Girls In Tech

What would happen if you put some of the most innovative, ground-breaking thought leaders from the business world in a room with some of the most creative and influential social change agents of our time for one day?

The Intersection Event is a day-long event on innovation and its effect on the major social issues of our time, held at Google’s HQ this Saturday, January 19, 2013. A line-up of respected innovators will join social change agents to tackle several pressing issues that face us every day.

The goal of the event is to create intersections of attendees from a wide range of backgrounds who can collaborate to uncover innovations with an impact on social change that are beneficial to themselves, their companies and the global community.

This year’s event will also include the first annual Gratitude Awards, which will award a total of $30,000 to three education-focused social enterprise organizations. The inaugural Gratitude Awards will honor non-profits or social entrepreneurs with high potential to move the needle on global social issues through innovations on education.

Speakers include:

• Barry Zito, All-Star & CY Young Recipient Pitcher, San Francisco Giants
• Bill Draper, Managing Partner, Draper Richards
• Evan Williams, Co-Founder of Twitter  and CEO of The Obvious Corporation
• Lorraine Twohill, Vice President Global Marketing, Google
• Sheryl WuDunn, Author, Half the Sky and Senior Managing Director, Mid-Market Securities
• Reid Hoffman, Executive Chairman of LinkedIn and Partner, Greylock Capital
• Nathan Myhrvold, Former CTO of Microsoft and Founder of Intellectual Ventures
• Peter Goldmark, Chairman, Ashoka Changemakers Global Council
• Helene D. Gayle, President and CEO of CARE USA
• Eric Nadelstern, Former Deputy Chancellor of NY City Public School System
• Steve Jurvetson, Managing Director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson
• Jason Yotopoulos, Executive Vice President Global Research and Business Incubation at SAP
• Frans Johansson, Author, The Medici Effect and The Click Moment
• Marla Olmstead, Artist
• Guru Singh, Teacher, Minister, 3rd Generation Yogi
• Randy Haykin, Chairman, Haykin Capital and The Gratitude Network
• Dr. Chris Pitt, President/CEO, VivaGlobal and Managing Director, Gratitude Global

Proceeds from The Intersection Event are donated to its non-profit 501(c)3 host,The Gratitude Fund , a non-profit social venture fund seeking to empower gifted social entrepreneurs who are embracing innovative products, business models and leadership practices in order to address and defeat social challenges. A selection of social ventures will be “crowd-funded” through The Intersection Event series.

For more information.

Tags: Google, Intersection Event
Posted in All Chapters, San Francisco | No Comments »

The international network that helps promote and empower women in tech entrepreneurship, Girls in Tech, has just announced that it will be launching in London in June.

Founded in San Francisco in 2007 by Adriana Gascoigne, the Girls in Tech network currently counts numerous international chapters around the globe – in countries like China, Greece, France, Singapore, Taiwan, the US and more – with over 8,500 members worldwide.

In partnership with Google and Criteo, the London launch of Girls in Tech will take place on June 1st at Google Campus with speakers from companies and organisations including :

• Reshma Sohoni, Seedcamp
• Olivia Solon, Wired.co.uk
• Deval Delivala, Uber
• Nathalie Gaveau, Shopcade
• Jude Ower, Playmob
• Colette Ballou, Ballou PR
• Bindi Karia, Microsoft Bizspark
• Judith Clegg, Glasshouse
• Cate Sevilla, Bitchbuzz
• Laura Citron, WPP
• Kathryn Parsons, Decoded
• Alexandra Chong, Luluvise
• Kristina Gibson, Eventbrite

The event in free to attend and open to both men and women alike. Space is limited and attendees are encouraged to share a bit about their backgrounds in order to confirm their spot.

In addition, Girls in Tech London will be announcing the top 100 women in tech in Europe at the event. The deadline for nominations is May 25th.

To sign-up to attend the event or to nominate someone for the GIT 100, please visit :

http://girlsintechuk.com/2012/05/13/launch-sign-ups/

Please note that Girls in Tech is not a radical feminist organisation. We host tech conferences but with primarily women speakers…for a change !

About Girls in Tech

Girls in Tech is an international network that seeks to promote and empower women in tech and entrepreneurship. Founded in 2007 in San Francisco by Adriana Gascoigne, the network counts numerous chapters around the globe – in countries like China, France, Greece, Singapore, Taiwan, the US and more – and over 8,500 members worldwide. The London Girls in Tech chapter will be run by Roxanne Varza, Ella Weston and Mihiri Bonney.

