Girls In Tech

After attending several un-conferences, workshops, meet-ups and dinner parties in and around the technology scene in China, I decided that I had enough information to create a much-needed iPhone application for women in the tech industry, which often times makes up a very small percentage of the people at each tech event (we’re actively changing that through Girls in Tech, however). I entered the “Save Me!” app idea in a “build an iPhone app in 15-minutes competition” and with a glue stick, one piece of construction paper and a Sharpie, we came up with the following app:

Save Me! Ever been stuck at a bar, conference or any event getting hit on by that oh so persistent person with no escape in sight? If so, Save Me! can help you. It’s super easy to use – choose a mercifully short time delay on the app screen ranging from 5 to 15 to 30 seconds, and then press the “Save Me! heart”. In a few seconds you’ll receive a realistic fake call form your “office” allowing you to make your emergency-related excuse and exit the situation or conversation. The application ended up winning the competition by popular audience demand (and applause) so Reign Design decided to be proactive and design and develop the application in one day! It was released by Apple within a two-week period.

Save Me! is a concept application designed by Girls in Tech Founder and CEO, Adriana Gascoigne in 15-minutes and developed and published by Reign Design in one day! For more information about Save Me! visit the Reign Design website.

Tags: Adriana Gascoigne, girls in tech, iPhone app, Reign Design
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During the 1990′s, Rochelle Peachey, a London native now living in Orlando, wrote a book: “Eat Your Lonely Heart Out,” a book based on 700 dates with men in England via the personal ads. As the title was so successful, she was offered a contract by Crown to write “My 1,000 Americans: A Year-Long Odyssey Through the Personals,” another success.

From her experience with these, her new venture mixes it up for the world of online dating.   I Love Your Accent – her newest venture – is an international online dating site which matches up singles here and in the UK (www.iloveyouraccent.com). Members can choose to meet someone in their respective city, but the site opens the possibility for singles in the UK and the US to find their “match” across the Atlantic .

“This encourages people to think outside of the box about meeting someone,” says Peachey. “Instead of limiting yourself to people in your area, why not be adventurous and consider meeting someone in another country?”  She will also offer tips on the site, some of which include:  Represent yourself honestly on your profile; and have reasonable expectations.  Above all, the site will allow for equally adventure-minded people to meet.   If you are a fan of online dating, says Peachy: “Why not try a different approach!”

Tags: Iloveyouraccent.com, online dating
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Last week I attended a talk by Erin Malone-  Designing Social Interfaces – 5 principles, 5 practices, 5 antipatterns.

I highly recommend checking out the presentation below. For me, the most interesting part was the discussion about the key decisions that define the future life of your site. Erin briefly discussed how there needs to be a compromise of your product’s vision in order to adjust for the real social needs of your users. She gave an example of how Friendster’s users attempted to create celebrity and music profiles, but Friendster did not allow this as it wasn’t part of their mission.

This decision ultimately contributed to the decline of Friendster and the major growth of MySpace. It’s flexibility, a strong understanding of how people socialize, and the ability to predict the future needs of your audience that will set your product apart from the rest.

Tags: design, interface, social
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O’Reilly Where 2.0

March 30-April, 1, 2010

San Jose, CA

http://en.oreilly.com/where2010

Register now and save an additional 20% with discount code: whr10git

Now in its sixth year, Where 2.0 is one of the world’s foremost events dedicated to exploring the emerging technologies in the geospatial industry. At Where 2.0, we expose the tools pushing the boundaries of the location frontier, track the emergence of new business models and services, and examine new sources of data and the platforms for collecting them.

Happening March 30-April 1, 2010 at the San Jose Marriott in San Jose, California, Where 2.0 brings together the people, projects, and issues building the new technological foundations and creating value in the location industry. Join with other developers, technologists, CTOs, researchers, geographers, academics, business developers, and entrepreneurs to debate and discuss what’s viable now, and what’s lurking just below the radar and how to gain a competitive edge.

At Where 2.0, you’ll find source mapping tools, reality mining, open standards for data and location web services, and sensors for obtaining location data. We’ll learn how the established geo industry is reacting to the first businesses making money from their grassroots geospatial projects. There’s no better place to meet the people behind the mashups, the people behind the platforms, and the people looking ahead to the future of geospatial.

Where 2.0 2010 encompasses a full day of workshops followed by two days of sessions featuring a unique combination of high profile keynotes with big players, lightning talks, panel discussions, demos, product launches, Q&A time, and much more. The most innovative and interesting people in this space are featured on stage, and they stay around to debate and discuss with other conference-goers off stage.

