Girls In Tech

A couple of weeks ago we had the lovely Veronica Belmont of Tekzilla and PlayStation Network’s Qore to Santa Cruz for a ‘Fireside Chat’.

We sat down with her to discuss how she found herself in broadcast, why she moved to Silicon Valley and which does she love more, gaming or consumer electronics.

Allan and Sun Lundell of Awake Media at NextSpace were generous enough to capture the chat on video, so we thought we would share it with you: click here.

The Santa Cruz Chapter’s next event will be a mixer at CAVA Wine Bar in Capitola on Wednesday, June 24th at 7 PM. We would like to take this opportunity to get feedback from our members and exchange ideas about what is coming up!!!

seana/jonathan wedding

It’s that time of year: wedding season!

I was lucky enough to get engaged last April. The proposal was fitting for us. I had been away, staying in San Francisco for the week during Web 2.0. One night I joked around with my then boyfriend, Jonathan, about the tech crowd and being a ‘girl in tech’ at some of the networking events. It wasn’t long before Jonathan was wondering what I thought about a promise ring… long conversation short, when I got home from the conference he took me to dinner and proposed as soon as he had the chance.

The romanticism from the proposal went away really fast. Wedding planning is not easy, especially if you are doing it yourself, so I wanted to share some tips that made it a little bit easier for me.

First off, I used WeddingWindow.com for our wedding website. This was immensely helpful in organizing my tech-savvy bridesmaids, family members and friends. Wedding websites are a great way to make all the details that surround your wedding visible to everyone. My bridesmaids could log into the secure portion of the site and communicate about the bachelorette party, wedding shower, wardrobe, etc. In case you didn’t know, telling people where you have registered without them asking is considered bad etiquette, but, inviting people to take a look at your wedding website where you list your registries is not. You can find wedding websites ranging in price just by Googling but I do recommend WeddingWindow. I would also recommend going to BloggerBrides.com, starting an account and sharing all things wedding related with the community there.

I read so many books and subscribed to Real Simple and Martha Stewart Weddings. Martha had a great to do list and timeline that I followed and found really helpful. One book I can highly recommend is Wedding Chic, by Nina Willdorf, which does a great job in breaking down everything you need to know running the gamut from DIY to having no budget.

Jonathan an I grew up here in Santa Cruz so we already knew most of the vendors and wedding locations. We decided on Bargetto Winery in Soquel. They have this beautiful little patio in the back overlooking Soquel Creek (and really great Pinot Grigio). Bargetto’s is about 5 minutes from our house so the quaint setting and proximity were huge selling points for us.

We picked our caterers because we heard so much through word of mouth but I would recommend choosing a location with an on-site kitchen because no matter how great your caterer is, having them cook off-site and bring the food to your location is not a good idea.

We also went old-school with invitations. Ours were Crane and the were gorgeous… anyway, back to tech tools for wedding planning…

I read ModernBride’s ‘50 Best Websites For Your Wedding’ and the first thing I did after reading this piece was forward Bachelorette.com to my bridesmaids! I know they used the site to help them find the perfect favors.

Slacker Radio, I kid you not, was the HIT of the wedding. I hired a DJ for the ceremony and reception but we had a good chunk of time in between the two where people were mingling during cocktail hour. I had the team put my Slacker G2 on the non-vocal Jazz station and it was such a hit. I can’t tell you how many people asked me and our DJ who was responsible for that music! Slacker Radio has an enormous music library (over 2.4 million songs). I have the Slacker Radio Plus service (no ads) and it really was great.

In order to get in shape for the wedding I enlisted fellow twitterer, Jennifer DiDonato of MadeFitTV. I read about Jenny in a bridal magazine and downloaded a few of her podcasts that included everything from fitness training tips to healthy recipes! Jenny even responded to an email I sent her asking her how to make my butt smaller and arms more toned! She was really helpful in keeping me motivated and on track even though she is in Detroit and I am in Santa Cruz!

A great idea for a registry is registering for your honeymoon. What better way for people to contribute then by helping you make the most out of YOUR special time together. We ended up looking all around the web for the right site to host our honeymoon funds but they all wanted to charge us a percentage of what we made &and I mean, in this economy, 10% of $5k is a lot. Especially when it comes to foreign travel. When we finally found HoneyFund.com we got really excited. Honeyfund.com will host your honeymoon wish list without charging you anything. From time to time they ask for a donation if you haven’t already contributed to their service and even then they only ask for what you can afford. Nice, right?

Some other great websites we used:

• For monogrammed stickers for our favors: Zazzle
• Wedding shoes: DSW or Zappos
• Bridesmaids dresses: Nordstroms
• White Christmas Lights for the mood (super hard to find in March): Christmas Depot
• Pretty butterflies & other delicate decorations: Floraltrims
• Davids Bridal
• Registries: Macy’s, Crate & Barrel, Bed Bath and Beyond, Williams Sonoma, Pottery Barn

If you are planning your wedding or getting ready to start, please feel free to reach out to me. I would love to help with the knowledge that I have accumulated over the last year (seana at girlsintech dot net). If you have the time, take a look at our wedding photos on WebShots!

Good luck!!

We are very excited about this weeks Girls in Tech – Santa Cruz event. Veronica Belmont will be coming to speak with us about community building, gaming, girls in technology and what she is currently working on. This event will be a very casual “fireside chat” where audience and group participation is encouraged. We are lucky enough to have the event hosted by the lovely people at NextSpace from 7 – 9 PM on Wednesday, May 13th.

In order to be admitted to the event, you must RSVP here: http://gitsantacruz.eventbrite.com/

Veronica (twitter) is the co-host of Revision3’s tech-centric show, Tekzilla, and Qore on the PlayStation Network. Previous to that, she hosted several other online video shows and podcasts, including Mahalo Daily, Buzz Out Loud, MP3 Insider, and Crave. She also created tech video content for CNET TV, including the popular series Prizefight.

