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Home » Archives for December 2010

Sheryl Sandberg on Why There are So few Women in Tech & New Year’s Resolutions

December 24th, 2010
All Chapters, Girls In Tech
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Christine Oneto

COO Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook recently spoke at the inaugural TEDWomen Conference.  Her touchstone speech is one which we are sure you may have been made aware of via a Facebook status, Twitter, or your favorite blog.  However, we thought it was important enough to post here, too.  In it, she outlines her top 3 tips she gives women on how to break the cycle mentioned above — too few women in advanced positions in tech.  So, whether or not your New Year’s resolution(s) include such job and career-oriented goals as these, I would highly recommend setting aside some non-interrupted time when you can sit and take in this video –  to all aspiring women in business out there.

(video via: www.ted.com/talks)

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Tags: Ted Women, tedx, women in tech
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A Holiday Invite for GITNYC Members: 2010 New York’s Technical Community Holiday Party

December 21st, 2010
Events, Girls In Tech, New York
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Tommy Michelle Jenkins

A Holiday Invite for GITNYC Members: 2010 New York's... Our friends at Bootup.io and other tech community partners are extending an invite to all Girls in Tech NYC members for their 4th annual holiday party, bringing together all aspects of technology and the business of technology in one event as we take over the entire Suspenders Bar and Restaurant. Come early for free drinks and connect with colleagues from every segment of the NYC tech scene! A collaborative event notice from GIT NYC. ~~~ Palindromic numbers and winter solstice holiday cheer is back on 12/21 for an evening of professional networking with New York’s technical community. As with previous years, we expect hundreds to fill the venue so arrive early to claim your free drink tickets. Our mission is to bring together all aspects of technology and the business of technology in one event. ~~~ All are invited – CTO/CIO, junior admin, engineer, developer, entrepreneur, manager, author, speaker, media, and business professional. http://www.bootup.io/holiday-party Make sure to RSVP right away to secure your entry! Tuesday, December 21st, 2010 at 6:30pm at Suspenders – 111 Broadway, New York, NY 10006 Fulton St stop on the 6 train, Wall street on the red line. Girls in  TechBootup

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Tags: bootup.io, holiday, holiday cheer, new york technical community holiday party, nyphp, nytchp, professional networking, startup one stop, suspenders, technology, winter solstice
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Where the Wild Things Are: Yoursphere Offers Young Teens Virtual Safe Haven

December 21st, 2010
All Chapters, Girls In Tech, New York, San Francisco
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Karin Xie

In the past decade, the meteoric rise of social media networks like Facebook and MySpace gave birth to a new digital generation that is more tech-savvy and exposed than ever. The generation gap between parents and kids has widened, and horror stories about sexting, flaming and all forms of cyberbullying have sent parents into a digital frenzy.

In the media, the Internet is often portrayed as an unpatrolled playground crawling with sexual predators and cyber criminals eager to take advantage of our little sisters, brothers, nieces and nephews. Paranoia? Yes and no. While teens are likely more media literate than overprotective parents are willing to believe, recent studies found that kids under 12 in particular are indeed not sophisticated Internet users and more vulnerable to harassment. The anonymous nature of the Internet allows for faceless criminals to “walk up” to our little ones and cause irreparable emotional and physical damage beyond our wildest imagination.

Thankfully, a myriad of organizations have sprouted up to help parents and kids find a happy medium – one from which they can reap the benefits of unprecedented connectivity and minimize the risk involved with untimely exposure to sexual content, verbal abuse and obscenity in the absence of parental oversight.

The world’s most popular networking sites, Facebook, Bebo and MySpace, all have age restrictions that prevent children under 13 from joining. However, a UK watchdog found that 25% of those surveyed under 13 lied about their age and had an online presence.

So what’s a concerned parent to do? A niche networking site, Yoursphere, caught our attention. Mary Kay Hoal, a mother of five and former media executive, founded the site to provide a safe and controlled platform for children and teens through 18. The multi-step registration process involves sophisticated parental identity verification and sex offender registry screening – essentially Facebook for kids with a bullet-proof vest. While Yoursphere is a for-profit website, it provides a great alternative to the wild west of our evolving digital landscape and affords anxious parents some peace of mind.

