Girls In Tech

Open source: Google Code-in contest kicks in last week. For those students in the ages of 13-17 years old could participate and win fabulous prizes and recognition.  It’s a simple process: Pick a task, complete the task and your task is approved. The contest runs from November 21, 2011 to January 16, 2012. Worldwide participation is encouraged. The goal is to produce a variety of open source code, documentation, training materials and user experience research for the organizations participating this year. These tasks include:

• Code: Tasks related to writing or refactoring code
• Documentation: Tasks related to creating/editing documents
• Outreach: Tasks related to community management and outreach/marketing
• Quality Assurance: Tasks related to testing and ensuring code is of high quality
• Research: Tasks related to studying a problem and recommending solutions
• Training: Tasks related to helping others learn more
• Translation: Tasks related to localization
• User Interface: Tasks related to user experience research or user interface design and interaction

Check out the site to participate and learn more. 54 days left to the challenge, so spread the word!

Be sure to let us know that you are participating so, you might get a chance to be profiled on our Girls in Tech Mentorship Program article. Drop us an email ivo@girlsintech.net

Follow me @MsSonicFlare

Tags: girlsintech mentorship, GITmentorship, google code in, Ivo Lukas, k-12, mentorship, open source, technology
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Last week wrapped up the Grace Hopper Celebration Women in Computing 2011 in Portland, Oregon. 3000 attendees (over 140 companies, 235 academics representation and closed to 90% women attendees) from all over the world flocked to attend this 4 days conference. What if, is the topic of the conference – It is about creating the next generation to be the leader in STEM/Tech (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). Telle Whitney opened the conference by introducing an initiative by Anita Borg/Grace Hooper “TechWomen” change agent scholars: 6 women mentees (Algeria, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine and Egypt) selected as up-and-coming leaders who will advance in women’s participation in technology and help support more women in their hometown and expand STEM education. TechWomen pairs technical women in the greater San Francisco Bay Area with their counterparts in the Middle East and North Africa for a professional mentorship and exchange program at leading technology companies.

Keynote speaker, Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook gave a career advice for any young woman who wants to move up the ladder in the career of technology:

1. Believe in yourself
2. Dream big
3. Make your partner a real partner
4. Don’t’ leave just yet
5. Start talking about this

The conference sessions range from career, academic, technical, theme and industry track. With Saturday dedicated for an open source day: Codeathon for humanity.

Grace Hopper Aspirations computing by NCWIT took place on Thursday night. More than 1200 applicants applied for and top 30 young women were chosen to attend this conference. The Aspirations award is the catalyst that propels young women into studying computer science in college and ultimately pursuing a career in computing and information technology. Event sponsored by Microsoft, Intel, viawest, Lewis and Clark, puppetlabs and 24Notion

Career fair and exhibitors from Google, yahoo, Microsoft, NSA, Deutsch bank, Lockheed martin, Amex, Intel, Pixar, Facebook, Twitter and hundred others gathered to recruit the brightest STEM young leader to lead their company. (Did you know that STEM jobs paid 20% more than regular career?).

Leaving the conference energized and excited that at Girls in Tech Mentorship Program, we are here to support and developed the next generation to raise them up the top. So, what are you waiting for? Get into it!

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Tags: 24notion, engineering, girls in tech portland, GIT Mentorship, gitpdx, grace hopper celebration, Ivo Lukas, mathematics, mentorship, mssonicflare, Science, sheryl sandberg, STEM, technology, women in computing
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Date/Time:  Wednesday November 2, 5:30-8:00pm

Location:  Andreessen Horowitz, 2865 Sand Hill Road Menlo Park CA

Panelists

Angela Benton, Founder/CEO at Cued Labs / CEO Black Web Media

Freada Kapor Klein, Founder Level Playing Field Institute

Marissa Mayer, VP Local / Geo at Google

Padmasree Warrior, CTO Cisco

Sandy Jen, CTO Meebo

Vivek Wadhwa, Columnist Washington Post

Tags: Adriana Gascoigne, Andreesen Horowitz, girls in tech, iridescent, mentorship, venture capital, women in tech
Posted in All Chapters, San Francisco, Silicon Valley | No Comments »

A recent article from Inc noted that women in technology still face an uphill battle. Quite true!