More information on Girls in Tech London can be found at : 

Girlsintechuk.com

@girlsintech_uk

Press Contact: Roxanne Varza roxanne@girlsintech.net

Tags: Criteo, Girls in Tech London, Google, Roxanne Varza, technology
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*Click on invitation to register for the event.

Tags: design, development, girls in tech, Google, Singapore, thoughtworks
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“Calling someone a GEEK is a highly compliment at Google… ” said Marissa Mayer.

Earlier this month, Marrisa Mayer of Google was awarded and featured as IMOW’s first ever Innovator Award for Women in Technology.

IMOW- International Museum of Women presented Marissa for her work as Google’s First female engineer and her part in enhancing the involvement of women in the field of computer science. Marissa’s work at Google has influenced how hundreds of millions of people access information online, and she has played a pivotal role in shaping Google’s most important products, such as Gmail and Google search.  She had some great things to say about women heroes, accepting yourself, and the role IMOW can help play in inspiring women to fulfill their greatest potential.  Marissa dedicated this award to heroes and geeks who inspired her personally. (so awesome)

IMOW is a groundbreaking social change museum that connects and inspires people with powerful ideas and new ways of thinking that transform women’s lives and the world. With its unique focus on cultural change, IMOW advances the human right to gender equity worldwide.

Follow me @MsSonicflare

Tags: female heros, Google, IMOW, Ivo Lukas, marissa mayer, super geek, women in technology, women leadership, women of change
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Today kicked off the third annual Inside Social Apps summit put on by Justin Smith and team at The Inside Network.  With a turnout of over 1,000 attendees it was clear that the games industry is getting hotter by the day as it continues to propel growth in the tech sector, above and beyond the two most hyped IPOs in recent history — Facebook and Zynga.  Whether the panel topic was which platforms hold the most opportunity in 2012 or mobile game marketing and distribution, the focus always came back to monetization.  While games historically has been very male dominated, the new crop of social casual games that are popular on mobile phones and Facebook are mostly played by females.  Not only are females out-playing men, women are increasingly running game companies and covering the games space. This was represented at ISA, where there were women on four of the five panels.

In the first panel of the day on the topic of promising platforms, Kevin Chou, CEO of Kabam, and John Spinale, SVP of Social Games at Disney both agreed that Google is very serious about gaming.  They  pointed to the massive user base and engagement that come from Google’s properties.  Kevin went one step further and surprised the audience by announcing that the large majority of Kabam’s new users are not from Facebook.  Instead, as Facebook user acquisition has become increasingly expensive, most game developers are scrambling for more cost-effective channels.  Kabam has turned to G+, Yahoo and other social networks across the globe.

In the panel on Cutting Edge Social Game Product Development, Bill Jackson, creative director at Zynga Dallas, embraced the combination of design and metrics, while Sebastian Knutsson, Chief Creative Officer of King.com spoke to the importance of having connected games that are cross-platform. Things got really interesting when the topic of cloning arose.  With Apple pulling games from the app store for cloning, and the recent controversy around the astounding similarity of games from Nimblebit/Zynga and Spry Fox/6Waves Lolapps, there was a great deal of interest in the topic.  Brenda Garno Brathwaite, COO of Loot Drop did not disappoint.  She noted that cloning hurts innovation for all of us.  To the cloners out there she said, “Congratulations.  You are empty of inspiration.  You belong in the subset of human being in a special area of hell.”  She advised game developers to be phenomenally protective of their ideas since game rules are not outright protectable.

Next up, Justin Smith spoke with Carl SjoGreen, Director of Product Management at Facebook.  Carl drove home the value of bookmarks, both in the browser and on Facebook, as a way to re-engage with visitors after the initial game installation. Carl noted that half of Facebook’s 845 million users are accessing the social network from mobile phones.  When asked about the value prop of HTML5 to game developers, Carl replied that it depends on the app.  His big picture view is that social applications are inherently cross-platform, because at the end of the day the fundamental value is being able to play with friends.

Lisa Marino, CEO of RockYou and Will Harbin, CEO of Kixeye were the most vocal panelists on the topic of “Monetizing Social Games on Facebook.”  Lisa kicked things off by saying, “Let’s face it, we are a media company.”  Will rebutted with “We are not a media company.  We are a game company.  99 times out of 100 our revenue is through a transaction.”  Then, he provided the choice quote of the day, “We monetize revenge.”  For Kixeye, monetization is inherent in the game play, not in ads.  When the panelists were asked about their thoughts on advertising competitors’ games in their own games, Lisa’s response was “Absolutely.  We want to monetize people who are not paying in our games.”

