Girls In Tech

Some of the world’s most influential female practitioners in digital, design and technology are coming together in a unique, mostly online conference to discuss and foster collaboration and innovation and showcase female excellence in the industry.

Titled ’The Emerge Mini-Conference’ the three day series of talks and workshops is organised by newly formed not-for-profit Web Heroines, hopes to address gender imbalance in the industry by; engaging more women with design and technology, showcasing the super work women are already doing and sharing best practice.

Hosted in partnership with The British Library Business and IP Centre and supported by the Big Lottery Fund, a charity in the UK funding community groups and projects. The Emerge Mini-Conference will take place over 16^th, 17^th and 18^th January 2012.  There will be ten virtual sessions followed by a finale pivotal panel debate and networking session on the evening of the 18^th January at the British Library in London.

Online sessions will include workshops, podcasts and inspirational talks by established influential women in the industry including, Naomi Atkinson who has worked for Audi and BT and was named “The Next Big Thing” at The Critters.

The panel debate hosted in style at the British Library is open to all with a limited number of tickets available for purchase at £10 each on the emerge website. Attendees who register for the event will come face-to-face with four inspirational prolific female panellists all of whom are renowned professionals working in the field of digital design and technology.

Keri Lambden, Senior Member and Founder of Web Heroines added, “This is a unique accessible event which reaches out to women from all backgrounds particularly those who have suffered hardship and want to get their lives back on track by learning new skills, adding strings to their bows and meeting like-minded peers. We are delighted to be working with some of the best and most established female practitioners in the industry and hope that our unique showcase and information exchange will inspire women to take the leap, make their ideas happen and keep innovating”.

Julie Howell, one of the conference speakers and a business woman working with past appointments at Fortune Cookie and RNIB added, [this is an] “exciting new initiative that champions role of women in design and technology industries”.

Emerge is for anyone who loves digital design programming, mobile apps, graphics, UX/UI and digital, and whilst it is aimed at addressing the gender imbalance men are more than welcome too!

For more information about the Emerge Mini Conference, details on all of the sessions and to book your place visit the microsite today: http://webheroines.com/emerge/

The Emerge mini-conference is organised by Web Heroines and forms part of a wider strategy and mission by the newly formed, Norfolk based non-profit to showcase and encourage more females into digital and technology related roles.

Tags: Emerge Mini Conference, girls in tech, London, Web Heroines, women in tech
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Avid Larizadeh - COO and co-founder, Boticca.com

Avid is the COO and co-founder of Boticca.com, the online marketplace for unique jewelry and accessories from top emerging designers around the world.

Before co-founding Boticca.com, Avid worked in Paris alongside the CEO and founder ofAltavia, an
independent global marketing communications group specialized in retail businesses. Prior to that she was at Accel Partners in London where she focused primarily on software and Internet investments. Avid has strong product management experience from four years working at eBay in Silicon Valley, and she also has worked at a number of start-ups, including Skype (acquired by eBay) and Tellme Networks (acquired by Microsoft).

Avid earned her BS and MS in engineering at Stanford University and holds an MBA from Harvard Business School. She grew up in Paris and has lived in San Francisco, Boston and London. Avid speaks French, Farsi, English and German.

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Boticca.com is an online marketplace for unique designer jewelry, bags and accessories from top emerging designers around the world.

Boticca champions independent designers with meaningful and authentic products, and its international customer base represents a burgeoning movement for unique, high-impact fashion from inspiring emerging designers.

Headquartered in London, Boticca’s team scours the world for the very best independent designers and creates an experience of global discovery. The site connects customers directly with more than 200 designers from 30 different countries, and celebrities ranging from Victoria Beckham to Olivia Palermo and the Gossip Girl cast have been wearing Boticca’s limited edition pieces.

Boticca is curated and edited by a team of fashion experts, designers, stylists and collectors, who illustrate the culture, stories and inspiration behind the collections on the site.

Since its public launch in October 2010, Boticca has been lauded by the likes of Vogue, the New York Times, TechCrunch, GigaOm, WWD and The Guardian for its exceptional products and innovative business model that benefits independent designers all over the world.

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Brought to San Francisco and the Silicon Valley via London, the Social Media Club has been meeting in the Bay Area now for a few years now (I stand corrected!), and promises much for its future membership.  I was lucky enough to attend their meeting last Wednesday, which was hosted at RocketSpace in the SoMA district of San Francisco, and hosted by Chris Heuer.  The topic:  Social Media Trends for 2011.

With panelists including: Shel Israel, Harry McCracken (the Technologizer) — who predicted it would be the “Year of the Social Mobile Web” — Sol Lipman of 12Seconds TV and AOL, and Augie Ray, of Forrester.   Shel Israel – who co-authored the first book on Twitter, Naked Conversations – noted that he sees 2011 as the year of the dawn of a state of “normalization” for social media, or the “flex point.”   McCracken pointed to the photo-sharing program Instagram as an example when he made the other most notable statement that his biggest interest is in compan(ies) in which they make a product that “adds a layer” onto social.

Ray, on the other hand, pointed to 2011 as “not the year of ROI obsession.”  In other words, for companies (particularly startups and in social) to gain funding, ROI proof will not always be necessary.  He stated that one has to “think outside of the ‘Facebox’ “: not everything will happen in conjunction with Facebook.  He also feels that we will begin to see a relevance filter on Twitter.  And, for Lipman, he agreed with things happening outside of Facebook in that “niche social networking” will be most important in 2011.  Additionally, Flipboard and other content drivers will be big, as well, he predicated.

