• How to conduct a technical interview
• My experiences writing a book for O’Reilly
• Coding, pair programming, web dev
• Health and longevity information
• ideas and experience about working collaboratively
• Art-to-Part process (how to be a MAKEr),
• get your IT helpdesk under control,
• how to write papers for conferences,
• how to write a book,
• rooting a color nook (android),
• apps vs traditional programming model,
• backyard veggies,
• hydroponic veggies,
• heirloom veggies,
• permaculture,
• master gardener program of UCDavis
• Ways to increase participation of women in open technology and culture
• Social justice and tech
• Possibly making a new programming language
• django,
• beekeeping
• Android stuff
• Cassandra a small introduction and experience in my organization with it.
• Could also share my interest in the Pleo as a teaching platform in robotics.
• programming,
• arduino,
• gimp
• Introduction to User Experience Design;
• Designing for Complexity
• Experience building technology for nonprofits
• How technology and cloud computing can be used to end poverty
• Navigating the IT world being a woman and a technical lead
• bio-optics simulation,
• machine learning,
• signal processing,
• web development,
• life as a phd (pre and post graduation), finding a job,
• how to start a women’s group at work
• I would like to talk about the importance of the presence of women on teams tasked with solving business and technology problems. Women consumers are the primary audience for most online products and the majority of entrepreneurial tech teams have a very low representation of women, if at all. In my mind, there is a huge opportunity out there for she’s geeky attendees. Let’s change it together.
• If there are folks interested in talking about service oriented architecture design and providing platforms, i’d love to hear about it. I can speak broadly about single sign on and SAML protocol in Identity Management.
• How museums conserve tech artifacts,
• building a game museum
• Organizing a study series for women learning the Python programming language.
• Yes – I’d love to share and compare visions for the future of science
• Cracking the Coding Interview: Advice for Mastering the Software Engineering Interview
• How to Get that Job at Google — Or Any Great Tech Company
• I’d love to discuss diversity, particularly as it relates to tech conferences
• Collaborative support; how to motivate and enable a community of developers to add their best insights to documentation, forums, and other resources.
• I would like to share our new program ZERO1 GARAGE, where principles of artistic creativity will be applied to real world innovation challenges. We are a non profit in the Silicon Valley dedicating to working with art and technology to shape the future.

What are you hoping to learn at She’s Geeky?

• What is going on in the industry
• Technical information
• Meet people and talk about web dev, feminism, etc
• How to promote my health and longevity conference
• what women find helps them when aiming to work together
• Inspiration and community
• hoping to network with folks and make some more friendships with other geeky women
• Increase my circle of geeky friends!
• More about open tech/culture outside of open source
• awesome stuff
• I don’t have a particular goal in mind other than to hear/talk about a lot of interesting things that people are doing and I might like to pursue/try.
• Ladies & Tech rule!
• What other geeky women are involved in and any opportunity for collaboration.
• mostly to meet other women in technology!
• I don’t know yet!
• mapping,
• programming,
• beekeeping, other things I haven’t even thought of
• Lots of new things!
• Development strategies for apps for phones and tablets.
• New gaming,
• career,
• writing,
• building,
• coding things.
• Technology trends, new perspectives & networking
• Networking and how women are shaping the way tech companies think today
• What’s new trend in IT field for women?
• Issues other tech leads face in a male dominated IT world,
• latest in neuroscience, photography, IT.
• I’d like to find a CTO to join me in business plan development.
• big data, other biotech computation groups
• What women are doing in technology,
• where there passions lie,
• what their goals are,
• how they are currently using their technical background,
• what their vision of the future is,
• how they are solving problems,
• what challenges they face.
• cool stuff
• I’m always surprised and delighted at what i learn!
• I hope that there are some Personal Data Ecosystem sessions.
• Find volunteers and people interested in the future of a museum for video, console, arcade, platform and computer games.
• I want to learn how to become more geeky, and to forge connections with other geeky women.
• What women are doing to fulfill their desires and careers and contributions to work, family, society and themselves
• Networking with other women in the tech/geek community
• I’m looking forward to meeting new women and hearing about their experiences as lady geeks.
• A lot
• I’m mostly hoping to meet new people
• Collaborative support; how to motivate and enable a community of developers to add their best insights to documentation, forums, and other resources.
• Im interested in learning about how women are taking risks in the technology sector.

