0. MOVING THINGS OFF IT TO GIVE IT AWAY IS PAINFUL! Moving files from this phone is NOT FUN. I’ve had to manually dig through folders to find my files and they are not clearly labelled. This is really flipping gross and unfun. I had to add zero as I had written the post before I got to this part. Also I can’t open files off the phone like a normal USB… I have to move it to the computer first… which is annoying when the photos are all labelled in a nonsensical manner.

1. Crappy camera (in comparison to the Samsung Galaxy 2 which was released BEFORE the Nexus). I’ll admit I should have probably read up on the specs a bit more here, so that’s also a fail on my part.

2. Shithouse battery life. It’s really great to have a phone that does all of these awesome things (sort of), but if I can get away with taking only about 10 photos before running to the nearest bathroom to steal a powerpoint, then it’s a bit pointless. This is more than likely due to it’s large screen (I’ll admit I don’t mind the screen size, but other people think it’s weird). Apps aren’t built to utilise the larger screen anyway so there’s not really a value add.

3. I only have 4 options for the screen brightness which also impacts battery life. Low, medium, high or auto. iPhones have a sliding scale and I always ran mine on low level brightness.

4. I can’t read Emoji in apps like Path, which is annoying (#firstworldproblems, but when you work in social media this stuff is kinda important!)

5. You have to download a program to read the USB on a Mac.

6. It doesn’t run Google+ that well, and uses Google Messenger (what is this Google??? You have Google Chat AND Google Messenger? Me no understand you…)

7. It’s hard to work out where to turn notifications off on things. I like to be in control of what push notifications I get, and it’s on an app per app basis… which is annoying if I want to flick a whole heap off for a day and flick them back on the next.

8. I have no idea how to use it for music. So I’ve gone with rdio.

9. It doesn’t seem to have Swype.

10. When I went to Androidland, the guys didn’t really know what they were talking about and the dude kept flirting with my mate. The sign said you would give me a free Ice cream sandwich pin badge. You had ran out but did not know until after I’d signed the contract. I’m small minded like that.

Having recently moved to a new city and in many ways starting afresh, I have been required to build new relationships and participate in new social circles.

One of the things I’ve found interesting is how quickly I have managed to accumulate female friends.

This shouldn’t be so surprising to me: I generally make friends easily and have little problems holding my own in many social situations. But building a deep connection with other women is much more complex than building a solid friendship with a man and to be completely honest it scares the shit out of me.

The social dynamics between men and women is something that completely fascinates me, and I was triggered to reflect on the way I negotiate different elements of my life between the two sexes today when I read an article by Mara Olekalns on The Conversation titled “A lose-lose proposition: what’s really happening when women negotiate“.

The crux of the article is that women can negotiate however they like when negotiating with men (be tough, strong, macho or the more feminine rapport-based, accommodating style of negotiation) and they will probably end up with a financially decent outcome without compromising any social value.

However when negotiating with other women:

other women are highly sensitive to the gender-congruence of a female negotiator’s strategy: trust increases when female negotiators’ conform to gender stereotypes by implementing an accommodating strategy, but decreases when violating gender stereotypes by competing.

This is so ridiculously true! I am actually ashamed to admit that I have judged my previous female bosses as to whether or not they have a masculine style of management (the article uses the term competitive, I have been very un-feminist in summarising “you know, she’s a man-boss”) or a feminine style (“she understands, you know?”).

I always assumed it was one type or the other, and I’ve effectively pinned myself into the same dichotomy – man-style Sarah, and ladylike Sarah.

The article highlights that effectively what happens here is a loss of social capital – I love the idea that when you create a situation where women feel they have to act “like a man” to negotiate and other women respond negatively, we can actually measure that as a loss of social capital. Because it’s SO FUCKING TRUE!

The good news is according to Olekalns we can create social situations that reduce this behaviour.

When organisations provide clear guidelines on what is negotiable and when it is appropriate to negotiate, the gender gap in economic outcomes is removed.

By legitimating the act of negotiating, these strategies also remove the risk of incurring losses in social capital.

