Girls In Tech

So, you’re almost 4 months into 2010. Perhaps you’ve switched jobs, started a new business, invested in one, bought a new house, an eco-friendly car, or any number of big life changes. Just when you thought things are starting to settle down, it hits you: Uncle Sam’s big tax payday is right around the corner! So what’s a girl to do? If you’re one of the many who still haven’t done their taxes yet, don’t fret! Here are some awesome tips and resources to help you out.

There’s a few ways to do your taxes, such as using websites online, specialized tax software for your computer, or even just going into a tax consultant or accountant. (There’s also the old fashioned pen and paper and forms method, but if you’re still reading this, then that’s probably not the route for you.)

So which to choose?

If you’ve got a simple tax situation, such as you held the same job all throughout 2010, no major life changes like marriage, new children, new house, car, or anything else similar, then tax websites or software are probably right for you.  They’ll save you the money of a tax consultant or accountant, are easy to use, and a lot of them now have some form of “Audit Protection” as well, should you be one of the random chosen few selected for an audit. Whether by website or software, They’ll ask you to have your W-2 form from the workplace in front of you, ask you for the numbers or amounts in each box on it, then some follow up questions to see if there’s anything you can deduct to give you the maximum possible refund if you’re entitled to one, or if you have to pay, make that amount as small as possible. All in all the process can take anywhere from 15-45 minutes and then you’re all set, in most cases they’ll even e-file for you, then let you setup how you want your refund (check, direct deposit, etc) and you’re all set and don’t have to lift a finger ‘til 2011.

But what if your situation isn’t as simple and you’ve had some major life changes? Maybe you did some consulting and have 1099’s to file as well, or started a new business and have to do taxes for that?

Online tax prep might not be right for you, but Tax Software might be.  Most tax software can even import your information from financial software like quicken, money, QuickBooks, and more, to make the process even easier. They’ll walk you through every step of your situation to make sure you’re crossing all of your T’s and dotting all your I’s.

If all else fails and you’re still a little nervous about handling your taxes, let a tax professional handle them for you. This route will typically be much more expensive, and often more time consuming, but that’s the price tag that comes with getting a professional to make sure it’s done right.

Things to keep in mind this year:

• Home ownership has some great tax perks, especially this year. Due to the Economic stimulus package, if you purchased a home in 2009 or even closed on it before tax time this year, you’re entitled to a huge tax credit. You can also deduct property taxes, mortgage interest, and more.

• Pay tuition for school for yourself or a dependant? Another great deduction.

• Was your Adjusted Gross Income lower than $57,000 last year? You’re eligible for free federal tax prep and filing.

• Didn’t earn enough to pay taxes this year? You might still be in for some cash back due to the Earned Income Tax Credit. More info at http://www.irs.gov/eitc

And don’t forget if worse comes to worse and you know you won’t have your taxes done on time before the April 15th deadline, be sure to file an extension, and then get them done!

Popular Tax Websites & Software:
H&R Block
TaxAct
TurboTax

Tags: girls in tech, GIT, hrblock, taxact, taxcut, taxes, technology, turbotax
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When it comes to today’s PR world, it’s all about the buzz. That particularly viral kind of word of mouth marketing that means big brand recognition and even bigger sales.

But, how do you build that buzz? How do you keep it going? How do you transition a PR campaign from traditional media to new media? And, how do you convince clients that all this tweeting and texting and typing is totally worth it? These are just a few of the topics we’ll be covering at our latest Girls in Tech LA panel — The Buzz: PR & Marketing 3.0.

The panel kicks off at 7, followed by cocktails and plenty of time to enjoy them. There will also be a full bar menu. And, we’re very excited to be hosting it at Hollywood hot spot H.Wood.

According to Citysearch, “this small, plush hideout has a loungey vibe with brown leather couches and low-lit vintage chandeliers. Inside the 1920s-esque bar and lounge, the see and be seen and celeb crowd plays chess on boards strewn on tables, shakes their hips on the upstairs dance floor, and snacks on upscale comfort food.”