What issues and topics would you like to discuss with women working Technology and other Geeky fields.

• learning ruby,
• native plants,
• urban farming,
• sewing,
• diy
• Event promotion and marketing using web tools and social media
• startups
• Data Viz,
• Design,
• WordPress,
• UX, UI,
• Info Architecture,
• Non-profits
• Data Analysis,
• Data Mining,
• Visualization,
• Big Data,
• Machine Learning,
• Research Methodologies. (Tools, study groups, self teaching methods, resources, etc.)
• professional growth,
• how to work with different personalities,
• how to strike work/life balance… the typical stuff
• Career growth – breaking next level in the glass ceiling.
• women in the workplace,
• interview tips,
• starting a business
• Developing technologies and apps with women-friendly motivational architectures.
• Non profits
• Collaboration,
• crowd-sourcing and social networking tools used by them and what works for them.
• work, life, networking,
• how to join open source communities
• I would like to find a female technical co-founder to start a company.
• startups,
• learning to code,
• making geek connections,
• geeky crafts
• The difficulty of getting financial support for a non-profit in a new industry without a tradition of giving.
• I’d like to hear how to engage women to contribute more within the male-dominated tech industry.I also would love to talk about meshing finance/economics with technology, and how to elevate both fields.
• Science (basic research)
• Mobile
• Career development and product management
• Open
• start-up ideas
• Green technology,
• art and innovation,
• arduino and processing

Links to videos and pictures without much comment
http://civicactions.com/blog/2011/jan/29/geek_portraits_shes_geeky_unconference

Brief technical session notes
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/lianaleahy/2011/01/29/shes-geeky-day-2-django/

Corporate Sponsorship

If you’re a woman who has a big idea that involves technology, the Internet or social media, BlogHer has an opportunity for you. With the leadership of 50 pioneering entrepreneurs, technologists and business leaders, BlogHer is hosting a special event for women who want to start something. Whether you’re considering a start-up of your own, or innovating from inside a company, we invite you to join BlogHer’s 2011 Business, Entrepreurism and Technology conference on March 24-25 in Silicon Valley.

Community Sponsorship

Appellation brings the science of linguistics to name development. For brilliant results, let Appellation name your tech project, product or service.

If anyone is still looking for recommendations on local hotels I found that Joie de Vire hotes has two that are both good locations and good on pricing. The Hotel Tomo (I’m staying here) up in Japantown and about a mile away from the conference site within walking distance of the bus line that runs on Van Ness.
Hotel Carlton is on Nob Hill and walking distance from the Conference location.

I can’t agree with her more – JDV Hotels are fabulous and I stay at them regularly in Silicon Valley.

If others have recommendations e-mail us at info@shesgeeky.org and I will post them.

What issues and topics would you like to discuss with women working Technology and other Geeky fields?
* mobile media, the semantic web, social media, mapping.
* front end development, design, wordpress, comics, music tech
* “Differences in how women get ahead or how to “”work the system”" to your advantage.”
* Leadership
* How awesome we all are
* Online arts communities; digital artists’ tools
* Futurama geekery
* career developmentwork life balance how to combine technology with business
* How they work and what they’ve learned
* How others do community. Why do they do it.
* Ed Tech and education reform best practices, college access for women in STEM careers, technology education, media and information literacy, game design and system design
* developing a strong network and helping each ohter
* Successful strategies for recruiting technical co-founders.
* Open to finding new technologies, strategies and opportunities that others are working on.
* domestic abuse and technology
* New ways of thinking and doing large-scale computingHow to make connections with others in the field
* skills for solopreneurs, resources for women in business, forming effective alliances and partnerships
* Who are the people that I should talk to as a female entrepreneur (e.g. which lawyers are comfortable with a young woman founder)? * Social Media!
* How do I balance the desire for customer/user research with business modeling and with technical development?
* Self improvement technologies
* Emotional support and collaboration among women entrepreneurs; we need more of it.
* Career development; Increasing the number of women in the field; success strategies for women in senior engineering and leadership positions.
*”I’m perpetually curious about other women’s experiences with the so-called “”imposter syndrome”" that often affects high-achieving women in technical positions. ”
* We need MORE women creating software!!
* Bridging the different ad channels online for a more effective target market message
* online business models
* Biggest challenges -> awesome solutions and strategies
* Why women tech CEOS get such a hard time compared with male counterparts
* Getting respect in the workplace, time management
* latest tools and technologies
* How and when do people define culture in the lives of their organizations and businesses?
* Applications of technology.
* Where are all the female system administrators?
* Progressive Education & Technology in Education
* Social Media and Community Building
* Strategies for supporting other women and fighting sexism
* Internet security
* Awareness and acceptance of people with disabilities as audience, customers, and peers.
* All kinds of techy goodness.
* User experience
* mobile learning
* webinar production
* “geeking for good” (social justice, training, personal development)