Register now and save an additional 20% with discount code: whr10git

http://en.oreilly.com/where2010

Tags: Adriana Gascoigne, girls in tech, O'Reilly, Where 2.0
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Girls in Tech is honored to announce its first, confirmed keynote speaker for the upcoming Catalyst Conference on January 26th at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco – Heather Harde, CEO of TechCrunch. Heather Harde is a role model and an inspiration for all women in the tech and business industries. With such an impressive background, including her work experience as well as education, we thought that she would be an amazing fit to present her stories, provide guidance and express words of empowerment to the 350 female leaders who will be attending the conference. As noted in her TechCrunch profile, Heather Harde is the CEO of TechCrunch. She spent the last ten years working within News Corporation. She held a variety of corporate development, strategy and operating roles both in Los Angeles and New York. Most recently, she was part of the founding team at Fox Interactive Media and their SVP Mergers & Acquisitions. Her team spent over $1.3 billion on eight acquisitions and two equity deals during her tenure. Their acquisitions spanned pre-launch start-ups all the way through public-company and pre-IPO buyouts.

Prior to Fox Interactive Media, she held a variety of posts at News America Marketing, TVGuide and ASkyB. Before News Corporation, she also worked for Viacom at Showtime Networks. The common theme in her media life has been working on assignments that focus on the impact of technology on media. This theme continues, of course, with TechCrunch. She started out doing investment banking for a small, private bank Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. She had the opportunity to work both in New York and Tokyo on corporate advisory and private-equity transactions. Heather is a graduate of Mount Holyoke College and Harvard Business School.

The Catalyst Conference catalyzes the career development of women working in high-tech. By offering high-level keynotes and discussions from successful women at the top of their game alongside workshops led by experts in innovation and collaboration, the Catalyst Conference enables & propels women to take the next step, whether they’re launching a venture, making waves in the corporate world, looking to join an innovative startup, or building their online and digital-media media brand.

Catalyst Conference will bring over 350 passionate, creative women together to fuel new relationships and ideas. Come prepared to share concrete technology and business tools and tactics, meet energetic leaders and entrepreneurs, and develop your own business ventures. This conference is for women at the top of their industries as well as those leading their first ventures, and will guide them all in discussions of strategy and success.

Click on the following link to register for the conference: REGISTRATION

Tags: Catalyst Conference, CEO of TechCrunch, girls in tech, Heather Harde, keynote, women in business, women in tech
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As the largest paid mobile community, PredictoMobile and its parent company Snackable Media, which is reporting over $150 million in revenue in 2009, up from $30 million in 2007,  continues to grow with 2 million registered users.  It is quickly gaining recognition as an industry leader in the mobile space.

Back in 2006, Predicto/Snackable CEO Eyal Yechezkell envisioned an idea for the masses to make predictions about American culture, texting in votes about America’s stars, news and political figures, sports – basically anything in the top news stories – with each prediction drawing anywhere from 5,000 to 20,000 participants responding via mobile phone or on Predicto.com.  Texting in votes via their mobile phone, users are entered into a points-earning system and have a chance to win huge prizes.

Says Yechezkell, “It may surprise many that while we trail behind Twitter in certain ways, we do lead in one key aspect – revenue generation.”  “By giving America a chance to weigh in on pop culture and awarding prizes, our audience continues to grow and we’re looking forward to 2010.” With a solid business model & rapidly increasing annual revenue, Predicto recently celebrated its two year anniversary and has plans for their expansion into international markets in 2010.  To try it yourself, go to: http://www.predicto.com/

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Girls in Tech San Francisco recently hosted their annual Holiday Mixer on Dec. 1st at 5A5 Steak Lounge.  A good time was had by all, as we met to celebrate the holidays and cap off the year of many successful GIT events.  Attended by many of our members, board members, and new members alike; it was a lively crowd with holiday drinks & appetizers galore.  We couldn’t have chosen a better venue either — with the warm glow of the ‘fire’ and generous bar staff. 

It will definitely go down as a night to remember, with great networking

and a casual fun evening for the Girls in Tech members to just get to know each other better and/or catch up with old friends!

(Many thanks to Alfred & Steve and all the staff for hosting us @ 5A5!)

Have any great pictures of the event you would like to share? Send them to info@girlsintech.net!

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The new book by Selena Rezvani, The Next Generation of Women Leaders: What You Need to Lead but Won’t Learn in Business School is just out & a great guidebook for young women looking to succeed in business. It is geared specifically towards young “Generation X & Y women” and explores in simple and understandable language just how to navigate in order for the businesswoman to succeed.

In writing this book, Rezvani realized that if women want to move up in the working world, they must ask for what they want (including more responsibility), be proactive in carving out their career path, and maintain constant communication with their managers in charting such a plan.