Anyhoo – I started by saying I have an amazing group of lady friends here in Melbourne and the thing I like about all of them is that if I put my negotiation pants on they sure as heck don’t hate me for it. So: Cheryl, Sambe, Jules, Jan, Bryony, Kealey, Lara, Kate, Alana, Doris, Jana, Andrea – massive girl love to you today.

Last weekend a group of us gathered at Circus Oz in Melbourne at an unconference called Trampoline.

An unconference is an event that starts with an empty grid and attendees pitch their session ideas until the grid fills up.

I had already confessed in advance to @Pat (one of the 3 organisers, the others being @melinachan and @aida_lee) that I had a session in mind so when that moment of awkwardness of pitching early hit, I knew I’d be in trouble if i didn’t step up.

I was freaking out as the session was based on a roughly outlined idea I had during a conversation with Jana. We were both tired and a bit worn down late on a Friday night and we went for a drive, discovering that the best conversation we could have was just taking in each other’s company in silence. That level of being comfortable with someone enough to know that neither of you have to say anything is a pretty special point to reach in a friendship, but getting to that point usually takes time.

I wanted to see if there was a way to break down the “getting to know you” process much more quickly, and perhaps cut past some of the usual traps we fall into when we are meeting new people.

The idea of Silent Networking was to remove speech from the experience.

I had no clue what would happen and was somewhat shitting myself as to what would happen. I thought I probably should have planned it a bit further than “get everyone in a room and ask them to get to know each other without talking”.

So I opened by saying “I’ll be honest and say this is a social experiment that I have never tried before. As usual, the law of two feet applies. Let’s get yourselves into groups and we’ll see where this goes!”

I started by leaving the room to go and get some music. I won’t lie: I really didn’t want to be held responsible if these people wasted the next 20 minutes looking at each other thinking “what has this crazy woman done to the start of our day”. Bailing for a few minutes shifted the onus for me to lead and instead placed the responsibility back into the room to do something with their situation. Ultimately I think this was a smart move.

I bounce back in with a laptop and discourteously start blaring Triple J Hottest 100 Volume 6. By blaring, I mean it was on the lowest possible volume but it sounded like I was Quasimodo ringing the bells it was that intrusive.

The trends in the room were interesting to observe. No-one really moved around the room and each group sort of tried experimenting with different techniques.

One group used an iPad and started drawing their professions (which is weird because my instinct would be to type). Another group used a notepad and wrote. One guy had some juggling balls, and they slowly started doing the rounds… interestingly being thrown across the room for people to meet without moving. I thought people who knew them were throwing them to each other at first, but found out after it was a way to break the ice between strangers.

Peter Spence said his group sat there for a few seconds and tried to use their eyes to communicate. He said it felt really weird so they scrapped that idea. Then they all held hands and that didn’t work either. it was just too close and wasn’t valuable.

My favourite part was when Elise decided to give me a massage and we ended up making a massage chain. Sounds weird, but bizarrely it was appropriate for “starting conversation” in the room.

All in all the experiment was a “success” in that no-one yelled at me or really left the room (despite them all having two feet).

Personally, I found it REALLY challenging as an extrovert to participate in this session, but was ridiculously pleased with how it turned out.

If you were there, feel free to offer feedback in the comments and I’ll take it on board as I’d love to do this again in the future (Peter Spence has suggested it might be an interesting addition to CPX).

You know, “like” like you… as in “more than a friend”.

Having not had a serious boyfriend since high school (which doesn’t count anyway because it was high school) I tend to instead get crushes on people. The regularity with which this happens is somewhat frightening (especially when measured in ratio to the number of boyfriends) but as an upside I am now able to draw out the key patterns of my crushing routine.

This is part of a writing experiment for me whereby I publicly express something that I usually reserve only for myself and close friends. As only close friends read my ranting at the moment, I am embracing that as a chance to have conversations that I would normally have with them at 3am – these “Deep And Meaningful” posts should allow me more opportunity to bring those discussions into the everyday (and increase my potential for sleep).

1. I will avoid talking to you.

I won’t avoid you altogether as I find your presence intoxicating. However, when it comes to actually speaking to you I become somewhat mute. My close friends find this ridiculously odd behaviour as I am usually the most socially well-adjusted extrovert they know. But when my crush radar is activated, my once-bubbly self becomes a socially-inept statue (I also minimise movement to avoid klutzyness). My theory on this behaviour is that I can’t seem arrogant, idiotic or selfish if I don’t speak, but the actual result is that I behave in a ridiculous manner not at all reflecting my actual being… which is not great for converting you to like me back.

