Girls In Tech

Today’s high-achieving women aren’t afraid to speak up, aren’t racked with self-doubt, and are confident in their abilities and contributions to the workplace. They also define success very differently than the first generation of women to integrate the corporate world and break down other barriers for women. For them, success means realizing their greatest personal potential, while having a positive impact on the world around them.  If this sometimes means taking a lower paying, less prestigious job instead of the next step up the corporate ladder, that’s what they’ll do.

Sounds great, right? Well, there’s a down side. Many of today’s high-achieving women often feel underutilized, bored, frustrated, and anxious that they haven’t lived up to their potential or that they aren’t making the difference that they know they are capable of. No matter how much they do, they always feel like they should be doing more. Master coach and author, Marcia Reynolds, Psy.D., calls this “The Burden of Greatness.”

In her new book WANDER WOMAN (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, June 2010, paperback), Dr. Reynolds explains how the burden of greatness often turns high-achieving women into wander women who move from job to job, career to career, business to business in search of fulfillment and purpose. This leaves them exhausted, anxious, and confused. Reynolds first revealed this phenomenon in her doctoral research in 2007. In her coaching practice she’s worked with hundreds of women who struggle with the burden of greatness. In WANDER WOMAN she offers them the tools, strategies, and coaching secrets they need for finding fulfillment, purpose, and meaning. She also explains the 5 main drivers of wander women and reveals the social shifts that gave rise to the wander woman phenomenon.  To find out what these drivers are, delve into WANDER WOMAN for her insight.

To read more about the book, click here: http://wanderwomanbook.com/  — or — Check out the Wander Woman Blog, here.

publicity credit: Lorna Garano | photo credit: wanderwomanbook.com

Tags: Dr. Marcia Reynolds, High-achieving women, Wander Woman
Posted in All Chapters | 1 Comment »

In France, the summer months are usually considered less active than the rest of the year- but not for Girls in Tech. The Paris chapter made its official launch on May 31st, making waves throughout the French and European tech scene right at the beginning of summer.

Believe it or not, the launch actually had to be rescheduled as way more people signed-up to attend than expected. We reached maximum capacity with over 80 regsitered attendees, who signed-up to hear from some of todays hottest French female faces in the tech space (details on the launch and the participants can be found in this article in TechCrunch). Plus, not only was the event covered by a number of local blogs but also by the leading morning television show, La Matinale on Canal+.  All in all, it was a fabulous success.

As a result, a handful of the local women’s tech groups approached us to do a collaborative event, La Night des Tech Women on June 29th. In addition to Girls in Tech Paris, this event featured the female entrepreneur magazine The Next Women, the internet group Girlz in Web, the female open source group Womoz and  networking group Cyber-Elles. This combined effort brought together over 170 registered attendees – right smack in the middle of summer !

Up next: a small, pre-Bastille Day networking happy hour. Here are the details, for anyone who’d like to join us:

When: July 12th, 7pm-10pm

Where: Le Presse Café (89 rue Montmartre, Paris 75002) / nearest metro stops: Sentier or Bourse (on line 3)

No registration is required but we request that you RSVP on the Facebook event page so that we can have a rough head-count in advance.

And the wheels are already in motion for our next big event on September 15th! We’ve got an absolutely amazing line-up and we’ll announce the details shortly.

In the meantime, feel free to keep-up with the Girls in Tech Paris chapter en français on Facebook and Twitter (@gitparis).

Tags: Girls in Tech Paris
Posted in All Chapters, Paris | 1 Comment »

Strong passwords are your online defense shield!

Randomness is the key to strong passwords, but is strictly against the basic human instinct. We all love patterns and systematic structures in anything and everything we do. It is hard for us to remember or memorize something that we can’t associate a pattern with! And, this predictable behavior of online users is what makes them prey to most common of hacking attacks – cracking passwords – by intelligent password guessing (brute force attack) or applying all words in the dictionary (dictionary attacks) resulting in unauthorized access to their private online accounts.

Our tendency of not to tax our brains with complex processing and information overload involved in the process of first, creating a complex password, and then having to remember it, results in easy-to-remember, and in most cases, easy-to-guess (weaker) passwords – and this is exactly the upper limit on how secure one is! (Read: Easy to remember but hard to guess passwords on wiki)

Some wary users actually come up with a very strong password(s), but most quickly get tired of the constant need to remember these, and start using ‘same’ password for all or many of their accounts (a behavior that gave rise to ‘Open ID’ technology).

Difficulty in remembering complex passwords?

