Girls In Tech

Social media guru Brian Solis will be discussing his new book, “Engage! The Complete Guide for Brands and Businesses to Build, Cultivate and Measure Success in the New Web” with media dynamo, Kym McNicholas, a woman who has risen to success by never taking NO for an answer!

We still have some tickets left! We will be accepting walk-ins this evening but can’t guarantee seats to those who don’t have advance tickets. http://gitgetsengaged.eventbrite.com

Posted in Girls In Tech, San Francisco, Silicon Valley | 2 Comments »

As some of you may have observed, there was a Women in Tech panel at TechCrunch Disrupt yesterday, which took a lot of heat and opened a lot of room for questions… But, perhaps these questions were needing to be brought to the forefront. As I see it, much of the chatter that was going on, via Twitter or otherwise, all pointed to one thing in my mind: Women in tech are here to stay, and they are demanding to be noticed. However, the question is: Are the ways they are choosing to be “noticed” always the best ways?

In her article in Mashable Business, Carla Thompson addresses these questions and more in the story: “Why We Need to Reframe the ‘Women in Tech’ Debate.”  One of her main points is, even if some bias still exists (in the start-up world, in VC funding, and in the tech field, in general) it is not as prevalent as it used to be, and we have made inroads in these areas, significantly.  There are also some “disheartening” aspects of being a lone women entrepreneur, she points out.  Having women’s sites which cater to home-based women, such as with diaper ads and fashion tips staring you in the face is one bit she finds discouraging.  But, on the brighter side, there are also a lot of new women’s organizations, (like Girls in Tech I might add),  who are there to support, uplift and empower women who are making a name for themselves in the industry.

An example of this is our upcoming Amplify Business Pitch Competition, which will allow women to come to present their business idea in front of a panel and leverage this community in this open yet competitive way.  Events like this and organizations which sponsor them are there for women and continue to support our being strong and empowered in the field not despite being a woman, but because we are women. However, we do not need to single ourselves out as women; and can join the discussion on a level playing field with men, in one’s own given tech specialty amongst a diverse cohort group, (as was seen in the most recent Facebook Garage Developer’s Hackathon event), not segragating ourselves out.

However, Thompson points out that:

• “Women-owned or led firms are the fastest growing sector of new venture creation, representing nearly 50% of all privately held businesses.
• Women-owned businesses are more likely to survive the transition from startup to established company.
• The number of U.S. software patents held by women has increased 45-fold since 1985; three times the national average.
• Women currently make up more than 30% of the technology workforce, but receive less than 10% of venture funding.”

So, the solution is, she states: “in an old truism: If you don’t like the answers, change the questions. We need a fundamental shift in the conversation around women entrepreneurs and women in business overall. We need opportunities to ask the questions that matter about the companies we’re building. We need answers that spark discussions from women who’ve been there. We need brainstorms around innovative ideas that will eventually turn into companies. In short, women need what any entrepreneur needs: support, ideas, energy, creativity, and answers. And you don’t have to paint it pink or make it heart-shaped to appeal to us. (Really, please don’t.)”  We agree.  Don’t “dumb it down” or give us special treatment.  We are here to take a lasting foothold in the tech field; and those events and organizations that support them are here to stay and encourage all.  I’d invite you to read Thompson’s entire article, (link below), and decide for yourself.

What are your thoughts?  Please, comment below!

Quotes courtesy of Mashable, http://mashable.com/2010/09/28/women-entrepreneurs/.

(by Christine Oneto & Kate Brodock)

Posted in All Chapters | 6 Comments »

Join us as we sponsor MediaBistro’s Virtual Goods Summit, coming October 12 – 13th in San Francisco.

It’s all about Making Money with Virtual Goods:

Once restricted to the world of online gaming, virtual goods and currencies are now influencing the development of social networks, community sites, and many other new and exciting markets. As the market for virtual goods continues to grow, join us for two days of engaging talks and panels designed to bring the community together to share lessons learned and a look at the future of virtual goods. With estimates suggesting this market will grow from $1 billion in 2009 to $1.6 billion in 2010, this is a must-attend event for those in the games, social media, and entertainment spaces.

Sessions include topics on:

• Virtual goods beyond games
• Designing free-to-play games for maximum engagement
• The virtual goods market in Asia
• The virtual goods market in Europe
• Virtual goods and mobile applications
• Free-to-play MMOs and virtual worlds
• Monetization infrastructure for virtual goods
• Best practices for engagement and player lifecycle management

To register, go Here.

