marianne.masculino

I’ve got a ton of stuff to write up on for the past few weeks. Namely the conferences/events I’ve gotten a chance to attend. Look forward to posts about:

• Got Social Media? Conference - Houston, TX
• BarCampTexas -Bryan, TX
• Bay Area Geek Girl Dinner #1 - Mountain View, CA
• Customer Service is the New Marketing Summit -San Francisco, CA

Oh, and my new job as a happiness engineer  here

Well, here we are…the last hours of 2007. It’s been a wicked, crazy year and I loved every minute of it(mostly). Despite the personal ups-and-downs, 2007 treated me pretty well. The biggest item was my move to San Francisco. I’m loving my new home and discovering new places, events, and people of course. I truly miss my Houston folk, because without them in my life it would’ve taken me much longer to get to where I am now(if ever). I’m looking forward to taking on 2008 and hopefully achieving a few (realistic) goals through the new year.

Without further ado…

1. Kelsey has told me time and time again, I need to blog more. Yes, I will try. What to write about? Who knows?
2. Learn and develop something in some sort of programming language. I will most likely tackle Django first.
3. Travel more. I love airports, flying and packing. I should do it more often.
4. To go along with #3, I plan to participate in more Startup Weekends. They are addictive.
5. Take more photos and learn more about photography
6. Bust out my wacom and improve my drawring skills

Here are a few highlights of my 2007

Ayo, Rene and I talking on our shoes.
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The next few months will be a busy one for me both personally and professionally.

- My 10-year high school reunion is coming up next week. Has it really been that long?

- I’m in planning stages for our first Hackday (maybe more of a Mashpit) for Pop Labs

- Attending my first BarCampHouston. I have the honor to help coordinate/organize the event as well.

- Learning myself on new things I’m really excited about.

- Improving current skills to coincide with the new ish I’m learning.

- Our Annual Boat Party in Austin for Labor Day

- AIR Houston 2007 team captain for one of 2 teams from Pop Labs

- I’ve even signed up to be part of the first StartUpWeekend-Houston

There’s more in between, but those are some of the major ones coming up for me in the next 3 monthss. It’s all a little scary, but I say bring it on.

I found myself watching American Inventor this evening mainly b/c the auditions were in Houston(and I was waiting for Traveler to come on). Anyway, I was blown away by one young man, Christopher Khanoyan, who is deaf. He came up with an invention idea for “The Voice Inside” which is portable voice-to-text and text-to-voice device that uses voice recognition software built into a phone/pda (sort of looked like a Sidekick or an MDA in the drawings) to facilitate a conversation between a deaf person and a hearing person.

Sorry for the blurriness of the video. I couldn’t find any online sources for video at the moment, so I did it ghetto-fab style and recorded the video on my camera.

It was really inspirational and probably one of the best things I saw on the show thus far. Don’t read further if you haven’t seen the episode yet

[Show Spoiler] Read the rest of this entry »