Tickets are $10, and supplies are limited, so grab yours before we sell out.

Speakers include:

Rynda Laurel (moderator)- Rynda is currently managing International Strategy for AF83 (Paris/San Francisco), Bearstech (Paris) and Hackable:Devices (Paris). She is involved in coordinating and participating in numerous events and panels including: French by South West, Twestival, Social Media Club, TedxSoma, Musi2K, Digital LA, Girls In Tech and FAIRfund. She also is developing a socially conscious marketing and consulting agency which is a manifestation of her deep-seated devotion to the environment and sustainability.

Nicole Jordan – one of the premier PR/Marketing names in the LA area, she has worked as a social media expert on the Rubicon Project and as director of PR and Communications for Clearstone Venture Partners. She has also worked with This Next, Inc., Brenthaven, Buongiorno USA, David Lynch, Edelman, and Ogilvy, just to name a few.

Heather Meeker – Director of PR & Marketing at Whrrl.

Babette Pepaj – founder/CEO of BakeSpace.com, the Web’s first food-themed social network and 2009 Webby Nominee for “Best Social Network.” She is also the founder of TECHmunch and publisher of The Daily Bite. Brands she’s worked with include KitchenAid, ABC, Sara Lee, Kodak, McCormick, Reynolds, Universal, Sony Pictures and FOX Searchlight and has a unique knack for spinning traditional ad campaigns into unique PR opportunities. Also find us @BakeSpace.

Amanda Coolong – Executive producer for Tech Zulu & ThisWeekin.com, Principal and Founder of Beta PR.

Andrea Scott – Manager of Interactive Marketing for POM Wonderful

Christine Kirk – Social Media Marketing Consultant/Founder at Social Muse Communications and PR Manager at Girls in Tech LA. Previous work includes Online Communications Director at Murphy O’Brien, Senior Account Executive at Murphy O’Brien, Account Executive at Zeno Group and more.

Sponsored by: Mashable

Tags: Events, marketing, mixer, networking, PR, social media
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In celebration of Women’s History Month, Girls in Tech is offering the final in a series of interviews with leaders in the technology field.   Today, we’re featuring Leena Rao, a talented writer at TechCrunch.

Additionally, if you’re in the Boston area, we have a great event TONIGHT!  Join Girls in Tech, MITX and the Microsoft New England Research and Development Center in a panel discussion where inspirational women in the marketing and technology fields will reflect on obstacles they’ve confronted early on in their careers and how they’ve learned from and overcome them to become successful business leaders.  Here’s a link to the event page and hope to see you there – http://www.mitx.org/events/2166.cfm

Cheers,
The Boston GIT Team

1. What’s the biggest mistake you’ve ever made and what did you learn from it that’s worth passing along to others?
Doubting myself is one of the biggest mistake I’ve made.  I know its sounds cliche, but it’s true.  If you believe in yourself, you can do anything.

2. What’s your biggest success in the workplace?
Scoring a job at TechCrunch!

3. What’s your life or work motto?
Nothing comes easy, and success comes with hard work, risk and sacrifice.

4. What woman in history inspires you most and why?
Geraldine Ferraro, she managed to be a wife, mother, lawyer, politician and vice-presidential candidate.  She’s a incredible role model for all women.

5. What piece of technology can you not live without?
It’s old school but my TV and my BlackBerry.

6. What tech trend are you following for 2010?
E-readers.  My husband has a Kindle and I’m trying to figure out of I should buy an iPad or wait for the next generation.  I’l probably give in and buy an iPad!

7. What one piece of advice would you give the Girls in Tech of tomorrow?
Don’t underestimate the value of networking.  You should begin building a network of professional contacts and mentors early, and continue networking throughout your career.  And use LinkedIn; it’s a great tool for networking!

8. What three items do you always carry on you?
Chanel lipgloss, my BlackBerry and a credit card.

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The Monterey Institute of International Studies will host the one-day TEDxMonterey conference on Friday April 16 from 1:00 p.m. to 6:30 p.m., with a reception to follow, in the Irvine Auditorium in the McCone Building at 499 Pierce Street in Monterey.