2. I will try to make things for you

Given my lack of ability to speak to you as outlined above, I will instead adopt the mantra of the location of my first crush, Lismore High School. Spectemur Agendo means “Let us be judged by our acts”. I will go to ridiculous lengths to do things, not even necessarily for you, but sometimes with you, or to impress you, or to make you say “Wow! This girl makes amazing things, therefore she must be amazing!” and often I make things just to distract myself. I will admit this is where having a crush has been very handy in my life: almost all of my major projects have been fuelled by a crush on a guy and I have pushed myself to make things I never dreamed imaginable. You know flow-state? It pales in comparison to being in crush-state. I can move mountains when I have feelings for someone, and if it wasn’t for the heady rush and backwards logic attached to those crushes I would never get anything done.

3. I can’t sleep, and therefore will be running on adrenalin when I see you

I will stay up late waiting for that last flicker of communication before bed that reassures me you are maybe slightly interested (even if you’re not and you just actually need to communicate, given point 1 has established I’m shit at it and point 2 implies I’ve probably involved you in some crackpot idea that involves communicating with you on a regular basis). BUT THEN I will be awoken about 2 hours before the time I need to wake up and feel the need to start building things again. Not just once, but EVERY DAY I have a crush on you until you tell me it’s not going to work out. I will also regularly proclaim “I need a nap”. (Oh who am I kidding, I can’t blame that bit on you…I just love sleeping in the daytime!)

4. I will try and seduce you to avoid you getting to know the real me

I have learned that going to bed with someone is a justifiably fun way to kill anyone’s romantic interest fairly quickly. I have read countless books on the subject, and have many theories as to why when I sleep with someone they are happy to do that till the cows come home but once you’ve done that part you can’t fix it in post by adding romance to the mix. Once you know someone in the Biblical sense it’s hard to move to knowing them in the Love Actually sense. It’s a one way street and if you enter at the wrong part you’ve missed the chance of swimming back upstream to the part you missed.

I don’t write the rules but I sure as heck know how to play by them and for me the quickest way to end this pain that is having a crush on you is to cross the line from friends to “special friends”, effectively ruining any chance of romance – with the handy add-on of being able to blame you for it. You have romantically rejected me after all… and like Aladdin’s Genie played by Robin Williams informed us all in Disney rule #428: you can’t wish people to fall in love with you.

5. I will try and set you up with someone else

This one is occurring a lot less these days, but I’m guessing it’s mainly because I have number 4 down to a fine art (and let’s face it, 4 is a bit more fun). If you are not single, I biologically cannot get a crush on you. It is a very strange thing I have learned about myself, but I’d like to think my genes have realised that in order for me to survive they had better kick in some sort of superpower to halt my crushdom from hitting overdrive levels. I can think someone is the bees knees as per all other crushes I have, but the moment someone mentions they have a girlfriend, partner, wife or whatever, I actually feel my body start to undo the crush. It is the strangest feeling but an absolute relief because I could imagine no worse prison than having a crush on someone who is not available. Employing my learnings from this, some part of my brain has created a logic that if I do not want to have a crush on you anymore, I should match you with someone else and artificially trigger the “Girlfriend Response”. Of course this has never actually been successful – I am pretty bad at matchmaking at the best of times, let alone when under the duress of having a crush on one of the parties involved.

I’m sure there are more ways, and my friends will observe different things to what I actively acknowledge that I do (happily leaving the comments enabled). But this is a good guide for beginners, and also is set to serve as a checklist for me to help trigger acknowledgement that I do in fact like you: weirdly enough, I’m also often the last to know.

BONUS:

6. I will try to find ways to not like you.

Of course, if you do me the favour of outright telling me you don’t like me back that pretty much instantly moves you to the “unlike” status pretty swiftly. But given that you probably don’t even realise I like you unless you’ve read this post, I don’t see why you would feel inclined to declare your non-like of me!