Other pioneer educational non-profits and agencies worth looking at include:

Family Online Safety Institute: http://www.fosi.org/

Common Sense Media: http://www.commonsensemedia.org/

ConnectSafely: http://www.connectsafely.org/

WebWiseKids: http://www.webwisekids.org/

iKeepSafeInternet Safety Coalition: http://www.ikeepsafe.org/

National Cyber Security Alliance: http://staysafeonline.org/

To note: The renowned Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project and Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI) have teamed up to conduct an extensive study focused on teenagers’ online activities and digital citizenship. The report will be the first of its kind to examine today’s digital natives’ attitude and behavior in a methodical and multidimensional way. We will keep an eye out for the expected results a year from now. In the meantime, if you have interesting research and stories to share with our readers, feel free to drop a comment!

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Posted in All Chapters, Girls In Tech, New York, San Francisco | 1 Comment »

Vivo Girls Sports, Inc. – Local Company for Young Women in Sports

December 18th, 2010
All Chapters
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Christine Oneto

i’m alive.  listen.

This is the slogan of Vivogs — Vivo Girls Sports — an organization created to foster the involvement in team and all sports in young women ages 13 – 24 years.  By this, it is an organization after my own heart, as it encourages women and girls, not only to be active, but also to have a voice.

Vivo Girls Sports is an organization started by women who are united in their passion to support athletic girls and young women. They are current and former athletes who believe sports and exercise keep us balanced in our sometimes frenzied  world.  Seeing the very “boy-centric” environment in high school and collegiate sports programs, they wanted to create a site that would focus on the unique and specific needs of teenage and college female athletes.  And so, in 2009, Mill Valley-based Vivo Girls Sports, Inc. was born.

When you go to the site, you are immediately drawn to the various options and ways that one can interact on the site.  From the ‘Reviews‘ section — where users can both post their own reviews of their favorite sports gear products, as well as search for reviews of items they are looking to purchase — to the ‘Buzz‘ section, where you will read about the “Athlete of the Week” or an interview with a local athletic star, and at the same time be able to reference a calendar of upcoming sports events and latest women’s sports news.  This section also includes training tips, videos, and a

SF University High's Girls X-Country Team

“Team of the Week” spotlight, too.  So, as you will see, there is something for just about everyone.  It is a site “for athletes, by athletes.”

Another area of the site is VIVOTALK – A forum for both girls currently or formerly in sports, coaches & parents, and even a forum specifically for sports camps.  So, as you can see, the site is very supportive of girls ‘getting ahead’ and mastering the sport of their choice.  It is a place for them to speak up and give their opinions, share with friends and teammates, or in general, just be a girl!  With experts in a variety of fields also contributing, it is a rich conglomeration of information and encouragement for this oft scarce-sourced age range.

We at Girls in Tech would like to say kudos!  to founder Marilou McFarlane (along with her husband Craig), COO Kathy Williams, and new EVP of Business Development/Strategic Partnerships, Holly Turner, for creating and maintaining such an exceptional resource for young ladies in sports.  It is a resource I know I will pass on and recommend; and I wish them much success.  Way to put technology/the web in play for such a necessary and vital segment of our community! — Girls on their way up to success in both sports as well as in life.

You can see more &/or join their Facebook group by visiting their website, here: http://vivogs.com/.  If you wish, read more on their blog, here.

(photo credit: VivoGS (http://vigogs.com)

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An Interview with Miriam Warren: Vice President, European Marketing at Yelp

December 16th, 2010
Girls In Tech
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Christine Oneto

Yelp is, without question, the maverick and juggernaut when it comes to online review sites; and it is often the first place many people go when looking for a new restaurant, hair salon, or auto mechanic.  I was fortunate enough to interview a woman who has just recently been promoted to head up the Marketing department for Yelp, Europe:  Miriam Warren.  Below is her very generous overview for us, shedding some light into the world of online marketplace and web deals for all of us who are curious!

Q: What is your current role at Yelp? And, how has your career lead you to this point?
I’m Vice President of European Marketing.
I’m tasked with expanding Yelp into Europe; we started up in the UK and Ireland last year and this year we’ve launched into France, Germany, Austria and the Netherlands. I’m lucky to lead a team of exceptionally talented local brand evangelists – they are responsible for spreading the Yelp gospel and growing its community.
I began my career building a creative team of designers, copywriters, information architects, brand strategists and art directors in the San Francisco office of a UK-based digital business consultancy.  That role helped build my foundation in talent acquisition and also gave me my first opportunity to work in a cross-cultural environment.  When the company closed up shop in the wake of 9/11 and the dot com bust I took a year to travel through France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Guatemala, Costa Rica and Belize, among others. This mostly solo expedition taught me many things but mostly that leaping toward that which scares you most can have incredible, positive results.
In 2005, while working in executive search, I started writing reviews on Yelp. About a year and a half later, I became Yelp’s first community manager in Washington, D.C. And the rest, as they say, is history!

