Girls In Tech

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
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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 »

Girls in Tech San Francisco chapter Managing Director, Laura Slezinger was party to an exciting launch at Web 2.0 this week. Slezinger, and Girls in Tech are early adapters and on the forefront of new technology and tools. Girls in Tech San Francisco launched its new Facebook Page to be part of a beta testing round prior to the launch of Roost’s Social Marketing Platform. Slezinger, along with Star Varga of Vega Star Productions, and Restaurant owner Joe Hargrave of Tacolicious answered questions on a panel conducted by Chris Brubaker, VP of Marketing for Roost.

Press Release Follows:

ROOST REDUCES TIME SINK AND STRESS CAUSED BY SOCIAL MEDIA WITH NEW SOCIAL MARKETING PLATFORM FOR SMB

Free Social Marketing Tool for Individual Professionals and Small Businesses

First of its Kind Product, Solves the Biggest Headaches: What to Post and When

SAN FRANCISCO, CA – WEB 2.0 EXPO – March 29, 2011 – Roost (www.roost.com, @roost), a technology company committed to helping small business go social, announced its new social marketing platform for Facebook and Twitter at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco today. The Roost freemium productivity tool helps businesses who rely heavily on word of mouth and referrals tap into the power of the social Web more efficiently and more effectively.

Roost solves the nagging problem all business owners face when thinking about social marketing, “what do I post and when do I post it?” To alleviate the stress and time-sink often caused by social media, Roost developed the Campaign Creator which helps professionals plan their social marketing activities in 20 minutes per week. With the Campaign Creator, a user can set the duration and content types (post, link, quote, etc.) for each campaign. Roost automatically provides customized recommendations on post type and frequency to match the length of the campaign and to deliver a variety of content for higher audience engagement.

In addition, Roost’s suggested content feature, a first in this category, solves the problem of what to post with direct access to articles, blogs, quotes and other original content. With the suggested content feature, Roost users can easily queue up content on a daily or weekly basis by accessing a dynamic library of content related to the user’s specific occupational sector and interests. Campaign Creator is also designed to build relationships and attract more business with The Roost Bar. When friends, fans or followers view a shared link, a small, branded bar appears above the article and allows audiences to immediately “like” the user’s Facebook Page.

“Roost Campaigns are critical to disseminating strategic content in an efficient and timely manner to our various Facebook Pages, Groups, and Twitter accounts,” said Laura Slezinger, Managing Director, San Francisco Girls in Tech. “And Roost Circles allows us to connect to our dozens of national and international chapters without having to coordinate manually for each post.”

Unlike existing publishing tools for social networks, Roost is inherently social. Roost Circles, announced today in Beta mode, is a way for SMBs and individual pros to band together with their closest business associates, and by request, share each other’s posts, providing branding and engagement opportunities across each other’s networks. Whether the circle includes employees, favorite customers or vendors, the technology capitalizes on the economically relevant concept that rising tides lift all boats.

“Roost was built for the restaurant, CPA or Realtor, who doesn’t want to spend 10 hours per week on online marketing. They know they need to be on Facebook and Twitter, but they aren’t sure what to do or how to start,” said Alex Chang, CEO of Roost. “Roost is a product for real people who have little to no time, aren’t fully up to speed on all the nuances of social marketing and live and die by referral business. And best of all, it’s free.”

To create real social marketing campaigns, stay top of mind with your existing customers, find new customers and grow your social network for free, sign up at www.roost.com.

Tags: facebook, laura slezinger, roost, roost marketing, San Francisco, Terra Khachooni, web 2.0 expo
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Girls in Tech, San Francisco is migrating their Facebook presence from Groups to Pages. As early adapters, Girls In Tech was first to join Facebook anduse social media in a real way to grow their network and online presence. Facebook has made some changes (and continues to make changes) and it is important to fall in line with where Facebook and social media is taking us. Please follow us on www.facebook.com/GirlsInTech.SanFrancisco as we will have great content for you to pull from for you Pages and of course, stay updated with Events. Groups will still be a place to connect and is a wonderful arena to have private interaction with your members, however as Facebook focuses on building out Pages, it is essential to understand the importance of have a robust Facebook Page.

