Girls In Tech

Last week wrapped up the Grace Hopper Celebration Women in Computing 2011 in Portland, Oregon. 3000 attendees (over 140 companies, 235 academics representation and closed to 90% women attendees) from all over the world flocked to attend this 4 days conference. What if, is the topic of the conference – It is about creating the next generation to be the leader in STEM/Tech (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). Telle Whitney opened the conference by introducing an initiative by Anita Borg/Grace Hooper “TechWomen” change agent scholars: 6 women mentees (Algeria, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine and Egypt) selected as up-and-coming leaders who will advance in women’s participation in technology and help support more women in their hometown and expand STEM education. TechWomen pairs technical women in the greater San Francisco Bay Area with their counterparts in the Middle East and North Africa for a professional mentorship and exchange program at leading technology companies.

Keynote speaker, Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook gave a career advice for any young woman who wants to move up the ladder in the career of technology:

1. Believe in yourself
2. Dream big
3. Make your partner a real partner
4. Don’t’ leave just yet
5. Start talking about this

The conference sessions range from career, academic, technical, theme and industry track. With Saturday dedicated for an open source day: Codeathon for humanity.

Grace Hopper Aspirations computing by NCWIT took place on Thursday night. More than 1200 applicants applied for and top 30 young women were chosen to attend this conference. The Aspirations award is the catalyst that propels young women into studying computer science in college and ultimately pursuing a career in computing and information technology. Event sponsored by Microsoft, Intel, viawest, Lewis and Clark, puppetlabs and 24Notion

Career fair and exhibitors from Google, yahoo, Microsoft, NSA, Deutsch bank, Lockheed martin, Amex, Intel, Pixar, Facebook, Twitter and hundred others gathered to recruit the brightest STEM young leader to lead their company. (Did you know that STEM jobs paid 20% more than regular career?).

Leaving the conference energized and excited that at Girls in Tech Mentorship Program, we are here to support and developed the next generation to raise them up the top. So, what are you waiting for? Get into it!

Follow me @MsSonicFlare

Tags: 24notion, engineering, girls in tech portland, GIT Mentorship, gitpdx, grace hopper celebration, Ivo Lukas, mathematics, mentorship, mssonicflare, Science, sheryl sandberg, STEM, technology, women in computing
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Event Details:

Date: Thursday, October 13th
Program: 7pm – 9pm
Where: dzine it studio on 26 West 23rd Street, 4th Floor, New York City

Initiating conversations about salary negotiation with the successful women in our network is the first step to acquiring a negotiation muscle.

I saw how tapping one’s network can positively impact a woman’s career after making an introduction to two female friends. One was an executive with great deal of professional experience, and the other was just about to start her professional career and seeking career advice. Let’s call the first friend C and the second E.

The more experienced friend gave friendly advice to E who had just received her first job offer. C encouraged E to negotiate for a better package and to not settle for the first offer. But E countered this advice with a great deal of hesitation. She was afraid she would risk losing the job offer by asking more for herself. She was having trouble seeing herself as deserving more than what was given to her.

Don’t get me wrong — E is hardworking, highly qualified, and someone I greatly admire as a person. I could see she deserves more, but she couldn’t. Like many women, she didn’t know how to negotiate, or that she could even negotiate. Gently prodded by C, E decided to work up the courage to ask for a better term. She later happily reported that the negotiation worked out in her favor.

Three things dawned on me from watching this conversation unfold:

1. Negotiation is a learned skill that improves with practice. C has a great deal of negotiation experience from both sides of the table and was thus able to give great, practical advice to E. Learning to negotiate is a skill that women may need to focus greater effort at developing than men, who in general seem to have a natural propensity to negotiate. According to authors Linda Babcock and Sara Laschaver “Women Don’t Ask”, men initiate negotiations four times as often as women.

With more women entering the workforce, entrepreneurship, and leadership ranks, it’s high time that more women raised their hands and asked for what they want. It’s time for women to develop and flex their negotiation muscles.

2. We need to talk more about initiating negotiation. Watching C provide guidance to E made me wish to facilitate more opportunities for women to connect and learn from each other on this topic. Furthermore, it is imperative that we have informed discussions about salary negotiation as part of the larger, on-going discussion around wealth creation for women and closing the gender pay gap.

