Girls In Tech

We live in the world where women entrepreneurs are exposed to many opportunities to create, launch, and develop their businesses. On November 18, 2010 in San Francisco, there will be held the first Amplify Business Pitch Competition to Award women-led start-ups. Vator.tv, a social network for entrepreneurs in a partnership with Girls in Tech, a social network enterprise focused on the engagement, education and empowerment of intelligent women in technology, will host the event.

The keynote speaker is Esther Dyson, a journalist, an entrepreneur, an investor, and a philanthropist. She is also an active member of advisory boards for-profit and non-profit organizations. She was named by Forbes magazine as one of the most powerful women in American business.

Esther Dyson was born in Switzerland to a family of a mother mathematician and a father physicist. She always had a passion for technology. Dyson has a degree in economics from Harvard. She started her career as a fact checker, and later a reporter at Forbes magazine. However, she was always seeking challenges and was deeply interested in start-ups. In 1983 she joined Rosen Research and bought the company from her employer Ben Rosen. She renamed it EDventure Holdings. This was later sold to CNET Network. By selling EDventure Holdings to CNET Networks in 2004, Dyson broadened her new business opportunities.

Now her record of involvement includes multiple areas: health care, private aviation & space, and IT. She is an investor or sits on the board of companies like MeetUp Inc. (US), Midentity (UK), Flickr (US, sold to Yahoo!), del.icio.us (US, sold to Yahoo!), Evernote (US), Boxbe (US), 23andMe (US), Airship Ventures (US), Eventful.com (US), Sunlight Foundation (US). This is not the complete list of the companies that Esther Dyson is involved in.

Her vast interests and vision goes beyond the United States boarders. She sees opportunities in the emerging markets of Russia, Hungary and Belarus. She is currently investing in CVO Group (Hungary), Epam (Belarus), IBS Group (Russia, advisory board), Vatera (Hungary), and Yandex (Russia).

Despite her busy schedule she is an active journalist and a writer. She publishes one of the most intellectual articles on technology, the monthly newsletter Release 1.0. In 1997, Dyson published Release 2.0. A book on how the Internet affects individuals’ lives. Her other work includes Release 3.0, her bimonthly column for the New York Times. She has a weblog Release 4.0 and an occasional contributor to online Huffington Post as Release 0.9.

Dyson travels a great deal. She is lives without a telephone at home and prefers not to drive a car. She is a remarkable individual who thinks large and has a unique vision of the future.