“I wrote The Next Generation of Women Leaders to connect aspiring women leaders with established women executives,” says author and business woman Rezvani. “Through my interviews with women like Melissa M. Monk, CIO at CapitalOne, Jamie McCourt, former President of the LA Dodgers, Mei Xu, CEO of Chesapeake Bay Candle, and Katharine Weymouth, CEO of the Washington Post Media, I felt I was able to write the guidebook I wished I’d had when graduating with my MBA.”

The book highlights methods to network, succeeding on the job, and activities off the job which can promote your career.

The Next Generation of Women Leaders features:

• 30 interviews with highly accomplished business women

• A foreword by Gail Evans, the highest-ranking woman executive ever at CNN

• A far-reaching bibliography of significant materials combining works examining gender dynamics in addition to business classics

Selena is president at the company NextGenWomen, LLC – A consulting firm dedicated to propelling more women into top positions of leadership.

Read more about Selena and her book on her company’s website at: www.nextgenwomen.com.

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Thanks to Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement yesterday about the changes being made to Facebook’s privacy structure, it looks like #privacy is about to have yet another run as the trending topic du jour. Well, that and that couple that crashed the White House dinner — as Demetri Martin would say, they’re like the herpes of hyped up news stories. Scheming social climbers aside, privacy is one of the web’s biggest concerns. As girls in tech, we talk about it all the time. Are our identities safe? Are our personal and professional brands secure? Are the kids in our lives making smart choices when they surf?

Months worth of memes have been made out of relatively minor changes to Facebook’s privacy policies in the past, and the comments are already piling in to the Mashable Article discussing this most recent development. It’s easy to understand why people get so worked up over what happens to their information on the internet. From cookies that track our every click to the fact that between docs, mail, maps and search, google knows more about you than your parents probably do, it’s clear that there’s plenty of reasons to make even the sanest surfer paranoid about what they post. As the product manager at a growing user generated content site, I deal with difficult decisions having to do with privacy all the time. What our decision making process always comes back to is a simple question: what would we want someone else to be doing with our data? Nine times out of ten, the answer is simple: give the user as much control over their content as you can.

Of course, as a user, it’s up to you to take advantage of that control. Fortunately, there are as many tools to track the people tracking you as there are mistresses in Tiger Woods’ skeleton closet. There’s google privacy dashboard, which allows you to see all the data points that google’s got about you. You can also set up a google alert that will let you know when new content about you is indexed by the search engine’s spiders. Keotag lets you put in a key word, and see what people are saying about it everywhere from Technorati to Twitter. And, Boardtracker lets you do the same sort of thing across multiple comment boards. Which means you can post your complaints about the new Facebook privacy policy today, and see all the trolls’ responses tomorrow.

It ain’t exactly privacy per se, but it’s pretty powerful stuff nonetheless.  At the end of the day, I strongly believe that the best privacy policy on the web is still the one you set up for yourself by watching what you post, where you post it and what gets said about it after you leave. However, if that’s too complicated for you, then just remember this simple rule: if you’re going to crash a White House dinner, don’t post photos of your uninvited self shaking hands with the president on Facebook. Unless, of course, your personal privacy policy involves a camera crew from Bravo and a hefty chunk of reality show change. In which case, I’ll see you on Thursdays at 10 in my living room.

Tags: facebook, mashable, Obama, privacy, salahi, social media, social networking, zuckerberg
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Associate Dean Magda El Zarki of UC Irvine's Donald Bren School of Information & Computer Sciences is now the Executive Director of the newly established Center for Computer Games & Virtual Worlds.

It’s a Far Cry (pun intended) from digital circuitry design and electromagnetics, but Dr. Magda El Zarki, professor of Information and Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, will head up UC Irvine’s Center for Computer Games & Virtual Worlds.

By next fall, UC Irvine will open admission to 50-100 eager students who will be able to declare a four-year major in Game Science. With access to a 4,000 sq.ft. cyber-interaction observatory, students will study everything from anthropology in virtual worlds to brain-computer interface sciences. If you are not a student, don’t fret, the Center will open its doors to visiting scholars, offer workshops, and partner with other virtual world and computer game science centers worldwide.

Though the Center for Computer Games and Virtual Worlds will focus on research and development, companies like Irvine-based Blizzard and French-based Ubisoft, creators of the Far Cry series, will eventually have access to employees with degrees in game science giving the gaming world a bit of needed legitimacy.

Since the UC system just closed its application process for Fall 2010 on November 30^th, be ready for the following year when the cyber observatory will open its doors!

Tags: game science, gaming, GIT, Magda El Zarki, UC Irvine, Virtual Worlds
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