As a little girl growing up in the Deep South, my mother told me that my future lay in my education. And she was right.

Our camps and workshops offer a space where girls of color can learn computer science and coding principles alongside their peers, with mentorship from female role models who have established themselves in tech fields where women, and minority women in particular, tend to be underrepresented.

Gender is not central to coding.

It's critical for girls to see role models like myself that are in technical fields. Looking for ways to come in as speakers or do a career day, or just find a way to connect with students or invite students to their workplaces to shadow them for the day... is critically important.

You go to a Japanese restaurant and have a wonderful dish, and the thing to do is take a picture with your phone, put it on Facebook, and see how many likes you get. If you don't share your experiences, they don't become part of the data processing system, and they have no meaning.

Fans write to us via our publisher and more than ever via the Internet, blogs and fan sites, and good writers should be actively seeking out that interaction. Gone are the days when writers are dead or hidden away in dusty attics; nowadays, you've got to get out there.

I see film as a real opportunity to examine the human condition. No matter where the technology goes in the future, the basics don't change. Storytelling is a primitive tribal function. The elders sat around the fires and told these stories as a way to pass on the 'dos' and the 'don'ts.' That will never change.

Light-field photography is a transformational technology that needs a transformational product to introduce it. For the first time, we have a light-field camera that's going to be for everyone - not something in a huge room in a research facility.