3. Women who successfully master the art of negotiating earn more money and are more successful in their careers. Another study cited by Babcock and Laschaver calculated that women who consistently negotiate their salary increases earn at least $1 million more during their careers than women who don’t.

A crucial step in learning to negotiate is to learn from the women in our own networks who successfully asked for what they want and got their worth in the workplace.

This is the thought process behind the panel discussion I’m moderating with wimlink in New York City on Thursday, October 13. At this event, three talented women leaders in fields as diverse as executive coaching, law, and digital media will share their wealth of experience and insight on how to get your worth in the workplace. Featured speakers are

1. Julia McNamara, founder of Helix Career Management and certified executive coach

2. Carla Varriale, partner of law firm Havkins Rosenfeld Ritzert and Varriale, LLP

3. Bethany Hillman, VP of Operations at TVGenesis

Click here to read the full bios of each panelist and register for this event.

Whether you are starting a job search, a new job, or salary negotiation, this session will provide you with tips, inspiration, and guidance to take your career to the next level.

Learn to flex your negotiation muscle. Learn from the rich experiences of women leaders. Be richly rewarded for the value you bring to the table.

Written by:

Jamie Lee
Operations Manager
Tipping Point Partners
@jieunjamie

Tags: event, negotiation, networking, New York City, women
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Girls in Tech are giving away 3 tickets to the World’s Largest Crowdsourcing Conference, CrowdConf2011. How would you apply the crowdsourcing principles in a unique way?

Jeff Howe of Wired Magazine first coined the term crowdsourcing. Howe explains that because technological advances have allowed for cheap consumer electronics, the gap between professionals and amateurs has been diminished. Companies are then able to take advantage of the talent of the public, and Howe states that “It’s not outsourcing; it’s crowdsourcing.” A less commercial approach was introduced by Henk van Ess in September 2010: “Crowdsourcing is channelling the experts’ desire to solve a problem and then freely sharing the answer with everyone”. More >>>

Girls in Tech would like to offer 3 tickets to our members. To be considered, simply post how you would use crowdsourcing (crowdfunding, crowdwisdom, crowdvoting, or crowdcreation) for your business or any other business out there. It doesn’t have to be a a large submission, simply comment to this post with a few lines of how you would apply the crowdsourcing principles in a unique way. Get creative, think of how the fashion world and television has utilized its concepts, non profits (like Kiva) and how crowdsourcing could possibly grow an organization like Girls in Tech… you can post as many ideas as you’d like. If you do, please post each idea in a separate comment. Post away!

More about CrowdConf2011 >>>

Tags: competition, conference, crowdsourcing, entrepreneurs, event, Events, San Francisco, Terra Khachooni
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Bizzy recently launched a mobile app for local business/restaurant ratings and mini-reviews (on iPhone and Android) and instead of sitting in their air-conditioned office in the Silicon Valley, the team is in the middle of their 5000 mile “Check Out Across America” road trip to host MeetUps, get feedback and interact with the people they work for.

Bizzy lets people easily share their dining experiences with their friends in just a few seconds, by snapping a photo of a food dish and writing a Twitter-length restaurant review. Then, Bizzy uses the mini-reviews you publish to provide you with awesome restaurant and business recommendations.

The next stops on the list:

Portland
Monday, September 12. 8-11PM (8-9PM draft beer open bar)
Bailey’s Tap Room | 213 SW Broadway
RSVP via Facebook or MeetUp

and

Seattle
Tuesday, September 13. 8-11PM (8-9PM draft beer open bar)
Barca | 1510 11th Avenue
RSVP via Facebook or MeetUp

Check out the app, come have a drink and let’s chat!

Tags: bizzy, event, meetup, Portland, restaurants, review, Seattle
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Big Data has quickly become a critical element in determining business strategy. Those who best leverage data will win. Who’s winning, and how? Who’s innovating, and where are the opportunities? These are some of the questions we’ll be asking and answering at the New York edition Strata, the big data conference from O’Reilly Media. A full week of data-focused conversations, training, and strategy is on tap the week of September 19-23, 2011 in New York City, including:

Strata Jumpstart – September 19, 2011 A crash course on how to manage the data deluge that’s transforming traditional business practices across the board-in finance, marketing, sales, legal, privacy/security, operations, and HR. Join us for an intense, day-long deep dive.