Guess what?!?!

The first 10 Girls in Tech members to register with promo code “git_april10″ will get 10% off!

In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TEDlike experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x=independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.

TEDxMonterey is open to the public; tickets are $30 for general admission and $20 for students. For more information, or to purchase tickets, visit www.tedxmonterey.org.

Tags: ted, tedx, TEDxMonterey
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Women-owned firms account for 40% of all privately held businesses in the US, according to the National Association of Women Business Owners. Yet how many small and start-up business owners are taking advntage of government-backed financing and funding and programs to finance their business?  What options are the best fit for your business?  Join Melissa Fischer of the Small Business Administration and Julie Lenzer Kirk, co-founder of the Path Forward Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, home of the ACTiVATE program for this soup-to-nuts webinar on “Demystifying Government Funding for Business” on April 30th at 2:00 PM, EDT .
You’ll learn:
–  various options for government funding;

–  tips for further exploration of SBA-backed loans;

–  state and federal government grants; and more!

When: April 30th at 2:00 PM EDT.
Cost: $10
Sponsored By: National Center for Women in Technology, ACTiVATE Program, Path Forward International, Women Who Tech, Small Business Administration and NTEN.
Register at:
http://govfunding.eventbrite.com/

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Whether it is ensuring people have access to water, girls and young brides go to school, or empowering women through microfinanance initiatives, you have to make time to care. CARE.org, a leading humanitarian organization fighting global poverty by supporting women around the globe, has made this part of their mission for the past 65 years.  They are inviting you to get involved this May when they host their National Conference & Celebration in Washington D.C.

The two-day conference on May 11 and 12 will bring together some of the top activists, lawmakers and speakers who are committed to women’s and girls’ empowerment around the world. They reached out to invite Girls in Tech members since many of you are focused on microfinance, women’s tech education and using ICT for development.

To register visit www.care.org/nationalconferencewomen.  Tickets for the two-day event cost $125. Students can register at the special rate of $40.

Beyond panels and speakers, the conference will offer interactive workshops focusing on girls’ education, women’s microfinance programs, maternal health, and global women’s empowerment. Attendees will also be able to meet Goretti Nyabenda of Burundi, whose inspiring story is featured in the best-selling book Half the Sky. Goretti is a successful entrepreneur and community leader who took part in a village savings and loan association with the help of CARE.

Finally, attendees will also get hands-on training for promoting the issues you care about on Capitol Hill, and then meet in person with your own U.S. Senators and Representatives to educate them about why women’s empowerment is important to you and your organization.

In addition, Girls In Tech NYC recently launched an educational program to address the pressing need for female advancement in technological fields. 

For more information about CARE.org or the conference, just follow the links!

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This blog on Girls in Tech Community Education and Programming Initiatives, with an eye to a crowd-sourced curricula, was graciously co-authored by Amy Vernon with edits by Theresa Lee.

Fast Facts:

• The above is a snapshot I took of a photo on the wall at IBM HQ, while at a NY PHP meetup in NYC, labeled Women Systems Service Professionals Class, 1935.
• Our friends at the McKinsey Quarterly (Rethinking how companies address social issues) discover: To Improve Business in the Developing World, Educate Women, at Harvard Business Review.
• DARPA announces the lack of women and minorities in technology is a national security issue, Wired Magazine.

Community and Education are One:
We are pleased to announce an initiative to address the pressing need for women’s advancement in technological fields. Using its network of members, partners and relationships, GIT is launching a series of free or affordable programming courses. The courses are crowd-sourced and designed by the programming and technology professional community.

Girls in Tech NYC will celebrate this initiative and pilot this Spring with a conference/party in New York City, when we will kick off a Girls in Tech partnership with DaniWeb.com, the largest C++ community and woman-founded programming forum of countless programming language communities online. And, once again, Bootup will offer its ingenuity and experience to the effort, rallying the user group community in the New York City area. Many more partners to come.