However, this is an extremely risky practice, as there’s too much at stake. One account being compromised puts all the other accounts (protected by this cracked password) are exposed to higher security threat. And, we all know, our creativity with passwords reaches stalemate when we start incrementing our beloved password by one or some other constant or begin recycling from a pool of previously used passwords! This is the death of our protective armor, and increases our vulnerability many folds!

When online, your identity is protected by your password. The stronger it is, the better shielded you are against hacking attacks. So protect yourself by flexing that intelligent muscle in your head and getting creative when setting the access code to your sensitive data online!

Use strong passwords as your armor when online!

Image sources:

http://www.voidspace.org.uk/technology/password_policies/images/passwords.gif

http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:BMja-Wnct1YBuM:http://blogs.davenport.edu/its

Tags: brute force, defense, dictionary attacks, guessing password, hacking, information security, online security, open ID, shield, stolen password, strong passwords
Posted in All Chapters, Minneapolis | 1 Comment »

Pakistan is a country that still ruled by ancient tribal traditions. Women in Pakistan are discriminated financially and socially. They work as hard as men, but have to obey their fathers, husbands and brothers. The women have no right to make their own decisions. Thousands of women are killed in Pakistan for their refusal to submit to an arranged marriage, seeking a divorce, separation, and perceived flirtatious behavior. Honour killings, Karo-Kari, is an old tradition in Pakistan. Karo-Kari is an ordinary murder but police and prosecutors often ignore it.

Khalida Brohi, is a young women from Balochistan, a remarkable activists who wants to change women’s life in Pakistan. In 2004, she built the foundation of Participatory Development Initiatives (PDI) to fight abuse of women. PDI aims to promote equal opportunities and benefits for all genders. Khalida is deeply passionate about her mission and opportunities that she can bring to her country.

On July 7 at the Unreasonable Institute in Boulder, Khalida Brohi was presenting her work against honour killings, in Pakistan. It is amazing, how much was PDI accomplished just for few years of it existence! PDA organized computer centers, sewing centers, a language centers and offer certificate courses. PDI also runs cultural preservation projects to preserve and protect the positive sides of the tribal traditions. Khalida’s presentation was able to raise awareness about her cause and brought hope of positive change.

Follow Khalida’s blog Kaleidoscope of Life or Participatory Development Initiatives website for future updates.

Tags: Khalida Brohi, Participatory Development Initiatives, pdi, women abuse Pakistan
Posted in All Chapters, San Francisco | No Comments »

An Invitation from Singularity University: All Girls in Tech members and Anyone interested in the advancement of Women in tech:

What: WOMEN @ FRONTIER – SU Public Panel
When: July 13, 7:00 – 9:00 pm (open to public)

It’s our pleasure to invite your organization to participate in Singularity University’s Women’s Frontier Expo -July 13th at NASA Ames, and to ask the members of your organization to join our audience for the evening.

We are hosting Women at the Frontier to celebrate women’s accomplishments in business, science, technology, politics, and humanitarianism.  Our goal is to bring together thought leaders to voice design solutions for creating grand scale positive change and to address the world’s greatest challenges.

Women at the Frontier will begin with a Frontier Expo showcasing groundbreaking women-led initiatives, companies and entrepreneurial ventures, and women’s resource associations.  Your presence would be a valuable contribution.  We would like to feature our Expo organizations with public information displays and interactive organization representatives.   In attendance will be Singularity University’s internationally acclaimed faculty and student body, as well as Silicon Valley’s leading entrepreneurs, business, and political community.

Following the Expo, a ‘Frontier Panel’ will feature keynote speakers including Venture Capitalist Consultant Liddy Karter and Moderator Sonia Arrison Senkut, and a moderated Q&A with BlogHer Founder, Lisa Stone.

For more information about the topic and participants, please see this private link, which is continually updated:

http://singularityu.org/women2010/

10^9+ is Singularity University’s Grand Challenge to students and executives that join our program.  Please see this video synopsis of our Graduate Studies Program Opening Ceremonies last week for a description of our program.

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=400372872809

We get amazing insight from top thought leaders of our time but… they’re almost all men.  Our world needs insight and solutions presented by all voices, including mothers, daughters, sisters, and wives.  Women at the Frontier will feature the voices of women on issues relevant to our future. In particular, 10^9+ (ten to the ninth plus), is Singularity University’s challenge to impact 1 billion people in a positive way in ten years leveraging exponential trends, innovation and the power of entrepreneurship.