Strata Summit – September 20-21, 2011 Two days of executive-level interviews, plenaries, and essential high-level strategies for thriving in “the harsh light of data,” delivered by the battle-tested business and technology pioneers who are leading the way.  Strata Summit is for executives, entrepreneurs, and decision-makers.

Strata Conference – September 22-23, 2011 Strata Conference covers the latest and best tools and technologies for this new discipline, along the entire data supply chain-from gathering, cleaning, analyzing, and storing data to communicating data intelligence effectively. With hardcore technical sessions, case studies, and provocative reports from the leading edge, Strata Conference showcases the people, tools, and technologies that make data work.  Strata Conference is for developers, data scientists, data analysts, and other data professionals.

Register for a Super Pass now, which gives you access to the whole week of conference and evening events, at a reduced rate. Girls in Tech readers get an extra 30% discount. Use discount code GIT

See you there! Follow me @MsSonicFlare

Tags: 24notion, analysts, conference, data, data prof, Developers, girls in tech new york, gitpdx, gitportland, gitweet, ivo, Ivo Lukas, mssonicflare, nyc, o'reilly media, strata, strataconf, technology, women leaders
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Girls in Tech is proud to be part of the Women@TheFrontier  2nd annual conference tonight: Tuesday August 16, 2011 6-10pm at The Tech Museum of Innovation San Jose, CA. This event is open to public. RSVP here

Women@TheFrontier launched in summer 2009- to inspire, to empower and to link female change-agents currently impacting the world through innovation, entrepreneurship, humanitarianism, policy, science and technology.

At its core, W@F celebrates the accomplishments of leading women that are creating positive and innovative change, global in reach and exponential in impact.

W@F also recognizes top organizations empowering and actively changing the lives of women and girls around the world.

 W@F is also collaborating with Women Go Global

follow me @MsSonicFlare

Tags: entrepreneurship, innovation, Ivo Lukas, Science, tech, Women at the Frontier, women go global, women in tech, women's conference
Posted in All Chapters, All Chapters, Events, Girls In Tech, Los Angeles, Palo Alto, Portland, San Diego, San Francisco, santa cruz, Silicon Valley | No Comments »

Another year passed for OSCON 2011 with over 3000+ attendees flocking to Portland, Oregon for this year’s theme: From Disruption to Default.

OSCON 2011 events, tracks, sessions and keynotes raised the bar again.

Here are a few highlights of the keynote session and tracks:

-       Microsoft Keynote by Gianugo Rabelino, Sr Director of Open Source Communities is quite great as he talks about the future of community: informed trends: education, repeatable science and experience. See speakers slides

-       Rob Pike: The  expressiveness of Go programming language. Read blog

-       Ariel Waldman: On hacking space exploration. See speaker slides

-       IBM: On building native mobile apps with phone gap. Becky Gibson and Simon MacDonald showed best practices on mobile apps. See speaker slides

-       Gabe Zichermann discussed the importance of Gamification. Check out the slides

Check out full speaker list

Check out full program speaker and slides

Check out keynote and video interviews

Lastly, On Thursday, July 28th, Global Girls in Tech Mentorship Program kicked off their inaugural VIP sessions at Oscon. Fortune 500, academic, tech and entrepreneurs and leaders from all over the world gathered together to participate and support our kick-off meet-up. Thanks so much to everyone who showed up. We couldn’t have done it without your continued help and participation. Interested in participating? Drop me an email; ivo@girlsintech.net  | Follow me @MsSonicFlare

For More info about GIT Mentorship

Watch video live interview with Ivo Lukas- Director of Global Mentorship/Partnership program & MD of Portland Chapter

Join our Local PDX Chapter

(Photo credit:  Pinar Ozger & OSCON)

Tags: 24notion, education, entrepreneurs, girls and technology, girls intech, girlsintech mentorship, girlsintech portland, gitpdx, ivo, Ivo Lukas, Mentorship program, mssonicflare, open source, oregon, OSCON2011, Portland, startups, technology, women in tech, women leadership, women technology
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I had a chance to sit down with Rob Pike from Google last week at OSCON 2011.  Rob Pike is a Distinguished Engineer at Google, Inc. He works on distributed systems, data mining, programming languages, and software development tools. Before Google, Rob was a member of the Computing Sciences Research Center at Bell Labs, the lab that developed Unix. While there, he worked on computer graphics, user interfaces, languages, concurrent programming, and distributed systems. He was an architect of the Plan 9 and Inferno operating systems and is the co-author with Brian Kernighan of The Unix Programming Environment and The Practice of Programming. More recently he was a co-designer of the Go programming language. Other details of his life appear on line but vary in veracity.