Girls in Tech get 15% off with discount code: VGGIT

Posted in All Chapters, Events, San Francisco | No Comments »

You can never be too careful about what you post on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media networks.

A recent survey by California-based data security company Proofpoint found that 20% of the companies surveyed had investigated whether confidential company information had been exposed on a social networking site (including Facebook, MySpace and Linkedin) during the past twelve months (up from 12% over the last two years).  In addition, 20% of the companiessurveyed haddisciplined an employee for violations of company social network use policies (up from 10% in 2009) and 7% reported that they had terminated an employee for violating such policies.

It’s no secret that companies are also monitoring employees’ social network accounts and tweets more frequently than in the past to determine everything from whether employees’ online conduct might be harming the company’s public image to whether employees are lying about being out sick.

Here’s a roundup of some recent cautionary tales that have hit the news:

• A Connecticut school superintendent was fired after posting inappropriate status updates to his Facebook page during his first few days on the job.  The postings, which cost him his $150,000-a-year job, included: a comment that he slept in until 10:00 a.m. on his first day of work and that it would be “the best job ever” if that happened every day; and “counseling an administrator to retire or face termination. : )”.  (Reported by several Connecticut news outlets, including: www.necn.com and www.ctnow.com)

• Five nurses were fired from a hospital in Oceanside, California after they were caught discussing patient information on Facebook (causing concerns about HIPPA violations).  They were fired despite that fact they did not post any patient names, pictures, or other identifying information. (Reported by several San Diego news outlets, including: www.nbcsandiego.com and www.signonsandiego.com)

• An employee at a European insurance company was fired after her employer discovered she was actively using Facebook after she had requested leave, saying that she felt ill and needed to rest away from her computer.   (Reported by the Economic Times)

Maybe the above examples sound like something you would never do, but people have been fired for things far less obvious.  The new Facebook group “Fired Because of Facebook” has created a forum for employees to share their woes.  These incidents may not have made the news, but they are definitely anecdotes that people should read.

Meredith Davis Williams is an employment law attorney at Miller | Williams LLP in Los Angeles and can be reached at (213) 426-2144, mwilliams@millerwilliamslaw.com, or @MerEsqLA.

Tags: facebook, Fired Because of Facebook, Fired over Facebook, girls in tech, linkedin, Los Angeles, Meredith D Williams, social media, social networks, twitter, Using Social Networks at Work
Posted in All Chapters, Los Angeles | 2 Comments »

Register today for the first Digital Music San Francisco business networking event, produced in association with Billboard’s Mobile Entertainment Live: The Music App Summit. This event will bring together entrepreneurs, VCs, music and tech industry executives, marketers and others working with the music industry to connect with each other and develop new business opportunities in the San Francisco and Silicon Valley area.

We currently have active groups in New York City and Los Angeles that draw crowds in the hundreds, and we’re happy to add San Francisco to our list with this inaugural event. Our gatherings attract independent labels, artists, producers, marketers, bloggers, professional services and other industry executives. Our purpose is to not simply connect the industry, but to help facilitate new business opportunities for artists, labels, producers, marketers, technology companies, brands and other industry segments that are ready to capitalize on the next wave of digital music.

If you are member of Girls in Tech and have a news announcement or product/service demo relevant to the digital music industry, please let us know so we can give you the stage for a quick pitch to the audience. Contact Ephraim Cohen at Cohen AT fortexgroup.com, or Brian Speronello at Brian AT fortexgroup.com for details

The Event:

Digital Music San Francisco
in association with Billboard’s Mobile Entertainment Live: The Music App Summit

October 4th from 6:00 PM to 9:00PM

Thirsty Bear
661 Howard Street
San Francisco, CA 94105

Register: http://dmsfoct4.eventbrite.com/

Cost: FREE

Tags: Billboard's Mobile Entertainment Live, Digital Music, Digital Music San Francisco, Mobile Entertainment, Music App Summit
Posted in Girls In Tech, San Francisco, Silicon Valley | 1 Comment »

The Athena International mission is:  Supporting, developing and honoring women leaders; Inspiring women to achieve their full potential; and Creating balance in leadership worldwide.  The Palo Alto Chamber of Commerce in conjunction with Athena International would like to invite you to nominate your honor your most exceptional, inspiring female leader for this year’s Athena Award.  Since the program’s inception in 1982 more than 6000 awards have been presented in over 500 communities in the United States, Canada, China, Russia, the United Arab Emirates and most recently the United Kingdom. By honoring exceptional leaders, the ATHENA Award® Program seeks to inspire others to achieve excellence in their professional and personal lives.
The requirements for the Athena winner specify a woman of professional excellence who is both a mentor and volunteer, and must work at a business in Palo Alto.   ATHENA Award Recipients are individuals who:

• Demonstrate excellence, creativity, and initiative in their business or profession.
• Provide valuable service by contributing time and energy to improve the quality of life for others in the community.
• Actively assist women in realizing their full leadership potential.