——————

What: WOMEN @ FRONTIER – SU Public Panel
When: July 13, 7:00 – 9:00 pm (open to public)
Where: NASA Ames Research Park, Bldg 3 Main Conference Room (Ballroom, seats 300)
Why: To showcase the “voice of women leaders”, entrepreneurs, scientists, innovators, and humanitarians in regards to 10^9+
Who: You and Girls in Tech!

Tags: Sigularity University, Silicon Valley, Women at the Frontier, women in tech
Posted in All Chapters, San Francisco, santa cruz, Silicon Valley | 2 Comments »

On Strategy (by Sramana Mitra) recently featured an article describing Google’s recent entry into the “vertical search” space, as they acquired ITA Software: a 14-year old company making software that compiles flight and pricing data. The acquisition was quoted at $700 million in cash and marks Google’s entry into the travel search market.

With the addition of Boston-based ITA, Google’s Marissa Meyer states: “we think there is room for more competition and greater innovation. Google has already come up with new ways to organize hard-to-find information like images, newspaper archives, scholarly papers… Once we’ve completed our acquisition of ITA, we’ll work on creating new flight search tools that will make it easier for you to search for flights, compare flight options and prices and get you quickly to a site where you can buy your ticket.”  “We’re confident that by combining ITA’s expertise as the leading developer of flight information software with Google’s technology we’ll be able to create great user innovations in flight search.”

Google will compete in this space with the likes of such search engines as Kayak.com.  As the blogger points out, it is about time that Google joins this vertical search space. It can provide its much-needed (in her estimation) innovation and sophisticated search algorithms which these other companies may lack. However, now Kayak is also beefing up its offering as it has purchased lead competitor, SideStep. This combined venture will become the fifth-largest online travel company, with a combined estimated worth of $3.5 billion, revenues totalling $85 million.  More consolidation in this market is most likely in the making and inevitable.

However, will Kayak compete once Google gets up and running, full throttle with customers migrating?  And will these consolidated companies really make the consumer happier?  From my past experience, certain travel sites can be better for certain purchases than others.  For example, it used to be that Hotels.com was the best for finding your perfect hotel … (Unless you were willing to be flexible on your arrival date & time and/or quality of hotel, in which case Hotwire or Priceline would almost always find cheaper rooms.)  For flights, Expedia or Orbitz may have been one’s preferred choice.   This is all left to unfold — What are your thoughts?

(quotes courtesy of: www.sramanamitra.com)

Tags: Christine Oneto, Google, ITA, Kayak.com, SideStep, Vertical Search
Posted in All Chapters | 2 Comments »

If you’re a gamer like myself, you’ve probably heard of the electronic entertainment expo, or E3. It’s one of the biggest conventions used to preview up-and-coming and recently released video games, accessories, attire, and much much more. I’ve had the opportunity to check out this convention for the past several years, and would like to share some of my thoughts on the highlights and changes that have occurred during this time.

After walking the halls of the convention for hours and hours, what really stood out is how much the entertainment industry has merged with the video game industry. Just 5-10 years ago Hollywood was on top of the world and gamers were more of an underground or basement crowd existing completely independently of each other. Now with the recessive economy, Hollywood is losing revenue while the gaming industry is maintaining it’s numbers. Once a power house, the movie market has now switched positions with the gaming industry. There’s a boost in game development and its takers, and entertainment is begging for a chance to play a part in anything gaming.

Take for example the highlight of the show: Nintendo’s 3DS. Nintendo truly outdid themselves with this new intriguing handheld console. As the name implies, the new features include two cameras on the back which allow for taking 3D pictures, and the ability to play games in 3D. However after the 30 minute wait to get a hands-on look at this new device, the majority of uses I saw were not gaming related, but entertainment. During the preview it wasn’t so much the games, but the movies that were highly stressed. “You can watch regular movies in 3D on the Nintendo 3DS!”, I was told. Now as amazing as I think it is to be able to watch movies on a game console, I started to wonder how it became as much or more about movies as gaming.

Looking around the halls there is more integration of entertainment and gaming than ever before. Most popular movies today are being turned into video games, as well as the other way around. There have been rumors about the online game World of Warcraft being turned into a movie. A game that is being played by a whopping 12 million people. Such a following would be a sure box office success.

This strange evolution from people watching movies or playing video games independently to a world where a movie or a game enhances the overall experience is amazing. In a short time these two very different industries found a way to combine their strengths and bring two audiences into the same circle. I believe this is a positive turn of events for gamers everywhere and I hope this trend continues, and the these two communities continue to grow in unison.