Tell us more about you, your role at Google and your team?

I was at Bell Labs for over 20 years, most of which were wonderful, but the last years at Bell Labs weren’t as much fun.  In 2002, I moved to Google, where I work on infrastructure- the technology behind the scenes. Lately I’ve been working on the Go team. At Google, I’m having fun. There’s strong interest from the engineers to learn more about Go, and we have users from from neophytes to experienced gophers. About 3 years ago, a few of us decided to address the problem that the programming languages we were using at Google for building system software were old and not well suited to the problems and the machinery we were working with. Right now, there are about 10 strong engineers on my team. We work on helping Google use this new language, but do all our language and library development as open source. As it says in my talk abstract, Go is not a small language but it is a simple one. By “simple” I mean that it is built upon a small number of ideas that combine orthogonally to generate power. Go may have fewer features than most mainstream languages but in expressiveness I argue it is ahead. Orthogonality lets elements be combined without unpleasant surprises. Simplicity makes Go easy to understand, fast to use and fast to compile. Go launched in november 2009. We are all over the world. we have team across the world from US to sydney as well.

What does the future look like for Go in the next 2 years?

It’s a maturation process. We want to grow a much larger community of users, which means we need a lot more exposure. Our focus now is to have it adapted by many users while we to continue to develop the language, libraries, and tools. We are giving talks and doing lots of advocacy. From the technical side, we are working on better libraries and making it even faster. It’s already very competitive; we just need to get the word out there: fun and fast.

What would be a single take away for the attendees that you want them to gain from your session?

You can have a nice language that is fun to use, safe *and* efficient

Whats next for GOOGLE?

Couldn’t speak to much besides my project, Go. But, this success of our social networking experiment, Google+, has been awesome!

You are one of the most accomplished individuals and a successful engineer, What can we learn from you?

it is important to do what you believe in. Some IT jobs can be very unrewarding and you can get trapped doing something that you dislike. So, if you find yourself in that position then you must switch to something you’re passionate about. What is  your goal and your interests?  What excites you the most? You should find them and make them what you do!

Which session(s) are you most excited about?

Sad to say I haven’t been focusing on others, except things related my project, and our sessions. I’ve just been swamped, but I know that I’ll be catching up by video afterwards. (I wish my talk had been videoed, hint hint.)

Is this your first time being part of Oscon? If not, then how’s it different from previous years?

This is my second year here. Last year, Go did not have a big presence – I was just a newcomer myself, although Google has been a major sponsor for years. This year, our team is more visible, with multiple talks and giveaways. Have you seen our Gophers? My wife, Renee French is an artist and she designed the gopher. There’s a plush incarnation, made by Squishable, and every attendee got the vinyl version, made by KidRobot. Renee’s name and a link to the Go are on the bottom of the vinyl gopher.

What’s a current device that you couldn’t live without?

Either my 11 inch mac air or my little digital camera. If there is no wifi, then it’ll be my digital camera for sure.

Read, download and check out the presentation by Rob on “Go” here. Good Luck Rob!

Follow me @MsSonicFlare

Tags: 24notion, Engineer, girls in tech, gitpdx, go, Golang, Google, gopher, Ivo Lukas, ivolukas, mssonicflare, OSCON, OSCON2011, Portland, programming, technology
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Register now for OSCON 2011, happening July 25-29, 2011, at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland. For 13 years, OSCON, the O’Reilly Open Source Convention, has put open source to work building the future. OSCON’s program encompasses 20 tracks to explore all things open source. New tracks have been added to OSCON this year, including Citizen Science, Geek Lifestyle, Open Data, Programming, and Emerging Languages, while Healthcare returns for its second year.

OSCON Java and OSCON Data – two new distinct events co-located with OSCON, debuting on July 25-27. OSCON Java combines Java and open source to take on the tech world’s juiciest challenges—in cloud computing, big data, mobile, and more. OSCON Java tracks include Client, Cloud, Craftsmanship, JVM, and Trends. At OSCON Data, learn about the open source technologies for gathering, storing, and analyzing data that make it possible to use new data sources and do new things with existing data. OSCON Data tracks include Analytics and Visualization, Hadoop, NoSQL Databases, Real-Time and Streaming, Relational, and Roulette. Don’t miss all the valuable tutorials, keynotes, hundreds of sessions and events. Girls in Tech readers can use discount code os11git to save 15% on your registration.