In reading Mashable’s article how Social is Turning Search on its Head, I realized that although many of us are on Facebook, we may still need to understand how powerful of a tool it can be. And, with all of the changes Facebook makes, it can be hard to keep up.

Reasons why to have a Facebook Page:

• Facebook Pages are indexed by Google (among other engines)
• Pages are Public, anyone can “like” your Page and follow you without adding as a friend
• It is easier to get someone to “like” a Page than to “join” a Group (joining sounds much more like a commitment)
• You don’t have to accept a friendship to have fans or followers, they can feel connected to you through Pages
• Pages are crawled as a stand alone website, sites with engagement receives a higher value and will rise to the top of Search Engines over static sites
• Everyone should have a Page, there are people who are looking for jobs and are using Pages as a way to showcase themselves, independent contractors, social media consultants, as well as restaurants, boutiques, nail salons, bars, etc. Companies are using Pages for brand and image (ex. pictures of non profit work, creating an identity through personal interaction, etc.)
• Savvy social marketers understand that followers do not want to be “broadcast at” but are engaged in a dialogue with people
• Facebook is building out it’s analytics for Pages, including Insights and Feedback
• Pages are cross marketing with each other and growing their reach
• Facebook is investing heavily to make Pages the best business presence on the web

To all Girls In Tech Groups, it is worth your while to start focusing efforts to Pages. Social Media Examiner recently talks about How to Optimize your Facebook Page and discusses Why Most Businesses Get Facebook Wrong. Unfortunately, there is no easy way to do this. Facebook used to offer a way to migrate to your Page, but it seems they have stopped this option. If anyone knows of a way to migrate a Group to a Page, please let us know! And don’t forget to connect your Facebook account to your Twitter account so you can further your reach. Roost.com makes it easy for you to post once to multiple pages and multiple accounts. – Terra Khachooni

Tags: facebook, laura slezinger, Pages, roost, San Francisco, Terra Khachooni
Posted in Girls In Tech | 1 Comment »

I love getting updates on who’s funding who. The beginning of 2011 has started off on an active foot. The Groupon - Google fall out at the end of the year was especially exciting, but what’s more exciting is the fearless progression of Groupon-like sites. Google has announced that it is launching its own coupon/group buying feature called Google Offers. Mashable was the first to showcase just how directly Google is going to compete with Groupon. [click here] The Washington Post reported that “Google Offers subscribers will receive a daily e-mail offer for a buy-in discount. According to its sources, businesses will get 80 percent of revenue derived from the coupon three days after a deal runs. Google will send the rest in 60 days, after processing any returns.”

As I have mentioned in my previous posts, I loved watching Groupon thumb their noses to Google’s $6Million offer and love the drama that Silicon Valley brings to business. Google is a giant and it’s interesting to see the beginning of an anti-google sentiment. Just like Firefox users in opposition of Internet Explorer or those who go out of their way to not use Microsoft products… we begrudgingly need google. Girls in Tech is an avid group of supporters and as entrepreneurs, we love to support start ups especially in the face of fierce competition. Plum District is targeted to us (women!) and with a female VC on the board, it is almost necessary to check the site out, join, and share.

Tags: Terra Khachooni
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A couple of weeks ago Alameda based start up, Vook recieved $5.25M in funding. First, it’s always nice to see the millions being circulated in Silicon Valley… but the exciting part is for who? Vook.vom is a site that sells experiential books and videos… sort of a twist to Kindle but even for Kindle, or your Tablet, or your iPad… VentureWire describes it as beyond buying the Sherlock Holmes book, you buy a digital “Vook” (get it?) and you get the Sherlock Homes experience. “ts Sherlock Holmes vook, for instance, features two classic stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – “The Man with the Twisted Lip” and “The Adventure of the Speckled Band” – and enhances them with videos that delve into the history and legend surrounding the character of Holmes.” It’s a combination of a digital book, text, video, photos, and social sharing. Vook founder and Chief Executive Brad Inman said he believes he has found the future of publishing. Just when you thought nothing can replace the last classic art form of solitary entertainment… think again. Even the nighttime novel you snuggle with in bed is going social, mobile, and interactive. Your vook (which ranges from about $7 to $16) will have about 10-20 chapters that include up to 20 short-form videos relevant to the text and are available on your iPad, iPhone, Android, and web.