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This week is Social Media Week, here in San Francisco, in New York, and several other cities around the globe.  So, go out  and attend the wealth of events we have at our disposal with a variety of outstanding speakers, panels, and topics.  Here are some links to events in various locales:

http://socialmediaweek.org/

SF/Silicon Valley

http://gitsocialmediaweek.eventbrite.com/

http://www.eventbrite.com/event/580971702

http://peoplebrowsrsf.eventbrite.com/

http://zozijump.eventbrite.com/

NYC

http://socialmediacampny.eventbrite.com/

http://www.eventbrite.com/event/1230477391

http://www.eventbrite.com/event/1252733961

http://smiammx.eventbrite.com/

Denver

http://rtwdenver.eventbrite.com/

London

http://socialmediaweek1.eventbrite.com/

http://teaandthezenofsocialmedia.eventbrite.com/

http://www.eventbrite.com/event/1229600769

http://www.amiando.com/smw_ukti.html

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Social Gaming Summit & Virtual Goods Summit in LONDON
The first London Social Gaming Summit is a one day event focused on the intersection of games and the social web. The event focuses on helping social games developers build, monetise, and grow their social games. We’re bringing together the leaders in free-to-play games, social networking, and payments infrastructure for a full day of panels and talks.

Social Gaming Summit
The first London Virtual Goods Summit is a one day event focused on the emerging market opportunity for virtual goods and economies. Once restricted to the world of online gaming, virtual goods and currencies are beginning to influence the development of social networks, community sites, and many other new and exciting markets. The market for virtual goods continues to grow – join us for engaging talks and panels designed to highlight important trends in this fast growing market. 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 markets.

Virtual Goods Summit London
The first London Virtual Goods Summit is a one day event focused on the emerging market opportunity for virtual goods and economies. Once restricted to the world of online gaming, virtual goods and currencies are beginning to influence the development of social networks, community sites, and many other new and exciting markets. The market for virtual goods continues to grow – join us for engaging talks and panels designed to highlight important trends in this fast growing market. 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 markets.

Register HERE for the Social Gaming Summit

Register HERE for the Virtual Goods Summit

*Discount code for Girls in Tech: GIRLSINTECH010 *

Tags: gaming, London, Terra Khachooni
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“100 Women – 100 Visions” is a portrait series celebrating women scientists and engineers, from all academic levels at the Imperial College in London in support of International Women’s Day.

On the whole, the series aims to capture a sense of the growing community of women scientists and engineers across the college, and their increasingly important role in all disciplines and levels of academic work.  Each photo gives the women a chance to express themselves; and also shows the diversity of the students and senior staff included in the project.

These portraits include women such as:

• A pharmacologist who has become a myocardial physiologist and finally a stem cell biologist.
• An undergraduate student in neuroscience, division of surgery, oncology, reproductive biology and anaesthetics.
• A MRes student in Green chemistry, energy and the environment, department of chemistry
• A professor of respiratory pharmacology, National Heart and Lung Institute
• A research post-graduate in the department of communications and signal processing, department of electrical and electronic engineering

To check out more of the profiles, and read about this great project, go to: http://www.union.ic.ac.uk/scc/100women100visions/index.html

Tags: Christine Oneto, Imperial College, technology, women in technology
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BT or as folks in the US would know it – British Telecom, invited the Geeks on a Plane crew for a very elegant dinner (even though the majority of us were in ‘very’ casual attire consisting of flip-flops, jeans, t-shirts and sundresses). The BT executive committee wanted to engage with us to discuss the “cutting-edge,” new-ish innovations that they are integrating to their SME packages. The most prominent technologies or at least, the most popular, included the use of Ribbit in their mobile suite of services as well as CRM capabilities offered to the SMB’s to help organize their sales transactions and profits.

The view from the top of the BT tower was spectacular. It was a real treat to not only be able to see this amazing building looking over the city center of London, but also to mingle with some of the most powerful and intellectual executives of BT. The fact is that they embrace and encourage innovation within a very traditional telecom ecosystem. They understand that they have a long way to go, but are optimistic in creating a bridge between Silicon Valley and the UK and integrating more ways for the telecom industry to utilize the technologies that will optimize infrastructure, function and accessibility for SMB’s around the UK.

We had a total blast and thank JP and the BT executives for such a wonderful evening.

Here’s a litte more information about BT:

BT is the world’s oldest communications company, with a direct line of descent from the first commercial telecommunications undertaking in the world.  The Electric Telegraph Company incorporated in 1846, was the first anywhere to exploit leading edge telegraphy technology and introduce electrical communications to an astonished world. Within ten years an international  network had been developed, making communications possible within minutes and hours instead of days and weeks. The consequences for every aspect of society were dramatic and profound.

Tags: Adriana Gascoigne, British Telecom, BT, Geeks on a Plane, girls in tech
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Originally posted on the Geeks on a Plane blog.

The Geeks on a Plane team has been trying to get over jet-lag by staying out all day and all night. This was definitely the case during the festivities, parties and start-up activities at Seedcamp in London. There were some compelling presentations and new technologies presented, in which GOAP’ers served as mentors to teach and provide advice on how to optimize the launch and core value of a start-up.

TechCrunch UK provided a solid synopsis of all of the Seedcamp finalists. You can check out the article here.

Following is a little more information on Seedcamp:

At Seedcamp, we believe Europe has the talent, the role models, and the capital founders need to succeed. We want to provide a catalyst for the next generation of great entrepreneurs and help you take risks, think big, and succeed. Participating in Seedcamp will give you enormous validation and access to a world-class network of advisors to help you with every aspect of your business, plus a direct route to seed and venture capital.

Tags: Geeks on a Plane, London, Seedcamp, TechCrunch, UK
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