Girls In Tech

Mountain View based start-up, Bizzy, is a new way for local businesses to share deals, events, tips and news with their customers.

Today they announced “What’s Happening” in San Francisco which provides us (consumers) with a listing of great offers, events and promotions from businesses in their city at any given time – all in one place.

On Bizzy, you create a customized list of your favorite local businesses and once you’re connected, your Bizzy homepage acts as a feed of updates, highlighting special deals and events from the businesses you’ve selected. All of the feed items are shareable on Facebook, Twitter and via e-mail providing an easy way for new customers to discover local businesses by learning from their friends’ experiences or from people with similar taste.

What I love about it is the fact that my inbox isn’t being bombarded with 20% off deals and the like. When I am ready to make plans for the weekend, want to shop, or whatever – I can go to Bizzy to see whats going on in San Francisco.

Wondering what to do this weekend? Take a look at “What’s Happening” in San Francisco: http://bizzy.com/happening/sf

Bizzy is also available in NYC and Dallas and I can’t wait for it to launch in Santa Cruz

Defining and engaging in social media can be tricky, everyone will tell you that, but I bet you already are on your way. As an uber-popular topic (and one frequently requested for our Girls in Tech events) we thought it might be time to have a conversation around it.

• What is ’social media’?
• What does it mean to you?
• How do you use it?
• Are you marketing yourself? Your business? Is it working for you?

This month’s event will be a round table where we can all discuss the topic, the tools, how we use them, what we find works, what doesn’t, etc.

So please, come join us at Little Tampico’s in Soquel for a margarita, some tacos and an educational conversation about how people are communicating today.

Please RSVP here: http://socialmediasc.eventbrite.com/
There will be a limit of 25 guests to this event. Plan on bringing cash for your beverages and snacks.

If you have any questions don’t hesitate to email seana at girlsintech dot net.

The 9-5 grind is gone. How we work, who we work for, and when we do it are more flexible, but also more complicated. That’s why two freelancers from Santa Cruz, Shane Pearlman and Margaret Rosas put together the first Freelance Camp back in 2008.

Their mission: help independent consulting professionals be in business for themselves, not by themselves.

Freelance Camp’s one-day un-conferences, organized independently and run from the barcamp.org playbook have taken place on three continents for three years and now San Francisco’s own Freelance Camp will take place on June 5th at the NextSpace Coworking San Francisco, 28 2nd Street, 3rd Floor.

Tickets are available on Eventbrite http://freelancecamppro2010sf.eventbrite.com/.

Run by a local team of volunteers, and always organized for the benefit of the local freelancing community and not for profit, all proceeds (net of expenses) are donated to the organizer’s nonprofit of choice. So far, all the events have included breakfast, a working lunch and an after party.

Freelance Camp takes a wide view on who exactly a freelancer is: if you’re a developer, designer, blogger or bookkeeper, great.  Same story if you work as a Realtor, lawyer, carpenter, engineer, or inventor.

Due to popular demand, the organizers of Freelance Camp San Francisco 2010 have created a new sub-brand, Freelance Camp PRO. This “unconference” will target attendees who have been running a freelance business full time for a year or more. The event will be smaller (+/- 100), topics more advanced, and participation is expected to be at a higher level than the past camps.

The morning will kick off with coffee and pastries (yum), and a brainstorm of desired topics. Participants with something to contribute or a specific topic idea generate the breakout sessions which are then scheduled throughout the rest of the day. Freelance Camp PRO will culminate with an after party to further the networking and knowledge exchange in a casual, social setting.

Throughout the event, Freelance Camp PRO will share live tweets (@freelancecampsf and #freelancecamp) and updates to the Wiki page, so the fun and learning can be followed outside of the space.

Attensity360’s IdolStats.com monitored millions of conversations to choose Casey James as this week’s American Idol cast off and if the current social media buzz is correct, we may have a winner in the underdog this season as Lee currently has a HUGE percentage of the American Idol conversation happening now.

Idolstats uses the Attensity360 social media monitoring and analytics product to track the power of social media conversations to predict which contestant will be voted off each week. Millions of tweets, comments and social media conversations about American Idol are analyzed in order to gauge American sentiment toward contestants.

In addition to predicting a cast off each week, the team at IdolStats has also been reading the tea leaves on how heart-throb status , fan-dialing and the judges opinions contribute to who will actually come out on top.

Fans can view the real-time data at IdolStats.com throughout the week to find out America’s uncensored opinion and tweet their own predictions based on updates and new data. Fans can visit the Idol Stats blog, http://blog.idolstats.com and follow the Twitter hashtag #IdolStats to keep updated on IdolStats.com and the community.

Success in selecting the American Idol cast off comes on the heels of Attensity Group’s acquisition of Biz360 enabling them to now offer the industry’s most powerful and easy-to-use analysis, delivery and response capabilities, enabling businesses to effectively listen, analyze, relate, and act on information, both inside and outside of the firewall.

Girls in Tech Santa Cruz is proud to present:

Leveraging Today’s Technologies to Publish Your Book

Last year 764,448 titles were produced by self-publishers and so-called microniche publishers – up an astonishing 181 percent from the previous year – and just 288,355 titles were published through traditional publishers (down from 289,729 the year before). Book publishing is simply becoming self-publishing.

FastPencil Co-Founder and CTO, Michael Ashley will lead the conversation on how you can leverage today’s various technologies to get your book published.

Attendees will learn:

• How to publish your book including tips on getting started and uploading or importing existing content.
• How to share work with reviewers and editors through social media platform.
• How to utilize the social web to promote your book project while you are writing it.
• How to distribute your book.
• How to use free online tools to promote your book.