According to the article, “Women make up half of the U.S. workforce but represent only 25 percent of the technology industry. Despite growth in entrepreneurship, women lead only eight percent of technology start-ups.”

Is this a problem of widespread gender stereotypes? Lack of aspiration to the technology sector by young girls? We need to balance the energy of building awareness with keeping more women in tech arenas. 75% of women in technology report “loving their work,” yet women leave technology careers at a staggering rate.

Finding support and guidance is quite a challenging task. Being in this field for some time, I’ve seen many inspired young women/girls have a hard time finding established women and entrepreneurs in tech to help them maneuver within the industry or corporations. We need more families and friends who can embrace and mentor them within the field.

How do we address this issue? My take is that it starts by exposing, educating and engaging girls from an early young age. Many parents continue to say , “Hey, I would love to have my kids become lawyers or doctors” but you hardly ever hear parents encourage their young girls to become a scientist, or explore technical or mathematicians occupations. Especially at a young age, girls are exposed to more traditional games and toys, but why can’t girls play with Legos? Or create a robotic science project at school?

We invite you to make a difference. We have launched the Girls in Tech Mentorship program in summer 2011. There are huge opportunities to build up the next generation of young girls in technology and entrepreneurship. Our goal is not only to inspire, share knowledge and help young girls to take notice of how cool technology can be, but to expose and educate their parents by encouraging their girls to take part in science, math and tech fairs.  We are looking for mentors, mentees, sponsors, media partners and more. If you are interested in learning more or being part of the program, drop me an email: ivo@girlsintech.net

Follow me @MsSonicFlare

Tags: entrepreneurship, girls in tech, Ivo Lukas, Math, mentorship, mssonicflare, Science, STEM, technology, women in tech
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On my ongoing quest to find the perfect mentorship, there comes along some really outstanding opportunities (not perfect for me) that  I can share with our Girls in Tech readers.  This is one of them.  Get this: Win a chance to be a key player in an upcoming women’s business owners’ team-building seminar~

For anyone who wishes to participate and try to “win” this:  Please note that there is a deadline for women entrepreneurs to apply for the consultation and opportunity to play a feature role in this webinar I am about to describe: deadline: this Friday, March 4th. You can download the application by visiting http://www.giveme5.com/events#232. Completed forms can then be e-mailed to Michael Fravel at mfravel@wipp.org. All submissions will be reviewed but only one woman business owner will be chosen.

Here’s the skinny on the seminar:

Lourdes Martin-Rosa, American Express OPEN Advisor on Government Contracting and Women Impacting Public Policy (WIPP), has nearly 20 years of federal contracting experience under her belt and will be able to provide all webinar participants with valuable information for accessing and winning contracts.  As the fourth part of the special hour-long, one-on-one mentorship webinars they have been promoting recently, Martin-Rosa will help one woman business owner develop an effective strategy for teaming.  This series is part of the Give Me5 Program – a national program by American Express OPEN and WIPP to help female business owners by giving them access and helping them win their share of government contracts.

What you’ll learn about in this seminar:

For both small and midsize businesses, developing a subcontracting and teaming plan is a key to being able to bid competitively on federal contracts. In this consultation session, Lourdes works with a selected business owner to put together an effective strategy for teaming and finding the right partners for bidding on contracting opportunities including:

• How midsize businesses can use small businesses
to gain a competitive advantage

• How small businesses can market their unique value proposition
to possible teaming partners.

Here are the details to simply register & attend:

Give Me 5 “Ready For Prime Time”: How to Leverage Teaming Arrangements

Date: Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Time: 3-4 p.m. ET / 12 p.m.-1 p.m. PT

Where: Virtual
If you would like to know more about the contest, the webinar, WIPP or the Give5 Program, go here.  — Good luck!

Tags: American Express OPEN, Give Me5, mentorship, webinars, WIPP
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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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Time and again, studies reveal lower percentages of women in technical domain. There is a lot of on-going effort around the world to influence women to launch their careers in some technical field in order to bridge the gap. This decades-old question still lingering around indicates that the traditional approach to lure women into technical field is not effective and, emphasize the need for a new approach altogether.