What would you like to share or present at the conference?
* social payments, business models for online content and services
* Mobile media for non-smartphones.
* I just published a book, Start-up from the Ground Up. I would be willing to share expereinces and offer some free copies
* wordpress, web development for nonprofits, online engagement and activism
* Observations as a woman in the science blogosphere; geeky parenting.
* Tips for planning a website and finding a designer
* When to blog, when to tweet, when write, when to comment. Tech gurus become rock stars with a certain balance, leaving time to play with technology, meanwhile making money.
* Educational technology
* professional development strategies
* change management
* college preparation for low-income youth
* design thinking
* user-centered design
* information architecture
* blog and website design
* using twitter
* Healthcare/biotechnology
* Using TwitterTo Brand, Network & Find Jobs
* I’d like to host a discussion on technical innovations to improve journalism.
* Getting back in the swing of things with a new mother title. When balancing work, motherhood and relationships how do i find time (and energy) to geek out??
* Empowering women in disaster recovery with technology
* Design Games, Prototyping with Junk, Agile software approaches,
Thinking holistically about small business, personal or brand marketing online
* Self help and assistive mobile technologies
* “Starting an iPhone company as a “”late 40s”" woman; most consider this the realm of young geeky guys.”
* I’m a mom and a software developer… you CAN do it all.
* Django a web development framework.
a small business perspective when using technology
* a small business perspective when using technology social payments,
* business models for online content and services
* How to Manage Up (Managing Your Boss),
* Games For Girls And Women (what are your favorites?)
* lean startup info, getting into hardware,
* writing browser extensions
* website accessibility (not so sure).
* Layar development for augmented reality apps
* I will share what I will share at the conference. That will give me some time to think about this question more thoroughly and to actively commit to my response.
* PHP, Drupal, WordPress, development environments, basic coding and debugging, talking about writing good code
* something about wine geekiness
* Windows Server 2008, Desktop Optimization tools, etc.
* any level of information on accessibility for people with disabilities on multiple platforms (HTML, Flash, PDF, mobile apps)

What are you hoping to learn at She’s Geeky?
* Connect with more mobile developers, generally expand my circle and take advantage of serendipity.
* I want to connect and interact with other start-ups
* New ways on how to run a start up company.
* wordpress, web development for nonprofits, online engagement and activism
* I want to be inspired by the energy of creative individuals. I hope to contribute to that energy.
* I am hoping to meet other women in the technology space. This is a good opportunity to network.
* Working practices, gaining knowledge from other attendees
* Advice on finding clients and growing sustainably
* How to be a better bee.
* How to get designers and developers to collaborate.
* Ed Tech and education reform best practices
* college access for women in STEM careers
* technology education
* media and information literacy
* game design and system design
* What women geeks want/need from the news media, e.g., preferred platforms (web, mobile, email, social media), better/fairer representation of women experts, less stereotyping, etc.
* Connecting with other like minded women which is always inspirational at She’s Geeky events!
* Tech other women are excited about
* Learn about the latest and greatest, and how we are incorporating technology to make the world better
* Skills for solopreneurs
* Just meet other women geeks.
* Gain confidence to attend geeky things in Seattle.
* How to navigate entrepreneurship as a young woman.
* Connect with other female entrepreneurs.
* Learn about opportunities to contribute to STEM programs for middle schools.
* Meet fellow iOS programmers
* ways to engage more women in the open source and technical community
* How to screen programmers and find partners in programmers.
* I’ll like to meet up with other female software developers.
* Surprise me
* open to anything… this is a great group of creators and what a great format…love the ‘un’conference format
* just want to meet other women geeks
* I’m open to all sorts of good stuff! I know I won’t be disappointed.
* Anything and everything; no specific intent; Make connections, get inspired
connect with other developers, looking at code and stuff, find pair programming people
* lots of things – that’s the point!
* Cool software/hardware/security things.
* Hoping to meet more women in tech in general, learn from those who have started their own companies.
* meet interesting people doing interesting things
* web development
* Network with other women in high-tech.
* I’m wide open. In general, anything about software development (either the engineering or the career aspects) is great for me. Also interested in anything having to do with biology.
* XBox Kinect hacks
* I will further embrace the idea of working globally, and recreate how I work with that in mind.
* New technologies, new ideas, new ways to keep myself motivated. New people’s names.