The only proven way to cure liking you if you don’t like me back is unliking you over time (I’m also assuming this is the reason Facebook only has a “like” button).

I’m not pessimistic that this will always be the case, and any of my close friends will happily attest to my undying optimism that you might in fact reciprocate and like me back. And if it wasn’t for that optimism I would never experience the crazy feeling of thinking someone is so amazing that I might actually like to share some of my unique bit of awesome with them, or have accomplished half of the impossible things I have been able to bring into this world driven by the fuel of being in pure crush-state.

So for that reason, I’m glad I like you. Because the world would be a little less interesting if I didn’t.

I knew it. There are no bad photos of Ryan Gosling on the internet.

I just read an article tweeted by the awesome Julia Hughan. The article is about a discussion at SXSW led by All Things Digital’s Kara Swisher on why there aren’t more women in tech and in particular in leadership roles / starting their own companies.

The reasoning:

“Fewer women with math backgrounds to take lead technical roles.” And it’s because they don’t feel awesome.

Why don’t young girls feel awesome?

Here’s why I never felt awesome enough to pursue maths, science or engineering despite being awesomely capable to do so.

Warning: What follows is a stream of consciousness rant that results in me wanting to take my left brain to the gym for a workout…(instead I took my body to Zumba!)

My love of computers and mathematics started when I was informally accelerated in primary school by an amazing teacher I had in years 1-3 who would just give me maths problems from the years above me, until I ran out and he’d send me to the library to do my own thing. There I found books on problem solving, and when I’d enter maths competitions I would completely blitz it.

This same teacher let me run crazy on Microbees and build my own games with the green text on the black screen, while everyone else played Raft Away River (OK, I freaking loved that game too, but BUILDING YOUR OWN was awesome).

My next maths teacher / mentor person started an extracurricular maths class. My primary school was a bit of a guinea pig school and we got to take time out of class to extend ourselves in the things we were passionate about. I did maths enrichment group and we would sit around and discuss maths problems and do brain challenges. This added a social element to maths that I really enjoyed. Most of these kids then moved to other schools, and particularly to the local school that opened a class for bright kids. But I sure as shit wasn’t leaving my friends!

All my primary school teachers left me to my own devices to pursue my analytical interests. When I returned to class, I’d join the others in P.E., Italian, English and everything else. But to be good at maths was to be in solitude – or elitist and removed from friends.

In high school I sat an IQ test and got accelerated in mathematics and in science. It was social suicide, but luckily I fell in with some amazing women in the year above me and always sat at the back of the class which eventually leant me to (almost) social acceptance across both grades.

I was the first girl computer programmer at my high school to enter into competition. My teacher took pride in that, and he held me up as a role model to other women for years after (I know this because my younger cousin who went through school after me made a point of letting me know).

However, I didn’t take pride in it. I did two extracurricular activities during my lunchtimes: choir and programming. If I missed programming I would tell them I was at choir (and I usually was), but if I missed choir I would NEVER tell them I was learning to code. It was my secret shame – hanging out with the most beautifully intelligent (yet socially inept) kids of the school did not bode well on my social resume.

I have never in my life told people about these things and how they shaped me. Not with pride anyway. I was SO embarrassed to be good at maths and science – it was painful to be good at something, love it, but to then be punished for it in the schoolyard. I’m a social butterfly, dammit!

Some of the things I think need to be considered about these early experiences and how they translated to me NOT pursuing maths / science / engineering / technical life:

1. I had male teachers in all my maths classes, and female teachers in all my english classes.

2. I had a male teacher give me a near-fail (pass minus I think it was called) when I built my first HTML site. He said I didn’t take the project seriously, and I said I wanted to be creative about it because it wasn’t challenging and technically I did nothing wrong – the code was perfect. If you didn’t want it fluro pink and with unicorns, then you should have said so. These days I would say “Write a better brief, dude.”

3. My English classes were creative: my maths classes were often silent. People talking at me, rather than nutting things out with the person next to me, drove me crazy in my maths classes. I got kicked out all the time! (In year 12, I ended up kicking myself out for two weeks and flew through the textbook. Then, when we had a substitute teacher who was not meant to teach maths, I offered to teach the class for him. I ran discussion groups where we would try to explain to each other what things meant. People would connect with others who thought in the same way as them, and the teacher got a free ride by letting us go for it. Win freaking win if you ask me. P.S. By this point I’d dropped out of accelerated maths and was doing “Maths in the beergarden” in my own cohort – but that’s another story).