Christine recently posted “AAUW Releases Report: “Why So Few? Women in Science, Tech, Engineering and Mathematics” at Girls in Tech blog. AAUW’s report highlights how ‘social belief system and learning environment’ affects initial mindset of the young girls.

I vividly remember during high-school, we were a class with 100 (approx) girls and, of these only 10% decided to choose a career in engineering, and relatively small percentage (4%) successfully sought a technical career. Looking back in time, and discussing this topic with a few girls who abandoned their goals midway, I figured that they were not comfortable in choosing a career in a field where women would be scarce, but most importantly that, they had some sort of inherent fear. Many girls doubted whether they could do well at math or physics, and did not wish to pursue the fundamental coursework required as basis for an advance degree in technical a field for example, engineering.

Along with positive encouragement at home and school (as AAUW report suggests, and I blindly second), there is profound need for an early exposure to technology as well. Most students have their first ‘real’ rendezvous during undergrad or graduate coursework. But, isn’t this kind of late, when most of us are already committed to our fields of specialization? I strongly feel that such opportunities of getting to taste technology should come at an earlier stage, which I prefer to call career forming age of students (junior-high school to high school), when almost all of us are faced with the question – “What do you aspire to be?”

A hands-on experience will allow these young minds make a better decision, and definitely break the ice. Those who are discomforted by the need to take basic courses like math, physics, chemistry or computers, will get a chance to see all of these in action, and hopefully get inspired and, overcome the fear factor!
Girls in Technology’s Mentorship Program shook hands with Iridiscent and launched Technovation Challenge 2010, aimed at providing a unique opportunity to high-school girls to learn directly from distinguished female entrepreneurs and professionals and get inspired! The success of this event underscores the importance of this cause.

As Managing Director of Minneapolis Chapter, I vow to bring this effort to state of Minnesota soon, and request others to spread the word. The desire to pursue a career in technological field will definitely grow deeper if winded at the right time. And, we will see professional demographics of women in technology change.

Tags: AAUW Report "Why So Few? Women in Science, education, Engineering and Mathematics", entrepreneur, girls in tech, iridescent, mentorship, Minneapolis Chapter, tech, technology, Technovation Challenge 2010, women in tech
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Technovation Challenge Spring 2010

The Girls in Tech Mentorship Program recently launched its Technovation Challenge Spring 2010 in partnership with Iridiscent. The Technovation Challenge is an eight-week program that brings together teams of high-schoolers and pairs them with mentors who are female professionals in technology & entrepreneurship.

The students and mentors work together in teams to learn programming using App Inventor for Android (TM), a new language developed by Google. Each team creates a mobile app and writes a business plan for their app. Concepts in entrepreneurship are explored through lectures and hands-on exercises on topics such as product and UI design, marketing, finance, and presentation and public speaking.

As one of the mentors for this program, I got to meet some amazing women from different backgrounds.  At the mentor orientation we went through some fun and eye opening exercises where we were given programming and business concepts and asked to explain it in lay person terms. We also brainstormed ideas to provide high level topics around which the students can develop their applications. Once I met the  high school students, I was blown away by their intellect and commitment to the program.  Over the last 4 weeks, we have had amazing speakers like Bill Trenchard who is an Entrepreneurship coach, Johanna Werther of AdMob, Theresa Stevens & Forest Glick of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program (STVP). What an amazing opportunity to be able to meet and be mentored by such luminaries while still in High School!

The event will culminate in a final competition, or “Pitch Night,” where teams will demo their prototypes and present their business plans to venture capitalists (VCs) with expertise in evaluating novel ideas and technologies, for a chance to win exciting prizes. The evening will feature keynote speaker Diane Greene, founder of VMware, along with reknowned VCs and entrepreneurs, Katherine Barr, Theresia Gouw Ranzetta, and Adeo Ressi, as our Pitch Night Judges.

Come join us on April 22 and meet these amazing young women, their mentors and experience the world of young entrepreneurship. Get your tickets to this much awaited event today!

Technovation Challenge Spring 2010

Tags: Android, Google, mentorship
Posted in Events, GIT Mentorship | 1 Comment »

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
Posted in Girls In Tech | 5 Comments »