Day one of Inside Social Apps saw a strong turn-out and lively panels.  While the industry as a whole grows, there is increasing friction in the space as it gets more difficult to acquire players and make hit games in an over-saturated market that is driven to some degree by cloning.  Last year new game studios popped up with regularity and funding was easier to attain.  More recently, studios that have not produced a hit within their first or second game launch are shutting down, and VCs are looking beyond studios with hit-driven businesses, and instead are eyeing businesses like platform plays. It will be interesting to hear more about the funding climate in ISA’s day two VC panel.

Tags: apps, cross-platform, Disney, Faecbook, G+, Games, Google, HTML5, Kabam, Kevin Chou, KIXEYE, Lisa Marino, Loot Drop, RockYou, Tina Tran, Will Harbin
Posted in All Chapters, Events, Girls In Tech, San Francisco | 1 Comment »

Which high-tech company do Americans feel has the brightest future: Apple, Facebook or Google?  According to Poll Position,  new polling data  finds that Apple tops Google and Facebook at 44 percent.

In a scientific national opinion poll, Apple won more votes than Google and Facebook, combined. Forty-four percent said Apple, 26% Google, 10% Facebook and 21% expressed no opinion.  More than half the young people, in the 18-29 year old category selected Apple as the high-tech company with the brightest future with 55.2% compared to Google’s 16.8% and Facebook’s 15.2%.

If you are interested in seeing a breakdown of survey participants by age, race, gender, and political affiliation, you may look in crosstabs for this poll at: http://media.pollposition.com.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/Poll-Position-crosstabs-hi-tech-companies.pdf.

Poll Position’s scientific survey of 1,066 registered voters, nationwide, was conducted October 30 of this year.  It  would be interesting to see how this poll would skew if given strictly the Bay Area/Silicon Valley population?  Or Austin, LA, New York, Boston or the UK, for that matter — Would we see Google, perhaps, pulling closer to the lead?
What do you think?  Which high-tech company do you feel has the brightest future?  You can vote in Poll Position’s online companion poll and comment at: http://pollposition.com/2011/11/01/apple-tops-google-facebook/.  [The online companion poll in which you can vote provides unscientific results, meaning it’s a tally of participating Poll Position users, not a nationally representative sampling.]

Learn more about Poll Position’s polling methodology at: http://pollposition.com/2011/09/26/our-polling-methodology/

Tags: apple, facebook, Google, high-tech, poll
Posted in All Chapters, Girls In Tech | No Comments »

We wanted to highlight this great video, a panel put on by Glamour/Conde Naste and moderated by All Things D’s own Kara Swisher.

You might ask: “What is a magazine like Glamour doing moderating such a panel?” To answer this, Editor Cindi Leive answers this way:  “Nothing is more glamorous than a woman with skills to make our world run more smoothly.”  Further, she adds: “We’ve always gone where the women are!”  I see this as a good sign!

With Hilary Mason of Bitly (their chief scientist), Stacy Brown-Philpot, director of Google-owned and operated properties; Julie Larson-Green, corporate VP of program management for Windows at Microsoft; Kati London, director of product for Zynga –  please enjoy as they talk the gamut of topics, including:  Why is it that girls, disproportionately, start to lose interest in science and math by the fourth grade? -to- How do we get women and girls interested in going into computer science and engineering degrees?, as well as how to foster role models for these skills in a career.

click to launch video

(photo & video credit: All Things D & Glamour)

Tags: All Things Digital, Bitly, Christine Oneto, glamour, Google, Hilary Mason, Julie Larson-Green, Kati London, microsoft, Stacy Brown-Philpot, women in tech, Zynga
Posted in All Chapters, Girls In Tech | No Comments »

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
Posted in All Chapters, All Chapters, Events, Girls In Tech, GIT Mentorship, Portland | 1 Comment »

In less then three months, Mountain View based start up, Bizzy, has registered almost 120,000 local business favorites in the hopes of providing YOU with business recommendations for everything from a lunch spot to a mechanic.

We can all go to Google or Yelp and type in “lunch in San Francisco” or “sushi in Soho” but the thing is, we are all going to get the same results. Even if you like upscale fusion sushi and I like the all you can eat buffet. Bizzy, Bizzy.com, is changing that with their personalized local business recommendation engine powered by people with similar tastes to you.

