Women Meetups/Workshop in Bay Area

• SDForum – Tech Women’s Program
• Fountain Blue – When She Speaks – 2nd Friday 11:30 – 1”30 pm
• Codechix.org – meetup
• Free workshops for women to learn Ruby programming (no experience OK!)sfrubyworkshops.com Next one: end of Feb or beg of March
• We founded a Female Funders and Entrepreneurs Group this Weekend!  idarose@gmail.com or @idarose  For more information
• Association for Women in Science San Francisco Chapter
• Technovation Challenge – program teaching high school girls how to develop mobile apps – looking for rockstar women-in-tech mentors! Contact w/this form: http://bit.ly/contactcy

Mailing Lists/Sites for Women in Technology

• Devchix.org
• Linuxchix.org
• Women2.org
• Codechix.org
• WomenWhoTech.org
• SFwow.org
• Anitaborg.org
• Systers.org
• Latinas in Computing
• Systers – Researchers
• Systers – LGBT list
• Codelikeagirl.org
• Forum for Women Entrepreneurs and Executives (FWE&E)
• Women In Information Technology (WITI)
• Society of Women Engineers (Santa Clara Valley Section)

General Meet-ups/Groups etc…

• South Bay Hacker DoJo in Mountain View
• SF Ruby Meetup – meetup.com/SFruby
• East Bay Word Press Meetup (@TechLiminal)
• Coworking in San Francisco (Castro) DM me @christineptran on Fridays
• Artificial Intelligence Meetup – 2nd & 4th Sundays Teck Shop Menlo Park
• Pacific IT Professionals (windows/MS/Sys & Net Admins) www.pacitpros.org
• BayCHI.org – UX/Visual Design/Sustainability Engineering
• Augmented Reality Arts Meetups and Yahoo group
• Women-on-Ruby Google Group – we meet up regularly to practice Ruby

Event Announcements & Invitations:

• InfoCamp – Berkley – March 6th : follow  @infoberkley for updates as we plan!
• www.uie.com/events (user interface conference)
• DrupalCon SF is happening in April in SF and accepting Session Proposals until Feb 15, 2010 – Please Submit!
• Call for Participation: Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing – gracehopper.org
• Pii 2010 – privacy, identity and innovation conference – Aug 17 & 18 in Seattle (for more info: Natalie @nfonsecae  tech policy summit.com)
• TechLiminal hosts Drupal 501(c)3 (drupal for non-profits)
• TechLiminal in Oakland – coffee house drop in and occasional speakers
• WILD QUEST! Fundraiser for Environmental Volunteers, non-profit teaching kids to love science – May 2nd 1-4pm Palo Alto Baylands EVols.org for info
• Expression Engine Conference  May 31 – June 2 in SF -www.eeci2010.com

We are still working on getting sessions into our wiki. Several women covered the conference on their blogs:

Yahoo! Developer Network folks attended Havi and Erin along with Erin’s daughters Cady and Grace. Lynn Langit, a developer evangelist at MSFT, led a session on teaching kids to program that her kids attended and loved .

At our session, we showed participants how to play the Social Mania Game, a social patterns card game that allows you to build products, gain points for great features, and eventually ‘pitch’ your completed product to the player representing a VC. The game was fun, of course, but the feedback we got was the great benefit. Erin and Christian Crumlish created Social Mania to teach people about social patterns and as a complement to their book, Designing Social Interfaces. Since the game is still in beta, some of the suggestions made at She’s Geeky may make it into future revisions.

Wanda Henning has an extensive post explaining the process:

Let me describe, in brief, the format.

You arrive. You get your biodegradable name tag. You sit on one of the chairs arranged several rows deep in a circle. You order coffee or mocha of your choice (from the only man in the place) and help yourself to bagels, muffins and other breakfast snacks (sponsored).

Then Hamlin does the rounds with her mic and you introduce yourself with the words “I’m geeky because ….

Vabulus writes:

Unlike most conferences, guess that’ s why it’s called an “un-conference,” Kaliya Hamlin invited us to share our names, twitter handles, professions, and “Why we’re geeky.”  It was so awesome to realize that boys were not the only ones messing around in their rooms trying to develop video games or software, most of these women were doing the very same thing.

….

The next day, Saturday, I was asked by my fellow carpool geeks if I was going to present.  I hadn’t thought about it, but I wasn’t really sure what I would talk about.  I kept thinking about it until we arrived in Mountain View.  After we went around the circle introducing ourselves again that Saturday morning at She’s Geeky, and Kaliya made the announcement to rush to the middle to write a discussion topic, I did it.  I wrote something, then announced it, then put it on the board, then freaked out the entire day.  First one woman came, then there were two, and at the end there were five of us.  Small, but cool, because I don’t know if I could have handled a larger crowd, although more experts would have been cool to bounce ideas off each other.

TechBunny Writes:

Not only was this event filled with a collection of fantastic women with a variety of tech interests that I can’t even begin to list, it was a great opportunity to learn new tips and tricks for soft skills that aren’t always high on the “geekdom” list! Practicing the “elevator pitch”, improving your speaking skills and discussing how to manage transition as tech roles evolve were some of the sessions on agenda wall today.

