Girls In Tech

Be sure to grab your tickets for the World’s Largest Crowdsourcing Conference coming this November 1 & 2nd.

Curious about what Crowdsourcing? The Daily Crowd describes it as “getting a crowd of people to help you with a task. You ask an undefined group of people to perform a task for you, and anyone who’s interested may perform the task.  You’ll get finished work from dozens of participants, which you get to select the best one(s) from.

The principle of crowdsourcing is based on the idea that more heads are better than one, and you can hire people based on skill rather than lowest bid. By canvassing a large crowd of people for ideas, skills, or participation, the search for an elusive answer or design is made that much simpler and more accurate.” Read More >>>

I am sure you can think of dozens of business models that take follow the principle of crowdsourcing. It’s strategy can be differentiated into four types, crowdfunding, crowdcreation, crowdwisdom, and crowdvoting. Grow your understanding about crowdsourcing at the world’s largest Crowdsourcing Conference, CrowdConf2011. CloudFlower has set up a series of crowdsourcing competitions through their many sponsors for the conference. Read about them here >>>

Girls in Tech are joining the Crowd in giving away 3 tickets to CrowdConf2011! Learn More >>>

Tags: conference, crowdsourcing, Developers, entrepreneurs, event, innovation, Terra Khachooni
Posted in All Chapters, Girls In Tech, San Francisco | 3 Comments »

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
Posted in All Chapters, All Chapters, Events, Girls In Tech, New York, Portland | No Comments »

Next weekend, the tech community in Santa Cruz will be hosting TechRaising, a first-of-it’s-kind event, where entrepreneurs (big thinkers, developers, designers, business men and women, marketers, etc.) can get together to actually build and execute on the very ideas they have been stewing on for months, years or even just weeks.

This event is about collaboration, execution, accomplishment and showing what you’ve done.

Participants will gather on the evening of May 20 at Cruzio (downtown Santa Cruz) and have 90 seconds to pitch their idea for a product, service, or company to the group.  After pitches have been completed, everyone will have a chance to dialog with each other and form teams to build the the idea over the course of the weekend.

Scott McNealy, an industry icon and co-founder of Sun Microsystems, will be keynoting the event on Saturday morning.

Early bird tickets are $29.00 (if purchased by May 13th) and $49.00 after that and can be purchased at http://techraising.eventbrite.com. For more information please visit TechRaising.com.

So let’s get together and build something. How awesome would it be if this is where your startup was born?

Tags: designers, Developers, entrepreneurs, event, girls in tech, marketers, marketing, santa cruz, Silicon Valley, techraising, women in tech
Posted in San Francisco, santa cruz, Silicon Valley | No Comments »

In a discussion revolving around passion for innovation, Mark Zuckerberg was asked several questions by Sen. Orrin Hatch in front of a crowd at the Brigham Young campus — all questions which had been submitted via the BYU Facebook page.   Specifically, the theme was based on having a passion for your product which allows businesses to succeed.

One of the questions provoked a discussion on which climates or environments promote said innovation.  To this, Zuckerberg replied:

“…we believe there will be much better services for all the people who use Facebook if millions of people around the world can develop those services.” This ties to many of the company’s efforts to facilitate experimentation on the Platform, such as its Girls in Tech developer garage and college hackathons, and his own commitment to improving math, sciences, and technology education.”

To read the entire article, click here.

Thanks for the shout-out, Mark & Josh!

(quote via: insidefacebook.com)

Tags: Developers, facebook, innovation, Mark Zuckerberg, passion
Posted in All Chapters | No Comments »

Wannabe entrepreneurs will unite and descend upon Wayne State campus in Detroit next weekend with the hopes of forming the next big ‘tech’ company. Designers, developers, social media experts, and business minded folks will spend 54 hours hunkered down in TechTown, Detroit’s research and technology park, for Detroit’s Second Annual Startup Weekend.

On Friday, November 12th, participants will gather to crowd source ideas. Groups of 4-10 people are formed around the most popular company ideas, and the remainder of the weekend is spent coming up with a business plan, marketing plan, and the structure of a working company. At the end of the day Sunday, November 14th, the groups present their now functioning businesses to a panel of expert judges, and a winner is selected. This year, the winning team will receive $5,000 courtesy of the Business Accelerator Network for Southeast Michigan to put towards their newly formed company, or to spend in any way they choose.

