» Urvashi Mishra : Girls In Tech :

Introducing Jacqueline Urick, New Managing Director for Minneapolis Chapter!

November 11th, 2010

All Chapters, Minneapolis

Guys, please welcome Jacqueline Urick as the new MD of Girls in Tech’s Minneapolis chapter. Its my privilege to introduce such a warm, smart and talented person, and glad to have her relieve me in this role. She has more than 12 years of web development and online marketing experience, and was the founder and owner or Fruition Consulting, Inc. (Minneapolis, MN). To know more please checkout her linkedin profile or best just reach out to her.

Jacqueline Urick, new Managing Director, Minneapolis Chapter

At my end, I look forward to my new role and responsibilities as a leader in technology with Girls in Tech Corporate. It was my pleasure to know you and would like to thank you all for your excitement and support in making GIT Minneapolis launch a huge success. I am sure your will continue to show your encouragement to Jacque and her advisory team in celebrating women in technology and their achievements.

Best wishes!
Urvashi Mishra

Ex-MD, Minneapolis Chapter.

Tags: ex-managing director, Jacqueline Urick, Minneapolis Chapter, New Managing Director, Urvashi Mishra
Posted in All Chapters, Minneapolis | No Comments »

Brace yourself for upcoming Startup Weekend in the Twin Cities!

August 8th, 2010

All Chapters, Event, Events, Minneapolis

Urvashi Mishra

Girls in Tech Minneapolis is proud to sponsor Startup Weekend in the Twin Cities, during the weekend of September 17th-19th, 2010.

This supercharging event aims at bringing together teams of developers, innovators, and enterpreneurs to work on novel ideas in this 54 hour event to build something enterprising and showcase the new products. This conference was founded in 2007 by Andrew Hyde, based on the concept of ‘focusing on learning by creating.’

Startup Weekend Twin Cities

Featured in Washington Post, TechCrunch, ABC News, TECHdotMN and more, Startup Weekend continues to make the buzz with success in more than 100 cities world-wide, from San Francis to Athens. Thanks to Shane Reiser, Coordinator (also orchestrated Startup Weekend in New York City and Omaha) for bringing this event here.

While event planning is still underway, it is confirmed that Jon Dahl, Co-founder of Zencoder, will kick-off the event on September 17th, Friday, with Jeff Pesek, Co-founder of TECHdotMN, discuss ‘Future of Minneapolis tech scene‘. On Saturday, Rob Weber, VP of Business Development, Co-founded of W3i 2000, CEO 2000-2007, will share his thoughts on ‘From Dorm to Millions‘. Other highlights include Sunday night panel featuring: Matt Bauer (founder, Pedal Brain), Luke Francl (web app developer), Pete Birkeland (CFO, RAIN Source Capital), Kathy Grayson(reporter – technology, venture capitals, and startups in Minnsapolis/St. Paul Business Journal).

Excited? Feel the adrenaline rush?

You can be a part of this super exciting event, and amongst other things, learn, grow, and network! You have to act fast as, participation is limited to the first 100 (registration is open).

All Girls in Tech Members are offered a discount of $15.

To register now, click here: GIT Member Registration @Startup Weekend.

Others: Non-GIT Member Register here.

When: September 17th – 19th, 2010

Where: CoCo MSP

Stay tuned at Twin Cities Startup Weekend for more details.

NOTE: Tickets price include food & beverage throughout the event (reduced pricing for students and demo only).

Via: TechdotMN, Twin Cities Startup Weekend, Girls In Tech Minneapolis

Tags: Andrew Hyde, Co-founded of W3i, Co-founder of TECHdotMN, Co-founder of Zencoder, CoCo MSP, Jeff Pesek, Jon Dahl, Kathy Grayson (reporter - technology, Luke Francl (web app developer), Matt Bauer (founder, Minneapolis, Pedal Brain), Pete Birkeland (CFO, RAIN Source Capital), registration, Rob Weber, Saint Paul, September 17th-19th 2010, Shane Reiser, startup weekend, Startup Weekend Girls in Tech member discount code, TechdotMN, Twin Cities, venture capitals, VP of Business Development
Posted in All Chapters, Event, Events, Minneapolis | No Comments »

Your password is your ARMOR!

