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Worldcon: My Panels!
I was on four Panels at the Dublin 2019 Worldcon, and I'd like to thank the programme organisers for giving me such amazing opportunities. I have definitely levelled up at panels as a result of this experience.
Thursday I was on "How to build an Evil Empire", well moderated by Lee Harris. I got to share the stage with two Guests of Honour: Steve Jackson, and Diane Duane (who is one of my very favourite authors). I was only slightly paralysed with terror, but very dazzled by the bright cinema lights. Unsurprisingly, many people turned up for this one, so I treated them to the evil British Empire, and the successes and failures of Voldemort's empire-building (10/10 for propaganda and distributing essential resources, minus several million for not monitoring his resources properly). Also gave a plug for![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
yhlee's Machineries of Empire series!
Friday: Groundbreaking women in Science. Lauren James (author) kindly moderated this for us. Corry L. Lee and Rebecca O'Neill (both PhDs) were great panellists to be with, and I treated the audience to some of my research into the Cavendish Computers, the "girls in the attic", and Dr Ann Neville, who wrote with Ryle a number of papers on earth-rotation aperture synthesis. (This research is a side project, not what I'm paid to do, in the same way that the minutes of Boy Scout Association meetings are run off on photocopiers across the country on Friday afternoons (apologies to Pratchett), as is traditional for History of Science projects. Thanks to those who have offered to help me with this project; I hope to follow up soon - around the weekend if possible.) Quite a lot (>60%) of the audience were women.
To answer the question at the end that we didn't have time to answer: there's nothing that women should have to do after a career-break for child-raising. The institutions should re-organise themselves to better support women, care-givers and anyone that needs to take a career break, by e.g. providing mechanisms to ensure that this doesn't disadvantage them when apply for jobs and promotions.
Saturday, I was on a terrifying panel on Past Astronomy meets Future Astronomy, with Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell (another GoH) and Brother Guy Consolmagno, Director of the Vatican Observatory. I was so nervous that I threw up before this panel (much Lady Astronaut, very anxiety), but they were both lovely andrmc28 a) said I sounded very cool and b) said that I should store up the applause I got when I introduced myself, to restore me when I'm feeling down about my work. It was great to briefly talk about John Scottus Eriugena and the Venerable Bede, and also LOFAR and the SKA. I particularly enjoyed Dame Jocelyn talking about the Birr telescope, Leviathan, which was for a long time the largest telescope in the world.
Sunday I was on a panel on Will We Ever Have Sentient AI? (Spoiler: signs point to no) with Dr V. Anne Smith, Antii Helin, and Stephen Cass, who was an excellent moderator. I felt really in the zone on this one, and had a great time. I loved listening to Anne talk about biology, sentience and AI, and Antti on algorithmic bias. I got to talk about why we don't want to use AI for most processing for the Square Kilometre Array Science Data Processor (reproducibility), the differences between e.g. GPUs, tensor units and the Mark I Human Brain, how chess is not a measure of general intelligence for computers, and Holly from Red Dwarf.
Our audience was majority mail (I estimate >90%), and our moderator made a point to solicit questions from women, which I particularly appreciated.
I hope that those who attended these panels got as much out of them as I did.
Thursday I was on "How to build an Evil Empire", well moderated by Lee Harris. I got to share the stage with two Guests of Honour: Steve Jackson, and Diane Duane (who is one of my very favourite authors). I was only slightly paralysed with terror, but very dazzled by the bright cinema lights. Unsurprisingly, many people turned up for this one, so I treated them to the evil British Empire, and the successes and failures of Voldemort's empire-building (10/10 for propaganda and distributing essential resources, minus several million for not monitoring his resources properly). Also gave a plug for
yhlee's Machineries of Empire series!Friday: Groundbreaking women in Science. Lauren James (author) kindly moderated this for us. Corry L. Lee and Rebecca O'Neill (both PhDs) were great panellists to be with, and I treated the audience to some of my research into the Cavendish Computers, the "girls in the attic", and Dr Ann Neville, who wrote with Ryle a number of papers on earth-rotation aperture synthesis. (This research is a side project, not what I'm paid to do, in the same way that the minutes of Boy Scout Association meetings are run off on photocopiers across the country on Friday afternoons (apologies to Pratchett), as is traditional for History of Science projects. Thanks to those who have offered to help me with this project; I hope to follow up soon - around the weekend if possible.) Quite a lot (>60%) of the audience were women.
To answer the question at the end that we didn't have time to answer: there's nothing that women should have to do after a career-break for child-raising. The institutions should re-organise themselves to better support women, care-givers and anyone that needs to take a career break, by e.g. providing mechanisms to ensure that this doesn't disadvantage them when apply for jobs and promotions.
Saturday, I was on a terrifying panel on Past Astronomy meets Future Astronomy, with Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell (another GoH) and Brother Guy Consolmagno, Director of the Vatican Observatory. I was so nervous that I threw up before this panel (much Lady Astronaut, very anxiety), but they were both lovely and
rmc28 a) said I sounded very cool and b) said that I should store up the applause I got when I introduced myself, to restore me when I'm feeling down about my work. It was great to briefly talk about John Scottus Eriugena and the Venerable Bede, and also LOFAR and the SKA. I particularly enjoyed Dame Jocelyn talking about the Birr telescope, Leviathan, which was for a long time the largest telescope in the world. Sunday I was on a panel on Will We Ever Have Sentient AI? (Spoiler: signs point to no) with Dr V. Anne Smith, Antii Helin, and Stephen Cass, who was an excellent moderator. I felt really in the zone on this one, and had a great time. I loved listening to Anne talk about biology, sentience and AI, and Antti on algorithmic bias. I got to talk about why we don't want to use AI for most processing for the Square Kilometre Array Science Data Processor (reproducibility), the differences between e.g. GPUs, tensor units and the Mark I Human Brain, how chess is not a measure of general intelligence for computers, and Holly from Red Dwarf.
Our audience was majority mail (I estimate >90%), and our moderator made a point to solicit questions from women, which I particularly appreciated.
I hope that those who attended these panels got as much out of them as I did.