The cost to attend is $75, $40 for students, and $20 to view the judging on Sunday if you can’t make it for the entire weekend. The price includes meals and drinks for the entire weekend. You can register to attend on the Startup Weekend Detroit website.

I was able to attend the event as a judge last year and will be going this year as a participant. It’s incredibly fun, and the innovative ideas that are generated are outstanding. I highly suggest coming out to be a part of all the fun and action. Girls in Tech Detroit members will be at the event live blogging at Detroit.StartupWeekend.org and tweeting from @GITDet on Twitter so you can follow along. Hope to see you all there!

Tags: designers, Detroit, Developers, entrepreneurs, startup weekend, techtown
Posted in Detroit | No Comments »

David Recordon is the Senior Open Programs Manager at Facebook, where he leads open source and open standards initiatives. He joined Facebook from Six Apart where he focused on platform strategies, and previously worked at VeriSign in the emerging business group. David has played a pivotal role in the development and popularization of key social media technologies, such as OpenID and OAuth. He collaborated with Brad Fitzpatrick in the development of OpenID, which has since become the most popular decentralized single-sign-on protocol in the history of the Web. In 2007, he became the youngest recipient of the Google-O’Reilly Open Source Award.

Check out David’s Keynote presentation at OSCON

David is a native Portlander. He enjoys hanging out with his friends and family

Working in Facebook, what’s the most challenging task to date?

Scale to continue to grow. Active users double in the year after year. Constantly continue to scale; new products and platforms; new version of API and more…We have about 400 Engineering team that support 500M growing users by day.

What’s current technology/device that you couldn’t live without- if you could take in a deserted island?

Kindle; I love to read.

Follow David on twitter @Daveman692

Tags: 24notion, api, david recordon, Developers, Engineers, facebook, girls in tech portland, gitpdx, ivo, ivolukas, mssonicflare, open source, oregon, OSCON, technology
Posted in All Chapters, Portland | 4 Comments »

I’ve had the chance to chat with Marten Mickos, CEO of Eucalyptus  systems about open source, cloud computing, and leadership

Eucalyptus Systems delivers private cloud software. This is infrastructure software that enables enterprises and government agencies to establish their own cloud computing environments. Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo Securities, Gartner and other prominent observers of the technology industry predict that cloud computing is the most significant IT shift of this decade.

CEO of Eucalyptus, Marten Mickos builds global disruptive businesses. As CEO of MySQL AB for seven years, Mickos grew that company from a garage start-up to the second largest open source company in the world. After the acquisition by Sun Microsystems of MySQL AB for $1bn, he served as Senior Vice President of Sun’s Database Group.

Tell us more about Eucalyptus

With Eucalyptus, customers make more efficient use of their computing capacity, thus increasing productivity and innovation, deploying new applications faster, and protecting sensitive data while making savings in capital expenditure.

Eucalyptus is an open source solution that originates from an NSF funded research project at University of California, Santa Barbara. The open source model is generally considered a superior way of creating infrastructure software. Innovation is faster, users and customers have more freedom and flexibility, lock-in is avoided, and secondary benefits accrue from the massive ecosystems that naturally evolve around the most prolific open source products.

You are one of the most accomplished individual and successful CEO; what can we learn from you?

Wait, why didn’t you like me before “I was accomplished”? No one is born to be accomplished.

People should not be afraid of being successful. It is such a great inspiration. I knew nothing about open source and decided to learn about it. There is always first for everyone. We all should define our own success; so don’t be afraid to be successful is the key.

Being an entrepreneur yourself, what can you tell those folks out there who would have the desire to start something small and to grow bigger?

I’ve learned in my life, weaknesses is also my strength. Make the best of them. As a young boy, I was a stubborn kid; my stubbornness grounded me to become one of the good positive quality for me in this day. To keep going and never give up

I am keen of this quote by Eisenhower-“In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.”

What’s next for Eucalyptus Systems?