Q:  Who has been an inspirational woman (or man) in your career, whom you can say has been a great influence on you and your work?

Attempting to narrow down to just one inspirational woman on my very long list proved too difficult. Without a doubt though, the opportunity to spend my undergraduate years at Mills, the oldest women’s college on the West Coast, had a profound influence on me, as did so many of the women I met and collaborated with while there.  I went on my very first job interview – in a borrowed suit – whilst still living in the dorms. And the Mills motto “remember who you are and what you represent” has served as an excellent guide.

Q:  In your new role at Yelp, what will be your main or core set of goals that you will endeavor to tackle?

I want to make Yelp as useful in London, Dublin, Paris, Berlin, Vienna and Amsterdam as it already is in San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York.

Q:  Given the great success of Yelp, along with: the recent trend in new sites such as Groupon and Living Social + check-in sites and the like: Where do you see Yelp’s opportunities and/or challenges in this new landscape?

Arguably, Yelp is the original local business search service. For over six years now, people have been relying on the site to determine at which local business they should spend their hard earned money. With the proliferation of other local services, especially on mobile, I really only see opportunity for us. In fact, Yelp recently announced that we are building onto our Check-in feature with Yelp Check-in Offers. We see this as a natural extension to our already existing services given we know +38M people on Yelp.com and +2.6M people on our mobile applications are coming to Yelp each month to discover new, local businesses. Adding a way for consumers to save money or get stuff for free for what they’re already doing – and a way for business owners to take advantage of the already existing traffic to Yelp – just makes sense. In my mind, these other services are more retroactive. Folks are leveraging them when they’re already physically at the business!

Q:  As a highly achieving woman in the tech industry, do you have a piece(s) of advice that you would most recommend to our entrepreneurial and leadership-minded readers on Girls in Tech?

- The best antidote to fear is action.
It’s fine to be afraid, just don’t stay there long. All of the best things that have happened in my life – career and otherwise – have had some element of fear at the outset. Learn to embrace it and take action. The inertia of fear is heavy and you must keep moving to get out from under it; don’t let yourself stagnate for long.

- Always ask “Who do you know?” and “How can I help?”
You don’t need to have all the right answers to be successful – you do need to know where to find them. When you meet someone who inspires you, make sure to inquire about who else they know that you should speak with. And start with your own network first! The best folks I know in London are people I met through people I already knew in San Francisco, New York and Washington, D.C. simply because I asked them to make introductions.

When someone takes the time to meet and talk with you make sure to ask how you can help her or him. You might be surprised with how you can be useful to others.

- Life doesn’t get easier, you have to get smarter.
Try to learn important lessons the first time around by being brutally honest with yourself and asking others to do the same.

- If you have an opportunity to work abroad, take it!
Oh the places you’ll go…

Q:  What is your achievement(s) you are most proud of?

My proudest achievements are those where I get to be part of seeing the dreams of other people come true: Whether that’s helping a fellow alumna practice for an interview, picking out a perfect shirt for a friend to wear to a big presentation, giving someone the extra push they need to quit a job in order to start a career or hiring someone into a role where I know they will excel.

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Going Viral on Mobile: Lessons from Social Gaming

December 15th, 2010
All Chapters, Girls In Tech, New York, San Francisco
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Mariya Yao

This article was originally published on Founders Block, an educational resource for early-stage entrepreneurs.

Social gaming is a fiercely competitive industry. Just look at how quickly and widely successful models like Zynga’s Frontierville or Playdom’s Social City are ripped off by eager copycats. Even Farmville started off as a clone of another popular title, Farm Town. The rewards of cultivating a captive gaming audience certainly justify the efforts. In the past year or so, Zynga’s estimated market capitalization has risen to over $5 billion and we’ve seen traditional media companies like EA and Disney snap up social gaming companies like Playfish and Playdom for $400 and $763 million respectively. When users have over hundreds of Facebook games to choose between and Facebook itself is taking efforts to undercut virality on its network, how can game developers make their games stand out?

Many are looking toward mobile as the next unclaimed territory to vie for. Smartphones are being adopted faster than any other hot technology in recent history, including the storied internet itself. Given the inevitable rise of mobile computing, social gaming companies are hustling to make strategic acquisitions to edge out their competitors. Zynga released a mobile version of Farmville in June and acquired a spate of mobile game developers, the latest being NewToy, producer of the popular Words with Friends app. DeNA, one of Japan’s most popular mobile networks, snapped up NGMoco, a mobile gaming platform, for $400 mil in mid-October.

