Living Computers: Museum + Labs put out quite the spread for Ada! I'll let CJ tell you more about it.
As I just wrote about in a blog post not too long ago, my family frequently, *frequently* visits the Living Computers Museum + Labs. We usually visit to attend new and interesting events, such as our last visit, where we went to see a documentary about a baby elephant's tale of survival (that had little to do with computers). At our most recent visit (on December 10), my family attended The Ada Party event, which celebrated the 201st birthday of Ada Lovelace, Lord Byron's daughter who is widely considered to be the first computer programmer. Ada Lovelace apparently wrote programs for Charles Babbage's Analytical Machine, which was an unfinished machine built in the 1840s as a general-purpose computer.
Upon entering the museum, one of the first things I noticed was that a large part of the northeastern corner of the building was taken up by a place where you could get a sugary drink and a bag with candy such as M&Ms and Skittles. Apparently, aside from being the daughter of Lord Byron and being the possible first computer programmer (as I mentioned previously), Ada Lovelace was also known for having a sweet tooth. At the sugar area (what I will call it from this point on), there was a cake featuring Ada Lovelace's likeness (with shutter shades). A lady dressed as Ada Lovelace from the event company running The Ada Party was present at the event, often interacting with the attendees (for example: While I was playing the classic Oregon Trail on an Apple ][, Ada asked my why I didn't put her in my party. I promised her I would name one of my party members "Ada" next time I played Oregon Trail.
Eventually, we went to the lounge area in the center of the museum to listen to a speech from Kate Edwards, the Executive Director of the International Game Developers Association. The IGDA is apparently the world's only major professional association for video game developers. One of the first things that Kate Edwards told us was that she was very geeky. To demonstrate her geekiness, she showed pictures of her in Norway and Tunisia, both prominent filming locations for the Star Wars original trilogy. Kate Edwards worked at Microsoft from 1994 to 2005, and she was involved to some extent in nearly every Microsoft game released in that period. According to the IGDA website, Kate Edwards was a "Geopolitical Strategist" at Microsoft, which, if I interpreted it right, meant that she made sure there wasn't any stuff in games that might be problematic or considered offensive outside of the U.S. During her presentation, Kate gave several pieces of advice that I consider not only helpful to game designers like her, but to creators as a whole. For example, Kate told us that we should ignore haters and "embrace your superpowers", which I interpret as meaning that we should take advantage of our abilities to help us succeed (I feel like there's a better way to phrase that).
Ada's birthday featured keynote speakers, including Kate Edwards of the International Game Developers Association.
In a quiet corner of the museum, Annabelle explored Encarta for the first time ever. I told the kids that these CD-based encyclopedias were the BOMB for research before the Internet was widespread.
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