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.

On September 30^th, 2009 the GHC will land in Tucson, Arizona with the theme of “Creating Technology for Social Good”. http://gracehopper.org/2009/

The conference offers a wide variety of workshops and sessions including a Resume Clinic, Robotics workshop and “How to Become a Person of Influence.”

The Resume Clinic is an opportunity to have your resumes “edited and polished by industry and academia professionals.” This is an invaluable service for those of us who just aren’t sure what we contribute or don’t know how to convey all that we do. Traditionally, women don’t make a big fuss over their accomplishments and therefore don’t acknowledge the awesome talents and contributions they have and make. Having your resume re-vamped by people who can see through the veil of non-value that I personally have worn is a most liberating and self esteem building process.

The Robotics Workshop will cover cutting edge research and present career paths in robotics. Topics will include “Engineering Self-Organizing Systems”, “Living Better with Robots” and a panel on “Career Paths in Robotics”. Undergrads looking for options, beginning graduate students searching for that ever elusive research topic, researchers interested in latest developments and faculty looking for that cool new motivator for their computer science students will all enjoy these sessions.

Jo Miller, CEO of Women’s Leadership Coaching, Inc., will be providing the “How to Become a Person of Influence” workshop where you will “explore ways to gain credibility, get buy-in for ideas, and make a larger impact in business, through understanding the mechanisms of power an influence.” The topics include influencing skills and differing perceptions of power and influence among others. There will be a self-assessment, group discussion and an action plan to become that person you want to be.

Speakers will include:

1        Josephine Cheng IBM Fellow and Vice President, IBM Almaden Research Center,

2        M. Bernardine Dias, Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon,

3        Susan Landau Distinguished Engineer, Sun Microsystems,

4        Brenda Laurel Professor and Chair Graduate Program in Design California College of the Arts

just to name a few.

 The conference will even include FREE Child Care for attendees with children ages 0-13. WOW! They do think of everything! Be sure to check out the website for other great sessions and to register for the event! http://gracehopper.org/2009/

Be the greatest you you can be!

Amelia