Veronica frequently guest hosts other technology-related podcasts, and also speaks about technology, gaming, and social networking. In her spare time, she hosts the science fiction and fantasy-themed podcast / book club The Sword and Laser. She currently resides in San Francisco, with one technology writer and two cats. She attended Emerson College, B.A. in Audio/Radio, focus in New Media studies.

We can’t wait to see you there!

In addition to the excitement we have about this Thursday’s GIT – SC special guest, Sarah Lacy, we are also proud to help promote ‘An Evening with Tina Seelig‘ on April 29th at NextSpace in Santa Cruz.

NextSpace, Bookshop Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz Geeks and Girls in Tech are proud to bring Prof. Tina Seelig, Executive Director, Stanford Technology Ventures Program and acclaimed author to NextSpace for a reading and signing of her latest book: WHAT I WISH I KNEW WHEN I WAS TWENTY: A Crash Course on Making Your Place in the World.

One crucial bit of career advice that Tina Seelig offers her students at Stanford University is this—never listen to career advice. This may seem odd, coming from the woman charged with teaching the best and the brightest to succeed in the business world. And yet this tip, together with the other insights she’s shared in her highly popular course at Stanford, has allowed Seelig’s students to become leading figures in the most innovative and successful business in the world, from Google to Intel to Adobe to Apple.

Now, in Seelig’s WHAT I WISH I KNEW WHEN I WAS TWENTY: A Crash Course on Making Your Place in the World (HarperOne; April 2009; Hardcover; $23.99; ISBN 9780061735196), we can all get inside access to one of the most sought after business school professors in the country. With provocative lessons gleaned from Seelig’s tenure in both the corporate and academic worlds, and with some untraditional advice inspired by leading business figures like Apple creator Steve Jobs (his Mac design was based on a calligraphy course he took as a college dropout) and JetBlue founder David Neeleman (it took being fired by Southwest to come up with his new airline), the book provides tangible skills and invaluable guidance that will allow readers to achieve unprecedented success in any field.

We hope to see you there! Please RSVP!

To be honest, when I reached out to Adriana about starting a chapter of Girls in Tech in Santa Cruz I wasn’t sure what kind of a response I was going to get from the local community. I knew we had a huge pool of talent who commutes over the hill into Silicon Valley every day but wondered if people would be interested in taking more time out of their day to “talk shop”.

The response from the community has been overwhelming. In addition to having a hot line-up of speakers for our events, like Sarah Lacy (TechCrunch, BusinessWeek, and Author of ‘Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good‘), Tina Seelig (Executive Director, Stanford Technology Ventures Program and acclaimed Author), Veronica Belmont (Co-host of Revision3’s tech-centric show, Tekzilla, and Qore on the PlayStation Network) and Girls in Tech’s own lovely Adriana Gascoigne, small businesses and organizations around town have been rallying around us to assist the group with promotion or even venues for our events.

NextSpace, has offered to host our event with Sarah Lacy on April 9th as well as the event with Veronica Belmont on May 13th. NextSpace is an entrepreneurial catalyst located in Santa Cruz, CA. They have a mission to catalyze local talent, local ideas, and local capital to create products, services, and solutions for the global marketplace. They have been such a help in event planning and promoting the cause here in Santa Cruz! If you are working locally and are interested in finding a place to work rather then your second bedroom, check them out.

Bookshop Santa Cruz has also offered to help us organize book signings and has partnered with our local chapter to promote their events as well as ours. Bookshop is the group behind bringing Tina Seelig to Santa Cruz and we are really excited to be working with them on ‘An Evening with Tina Seelig‘ for April 29th as well as additional events in the future

The Santa Cruz Chapter of Girls in Tech has grown to almost 40 members in about a month and I look forward to seeing how high we can take this organization in our community and in the global community of women in tech.

Cheers, Girls!

Come Mix and Mingle With One of Girls in Tech’s Major Evangelists’: the brilliant and beautiful Sarah Lacy in a casual environment as she provides insights to being yourself, a strong woman entrepreneur and a force to be reckoned with in the Valley.

The Santa Cruz Chapter of GIT is proud to host Sarah Lacy, an award winning journalist and author of “Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good: The Rebirth of Silicon Valley and the Rise of Web 2.0″ (Gotham Books, May 2008). Lacy has been a reporter in Silicon Valley for nearly a decade, covering everything from the tiniest startups to the largest public companies. She writes a biweekly column for BusinessWeek.com called “Valley Girl” and is co-host of Yahoo! Finance’s Tech Ticker. She lives in San Francisco. *You can purchase a copy of Sarah’s at the event – “Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good.”

You can follow Sarah on twitter at twitter.com/sarahcuda

Details:

Date: Thursday, April 9, 2009
Time: 7:00pm – 9:00pm
Location: NextSpace
101 Cooper Street
Santa Cruz, CA

Looking forward to seeing you all there.

Please RSVP via Facebook or by emailing seana at girlsintech dot net

We are really excited to be launching a Girls In Tech Chapter in Santa Cruz, California. Being centrally located between the beach and Silicon Valley we are very lucky to have a great community surrounding us.

Lets all get together for a glass of wine to talk about Girls in Tech and why it is so awesome we are starting a chapter here in lovely Santa Cruz. This is going to be a very casual event where we can discuss what else is being planned for Girls in Tech in Santa Cruz and what you might want to get out of such an organization.

If you know of any other women in tech who live locally, bring them!

RSVP on Facebook or email me: seana at girlsintech dot net

Please join the Santa Cruz Chapter Facebook Group to get the latest updates!