Girls In Tech

Written by Don R. Crawley, Tweeting Linux was developed with the idea helping all people get familiar quickly with some of the most commonly-used Linux commands. For women who are interested in broadening their skillsets to advance their careers, the book is a practical, immediately useful Linux command reference. Certainly, the same benefit is available to men, but for women looking to advance in such a male-dominated industry as IT, Tweeting Linux is a pretty powerful tool for increasing overall knowledge of Linux shell commands.

Tags: Adriana Gascoigne, Don R. Crawley, girls in tech, IT, Linux, Shell commands, Tweeting Linux, women in tech
Posted in All Chapters | No Comments »

Late last month May 23-25, 2011, NCWIT kicked off its Summit on Women and IT in New York City. NCWIT mission is a national community of change-leader organizations working to significantly increase the meaningful participation of girls and women in IT. The yearly summit brings in together leaders, change agents, and stakeholders to focus on research-driven practices and ideas that can strengthen the computing workforce and promote technology innovation by increasing the participation of girls and women.  The NCWIT Summit on Women and IT convenes prominent leaders from corporations, K-12 and higher education, non-profits, startups, and government organizations. Topics to be addressed during the summit include:

• How an increasingly diverse U.S. population impacts the future of IT
• How to develop diversity in open source
• Ways to better inform and educate girls about IT career choices
• How diversity impacts innovation and how stereotype threat affects underrepresented groups in particular environments
• What organizations can do to promote a diverse work environment, retain talent and avoid high attrition

The Department of Labor estimates that the U.S. workforce will add 1.4 million technology jobs by 2018, yet universities will produce fewer than half of the technology-trained candidates needed to fill these jobs. Research shows that the number of women in IT is dwindling; in 2009, only 25% of U.S IT professionals were women, compared to 36% in 1991.

check out NCWIT’s Alliances

Check out NCWIT BLOG |   Photos from the NCWITSummit |   Schedule of the prominent speakers/panelist |  Don’t forget to read all of the coverage #NCWITSUMMIT @NCWIT, And last but not least, like their Facebook page |   Fun digital photo booth on the last night hosted at MTV HQ for Symons Innovator Award |   Press Release for media

Follow me @MsSonicFlare

Tags: 24notion, Computing, diversity, education, girls in technology, innovation, IT, Ivo Lukas, NCWIT, ncwitsummit, New York, tech, technology, women in technology
Posted in All Chapters, All Chapters, Girls In Tech | No Comments »

In its 12th year, OSCON continues to be the premier meeting ground for everyone using open source. Join over 2,500 people passionate about open source, from developers, designers, trainers, and programmers to sys admins, IT managers, hackers, and entrepreneurs. At OSCON, you’ll participate in hundreds of sessions covering open source languages and platforms, practical tutorials that go deep into technical skill and best practices, inspirational keynote presentations, an Expo Hall featuring dozens of the latest projects and products, fun networking events and activities, and the best “hallway track” around.

This year OSCON is coming back to Portland, Oregon – July 19-23, 2010 at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland, Oregon. OSCON brings together people like you from across the open source universe to learn, inspire each other, and collaborate. I’ve had a great time chatting with Allison Randal, Program Chair for O’Reilly’s Open Source Convention.

Tell us more about Allison Randal. What’s the most accomplished technology you’ve seen today?

Her first geek career was as a research linguist in eastern Africa. But eventually her love of coding drew her away from natural languages to artificial ones. Allison is the architect of Parrot (a virtual machine for dynamic languages), on the board of directors of The Perl Foundation, and founder and president of Onyx Neon. She co-authored Perl 6 and Parrot Essentials, and has edited various O’Reilly books on dynamic languages including Perl Hacks and Programming PHP. Allison is currently working on her PHD in UK. Her favorite technology built in this age would be thunderbird 3 of email applications. Two thumbs up to the developers who built this amazing technology platform

Tell us more about this year Open Source Convention in Portland, Oregon? What can we expect from OSCON 2010 this year? What are the key differentiators this year?

Last year we shy away from Portland but we’ve realized that we want to come back to Portland because there is more support from the Portland community. Portland as a city is smaller comparison to Silicon Valley but they have a large technology community; it’s considered as the open source tech big event of the week. Basically, it is one of the biggest open source conferences in the US. New sessions include Government track and health track- open source in health and technology. The healthcare industry is changing; there is an opportunity for an open source to grow in that space- it is quite an expensive solution of keeping and storing patient’s data. So, there is a huge benefit for the open source solutions.

How would the process in developing key notes and sessions different from year after year?

This year there is a theme. The theme is “make it happen” – open source is in the position of broad acceptance now, we need to educate and expose as many individuals as possible- it’s on the cross road! You need to take the action now and open source can actively change the future. We encouraged public for proposal submission that flows along with that theme. This year we get about 700-750 proposals; we’ve had space about 150 sessions only. The committee takes different pieces of technology to review those proposals; for example: python and ruby each segment of program will be covered by the subcommittee then, we will vote on the final proposals. Basically, we’ll take the top ranks one.

