Alison Young

A couple of weeks ago I got an offer that was hard to refuse. An opportunity to join a team with two friends on a roadtrip along the coast of NSW over 4 days. Those who know even a little about me will attest to my longtime love of road trips and that I’m quite commonly photographing trips and on my phone tweeting when I’m not driving.

More details slowly came to light and I learnt that the roadtrip we were taking was part of a bigger event with other teams involved too doing different drives and it was all about launching some spectacular drives between Sydney and Melbourne.

Tomorrow we’re off on the 4 day adventure. A roadtrip of which the aim is to tweet, photograph, make videos and generally have a blast while completing activities we’ve been assigned and complete some mission objectives. Not wanting to give too much way until it happens but there’s going to be motorbike riding and a very, very early morning one day that I’ve been assured it will be well worth it.

If you want more details of what we’re up to, when and where then there’s no shortage of methods to track us such as: join/like the StalkFacebook page; check out the Tumblr that will hopefully filter everything together so it’s a good single point of contact and collation of tweets, photos and videos. Browse the photos we’re posting to the Flickr group- you will need to ask to join but anybody can look. Following the twitter hashtags #S2MT and #teamMal. Some things will have both but others might not. I’m also considering raising my 12seconds account from the almost dead for short’n’sweet clips from the road. There’s always a chance that further updates and longer posts may appear on the site here

I would like to thank Mal for the offer to join the team, and everybody involved with organising the Sydney – Melbourne Touring trip. It’s going to be some serious fun.

This entry could begin with a heartfelt apology for neglecting this blog and a promise to update more often. But it won’t. Instead I just wish to say that updating here has taken a lesser priority over the last few months in favour of updating my private, locked journal elsewhere among other projects, people and events. If you have been hanging out for new entries because you don’t communicate with me any other way then I do apologise and invite you to engage on a medium I do frequently use; trust me there are plenty.

Something I have been doing a lot more of lately is writing. About 4 years ago I wrote quite a lot, mostly by hand. When going through my belongings prior to moving into my own place I found dozens of loose pages of writing. The picture here shows some of my collection of travel diarys, dream diarys, exercise books and letter writing sets.

Over time I’ve done a lot more writing while on my laptop. I can more closely get my thoughts out as quickly as I have them with my fingers flying across the keys and not caring straight away whether I’ve spelt things correctly or words are in the order that makes for the best sentences.

For as long as I can remember I’ve written, or wanted to write. Stories, thought excerpts, braindumps and sometimes just pages that would make little sense even to myself when I reread them. Being particularly fond of writing out observations from people-watching, snippets of an interesting parts of my day, something that I dreamt and am still tossing around in my mind a day later.

While talking with a friend the other day we were discussing some of the stories I’ve acquired over the years from my various adventures and misadventures through life. I’ve become newly inspired to start trying to document them for a book idea I had earlier this year incorporating some of my own experiences with those that I’ve observed around me. At present it’s tempting to start by going into my head and just writing about my own stuff. Majority of the pieces I’ve written that weren’t specifically for blogs, emails etc have only been by myself and 1-2 others. Their feedback has been nothing but positive. Once I’ve got more pieces in electronic format I’ll decide what to do with them. Have already decided to anonymously post 3yrs of writing from all those years ago somewhere that I’m not planning to reveal to anybody.

Ada Lovelace Day is a day of recognition, for all the amazing women who do remarkable things in IT. I could easily write hundreds of words about the women who have introduced, supported, inspired, challenged and have a great time being involved in IT and who I will pay due recognition to but instead I’m going to humbly recognise myself as a woman who’s making her way further into IT.

I’m a relative newcomer but have been involved with spreading the good word since my university days and have now managed to forge my way ahead into this brave new landscape which I never imagined I’d get to so soon. Leaving academia and struggling to find my feet in a career that was both rewarding and sustaining I was offered an unexpected chance to move into a position I hadn’t envisaged for myself so soon. Working as a contractor for a remarkable company who took a chance in me and I can only hope has paid off. While I’m still learning the world of self-employment and contracting it would be a pleasure to inspire and assist others to reach for their wildest dreams also.

All this would never have been possible if not for the following women who rock my world: Sue, Angela, Jenine, Leigh Ellen, Pia, Catherine, Kate, Jodie, Susan, Damana, Cathie and MissWired.

Have been having drama after drama trying to post updates to this blog. Something tells me Wordpress may be punishing me because I haven’t updated yet… suppose I should and see if things get fixed or not.

Kicking along, have a few posts I’d love to put up if only they’d stop getting lost along the way.

Go to http://www.bighugelabs.com/flickr and create a mosaic using the answers from these questions. Take your answer to Flickr and search for it.. Pick an image from the first page of search results, put it into the mosaic maker and post your results!

NB: For simplicity’s sake I’m linking and attributing after each answer and licensed under the  Creative Commons.

1. What is your first name? Alison
2. What is your favorite food? Rib Eye Steak
3. What high school did you go to? Pioneer
4. What is your favorite color? Purple
5. Who is your celebrity crush? Clive Owen
6. Favorite drink? mojito
7. Dream vacation? Santorini
8. Favorite dessert? vanilla bean gelati
9. What you want to be when you grow up? a writer
10. What do you love most in life? discovery
11. One Word to describe you? dedicated
12. Look up my flickr name and found something someone dedicated to me – Alegrya not dedicated to me in particular but then again none are… so this is for each of the fine chicks in the photo who are now all scattered across the country.

Thanks to Fifikins and Monnie who inspird me to have a go at this myself.