4. You could be good at maths or English, but not both. Timetabling at our school always directed you to pick one over the other – because why should you be good at both? Just pick one thing and specialise. In Year 8 one of my teachers observed “Sarah, most people’s paths are a pyramid. They start with a broad range of interests and slowly narrow down to what they want to be. Your pyramid? It’s inverted.” God bless him he’s still right.

So: after so much discouragement, social outcasting and lack of appeal to my introverted self, my pre-tertiary education beat the passion out my left brain entirely.

What am I supposed to do about that? I still love all those things but cringe at learning and exploring because the transfer of knowledge doesn’t appeal to my senses and now-very-exercised- right brain enthusiasm.

Socially, the path to becoming a female tech pioneer from here on out could be a struggle for me personally. But then again women can do anything. So: bring it the fuck on, I say.

Since my adventures with Best Job in The World, competitions have become a personal fascination for me.

What makes a good competition? A great prize? A great marketing tool? What are the lessons learned from running a competition online?

I think about this stuff probably a bit more than I’d like to be honest.

I’m often approached by people looking to win competitions that require skill: e.g. film contests with a popular voting component. So I sharpen my skills on a regular basis.

As a frequent competition ponderer, by default I’ve become an avid competition enterer.

This week I’ve won tickets to the Alliance French Film Festival and got a bit cross after finding a Lindt bunny in a Where’s Wally style promo only to find out it earned me an entry into the draw for something and not a direct prize.

So tonight I have set up a database to track all competitions running online that I can enter.

Next I’ll start a newsletter and charge people a small fee to subscribe to it.

If ever you’re thinking of running a competition, I can help you make it or break it.

Last weekend I went to Canberra and caught up with a high school mate from Lismore.

We were talking about where to get Chinese for dinner and he made a joke that we should go to the Mandarin Palace.

The Mandarin Palace was Lismore’s most prominent Chinese restaurant as it lives in the main CBD (on Keen street, on of the 4 streets that make up the main block, aka CBD).

The food quality at the Mandarin Palace varied over the years as different staff came and went. When I was young it was a space for special occasions, mainly because the interior was pretty and looked different to our lounge room. Oriental FTW.

Today I’m eating lunch at one of Melbourne’s best dumpling places, Hutong Dumplings. The dumplings here taste EXACTLY like the ones I ate in Beijing.

I’m having a reasonably late lunch on a Monday and only need a table for one. If I was wanting dinner and hadn’t booked, I’d struggle to get in.

In a big city, people can focus on their craft. They don’t need everyone to buy their stuff to make a living: they can appeal to a niche and be successful.

Cities support diversity and quality. You don’t have to be a jack, just focus like a master.

The same goes for my career. I can’t survive doing the work I love in the country. That sux in a lot of ways, but I’m so happy in my day to day I find it hard to be sad about some of the things I miss.

Cities create ecosystems where anything is possible – I am struggling with this in a very happy way.

It's not every day you drink beer inside an ants nest!

Tonight I adventured to the SmartBar event at Melbourne Museum. When we arrived, there were about 100 people waiting to buy tickets on the door after missing out online. At $20 including a complimentary drink, it’s no surprise.

The sell-out crowd had been invited to enjoy the marvels of the museum after dark, while enjoying premium beers and cocktails with friends. There were talks and interactive displays as well as a decent DJ to set the mood for the evening.

What I really enjoyed about the event was that you were in an environment built for conversation and exploration, not a venue designed for drinking (or, more to the point, designed for getting drunk).

The event was full of young people seemingly captured by the venue and having an awesome time. One of the things that crossed my mind is how great it would have been if it was a singles event: such a great venue to strike up a conversation with someone without it being awkward!

I’d like to make sure I head along to more events in seemingly unusual places: the vibe was just what I needed for a social Thursday evening drink.

I’ll be attempting to post every day in March and I’ve just beat the midnight deadline. Good luck to everyone getting their blog on this month, and thanks to Steve Hopkins for the nudge.