Are you expecting more attendees this year?

We are hoping for more attendance. And yes, it will be; it will be bigger than last year and the year before.

Which sessions are you most excited about?

Two things most excited: cloud and Scala summit; as well as emerging languages camp! Crucial key elements in the open source community. Also, there are dozens of amazing speakers on top of the game that will be presenting. Jill Tarter, SETI Institute and Rob Pike, Google Inc and there are many more great keynotes/speakers throughout the week. To capture what’s hot this year; every year our conference changes with the current technology. Cloud technology is taking off; this year we have a great cloud computing key session by Simon Wardley, Leading Edge Forum. He will share the evolution of technology, the management challenges this brings and the common myths that surround the concept of cloud computing.

Any take away for the attendees?

The idea of how they could get involved in the open source community. To get involve in the local user group and get to know people in that community. Most people are welcoming and embracing the new idea.

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 @allisonrandal @mssonicflare @oscon @24notion @gitweet

#oscon #portland #opensource

Tags: 24notion, allison randal, cloud computing, facebook, gitpdx, Google, health tech, IT, ivo, Ivo Lukas, open source, oregon, OSCON, Portland, programmers, python, ruby, technology
Posted in All Chapters, Events, Portland | 1 Comment »

This press release comes directly from Crisis Commons, who are doing such great work that we wanted to share them with all of our Girls in Tech. To learn more, or get involved, check out their site and follow them on Twitter.

Hundreds of CrisisCamp volunteers are gathering in an expanded number of cities to collaborate on information technology projects in support of disaster relief for post-earthquake Haiti. Initially launched last week in six locations in response to the crisis, the volunteer technology effort has rapidly grown to 12 cities in four countries.

CrisisCamps are in-person meetings of a new grassroots movement called CrisisCommons (http://www.crisiscommons.org), with a mission to share best practices for crisis response.

Montreal and Toronto in Canada,  as well as Bogota, Colombia, join London, UK as international locations. US gatherings will take place in: Boston; Denver; Los Angeles; Miami; New Orleans; Portland; Seattle; Sunnyvale, California; and Washington, D.C.

In just one week, CrisisCamp Haiti volunteers in five cities collaboratively conceived of and created “We Have, We Need” (http://www.wehaveweneed.org/) an online service to support the logistics of matching donors and relief organizations. CrisisCampers have also assisted organizations such as Ushahidi, Sahana and OpenStreetMap to generate free detailed basemap information for Haiti. The detailed digital maps have been useful to rescue teams by locating NGOs on the ground, source of available water and the locations of evacuee camps. Additionally, volunteers built and contributed data to mobile phone applications to allow those on the ground to report vital information such as the location of hospitals or missing persons. Nontechnical volunteers have been instrumental as well, as with one project requested by the United Nations that generated a definitive list of news sources covering the Haiti earthquake.

Development on these projects has continued even after CrisisCamp events are over through open source online collaborative tools, such as MediaWiki, Drupal and Internet Relay Chat. Projects underway include Language & Translation, Mobile Disaster Assessment Mapping, Family Reunification and Haitian Skilled Worker Retention. CrisisCamp creations are released under a free license, allowing anyone to use, copy or modify any volunteer efforts.

All of the applications and project descriptions can be found on the CrisisCommons website. Listed on the site are “Simple Tasks Anyone Can Do” with screencasts and step-by-step instructions to teach the Internet novice how they can participate.

“We are witnessing the development of a transformational change in how an average citizen can participate in the crisis response effort,” says CrisisCommons co-founder Noel Dickover.  “Previously you could only send money.  Now, you can directly help in the response. An existing social network of national and international first responders, web 2.0 developers, and NGOs had been established, so the immediate response was just a matter of galvanizing existing relationships.”

About CrisisCamp
CrisisCamp is a open, collaborative event held in “barcamp” style to provide local and international responders, community leaders of affected areas and non-governmental organizations an opportunity to engage with operations on the ground during a crisis. Tools and resources created by CrisisCamp volunteers are designed to enhance responders’ decision-making capability, transparency and collaboration.

About CrisisCommons
CrisisCommons brings together domain experts, developers, and first responders to develop technology and practices for humanitarian crisis management and disaster relief. CrisisCommons is part of a global movement that unites volunteers, academia, non-profits, companies and government officials in sharing best practices and lessons learned to advocate for further use of technology and telecommunications to assist citizens and communities during crisis.

Founded in March 2009 through an impromptu meetup of Twitter users at the Government 2.0 Camp, a small band of idealists and innovators gathered to discuss the idea of a creating a common community through a mash-up of citizen volunteers, crisis response organizations, international humanitarian relief agencies, non-profits and the private sector. Within minutes, the CrisisCamp concept was born to unite communities, seek common ground and cultivate innovation in the use of technology for mobility and efficiency during crisis.

Learn more about the movement at http://www.crisiscommons.org/

Tags: charity, IT, nonprofit, social media, socialgood, tech
Posted in All Chapters, Los Angeles | 1 Comment »