We are expanding. We are a team of 25 and growing tremendously. We are hiring team of engineers, business and more for an additional 20+. We are also developing a testing lab for our products. We are building stronger in offering and more in partnership; we are fine tuning our strategy.

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

No. I’ve been here since 2002.  I would say it’s much bigger now. This convention is steering toward the open source fanatics.

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

Digital camera.

To learn more about the product go to http://www.eucalyptus.com/ And be sure to follow @Martenmickos

Be sure to join Girls in Tech Portland Chapter at OSCON 2010 this year at Portland Oregon.

If you are interested in being a guest speaker and/or panelist for our workshops and lectures, pls feel free to drop me an email: ivo@girlsintech.net

tweet @mssonicflare @oscon @24notion @gitweet

Tags: 24notion, cloud computing, Developers, eucalyptus systems, girls in tech portland, gitpdx, ivo, Ivo Lukas, Leadership, management, marten mickos, mssonicflare, open source, oregon, Portland, tech, technology
Posted in All Chapters, Portland | 1 Comment »

Kevin Whinnery is an engineer and platform evangelist for Appcelerator. In addition to his contributions to open source and Appcelerator projects, Kevin is also the developer and maintainer of a Ruby on Rails student information system in use by several elementary schools in his home town of Saint Paul, Minnesota. A frequent speaker, blogger, and writer on technical and business topics, Kevin has appeared in multiple print and online publications.

HTML, CSS and JavaScript are quickly becoming the development languages of choice for creating native mobile applications. By using the open source Titanium platform, web developers can create apps for iPhone, Android and Blackberry using a single code base. One of the must attend session this week at OSCON

Tell us more about Appcelerator. What’s unique about your technology?

Appcelerator is an open source software company based in Mountain View, CA.  Our primary product is Titanium, which allows you to build native applications for desktop and mobile devices using JavaScript, HTML, and CSS.  I’m here at OSCON to present on Titanium Mobile for iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry

How’s it different using open source in building your mobile apps?

It’s important when building an application to have unfettered access to the framework you are using for those cases when you need to know how specific functions work, or need to extend the platform yourself.  Open source empowers developers to do just that.  In the case of Titanium specifically, we also think it’s more productive to use our framework than the tools of multiple different platform vendors directly.

How is mobile different compares to a decade ago? Where do you think it will go in the next decade to come?

Mobile devices today are significantly more capable than ever, becoming essentially mobile computers.  Also, mobile technology is already ubiquitous, and will be more so in the years to come, with developing markets getting access to mobile technology far in advance of other technologies.  I think today we have better devices and technology than ever before, and in the future we will have this technology in the hands of nearly everyone on the planet.  This presents a great opportunity to develop cool software that users all over the globe can leverage from wherever they are.

Which sessions are you most excited about?

I’m really excited to learn more about the Scala programming language.

How’s your session today?

The session went well – we had to take a few minutes to get everyone set up, but we had over 100 people attend and as a result got lots of folks up and running with Titanium.

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

The mobile web is a great tool, and is progressing fast.  But when you need to go native, Titanium is a great (free and open source) option for developing cross-platform apps that still leverage native UI and platform capabilities that make them indistinguishable from their full native counterparts.  And you get to use JavaScript, which is awesome!

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

Yes, this is my first time, but certainly not the last, I had a great experience.

What’s current technology that you couldn’t live without?

If someone took my MacBook Pro away I’d probably cry.

To learn more about the product go to http://appcelerator.com And be sure to follow @kevinwhinnery

Be sure to join Girls in Tech Portland Chapter at OSCON 2010 this year at Portland Oregon.

Register now and save 15%. Use discount code os10pgit when registering at: http://www.oscon.com/oscon2010

For More info for our local Portland chapter, go to our facebook page. If you are interested in being a guest speaker and/or panelist for our workshops and lectures, pls feel free to drop me an email: ivo@girlsintech.net

tweet @mssonicflare @oscon @24notion @gitweet

#oscon #portland #opensource

Tags: 24notion, Developers, Engineer, girls in tech portland, gitpdx, ivo, Ivo Lukas, kevin whinnery, mobile, open source, oregon, OSCON, platform, technology
Posted in Girls In Tech, Portland | 2 Comments »

Had a brief discussion with Marko to learn more about open source and android for Java developers at OSCON yesterday.