The favorites that have been shared on Bizzy thus far have been used to make over 650,000 local business recommendations and with every new shared favorite, the recommendations Bizzy makes are getting that much better. So sign up and share Bizzy with your friends and family to get the scoop on where to eat, shop and play.

Bizzy has released lists of the most favorited local restaurants in the top 10 cities gettin’ Bizzy including San Francisco, New York, Dallas, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, DC, Seattle, Shreveport, La., Boston and Austin, Texas. Visit http://blog.bizzy.com/the-bizziest-cities-in-america to see the lists.

Top 10 Restaurants in the San Francisco Bay Area
1. Absinthe Brasserie & Bar
2. Pizzeria Delfina
3. Little Star Pizza
4. Yoshi’s San Francisco
5. Nopa
6. Cafe Borrone
7. DishDash
8. Coupa Cafe
9. La Fondue
10. Tied House Brewery & Cafe

Are some of your favorites in that list? Head to http://www.Bizzy.com and enter your favorites to start getting personalized local business recommendations. If you end up trying Bizzy and their recommendations, let them know how it goes! You could win $500 with their “Rec Check Challenge! Oh, and yes, there is an app for that: Bizzy.com/iPhone.

Tags: Boston, Chicago, Dallas, DC, dinner, eat, Google, Los Angeles, lunch, New York, play, recommendations, restaurants, San Francisco, shop, Washington D.C., win, Yelp
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Recently, my voracious appetite for movie-watching led me to discover Roku, a streaming player that allows me access to a world wide web library of movies, shows, music, videos, podcasts, games, and more. I’ve only had the Roku player for five days but I already know: it’s my #1 recommendation for a gadget gift this holiday season. Here’s the high-level:

• Cost: $59/$79/$99. Click here to compare the three different models (I went for it with the $99 model)
• Includes: Roku streaming player (4.9 x 4.9 x 1.2 inches; roughly the size and weight of a paperback book), HDMI cable, composite AV cable, remote control and batteries, power adapter
• Required: television, high-speed Internet

Setting up the Roku player was easy: the HDMI/AV cable connects the Roku and the television, and the power adapter connects the Roku to the electrical socket in the wall. Just power on and select the Wi-Fi connection; no special software involved.

Next, I did a tour of the default channels: Netflix, Amazon Video, Hulu Plus, and Pandora. To access the shows and music on those channels, I had to validate each existing account through a code exchange process that required me to login on my computer. Although I had to do this for every account in order to access its library, the entire exercise was quick and painless.

The channel I’ve accessed the most is Netflix. Because my Netflix account is now activated on my Roku, I now have two queues (which I update online): my regular queue for Netflix dvds (mail) and my “instant” queue for on-demand shows/ movies. The small caveat is that not all of the Netflix library is available for “instant” viewing (less than a total of 2,000 TV shows and movies as of today). But the list is growing daily. And did I say these movies are instant and on-demand? As in, you can watch them anytime, for no additional fee other than your monthly Netflix subscription?

Pandora is awesome — all your personalized music settings projected on the television. Tunes for every mood and occasion.

Amazon Video is a bit on the expensive side, ranging from $1.99 to $3.99 for a 24-hour rental (with the option to buy). But it offers the latest and greatest shows, including those currently in season.

I’m excited to check out Hulu Plus, which just became available on Roku today.

In total, there are over fifty channels available on Roku, and the company says they are adding more every day. On day six of owning the Roku, I’m only discovering the tip of the ice berg. The channels are listed under the following categories: Featured, New, Most Popular, Top Rated, Movies & TV, Web TV & Special Interest, Music, Sports, International, News & Podcasts, Photos & Videos, Games & Screensavers.

Notable channels include:

• Facebook photos and videos
• Vimeo
• Blip.tv
• flickr
• MLB.tv

I have a feeling my Roku and I are going to be together a lot, inside and outside my home. The Roku player is smaller than a paperback book and very light at 7.2 ounces, so it will be a convenient travel companion (as long as the destination includes a television and high-speed Internet connection).

A little tidbit about the brain behind Roku: the company was founded by Anthony Wood, who invented the DVR. Enough said.

The one question I have to ask is: where do Roku and other streaming players fit in when Apple and Google enter living rooms?

Tags: Amazon Video, Anthony Wood, apple, Baochi Nguyen, blip.tv, DVR, Facebook photos and videos, Flickr, Google, HDMI/AV cable, Hulu Plus, MLB.tv, Netflix, Pandora, Roku, The Roku player, travel, Vimeo, Wi-Fi
Posted in All Chapters, Los Angeles | 1 Comment »