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

First of all, simply to have 200-300 technical women together is relatively rare (at least in my experience).  The only other large gathering of technical women that I’ve attended is the annual Grace Hopper Conference.  While that conference is equally geeky, the most noticeable difference between these two conferences is that She’s Geeky attendees are from industry (most are already working), while GHC attendees are from academia (most are studying or teaching).

First, take a look at a part of the one day’s session wall (shown below).  Topics varied widely – from uber-geeky, such as ‘Command-line tricks’, to practical ‘Debugging for non-programmers’, to commercial ‘Pitching your startup – do’s and don’t’s’, to much more.  You’ll note the session I presented below ‘Teaching Girls to Program’…

All in all, it was another great She’s Geeky event and I caught up with women geeks I already knew as well as made many new connections.  I really don’t know where else I could find sessions on ‘Bee Keeping’, ‘Windows 7’, and  ‘Personal Genome Citizen Science’ in the same room (see picture of topics below)!

Singularity U Sponsors She’s Geeky:

Demonstrating its commitment to a broader, women-focused initiative, Singularity University (SU) — the academic institution with the goal of preparing the next generation of leaders to address “humanity’s grand challenges” — recently became a Corporate Sponsor of She’s Geeky, a series of national technology unConferences for women. With the sponsorship, SU underscores its continued commitment to supporting and advancing women in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), as well as raising awareness among young women about the STEM “cool factor.” SU kicked off its sponsorship with the She’s Geeky unConference held on January 26, 2010 at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif.

“During the past decade, some of the most significant advancements and job opportunities have come from the STEM fields,” said Susan Fonseca-Klein, VP of Operations and Founding Architect at Singularity University. “This growth is accelerating, and is expected to do so through this decade and beyond. With She’s Geeky, SU has the opportunity to support women as they create and harness the latest innovations. We can also encourage young women’s interest and education in STEM fields, showing them that being a ‘geek’ can lead to a better and brighter future – like Marissa Mayer as the first female engineer at Google. Geek really is the new black, as they say.”

“This sponsorship is just the first formal step in our initiative to support women in technology. In Singularity University’s inaugural year, women represented over a third of the Executive and summer Graduate Studies Programs, respectively,” added Fonseca-Klein. “As we continue progress on our initiative, we fully expect to increase those numbers, and expand our engagement with the women in technology community.”

One of the most valuable sessions at She’s Geeky this year was My Gender is Breaking Your Drop Down Menu convened by Sarah Dopp. She wrote about the session in this blog:

A year ago, I wrote an open letter to Silicon Valley, asking people to stop and think about how they’re handling gender (and race, for that matter) in their community websites.  The short version is that if you’re requiring users to select their gender from a drop-down menu that has two options in it, you’re alienating some people. I didn’t offer alternative solutions at the time — it was just a request for everyone to think about it.

After grappling with this problem on a few other projects, and talking about it in a session last week atShe’s Geeky (I called it “My gender broke your drop-down menu…”), I’d like to now offer my suggested alternatives.

Continue reading her suggestions on her blog.

 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.