Android for Java Developers is an action-packed, hands-on presentation that takes you through the anatomy of an Android application. The sample application includes most major Android building blocks (Activities, Intents, Services, Broadcast Receivers, Content Providers) to illustrate the philosophy of Android application development. It assumes basic Java knowledge.

Tell me more about Marko and your company, Marakana

Marko is creator of Marakana Android Training series. He has taught Android to over 1,000 developers at companies such as Motorola, Sony-Ericsson, Qualcomm, Ericsson Canada, Cisco, Sharp, Texas Instruments, DoD and many others. Marko is a co-founder of San Francisco Android Users Group and regularly teaches Android Bootcamp at Marakana.

Marko founded Marakana in 2001 to help underprivileged youth, minorities, and inner-city kids learn web technologies and get ahead in life. So Marakana emerged with goal of helping people get better at what they do professionally, focused on open source software training.

Marakana founded and continue to run a few user groups such The San Francisco Java User Group, The San Francisco Agile User Group and The San Francisco Android User Group. It’s a community organized user groups.

How’s your session today?

I’ve taught Android class last year at San jose and only 10 people attended. Today we’ve had over 120! So much love in Portland. So great!!

What can we expect from your session?  Any take away for the attendees?

If you know java, then android is pretty straight forward. Learn it and use it. Mobile is where the action now. We are in the early stage but there is so much opportunity.

Open source is ubiquitous. It’s been the same since back then; but how the technology is being applied constantly changing. Also leverage our video tutorials under community; it is such a great resources http://marakana.com/forums/android/general/ and http://marakana.com/forums/android/examples/

Which sessions/keynote speakers you are most interested in?

I’m planning to see some tomorrow and also to relax! Looking forward to seeing some of the keynote speakers. Follow Marko @marakana or go to http://marakana.com/ to learn more

Be sure to join Girls in Tech Portland Chapter at OSCON 2010 this year at Portland Oregon. Register today and receive special discount by being a Girls in Tech member.

OSCON takes place July 19-23, 2010 at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland, Oregon.

Register now and save 15%. Use discount code os10pgit when registering at: http://www.oscon.com/oscon2010

For More info for our local Portland chapter, go to our facebook page. If you are interested in being a guest speaker and/or panelist for our workshops and lectures, pls feel free to drop me an email: ivo@girlsintech.net

tweet @marakana @mssonicflare @oscon @24notion @gitweet

#oscon #portland #opensource

Tags: 24notion, Android, Developers, girlsintech portland, gitpdx, ivo, ivolukas, marakana, marko, mobile, mobile apps, open source, oregon, Portland, programmers, tech, technology, women in tech
Posted in All Chapters, Portland | 1 Comment »

The Social Developer Summit, produced by mediabistro.com and Nick O’Neill, founder of All Facebook and Social Times, will be a series of technical conversations about programming the social layer of applications.  On June 29 at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco, leading developers, engineers, and programmers will unite to discuss solutions and best practices for building applications in the rapidly expanding social web economy.

Sessions cover scaling social analytics, optimizing the monetization funnel, the future of relational databases, continuous deployment, engagement and more.

Speakers include:

• Luke Rajlich, Architect Engineer, FarmVille
• Arin Sarkissian, Core Infrastructure Team Lead, Digg.com
• Jia Shen, CTO & Founder, RockYou
• Brett Durrett, VP of Engineering and Operations, IMVU
• Leah Culver, Co-Founder/Lead Developer, Pownce & iPhone Developer for Plancast
• Jason Oberfest, VP Social Applications, ngmoco
• Mike Malone, Infrastructure Engineer, SimpleGeo
• John Smart, Chief Architect, Zoosk

For the most up-to-date list, see the Social Developer Summit website.  So, join in!

* Get your 15% off with code SDSGIT!

Tags: Christine Oneto, Developers, MediaBistro
Posted in San Francisco | 1 Comment »