Although I am a lover of technology, it seems I am still stuck in the generation that is not excited about telling everyone in the world where I am eating or getting my nails done via FourSquare or making everything I do including cooking chicken panang curry for the first time an online social event with pictures, comments and tips… it seems that the rest of the world is! When I think about reading the biography of JFK (JFK: 50 days a best-selling vook for the iPad that features content created in partnership with Perseus Books and NBC Universal), or old Jane Austin novels… I agree that I would love to discover more about the topic. I watched Becoming Jane because she is a favorite author and I thought about how interesting vook could make my annual Pride and Prejudice read.

Vook is setting out to not only entertain us with topical entertaining add ons, but further the depth in which we know, learn, understand what we are reading. Vook has released about 150 titles last year and is set to publish over 1,000 this year. They have also launched their own digital e-book imprint which will offer over 500 “how to” and educational titles to the 2011 market. Check them out and tell us what you think. Are magazines, newspapers, and books becoming a thing of the past?

Tags: Terra Khachooni
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Social Gaming Summit & Virtual Goods Summit in LONDON
The first London Social Gaming Summit is a one day event focused on the intersection of games and the social web. The event focuses on helping social games developers build, monetise, and grow their social games. We’re bringing together the leaders in free-to-play games, social networking, and payments infrastructure for a full day of panels and talks.

Social Gaming Summit
The first London Virtual Goods Summit is a one day event focused on the emerging market opportunity for virtual goods and economies. Once restricted to the world of online gaming, virtual goods and currencies are beginning to influence the development of social networks, community sites, and many other new and exciting markets. The market for virtual goods continues to grow – join us for engaging talks and panels designed to highlight important trends in this fast growing market. With estimates suggesting this market will grow from $1 billion in 2009 to $1.6 billion in 2010, this is a must-attend event for those in the games, social media, and entertainment markets.

Virtual Goods Summit London
The first London Virtual Goods Summit is a one day event focused on the emerging market opportunity for virtual goods and economies. Once restricted to the world of online gaming, virtual goods and currencies are beginning to influence the development of social networks, community sites, and many other new and exciting markets. The market for virtual goods continues to grow – join us for engaging talks and panels designed to highlight important trends in this fast growing market. With estimates suggesting this market will grow from $1 billion in 2009 to $1.6 billion in 2010, this is a must-attend event for those in the games, social media, and entertainment markets.

Register HERE for the Social Gaming Summit

Register HERE for the Virtual Goods Summit

*Discount code for Girls in Tech: GIRLSINTECH010 *

Tags: gaming, London, Terra Khachooni
Posted in All Chapters, All Chapters, London | No Comments »

WarmGun is offering Girls in Tech 10% off! If you’re in and around San Francisco, you may want to jump on a GIT discount! Click HERE for more details.

It’s no longer enough to have a pretty UI. Face it – you need to make your site convert…wake up and smell the analytics!

Warm Gun: Designing Happiness is a 1-day conference for designers and non-designers about “designing for conversion”. From successful startups like Mint to iconic brands like Apple, design has become increasingly crucial for attracting, retaining, and converting visitors into users, and users into happy customers. The Warm Gun conference will uncover the science behind the art of web design, and demystify the process of designing for both conversion and happiness.

Tickets are almost SOLD OUT — for more info, visit www.warmgun.com or Watch it Live!

Tags: San Francisco, Terra Khachooni
Posted in Girls In Tech, San Francisco | No Comments »

Join us on September 23^rd at our first West coast Think Mobile event, a conference that explores the broadening mobile ecosystem, the application marketplace, and the innovation that drives the industry.

