator trouble on the way to see the doctor. Why would THAT have been in the acceptance test plan? 😐
Ugh, Sutter Health has apparently now launched an AI phone bot with no opt out and it literally doesn't know what to do if you say "I'm running late".
@alex.bsky.team Great chatting today! Love the banner image; if you have time to swing back by the booth tomorrow, I have some related stickers and would happily share one
Some organizations' office of the Chief Learning Officer (who usually comes up through L&D/HR) has a role like this, but I've unfortunately seen both roles becoming less prevalent in the last few years even as we start to acknowledge that AI-powered engineering roles are fundamentally humanities!
Thank you! This looks great, and I'm very excited to be included 💖
Very excited to announce that I'll be joining @northbaypython.org as a speaker again this year! This time we're going to talk about Crisis (Technical) Communication, and the lifesaving skills that you, Pythonista, may not even realize you have 💖
Yay!!! I love that, and not just because you linked to me in it. I feel like it's been a while since anybody has put out a reviewer-perspective walkthrough of the process. Thank you for writing this up!