Girls in Tech will be at OSCON 2011 as they kick off the inaugural GIT Mentorship Pilot Programs globally (everyone is welcome). Learn more about the mentorship programs(for k-12, colleges/universities, working professionals), get involved and participate,  and how you could help spread the word. If you are attending Oscon 2011, don’t forget to join us on Thursday on July 28th 1-2pm in room #D134.  http://www.oscon.com/oscon2011/public/schedule/detail/21239

For more info contact: ivo@girlsintech.net     |    Follow me @MsSonicFlare

Need a press pass to cover GIT mentorship session? contact : ivo@24notion.tv

Tags: 24notion, colleges, girls in tech, gitpdx, global mentorship, Ivo Lukas, ivolukas, k-12, Leadership, Mentorship program, O'Reilly, open source convention, oregon, OSCON, OSCON2011, Portland, STEM, universities, working professionals
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Please join Girls-In-Tech for an evening of fabulous wine, keynote speakers,
and networking with the Bay Area’s top employers.
This event is an outstanding opportunity to connect with some of the Bay Area’s most accomplished leaders,
recruiters, and job seekers.

Register Now: http://gitajob2011.eventbrite.com/

Together, we’ll eat, drink and empower each other professionally and personally – providing an exclusive opportunity to join job seekers with outstanding employers, and learn insights from our keynote speakers about the job market today.

Companies attending the event will have access to the Girls-in-Tech membership and all resumes from event participants.

This event will sell-out and space is limited to the first 200 registrants. Early Bird registration is available for both job seekers and companies for a short time period. Once GIT publishes the finalized list of employer-attendees, prices WILL go up! Please note, without advanced tickets your resume will not be distributed to employers in advance of this event.

Speakers:
Rebecca Meissner, BranchOut

Rebecca Meissner is the Director of Enterprise Products at BranchOut, the largest professional networking application on Facebook.  In this role, Rebecca leads the product, design, and development teams building all BranchOut’s corporate offerings.  Prior to BranchOut, Rebecca worked as a Product Manager for Disney Interactive Media Group, an HR Business Partner for Playdom, and as a recruiter for a number of VCs, private equity firms, and large investment banking groups in San Francisco.  She has degrees from both Boston University and the University of California, Berkeley.

Olivia Watkins, Twitter

Olivia Watkins is a Technical Sourcer for Engineering at Twitter.

More Speakers TBA!! Stay Tuned!

Sponsors:
CloudCard – Share business cards from phone to phone.

Use our apps to share your card directly, peer to peer, from phone to phone. You can even share your card with multiple people at the same time if they have our app installed. Or, send your cards directly via email. Only person in the room with Cardcloud on your phone? Send your card directly to (multiple) email(s). Recipients receive a beautiful card with your logo, contact information and social networking profiles. They can store the card directly on their phone thanks to Cardcloud’s vCard support.

Featuring Guidebook App:

Guidebook is the best and simplest way to create a mobile guide – Going mobile has never been this easy! Guidebook allows attendees to access your event’s entire schedule right from their mobile device. Plus, they’ll never miss a session, panel or activity with our easy-to-use mobile alerts. Guidebook, located in Palo Alto on California Avenue, is looking to add talented mobile developers to our team!

Special Thanks to Founders Den for hosting our event!

Founders Den is a shared office space and private club for experienced entrepreneurs and their friends. Founders Den’s unique approach combines a selectively curated startup community with a focus on experienced entrepreneurs and graduates of accelerator programs. Space at Founders Den is offered on an invite-only basis to startups referred through the networks of the Founders Den community. Founders Den also provides a home base for experienced entrepreneurs who are between projects.

May 24th, 2011
Founder’s Den http://www.foundersden.com
665 3rd, Suite 150
San Francisco, CA 94107
6:00-9:00 PM

Tags: branchout, event, facebook, founders den, Job, mixer, networking, recruiter, twitter
Posted in Events, Girls In Tech, San Francisco, santa cruz, Silicon Valley | No Comments »