A strong mobile strategy means new opportunities for innovation, growth, and smarter marketing.

*Mobile can reinvent your business*

The impact of mobile technology goes far beyond the mobile industry, touching media organizations and cross-industry businesses every day. At Think Mobile, leaders from Hearst, Starbucks, Nielsen, comiXology, and more will share case studies and explain how mobile has transformed their businesses. You’ll leave with tactical tips and strategies to put to work in your organization, including how to improve user experience, marketing, make money with mobile and successful methods for innovation.

The mobile industry is moving at a rapid pace, and a smart mobile strategy is essential for all organizations. How can you take advantage of the opportunities?

• Monetize. Uncover revenue drivers: content, apps, advertising, and more.
• Be relevant. Learn how to develop and monetize location services, targeted content, and augmented reality.
• Mobilize your marketing. Learn from mobile marketing case studies.
• Explore streaming media. Analyze the value of mobile video.
• The big debate. Build an app, or focus on the mobile web?
• Look ahead. Hear what opportunities mobile will present in the next few years.

Register today with a group, and you’ll pay just $225 per person after the first registration.
Sign up now!

Tags: comizology, hearst, nielsen, reinvent, starbucks, Terra Khachooni, think mobile
Posted in All Chapters, All Chapters, Events, Girls In Tech, San Francisco | No Comments »

A new book was released this month called “The Custom Fit Workplace: Choose When, Where, and How to Work and Boost Your Bottom Line” has business owners thinking about employees and mothers in a new way. As Google and other startups paved the way to build happy work environments, the notion of being a “great place to work” has become a goal for many companies. Although the start up world has added pin ball machines, bean bags, bright colors, and martini Mondays, larger corporations are applying the concept in more applicable ways. Some companies like Yahoo, offer a shuttle bus that will pick you up from San Francisco and bring you directly to the Yahoo campus. Many other companies offer cafeterias with high quality, healthy food as well as recreation areas for exercise such as basketball and volleyball courts, gyms, and even provide bikes to get from one part of the complex to another. For the younger crowd, this may seem like an obvious ROI for employers to have healthy, happy employees, but it was wasn’t too long ago any of these efforts ever existed.

Going a step beyond having ergonomically correct chairs, organizations like MomsRising.org* (2010, Forbes.com named MomsRising’s web site as one of the “Top 100 Websites For Women.”) is pressing upon companies to incorporate more flexible work situations for mothers. This is a 24/7 work culture and leaving the office doesn’t necessarily mean leaving work. The question still haunts most of us; will we be good parents or successful businesswomen? Men and women are under pressure to balance work and life commitments: being a good husband/wife, raising children, caring for aging parents, or just trying to find time to take care of themselves. In many places, it is difficult to imagine going form dual income to single income and even more daunting the thought that if you leave your job, you will most assuredly be replaced or left with whatever role is waiting for you.

“The Custom-Fit Workplace” has important and far-reaching implications for the way we work and improving not only people’s lives but companies’ bottom lines. This research-based book presents flexible work tactics including work-from-home arrangements, results-only work environments, babies-at-work programs, and successful career lane changes, among others. Perhaps surprisingly, Jet Blue, Ernst & Young, Best Buy and the University of California are among the companies that have already positioned mother and family flexible policies, which are detailed in this book.  A TIME Magazine article called “Brining Babies to Work” may have been the inspiration of Joan Blades and Nanette Fondas, founders of MomsRising and authors of “The Custom Fit Workplace”. It not only showed that babies are not any more of a distraction than the water cooler conversations or Fantasy Football, they have also shown to boost morale. “We have tended to have this myth of the separation between work and family,” Secret says. “In reality, that never existed.” Read More

by Terra Khachooni

*MomsRising.org <http://www.momsrising.org/> is an online and on-the-ground grassroots organization of more than a million people who are working to achieve economic security for all families in the United States.

Tags: Babies, joan blades, khachooni, Moms, momsrising, nanette fondas, Terra Khachooni, the custom-fit workplace, time
Posted in Girls In Tech | 2 Comments »