And bovil and I will be there, representing the San Jose in 2018 Worldcon bid!

We're on the lookout for non-North American residents who might be interested in representing the bid in European locales, because this is a great opportunity to hand off some promotional material rather than schlep it both ways internationally. If that sounds like something you might like to help do, comment here or drop me a line at kevin.roche@sjin2018.org

Saturday I preesented "The Accidental Roboticist" at the Livermore Public Library as the final talk in the Livermore Reads Together program for 2016.

Between 80 and 100 people attended, at least 1/3 of them children. My talk was short, 15 slides in about 35 minutes (or so, I took questions as we went along) and then time for people to come up and play with ThinBot, Arthur-9 and some of my neoPixel projects. (ThinBot was filled with water only, before you ask).

Thanks to bovil who shepherded people through the ThinBot navigation while I bounced between the youngsters driving Arthur-9 with my phone and people who had questions about Arduino, wearable electronics, and various and sundry other topics. Thanks, too, to Diane O. who helped encourage the shyer kids (or parents) to have a go with A-9.

We arrived at about 12:20, the talk started at 2pm, and we were done and loaded to head home at 5pm. Andy's Photos are up on our robotics team page, Drinks Advanced Research Project Agency.
It was a long but rewarding afternoon, and I urge folks to support Friends of the Livermore Libary, who sponsor the Livermore Reads Together program.

Also, if you live in Livermore or have friends who do, they have assorted robots you can check out for a month at a time to learn to program!

This morning San Francisco Science Fiction Conventions, Inc. (SFSFC) announced that should the San Jose in 2018 bid for the 76th World Science Fiction Convention succeed, I will be the convention chair.

You can read the complete press release on the SFSFC website.

I'm thrilled, honored, and (appropriately) mildly terrified to have been appointed.

There have been lots of congratulatory notes and (more importantly!) offers of help flying in already, which is quite gratifying.

To avoid the curse of social media scrolling your offer away, if you want to reach me at my "official" address, it's kevin.roche@sjin2018.org.

I'm featured on the IBM Research blog today.

http://ibmresearchnews.blogspot.com/2015/04/profile-of-ibm-scientist-kevin-roche.html?m=1

And, because someone asked, the no-stripes hair in one photo is from just before Costume College 2007 so I'd bleached it preparatory to doing Vanamonde from Girl Genius.

Tomorrow I'm honored to be a panelist on Talking to the Future, an all-day event at the Computer History Museum.

We'll be talking to 100 high school students about what got us started in technology and science, putting on our own little maker fair for the kids (and yes, ThinBot will be represented, somehow*) and then each of us doing breakout sessions with 20 of the students.

Apparently my mohawk gave their art department some difficulties when posterizing my headshot.

So it (the mohawk) will obviously have to be up in one form or another tomorrow.

( Spoilers...Collapse )

Just got word that my Power Suit won the award in Full Ensemble for Most Innovative Design in the PIQF Wearable Art Competition.

(PIQF a is the Pacific International Quilt Festival. This was a juried and judged competition -- juried to have a piece accepted, then judged on site)

I did finish the 10k, and in 58:39, which met my goal of completing in under an hour.!



And yes, the medal has a beer bottle opener built in.