I’ve just moved to the marvellous city of Melbourne – the world’s most liveable city. I work in digital, and as such have developed a strong sense of community through the friends I have met online. Over time though, I came to realise that I missed the fun of physically hanging out with my friends, and when the opportunity to move to Melbourne arose, I was relieved to be with my friends at the pub rather than just on Twitter.

I grew up in a smallish town on the New South Wales Far North Coast. I always drew my sense of community from my family – I had a matriarchal great grandmother (Grandma), followed by an equally strong grandmother (Nana) who drew our family together.

From left: Nana, Bill and Grandma

One of Nana’s brothers is my great-uncle Bill. Bill is mentally disabled and has spent the whole of my lifetime in a wheelchair. A few years before Grandma died, our family secured housing and care to ensure he would be OK as Grandma could no longer care for him. Our family has a habit of living a long time, and every time Bill goes to hospital the doctors ask us why he heals so quickly!

Bill has worked as an employee for most of his life at Multitask, known as Challenge Foundation until 2007. This organisation allowed Bill to participate in a community of work – doing things such as bag lollies and make soap. Multitask has since shifted its focus from the just performing tasks, and among other initiatives now administers a co-living situation in Bill’s home which allows him to share a life with 4 others and a permanent carer (this situation changes occasionally, but that’s another story).

Emma, Bill and Nana at "Getting To Know You", held on Tuesdays once a month in South Lismore

Every Friday Bill would go to “Neighbourhood”, which was an event that drew together people from nursing homes, permanent carers and their children and others to sing, dance and socialise in the Lismore City Hall. During school holidays the numbers ballooned when Nana would tell us we all had to go too!

I was just listening to an episode of This American Life called Neighbourhood Watch. Act One was about a woman  who goes throughout her neighbourhood seeking a friend for her 23-year-old autistic son. She’s secured a home for him to live in independently, but finding friends for him is not an easy task.

Despite searching through every community service in her local area, the mother could not find a mechanism to find someone to volunteer as a friend to her son. The happy news is over time the son made friends with his neighbours by offering to mow their lawns and starting a conversation by getting involved in the happenings of his street – a challenge as an autistic person, however there was enough community that it eventually happened.

I don’t know why, but I was really upset hearing her story. To think that someone could live in a place where a mother would have to go to such lengths to simply find some company for her son really upset me. (The podcast is worth a listen!)

Having Bill in my life has taught me a lot about inclusiveness, family, community and participation. But above all else, it’s probably given me a subconscious motivation to ensure no-one is left alone in the world. Everyone has the right to a happy life, and happiness is most strongly felt when people feel a part of something and have a way to participate. The above video demonstrates how happy Bill and his friends are when they attend events like Neighbourhood and Getting To Know You.

Generally speaking, living both here and in Brisbane, I’m yet to feel that sense of community I grew up with as a child. That feeling of being a part of something bigger than yourself, that what you do matters and the ability to find happiness in participation. (I am probably just being nostalgic, because in hindsight I could not wait to leave to claustrophobic sensation of the town where everybody knows your business…but it wasn’t until I hit 18 that I felt this strongly.)

I often wonder about how a city functions and supports communities of people in an age where the single person household is on a drastic upward swing – what will the world’s most liveable city look like if there isn’t a focus on developing a community when the “community of family” doesn’t exist naturally?

I am yet to meet my Melbourne neighbours and the times we connect are when there’s an evacuation or the lift breaks. Notes in our building are pulled down within hours and there’s no community noticeboard. We don’t have a front porch to engage with people passing by and there are very few places you could find where you would go to hang out and meet people.

At Hub Melbourne on Monday, a few of us were extras in an RMIT shoot starring @rexter aka Pete Williams from Deloitte.

I am hyper-aware of my own ability to build a family of friends and I value that immensely. I hang at Hub Melbourne and am blessed that I’m not the only one of my friends who thinks Melbourne is a great city to live.

I hope that Melbourne grows to be not just a liveable city but a liveable community in the future. I miss hanging out with children, elderly people and people not from my working world – I look forward to exploring the opportunities I can find to help me connect in that way in my new home.