July 9th, 2010

All Chapters, Minneapolis

Urvashi Mishra

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 »

Minneapolis Geek Girl Happy Hour!

June 17th, 2010

All Chapters, Event, Events, Minneapolis

Urvashi Mishra

Geek Girl Happy Hour!

Girls in Tech, Minneapolis welcomes Summer of 2010 with friendly drinks and sparkling conversations among our women in technology, industry and academia, and all enthusiasts.

Please attend Girls in Tech Minneapolis for our “Geek Girl” Happy Hour!

This is a “just for fun” event . Let’s get to know each other well in fun non stressful way

When: Thursday, June 24th, 5.30 PM – 6.30 PM

Where: Joe Senser’s, 4217 American Blvd, West Bloomington, MN 55437

Cost: Free admission to this event.

RSVP: (required, in advance) http://gitmspgeekgirlhappyhour.eventbrite.com

Happy Hour Specials:

$2.50 short domestic taps/bottles, rail & call drinks, house wine, short senser teas, more…

Visit our website: Girls in Tech Minneapolis Chapter

Become a member: Register here!

Follow us on Twitter: @GitMinneapolis

Join us on Facebook: Girls in Tech Minneapolis

Attend This Event

Tags: event, girls in tech minneapolis chapter, happy hour, mixer, social networking
Posted in All Chapters, Event, Events, Minneapolis | 2 Comments »

Need for Technologically Motivated Young Minds!

May 17th, 2010

All Chapters, GIT Mentorship, Minneapolis

Urvashi Mishra

Time and again, studies reveal lower percentages of women in technical domain. There is a lot of on-going effort around the world to influence women to launch their careers in some technical field in order to bridge the gap. This decades-old question still lingering around indicates that the traditional approach to lure women into technical field is not effective and, emphasize the need for a new approach altogether.

Christine recently posted “AAUW Releases Report: “Why So Few? Women in Science, Tech, Engineering and Mathematics” at Girls in Tech blog. AAUW’s report highlights how ‘social belief system and learning environment’ affects initial mindset of the young girls.

I vividly remember during high-school, we were a class with 100 (approx) girls and, of these only 10% decided to choose a career in engineering, and relatively small percentage (4%) successfully sought a technical career. Looking back in time, and discussing this topic with a few girls who abandoned their goals midway, I figured that they were not comfortable in choosing a career in a field where women would be scarce, but most importantly that, they had some sort of inherent fear. Many girls doubted whether they could do well at math or physics, and did not wish to pursue the fundamental coursework required as basis for an advance degree in technical a field for example, engineering.

Along with positive encouragement at home and school (as AAUW report suggests, and I blindly second), there is profound need for an early exposure to technology as well. Most students have their first ‘real’ rendezvous during undergrad or graduate coursework. But, isn’t this kind of late, when most of us are already committed to our fields of specialization? I strongly feel that such opportunities of getting to taste technology should come at an earlier stage, which I prefer to call career forming age of students (junior-high school to high school), when almost all of us are faced with the question – “What do you aspire to be?”

A hands-on experience will allow these young minds make a better decision, and definitely break the ice. Those who are discomforted by the need to take basic courses like math, physics, chemistry or computers, will get a chance to see all of these in action, and hopefully get inspired and, overcome the fear factor!
Girls in Technology’s Mentorship Program shook hands with Iridiscent and launched Technovation Challenge 2010, aimed at providing a unique opportunity to high-school girls to learn directly from distinguished female entrepreneurs and professionals and get inspired! The success of this event underscores the importance of this cause.

As Managing Director of Minneapolis Chapter, I vow to bring this effort to state of Minnesota soon, and request others to spread the word. The desire to pursue a career in technological field will definitely grow deeper if winded at the right time. And, we will see professional demographics of women in technology change.