Attendees must RSVP here: http://publishingtech.eventbrite.com

Girls in Tech is grateful to have NextSpace as the event’s gracious host.

FastPencil is leveraging the disruptive trends of self-publishing, social media, print-on-demand and eBook distribution to deliver a new unified online service that streamlines the book publishing process offering more control and higher margins for authors. The FastPencil writing and publishing service enables authors to create books online, collaborate, publish and distribute from one engaging, simple, cost-effective solution. For more information please visit FastPencil.com.

The wonderful people at Cava Wine Bar in Capitola have graciously offered their venue for Girls in Tech Santa Cruz’s next event: Speed Networking for a Cause!

The speed networking portion of the night works like this:

• We will put everyone in pairs (pick someone you don’t know) and then you each get 30 second each to introduce yourself, what you do, who you are, etc.
• After introducing yourself you get another 30 second for questions each and another 30 second for answers. Be quick!
• At the end of 2 minutes we will ring a bell and you will pair with another person.
• Simple enough right?

Our favorite aspect of the night is that a portion of the nights wine sales will be donated to the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music which will be taking place this August. It is a wonderful festival and we are very happy to be working with them.

So! Come join us! We look forward to seeing you on May 6th. Please do RSVP so we have an accurate head count for how many people to expect.

http://speednetworkingsc.eventbrite.com/

If you have any questions, please feel free to email: seana at girls in tech dot net.



The Monterey Institute of International Studies will host the one-day TEDxMonterey conference on Friday April 16 from 1:00 p.m. to 6:30 p.m., with a reception to follow, in the Irvine Auditorium in the McCone Building at 499 Pierce Street in Monterey.

Guess what?!?!

The first 10 Girls in Tech members to register with promo code “git_april10″ will get 10% off!

In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TEDlike experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x=independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.

TEDxMonterey is open to the public; tickets are $30 for general admission and $20 for students. For more information, or to purchase tickets, visit www.tedxmonterey.org.

Last nights “She’s Savvy: SEO” event with Chelsea Rustrum in Santa Cruz was a real success. I was so happy to see a packed room full of a lot of new faces.

I promised the group last night that we would publish Chelsea’s slides as they had a lot of great content in them and we wanted to share it with everyone who couldn’t make it. Chelsea did a great job of defining SEO and walking us through some best practices:

Tile Tags
- First, make sure they are unique and well researched
- Try and keep them to 65 characters or less because that will show up in Google
- In formatting them, put business name behind the keywords (example in slides)
- Remember: first words in tile tag are weighted more highly

Links lets search engines know you exist and how valuable they are. Are all links created equal? No – a link from your best friend’s blog isn’t weighted as heavily as CNN.

Link text is essentially the same as anchor text
- Create quality content
- Use social media icons to your benefit – Tools like Facebook and Twitter are free. Link to them and build your community that way.

“Text is why the search engines live breathe and consume.”
- Text needs to be unique – well written
- A great source for writing copy is: Copyblogger

Quotes to live by from Chelsea:
“What’s good for humans is good for the search engines.”
“Just build something cool.”

GOOGLE
Google Suggest is helpful with articles or blog posts to find out how many search queries are made each month – that information could be useful in writing and optimizing your article/post.

Google AdWords keyword tool is a FREE service and will help with title tags
Something to think about: the longtail – perhaps there is less competition when you are more specific

Google universal search integrates all different media sources

Did you know:

• 10% of NYTimes.com traffic is coming from Twitter
• Facebooks traffic surpassed Google’s last week

Have you been thinking more about building your brand? How can you set yourself apart in a world full of buzz, tweeting, posting and noise?

In addition to their authoring and publishing services, FastPencil has recently launched the Concierge Thought Leadership Book Program offering “influencers” a unique way to gain credibility with customers, prospects, constituents, and partners by publishing a book.

The Concierge Thought Leadership Book Program simplifies the process by providing an expert team of ghostwriters, designers, and editors who quickly move from content creation, cover design, final editing, and formatting to publishing and distribution.  A project manager facilitates the entire writing and publishing process to reach book completion in 90 days.

FastPencil’s Concierge Thought Leadership Program Features:

• Expert book authoring team to produce high quality book in 90 days
• Project manager to manage details of book creation, so project runs efficiently
• ISBN registration with print and eBook distribution through Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other online retailers
• Rally early fan base with collaborative platform
• Includes 100 free hard cover copies of the book

This program is for CEOs and other key executives, influencers and others who desire to build their brand in well-defined communities of prospects, peers and organizations.

The Santa Cruz chapter of Girls in Tech is seeking a new Managing Director.

I would like to hear from any of you who may either be interested in the position, or know of a stellar women who might be. The position is volunteer, and part-time (everyone has full-time jobs).

I will be continuing my work with Girls in Tech at the chapter board level, and will still be involved in the Santa Cruz chapter, so I’m not really going anywhere, and I’ll be very available as a resource for my replacement, should she need me.

Please email me, seana at girlsintech dot net, if you’re interested in learning more about the position.
There won’t be a formal interview process per se, but would like to have a conversation with each candidate regardless.

What we are looking for:

• Someone who feels strongly about what Girls in Tech stands for (women, technology, entrepreneurship, the community etc)
• Someone who is comfortable leading a team of women to carry out events/community involvement/coordination with corporate etc
• Someone who can be the face and voice of the org in Santa Cruz, who has no problem getting out there, making connections (and ideally has a good network, as it really helps!)
• Someone who can commit for at least a year
• Someone who can think outside the box in terms of event formatting, partnerships, sponsorships etc, and who feels comfortable making a lot of decisions, as each Chapter ends up being self-sufficient and has a lot of leeway in what they can do.

There is also opportunity to take initiative at the national level, should you find the time, but this isn’t required.