Please make your nomination before Friday, Oct. 1st by finding the nomination form at this link: http://paloaltochamber.com/form.html.

The 24th Annual Athena Award will be presented at the Palo Alto Chamber of Commerce’s Luncheon on November 17, 2010 at the Garden Court Hotel.

Posted in All Chapters, Palo Alto | No Comments »

GIT presents Brian Solis, social media guru, the author of “Engage! The Complete Guide for Brands and Businesses to Build, Cultivate and Measure Success in the New Web”. He will introduce a concept behind his newbook and address marketing challenges in the social media realm.

Solis is globally recognized as one of the most prominent thought leaders and published authors in new media. A digital analyst, sociologist, and futurist, Solis has influenced the effects of emerging media on the convergence of marketing, communications, and publishing. He is principal of FutureWorks, an award-winning New Media agency in Silicon Valley, and has led interactive and social programs for Fortune 500 companies, notable celebrities, and Web 2.0 startups. BrianSolis.com is among the world’s leading business and marketing online resources.

Interviewing him will be Kim McNicholas, an anchor and reporter in Silicon Valley on the Forbes.com Video Network. Kim was “Star of the Year” in Bub.blicio.us’s “15 Members of the Press You Need to Meet” for 2010.

Please visit the event page for details and tickets: http://gitgetsengaged.eventbrite.com

Posted in San Francisco, Silicon Valley | 1 Comment »

The WeFeedback is an innovative, global campaign that the UN’s World Food Programme will launch on October 11th, the week leading up to World Food Day on October 16th. The theme behind the program is the power of collective as WeFeedback mobilizes individuals to come together online and in a fun and social way make a difference to lives of hungry schoolchildren around the world.

How does one feed back? Through the Feedback Calculator you can choose your favorite item such as a Cappuccino and its estimated cost. The calculator will then tell you how many hungry school children you might feed back around the world. Partners include PayPal, Zynga, Microsoft, eBay, Blogher, TNT and celebrity partners such as Drew Barrymore. Even more key to the success of WeFeedback is individuals sharing it with their friends, companies sharing with their consumers, bloggers sharing with their readers and everyone can track the overall impact of their network through their WeFeedback.org page.

And so you know that your money and effort is going the right places in the right way, be assured that:   Nutrition considerations cut across all WFP operations and programmes. The agency is giving nutritional input even in an emergency-related general food distribution. The same is true, in less dramatic circumstances, whether it provides a snack of fortified biscuits or a hot meal for school children during the school day.  Thus, their programs are targeted and very well-advised as they implement them.

We encourage you to join the WeFeedBack campaign and get engaged with your global community at http://engage.wfp.org.  Help these shining faces!  You can also go straight to the donation page, here.

Posted in All Chapters | No Comments »

Live blogging from San Francisco on Friday, September 24, 2010:

Smartphone Games – V The Changing Face of Distribution – Living with Apple

The Changing Face of Distribution — Living with Apple
Jason Citron: AuroraFeint
Foker: Scoreloop
Tracy Chan: NGMOCO
Si Shen: PapayaMobile

How does adding a social layer impact players:
- NGMOCO: The more friends people have, the more engaged they are.  The more social your games get, the more often you can pull people back into your games.
- Scoreloop:  You can drive monetization, engagement depends on how you weave it into a game.  A great game with smart integration of a social layer does improve the overall user experience.
- AuroraFeint: JetCarStunts, added action replays.  After they added in asynchronous social mechanic, dramatically increased game play, time to play.

By Geo or demo, who are the people that are most aggressive about playing in a social context?
- Papayamobile: Mainly girls are playing on the PM social network
- NGMOCO:  It depends on the game.  We want people to find friends where ever they may be.  We find the compulsion to react to the social obligations and nuances are dependent on the life cycle within the game.
- AuroraFeint: Since we’re on 30% of iPhone devices, our demo is quite broad. For our Free Game of The Day program — that audience is mainly teenagers, typically male.

Each of you have very complete products, but Apple still came out with Game Center — Why?!
- Aurora Feint: The feedback we’ve received from our devs, people are using GC, because they feel they are suppose to.  It’s in Apple’s nature to control the stack.  But devs are interested in using OpenFeint side by side with Game Center
- NGMOCO: We’re working with them to see how they can be complimentary
- Scoreloop: As long as Game Center is iPhone only, it’s a very limiting thing.