Sunshine did a podcast from She’s Geeky with organizer Kaliya Hamlin.

and posted on her blog.

She’s Geeky is part of a larger “unconference” movement, in which folks are thinking about how to tap into human ways of relating that yield new and energizing results.

…

What struck me about this was how similar this “offline” event was to the way that my online life now functions. I went to a meeting or panel, and then if I met someone with whom I clicked in some way, we took our conversation over to a table, sat down and chatted further. Then we stood up and joined the larger stream. It worked beautifully, and it made me wonder if our culture’s obsession with structure, leadership, and climbing the ladder may be crumbling in the face of these more natural and creative ways of connecting with others.

Cootie Catcher by banane:

The more I thought of it, the more things started to make sense. Games are great introductions into programming, as they’re fun and interesting, interactive, and a great career option. Anything that shows the “genie behind the curtain” is useful, but games where the overall architecture and construct is simple and well-known helps. The girls told me the rules quickly and easily, almost as if I was stupid.

View from the Cubicle Farm:

I usually avoid all-women events, for reasons I haven’t clearly understood myself.  However, this event exceeded my expectations.    The conference was completely user-generated and fairly unscheduled, yet we covered a broad variety of intriguing topics.  Everyone came to the table with a different piece of information and different perspective to add to the conversation, yet we all had technology geekiness in common.  We created a worthwhile event based on our own experiences and research.  In that sense, it was almost as if the whole unconference was the embodiment of a wiki.

More posts will be coming with feedback from She’s Geeky and notes updates

Girls in Tech Catalyst Conference (in our last post) Tuesday January 26th

SDForum presents “Organizational Savvy for Women: Shattering the Glass Ceiling”
Thursday, January 28th, 2010, 6pm, Symantec, Mountain View, CA
Based upon his Wall Street Journal bestselling book “Survival of the Savvy”, Dr. Rick Brandon will deliver “Organizational Savvy for Women: Shattering the Glass Ceiling to empower SD Forum Tech Women to break through barriers to their influence, impact, and advancement due to gender norms”. You’ll learn about the cutting edge leadership competency of political astuteness with integrity, which has now been sensitively applied to special influence challenges faced by women.

Women’s Speed Networking Event
Thursday, January 28th, 2010, 6pm, Spinnaker @ Seaport, Redwood City, CA
Are you looking for project collaborators? Interested in a new job or volunteer opportunity? Meet other women in the Bay Area who are passionate about their businesses and community!

Following She’s Geeky

Women 2.0 is hosting “Will it Launch” the weekend following She’s Geeky.

The event is for: Future startup founders with ideas, or existing startup founders with ideas already in alpha or beta stage across web, mobile, cleantech or biotech.

Girl Geek Dinner number 5 is happening Thursday February 4th.

The focus is on how to Succeed in Mobile and features some amazing speakers. Unfortunately it is sold out already.

Now the really hard next steps…funding, marketing, promoting, and getting your item on the shelf! Who do you know that can and will tell you, show you, help you with all the “business” of being in business? Well, if you’re like me…no-one.

So where do you go to find “those people?” You know, the people who have the money and are willing to part with it for that next great thing? The people who have the business know how to make sure that your next great thing actually makes it to the marketplace?

What if you ARE one of “those people” but you have no idea where to find the folks with the next great idea? Perhaps you just want to WORK with the folks with the cool idea and have inspiration and knowledge rubbed off onto you.

Well, perhaps Women 2.0 is where you need to be! This August Women 2.0 will be hosting a ‘Start Up Weekend’ just for folks who have the ‘idea’, want to promote the ‘idea’, and who just want to work with the ‘idea’ minded.

As they say on their website http://www.women2.org/:

Startup Weekend is a place to test ideas, contribute to ideas, and meet potential founders. We are bringing together the most innovative, talented, and out-of-the-box entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley.

Get together with folks to hash out the ‘idea’ on Friday. Develop the product/service with your group on Saturday, and then get a chance to pitch it on Sunday.

WOW! A new company/product in a weekend. Now that’s synergy! Talk about a vision becoming a reality. Think of all the wonderful minds working on your “next big thing” and pulling all that energy into making it happen. Are you ready for the next rocket ride? Then pull up to the launch pad and SHOW THEM WHAT YOU’VE GOT!

Be the greatest you you can be!

Amelia

P.S. Please be sure to comment on your experiences at this wonderful event if you have attended before. Any an all encouragement for those who are on the cusp of entrepreneurship is more than welcome!

If you have a color printer at home and want to make some there (that way it is not too expensive – download the color version and print on white paper.

She’s Geeky Color 4 on 8.5×11
She’s Geeky Color 8 on 8.5×11

If you want to make a lot of them – to hand out at something like MacWorld or CES or tech context of your choice – download the black and white version and print on pink, the brighter the better, paper.

She’s Geeky B&W 4 on 8.5×11
She’s Geeky B&W 8 on 8.5×11