Tags: Alexandra Mokh, gaming, girl gamers, girlgamer, Girls, girls in tech, GIT, Los Angeles, tech, technology
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Due to the economy meltdown, people started looking to innovation and startups to rejuvenate the economy. According to Richard Bendis ,“Companies with less than 20 employees were the source of 107 percent of the new jobs created after the 2001 recession.”  New York has been seen as an emerging tech center , Boston maintains its incumbency as a tech beacon , and, of course, Silicon Valley retains its title as the epicenter for tech startups and innovation.  However, what about all those states in between the distant coasts?

A female entrepreneur, Ruth Hedges, is trying to map out this problem—literally  . Her startup, FundingRoadmap is an electronic business plan and due diligence reporting system that streamlines the deal closing process. Ruth and her team have developed a way to bring together “startups looking for a level playing field for access to capital”. The map not only shows the startups and their respective locations but also highlights the amount of capital that they are looking to raise but have yet to find.

While I do not see this as a solution to the problem nor an integral sourcing tool for investors (or at least for the time being), it highlights the point that geography limits access to capital. In this virtual world that makes us so connected, ironically, the innovators are having trouble connecting capital with their geography. We need not only location-based technology but location based capital as well. I hope that Ruth and her team make some headway on mapping out and mitigating the issue. There are plenty of landlocked folk that have great ideas, ambition, and the ability to execute—all they need is a little cash.

To add a startup to the map or identify the startup demographics, see the map.

Posted in Girls In Tech | 1 Comment »

Hi Girls! YouNoodle has partnered with Intel again this year to organize a technology innovation business plan competition in South America – Desafio Intel 2010 will be open now to all Latin American countries after receiving over 220 submissions in 2009. More on this exciting opportunity, until then check out Heesun’s invitation:

We are organizing a mentorship program for the semi-finalists of a technology innovation business plan competition in Latin America and Europe.  The competition drew hundreds of entries this year, and starting this month will be offering semi-finalist teams mentors in Silicon Valley.  Teams are competing for cash prizes and a chance to travel to the final rounds in Silicon Valley in the fall.

Last year’s participants were so grateful for their mentors’ help and expertise, especially their knowledge of the US market and network, and mentors also expressed how rewarding it had been to work with budding entrepreneurs in the early stages of their startups.  One mentor even flew to the Bay Area to support her team for the final round of the competition!

The commitment for mentorship would be about an hour a week throughout the July-August for Latin America or throughout August for Europe.  It is a great opportunity to meet young entrepreneurs around the world – not to mention a perfect way to make friends to visit in different countries – and we would love to have you on board this year.

If you’re interested, please contact Heesun Lho (heesun.lho@gmail.com) for more information. Or click here for  Desafio-Intel and the Intel Challenge.

Tags: business plan competition, competition, Europe, Heesun, Intel, international, latin america, mentorship, Terra Khachooni, YouNoodle
Posted in All Chapters, All Chapters | No Comments »

BlueGlass LA is a unique opportunity to network with, and learn from, some of the top names in search marketing, social media and entrepreneurship. It’s also a great excuse to spend some time in gorgeous Marina Del Rey, and it’s already shaping up to be one of the summer’s premiere industry events.

Speakers include: Ben Huh (Cheezburger Network), Neil Patel (KissMetrics), Dave McClure (Angel Investor), Marshall Simmonds (NY Times), Jason Nazar (DocStoc), Vanessa Fox (Nine by Blue),  Jessica Bowman (SEM InHouse), Greg Boser (3 Dog Media), Todd Friesen (Position Technologies), David Szetela (Clix Marketing), Melanie Mitchell (Digitas), Adam Audette (Audette Media), Andy Liu (Buddy TV), Michael Brito (Edelman Digital), Lawrence Coburn (Rate It All), Micah Baldwin (Graphic.ly), Rand Fishkin (SEOMoz) and David Roth (Yahoo!).

The conference starts at 8am on July 19 at the Marina Del Rey Mariott, and it goes until 5pm on July 20. Sessions will focus on SEO, social media marketing, entrepreneurship, raising money from angels & VC partnerships, link building, InHouse SEO and much much more.

Between the amazing speakers and the incredible networking opportunities, this is one conference you can’t afford to miss. And, fortunately for Girls in Tech members, it also happens to be a lot more affordable, thanks to a generous 10% discount on tickets with the code gitbgla.

Tags: conferences, Events, networking, seo, social media marketing
Posted in Events, Los Angeles | 1 Comment »