The Rise of Mobile Microtransaction Economies

With the merging of social gaming and mobile comes a mashup of monetization and distribution models. Traditionally, mobile apps are either ad-supported or paid downloads and achieve wild success only by climbing app store charts and staying there. Social games, on the other hand, offer free-to-play models that are sustained by convincing a small percentage of users to pay up for virtual goods and the rest to evangelize the game to their friends. Well-timed releases like Farmville were able to ride the viral channels and explosive growth of Facebook. As mobile OS makers like Apple and Google increasingly support in-app transactions, mobile games are adopting similar monetization strategies by building virtual goods economies to increase engagement and monetization opportunities. Recent data from mobile app analytics firm Flurry show that from Sept 2009 to Sept 2010, virtual goods went from producing $0.25 of average monthly revenue per user to nearly $9 for the mobile applications in their portfolio. In contrast, mobile advertising has stayed steady at $1 average monthly RPU.

Of course, there’s a catch. Successful virtual goods economies are hard to grow and sustain without an engaged network of users like Facebook’s or an immersive and addictive virtual environment like World of Warcraft’s. Additionally, mobile game players have a shorter attention span than their online counterparts, often catching just a few minutes of gameplay during brief downtimes throughout their day. The average shelf-life of a mobile game is about 6 months to 1 year, even for a wild success like Angry Birds. Existing mobile hardware also limits the complexity and depth a mobile game can have relative to console games.

Virality in Mobile Social Networks

So what’s a mobile game developer to do? You could spend tons of time, effort, and money running marketing campaigns, getting onto Game Portals like GetJar or Steam, and hustling for reviews and press. For the majority of game developers who are one or two-man teams, this is really a non-option. Enter the mobile social network, or mobile SNS for short. These are platforms like Open Feint, ScoreLoop, and Papaya that allow developers to easily add social dynamics to once solitary gaming. The value proposition is that leaderboards, public achievements, and social challenges make games more fun. More fun means more engagement means more revenue.

Just giving gamers the opportunity to interact meaningfully with each other increases stickiness. Papaya, a social gaming platform for Android, took a hint from successful mobile SNS like GREE and Mixi of Japan and opened multiple channels of user-to-user communication like news feeds, chatrooms, and intra-game commenting systems. According to Paul Chen, VP of Business Development, the company has aimed from the beginning to monetize around a mobile user’s impatience. While the average user on Facebook visits 27 times a month for 9 minutes per visit, the average user on PapayaMobile’s network visits 55 times a month for about 3 minutes per visit. Also critical to maximizing user stickiness is providing a frictionless virtual payment platform. Papaya offers game developers the option to use Papaya’s virtual currency, which can be used for other games on the platform. Users are more likely to trade real dollars for virtual ones if they know there are many ways to spend them.

Founded in 2008, Papaya now has 8 million users and provides an interesting case study on why mobile social networks, particularly those centered around games, add value on top of existing networks. When the platform first launched, users had the option of logging in with Facebook Connect. Turns out that feature was hardly used as the gamers on PapayaMobile preferred to have virtual identities. In the context of games, this makes sense. No one likes getting Farmville spam on Facebook and no one wants their coworkers or families to know that they’re playing games all day. For developers, there’s another benefit: a clearer path to the top of the app charts. Using the distribution channels within their own network, Papaya was able to get Papaya Fish 3D, an in-house game, to #2 on Casual Games and #4 on All Games in the Android app rankings in just 24 hours after release.

To be clear, mobile SNS are no cure-all for distributing and monetizing your apps. Like all social networking platforms, their value depends on the number of engaged users they have. How well any individual game does on mobile SNS depends on the quality of the brand and content. One of the biggest challenges of platforms like Papaya or Open Feint is to convince game developers of the value mobile social networks can add. Whether they can be won over is yet to be seen.

Recommended Reading:

1)      Virtual Goods in Asia – Ben Joffe

2)      Social Games on Mobile – Paul Chen, Papaya Mobile

3)      Madison Avenue and the Land of Make-Believe – Peter Farago, Flurry

Many thanks are due to Paul Chen of Papaya Mobile for contributing to this article and to Charles Hudson and MediaBistro for hosting informative conferences like the Social Gaming and Smartphone Games Summit where I get to meet plenty of cool folks working on social and mobile gaming. For those interested, Papaya Mobile is hosting a Global Game Developer Contest where you can win $10k and cool prizes.