Do you think Android will do the same thing as Apple did with Game Center?
- Aurora Feint: As we go forward on the mobile phone, having these localized game networks is kinda stupid. You need to have a social layer that goes across all the devices so people can play with all of their friends.  It’s like not being able to play Farmville with your friend because you have a Dell, and your friend has a Mac.

Does Facebook keep you up at night?
- Aurora Feint: Yes.  We hope by the time FB goes to mobile we’ll have already kicked ass.
- Scoreloop: FB grew to where it was on a single platform, which is infinity easier than doing it on a slew of platforms.  It’s one of 15 things that keep me up at night

You all see tens of thousands of developers that want to know how to grow. What do you tell them?
- Scoreloop: How can social elements spurn social activity within a game and thus grow a game.  I’d say social
- AF:  Devs want to know how do we make awesome games.  To the extent that we can help them make their games better, we do.
- PapayaMobile: It’s even harder for people to make good applications and make money.  We tell devs to focus on user engagement and think about it deeply not just add leaderboards.  We have an offer SDK for Android, that’s similar to Offerpal.
- On Plus: Devs want to know how can we take this game to the masses.  Lot of the games are free-to-play but it is the social connection that drives it forward.

What role do you all see for the carriers in helping with distribution ?
- Aurora Feint: Last week we launched OpenFeint on Android, and we partnered with AT&T, Verizon and Google to promote these games.  They will play the same role as Apple plays on iPhone.  The carriers are going to be able to promote games in bright lights. When we launched last week, our two games reached #1 and #2 paid spot Fruit Ninja and Minisquadron within 24 hours.
- Scoreloop: We have started working with a couple of carriers in Asia.  That drives uptake of the game.

What are the strong points – differentiation for each of you?
- PapayaMobile: We are the best on Android.
- NGMOCO: We are game makers and we are building the tools as game makers for game makers
- AF: We are the largest mobile on the planet.  40 million player.  We can move 1.5 free downloads in two days.
- Scoreloop: We add virtual currency and virtual goods.

Tags: Aurora Feint, compulsion loop, Jason Citron, ngmoco, OpenFeint, Papayamobile, Scoreloop, Si shen, Social Games, social network, Tracy Chan
Posted in All Chapters, San Francisco | 1 Comment »

It’s time for women with great ideas to ignite their company’s visibility and growth!

Vator.tv, a leading social network for entrepreneurs and innovators, and of news and information through VatorNews, has partnered with Girls in Tech, a social network enterprise focused on the engagement, education and empowerment of like-minded, professional, intelligent and influential women in technology.

Together, we are hosting our first-ever Amplify Business Pitch Competition – Awarding women-led startups, which will be held on November 18, 2010 in San Francisco.

To sign up for the business pitch competition, please click on the following link: Enter the AMPLIFY business pitch competition

To purchase a ticket to the event, please click on the following link: Purchase tickets

Our keynote speaker is Esther Dyson, an active angelinvestor in a variety of start-ups, for-profit and otherwise, around the world. She also operates as the Internet’s court jester, a person of no institutional importance who somehow manages to speak the truth and to be heard when and where it matters. She does business as EDventure, the reclaimed name of the company she owned for 20-odd years before selling it to CNET Networks in 2004.

Her primary activity is investing in start-ups and guiding many of them as a board member. Her board seats include 23andMe, Airship Ventures, Boxbe, Voxiva, Eventful, Evernote, IBS Group (Russia, advisory board), Meetup, Midentity (UK), NewspaperDirect, Yandex (Russia)…and WPP Group (not a start-up). Some of her other direct IT investments include Flickr and Del.icio.us (sold to Yahoo!), BrightMail (sold to Symantec), Orbitz (sold to Cendant), Medstory and Powerset (both sold to Microsoft), Plazes (sold to Nokia), Tacit (sold to Oracle), BlogAds, BrightHouse, ChoiceStream, Dopplr, Dotomi, Linkstorm, Mashery, Organized Wisdom, Ovusoft, PatientsLikeMe, Resilient,Technorati, ThingD, Vizu.com and Zedo. Indirectly, she is an investor in Amee.cc and Wesabe.

Tags: Adriana Gascoigne, AMPLIFY, Bambi Francisco, business pitch, competition, girls in tech, Vator.tv, women in tech
Posted in All Chapters | 3 Comments »