Evolve and Celebrate:

Big thanks go out to Dani Horowitz of DaniWeb.com for her spirit and drive. And thanks, too, to Hans Zaunere of Bootup and NY PHP for his incredible initiative and support, and to Sara Chipps (Girl Developer), our pioneer instructor in the space. They not only have experience teaching courses in the space, but also more importantly have the mindset open to a crowd-sourced curriculum. Joanna Wen and many more are expected to join them soon!

As industries evolve, so too will all technology skill sets, and women have typically lacked educational resources targeted to their mindset. The first and most important barrier for women is having a community to support and respond to their needs and to include them in the curriculum. As noted by education pioneer, actress and Math genius Danica McKellar in her conversations with us and through her best selling books “Math Doesn’t Suck” and “Kiss my Math” this barrier exists at the middle school level. Girls in Tech has striven to highlight initiatives via our national and local events, such as: the GIT mentorship program hosted at Apple HQ (Education) and Microsoft, GIT University and continues to innovate in the space through many digital avenues.

More Community:

In addition to offering a stepped process to creating a practical educational curriculum (informal Question and Answer sessions, constant feedback via surveys, engaged teachers, inspiring guest speaker input, and some of the most tested curricula from our corporate and community partners), Girls in Tech would like move the bar for all people who would like to be involved with technology. Tech should be accessible! We have discussed teaming up with other co-ed technology events groups committed to addressing this need in a social way, with a positive and inclusive mindset.

Hallmarks of these classes include offering students consistent feedback, curriculum developed by leaders in the programming community and guest speakers who are programmers and authors, as well as featuring real-world projects designed to reflect women’s strengths, vision, and both our enterprising and philanthropic nature, while focusing on getting them online and programming their own blogs and websites. More advanced courses also will be available, for those who know the basics but need to take their skills to the next level.

Technology and Education Overview:

Over the past many months, Girls in Tech has fielded interest from some of the largest tech companies about their participation in the program and curriculum. Companies such as Microsoft have extremely advanced learning communities, and Google (Education)and IBM (Academic Initiative) foster innovative and crowd-sourced education. Meanwhile countless others have offered their support and interest. Numerous education experts at  Social Media Week in NYC have further been supportive of our efforts. Special thanks to Asli Bilgin at Microsoft for her inspiring discussions on the way women build (WomenBuild) at our board meetings last year. Thanks to Tony Bacigalupo and Sanford Dickert at New Work City for offering your encouragement and partnership. Meeting with FogCreek Software was particularly productive. New York PHP User Community launches its introductory web seminars this month. Local programming communities,companies and corporate partners have signed on as advisers and partners. More soon.

Girls In Tech believes the biggest barrier to women’s advancement in the technological sphere has been the lack of a network of positive community support, and that’s precisely what GIT has aimed to provide since its inception. The project aligns with our belief in education and how social networks and communities support it, as well as our belief in pulling together the collective wisdom of women already successful in the field.

April Q&A Kick-Offs:

Stay tuned for our Q&A classes at the Downtown Alliance’s Hive at 55 starting this April. Daria Siegel and Brian DiFeo, at the Hive at 55 have graciously offered their space to GIT NYC and Bootup, as well as many other value-focused community groups, to encourage ground-breaking training.

April 02, 2010 Update:

Please visit http://techtoeducate.eventbrite.com or http://girlsintechnyc.com for updates as they occur on the pilot of this program.

Posted in All Chapters, New York | 3 Comments »

Last nights “She’s Savvy: SEO” event with Chelsea Rustrum in Santa Cruz was a real success. I was so happy to see a packed room full of a lot of new faces.