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Get a shoe in…

December 14th, 2010
Girls In Tech
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kristy mchugh

Let’s face it; you can never have enough shoes in your closet! In honor of a new marketing strategy by Ugg Australia, having celebrity endorsers such as Tom Brady promote their brand; Mobile Social Media site, PONGR (think them as the paparazzi of social media) is presenting the chance for you to be your very own celebrity endorser. They are kicking off a campaign called Endorse-a-Shoe photo contest.

Kick up your heels…

Hop on the endorsement band wagon. Creatively show off your favorite footwear brand by photographing yourself (or a friend of family member) and score your chance to win a pair of  shoes/sneakers/boots from your favorite footwear brand.

How to get your foot in the door:

Email or picture-text it to: yourbrand@pongr.com

*In order to be eligible, the picture must contain a person and their footwear. Be creative. Do something fascinating while posing with your shoes. The most interesting picture — as determined by our panel of Pongr judges — wins.  (Contest submissions will be accepted from Monday Dec. 6 at 12:01 a.m. through Monday, Dec. 20 at 11:59 p.m.)

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Girls in Tech expands global reach and takes Toronto!

December 13th, 2010
Girls In Tech
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Soniya Monga

So what exactly does it mean to be a ‘girl in tech’? There are many misconceptions around why women are focused on empowering women in the field of technology as it relates to the workplace and society at large. Maybe it’s because there’s an underlying stigma around the notion that developing a programmatic response to the lack of female representation in technology is part of this overarching problem in and of itself. But we here in Toronto tend to disagree wholeheartedly.

In 2007, a woman by the name of Adriana Gascoigne started an organization called Girls in Tech with the intent to curate a community of like-minded women at various life stages for the purpose of understanding the power of this rapidly changing landscape we’ve come to know as technology.

According to Barbara Orser, PHD:

Technology-oriented and knowledge-intensive enterprises are engines of Canadian economic growth. Yet, numerous studies have suggested that the shortage of skilled and educated workers is a key obstacle to business development. Women are an obvious source of talent, yet compared to men, women are significantly under-represented in the advanced technology sector.

Given the innovation that occurs globally, it’s still always surprising that the proportion of women in a number of technology-based professions is also dropping. An article in Edutopia recently explored the reasons behind why girls are hesitant to study computer science in school – a notable concern as the number of female engineers and scientists is diminishing by the years.  This idea is further cultivated by a consciousness of why women are relatively absent from Canada’s technology-orientated and knowledge-intensive sectors, and why this seems to be a growing trend.

Technology is powerful and so are the women and men behind it. In Toronto and the rest of Canada, we’re looking forward to deriving some learning’s from the Canadian Tech community and continuing to empower a current and future generation of young women in recognizing their stance as technologists, leaders and citizens of the world.

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‘Rent the Runway’- An Analysis of the High Fashion Rental Retailer

December 13th, 2010
All Chapters, Girls In Tech
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Allison Strouse

When I first heard of Gilt Groupe, I thought, “Wow, perfect timing with this terrible economy”…but, to be honest, prices are still on the pricey side (that Herve Leger dress is still not working with my budget, despite the discount). Then, a new website appeared that seemed to solve my problem, RenttheRunway.com. Rent The Runway allows you to rent high-end designer dresses for $50 – $200 dollars for a four night loan. Shipping is free, and after wearing the dress, you send it back to the site in a pre-paid envelope. Sounds like a simple process, and a realistic way to dress up for holiday and wedding events. However, are the internal and external factors favorable or unfavorable to achieving their hopes of getting the rental model to take off. Below, I have written out some of my thoughts…

Strengths

A strength for the company is that it’s launching in an extremely tough economic time for the country. While women may not have previously paid close attention to retail spending, people are now sticking close to a pre-planned budget. So, I may not be able to keep the dress for life, but renting the dress does allow me to stick to my $350 monthly max in retail spend.

