Girls In Tech

Have you ever wondered what it’s like working for one of the world’s best Game Studios? Wonder no more! Criterion Games is offering the opportunity to win a unique work experience placement to a lucky few students! apply here

They’re holding a competition aimed at final year A-level and first year university students who are interested in a future career in the Games Industry.

30 lucky students will be selected to participate in attending the open day at Guildford studio on Thursday April 12th, 2012.

Registration closes on the 9th March 2012. Be sure to submit your application now!

Tags: competition, criterion, EA, Electronic Arts, Games, gaming, Ivo Lukas, students
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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
Posted in All Chapters, All Chapters, Events, Girls In Tech, San Francisco | 4 Comments »

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
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Hi Girls! YouNoodle has partnered with Intel again this year to organize a technology innovation business plan competition in South America – Desafio Intel 2010 will be open now to all Latin American countries after receiving over 220 submissions in 2009. More on this exciting opportunity, until then check out Heesun’s invitation:

We are organizing a mentorship program for the semi-finalists of a technology innovation business plan competition in Latin America and Europe.  The competition drew hundreds of entries this year, and starting this month will be offering semi-finalist teams mentors in Silicon Valley.  Teams are competing for cash prizes and a chance to travel to the final rounds in Silicon Valley in the fall.

Last year’s participants were so grateful for their mentors’ help and expertise, especially their knowledge of the US market and network, and mentors also expressed how rewarding it had been to work with budding entrepreneurs in the early stages of their startups.  One mentor even flew to the Bay Area to support her team for the final round of the competition!

The commitment for mentorship would be about an hour a week throughout the July-August for Latin America or throughout August for Europe.  It is a great opportunity to meet young entrepreneurs around the world – not to mention a perfect way to make friends to visit in different countries – and we would love to have you on board this year.

If you’re interested, please contact Heesun Lho (heesun.lho@gmail.com) for more information. Or click here for  Desafio-Intel and the Intel Challenge.

Tags: business plan competition, competition, Europe, Heesun, Intel, international, latin america, mentorship, Terra Khachooni, YouNoodle
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What we planned to do: publicize an event to girls in Silicon Valley, an iPhone app store competition in which they, grouped into teams, were to design and storyboard a brand new iPhone app.  They would have to think through a quick and dirty business plan and pitch it in 60 seconds. And the winners would take home brand new iPod Touches!

We hoped that by hosting a fun, enticing, and engaging competition, we could show the participating girls that careers in engineering and science weren’t limited to the stereotypical images of pocker protectors and protractors we see on TV.

What we did do: exactly that, and more.

As I walked around the room while the girls and their mentors were chattering excitedly about their ideas, I knew we had done it– we had clusters of girls at each table from all different schools in Silicon Valley, including a group of girls who traveled to Cupertino all the way from San Francisco that had already completed high school but were now participating in a program which prepares them for particular trades that require a certification program or two year degree. Everybody was talking to each other freely, shooting off ideas with confidence and finesse. Nobody cared that the tables were mixed up with girls of different ages (14-17) or that they hadn’t ever met before. Likewise they were interacting with each mentor with enthusiasm and respect. These mentors were women who had technical and engineering backgrounds who worked at Apple, Virgin America, and Admob and volunteered their time as resources for the inspiration and guidance of this group of girls during the competition. And everyone had a blast!

The feedback from the post-event survey was wonderfully positive. The girls said things like:

“I learned that there is a lot more to engineering than sitting behind a computer and [that] science and math really help.” “”I thought the mentors were cool and had a lot of variety of careers and I learned that a positive team-work attitude was cool.” “I learned that engineering is an option for girls and that I wouldn’t be alone.”

Ultimately, the winning app, titled “Stop, Shop and Go!” had most of the elements of a real iPhone app people clamor to use on a daily basis– the melding of geographic data, coupon codes, and (duh!) a shopping guide. All of the apps that were dreamt up that day were feasible– now if we could only create them all! The presentations, while limited to 60 seconds, were vivid, engaging, amusing, and fearless. These girls rocked it.

I would say, without hesitation, that the Girls in Tech mentorshorship debut was a resounding success. I would also say, this raises the bar so high on what’s still to come!

In the spring, we’re taking the involvement to a whole new level. We are partnering with Iridescent again to put on the Technovation Challenge 2010! This time, it won’t be one evening, but several months of teamwork, leadership, and engineering. The girls will learn, with the guidance of professional women in the tech industry, how to design and program cool mobile apps using App Inventor for Android, a new programming language developed by Google. Once created, these apps will be presented to a real team of venture capitalists for prizes, feedback, and the chance to be recruited into summer internships at some of the coolest local startups. Don’t you wish you were still in high school?

We can’t make this level of awesomeness happen, however, without help. If you are a female professional in the Silicon  Valley area, I hope that you will think about joining us for our program in February.  We will be working with the students twice a week for 8 weeks (Tuesdays and Thursdays 5pm – 7pm beginning on February 23rd).  The girls and their mentors (looking at you!…hopefully) will work in teams to learn how to program mobile apps for Android and they will develop working prototypes.  The teams will also get coaching from VCs and entrepreneurs on writing a business plan for their app ideas.  We are building an exciting team of VCs, entrepreneurs, and speakers that will focus on teaching various parts of the program, so it promises to be a great learning experience for students and mentors alike.  If you have ever done any kind of programming before or are interested in learning how to program in this new language, the girls would greatly benefit from working with you, so please consider joining.

We even had a fellow GIT pro photographer hook it up! Thanks Elizabeth McGinnis!

One of the things that we learned from our experience on Friday is that it works much better to have two mentors per team, since mentors often have other commitments and may have to step out from time to time.  So if you’re interested in mentoring in the Spring, but are not sure if you can make it to every meeting, let us know and we can either pair you up with another mentor or you can sign up with a friend!

Thanks E McG for capturing these ladies' true essence!

Girls in Tech and Iridescent made something really cool happen for a group of enthusiastic girls this past Friday. We want to do it again, on a much bigger and hopefully even more impacting scale. Will you help us?

Tags: Android, app development, app inventor for android, apple, business pitch challenge, business plan competition, challenge, competition, engineering, Girls in Tech Silicon Valley, Google, high school girls, iridescent, mentorship, pitch competition, Silicon Valley, STEM subjects, venture capital, women in technology
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