I promised the group last night that we would publish Chelsea’s slides as they had a lot of great content in them and we wanted to share it with everyone who couldn’t make it. Chelsea did a great job of defining SEO and walking us through some best practices:

Tile Tags
- First, make sure they are unique and well researched
- Try and keep them to 65 characters or less because that will show up in Google
- In formatting them, put business name behind the keywords (example in slides)
- Remember: first words in tile tag are weighted more highly

Links lets search engines know you exist and how valuable they are. Are all links created equal? No – a link from your best friend’s blog isn’t weighted as heavily as CNN.

Link text is essentially the same as anchor text
- Create quality content
- Use social media icons to your benefit – Tools like Facebook and Twitter are free. Link to them and build your community that way.

“Text is why the search engines live breathe and consume.”
- Text needs to be unique – well written
- A great source for writing copy is: Copyblogger

Quotes to live by from Chelsea:
“What’s good for humans is good for the search engines.”
“Just build something cool.”

GOOGLE
Google Suggest is helpful with articles or blog posts to find out how many search queries are made each month – that information could be useful in writing and optimizing your article/post.

Google AdWords keyword tool is a FREE service and will help with title tags
Something to think about: the longtail – perhaps there is less competition when you are more specific

Google universal search integrates all different media sources

Did you know:

• 10% of NYTimes.com traffic is coming from Twitter
• Facebooks traffic surpassed Google’s last week

Tags: chelsea rustrum, girls in tech, Google, santa cruz, seo
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It has been said that right now, only 45 percent of Americans are satisfied with their jobs.  (This is the lowest it has been in 22 years!)  And did you also know that an employee’s happiness really affects a company’s bottom line in both a negative and positive way.  Esteemed employee satisfaction expert, Beth Thomas’s newest book, Powered by Happy wants you to have an insight into how to harness the power of “Happy” to be more successful and productive in life, no matter how high the bar is set.

Since research has shown true happiness improves companies’ bottom line, Ms. Thomas has crafted a powerful little book filled with an upbeat personal coaching program, complete with worksheets and checklists, practical advice, and proven techniques. She wants all companies to teach their employees how to find happiness by using techniques like:

• Learning to choose happiness (even on a Monday)

• How to deal with a Boss you are having difficulty relating to

• Creating your own definition of happiness

• Changing your “To Do” list into a wish list, &

• Hanging with the right group that gets it

Here’s what one reader has said about Powered by Happy:  “Buckle up and hang on – it’s going to be an introspective and fun ride.  Look hard into the mirror, be honest with yourself, follow Beth’s advice, and become more productive and honestly happy!” – Steven M. Lyman | VP – Supply Chain,  American Eagle Outfitters, Inc.

So, we invite you to check out Thomas’ book.  And in the meantime, get a preview of this dynamic author’s ideals by watching this recent interview with her on “Good Day Columbus.”

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We at Girls in Tech are fascinated by the idea of crowdsourcing and its effect on achieving social good.

It’s why we’re happy to spread the word about the 2^nd Twestival event, a global philanthropy event which will occur in hundreds of cities around the world. This year, Twestival turns its focus to raising awareness – and real money – for global education.

Consider these facts:

• At least 72 million children around the world are not enrolled in school
• Girls account for 55 per cent of the world’s out-of-school population.
• In 26 countries, approximately 20% of young adults have fewer than two years of schooling.

New York City – by far, one of the most active cities on Twitter – is once again participating in the global cause with a music-filled event on Thursday, March 25, 2010 at Good Units, a swanky new venue in the Hudson Hotel. (Yes, tickets are still available!)

What’s amazing is that every last dime raised at every Twestival event taking place around the world will go directly to Concern Worldwide, a non-governmental, international, humanitarian organization dedicated to reducing suffering and eliminating poverty around the world.

If you’re not able to make it to tomorrow’s event in NYC, you can still participate. Check out Mashable’s list of 5 Ways You Can Get Involved With Twestival. If you’re an iPhone user, check out the app they’ve built to help you stay in-the-know about this year’s efforts. Very cool.

… And stay tuned for a number of Girls in Tech education + tech initiatives and mini-conferences making their debut this Spring 2010.

Tags: networking, New York City, social media, social network, twitter
Posted in New York | 1 Comment »