Weaknesses

A weakness of the company is that styles come and go quickly, so dresses that are purchased for the site may never sell…and once a dress is considered to be from last season, users will want a rock-bottom price. To hedge against this, I noticed that the site recently hosted a sample sale where certain items (used, of course) were sold for keeps. In addition,  with my background in web analytics, I would not be shocked if the numbers of dresses purchased was not decided until the dress is live on site and the business people can gauge from pages view and visitor numbers how popular the dress will be.  Another weakness is that designers may not want their dresses to be on the site. Why would a designer want to sell a handful of the dresses to Rent the Runway when they can try to sell more dresses directly to the customer. However, a NYTimes article about the piece seems to show the opposite reaction. They pitch Rent the Runway as a “creative marketing strategy and a way to reach a new generation of customers.” But are these the right customers? Remember, this site sells to women who are on a budget. However, the article does quote designers Christian Siriano and Karen Scheck expressing their love for how the site allows them to reach a broader audience, especially in these tough economic time.

Opportunities

The concept of a rental business online has been done with companies like Netflix, but this is the first time I’ve seen it for high end designer clothing. The opportunity here is that this company can shape the business model. Are designers selling outright to the site? …or is there a revenue share model? Sites like Gilt cannot market dresses until they are on sale in the brick and mortar stores. However, can Rent the Runway put a dress out for sale that is still full price at your local Saks? All of these questions will get answered with how Rent the Runway decides to grow the business, which is a very unique opportunity.

Threats

There are threats to this business- many. First of all, if the economy bounces back quickly, perhaps visitors will start to have more of a desire to own the dress and invest in it rather than buy it. An even bigger threat in my mind is if a competitor site comes out with a better offer—some levers to pull here include the length of time you can hold the dress, the cost you pay for the dress, ease of use of the site, better customer service, etc.  If a competitor comes about, the idea may become less of a financial opportunity. Lastly, this is really a new concept to the retail buying world. Last November, the site claimed to have 20,000 registrants. There are registrants—not customers. Are people really ready to drastically change how they receive and retain clothing?  Many people may be interested in the idea but still feel uncomfortable with the idea of not owning a dress or wearing a pre-worn dress, and having mass appeal is important to the success of the company. For let’s say a $1,000 dress, it will have to be rented 7 times at $150 to get past a break-even point. The company will need to hit high rental numbers per dress to get the margin and revenue they’re hoping for.

What are your thoughts?

What do you think about the site? I have yet to rent a dress, but maybe I will in the future. Has anyone rented and had a good or bad experience? We want to hear about it. Any ideas how to make the site more interactive and more of a daily stopping ground for women? How about a ‘look of the day’ or more editorial content. I would like the site to offer renting an entire ‘look’ so I don’t have to worry about having the right accessories—that would be cool, right? I’m looking forward to hearing your thoughts.

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Business Communication Strategies to Influence Listeners

December 11th, 2010
All Chapters, Girls In Tech
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Christine Oneto

Out this month, from returning author Karen Friedman, is the book Shut Up and Say Something: Business Communication Strategies to Overcome Challenges and Influence Listeners. This book will help you say what you need to in business situations, in ways that will resonate with those you need to hear it. In the book, Friedman shows readers how to convincingly communicate expertise in any business situation. She demonstrates how to “condense complicated concepts, minimize communication mistakes, avoid misinterpretation, convey vision, and quickly influence decision makers.”  She reinforces each chapter for readers with “coaching notes, anecdotal reference points and easy-to-implement techniques to apply to their business challenges.”

Some of the topics covered include how to’s such as:

• Sell yourself, your vision, expertise and point of view more persuasively, passionately and effectively to enhance your reputation and influence outcomes.

• Step-by-step strategies and down to earth try-it-this-way techniques to say things differently, overcome communication obstacles and humanize information to become a results-oriented communicator.

• Tap into a wealth of specific examples from client coaching notes and conversations, interviews, presentations, meetings, speeches, hearings, brainstorming sessions and more to minimize communication blunders, avoid misinterpretation and deliver more interesting and meaningful messages.

So, to give you a flavor for who Ms. Friedman is and why you may be interested in reading her book:  Karen Friedman is a former award-winning television reporter and a political candidate whose expertise in message development was first recognized when a U.S. delegation led by then First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton tapped her to provide media and political training for women from emerging democracies.  (Now that’s my type of political candidate!)   As well, for our readers out there who are starting their own businesses, this book may give you that extra inch of  something extra that will give your next presentation, VC pitch, or elevator speech what it needs to really be heard!  – Read it (or an excerpt, here) and comment back on what you think -or – Submit a question for Karen in your comment.  We will have a follow-up post next month.

(quotes:  provided via  author’s publicist and author’s website)

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Tags: Business communication, how to, Karen Friedman, resonate, strategy
Posted in All Chapters, Girls In Tech | No Comments »

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