Girls In Tech

November is National Novel Writers Month, NaNoWriMo.

Have you ever thought you had a book in you? NaNoWriMo is a great opportunity to finally bang that project out, although it is no easy task. The object of NaNoWriMo is to sit down and write a 175-page(50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30. Last year NaNoWriMo had over 100,000 participants and over 20,000 completed their novel. If you complete your novel within the time window you win the contest.

Recently FastPencil Co-Founder, Michael Ashley, posted his thoughts on “How to Win Big at NaNoWriMo” and I thought he had a few great points.

When writing a novel at anytime you shouldn’t be afraid to invite friends in to help you review and edit your material. Your friends and family are the people who want to see you succeed and can prove to be extremely helpful in making sure that you get some quality feedback. He also touches on how to avoid procrastination and think about your novel as a “sculpture” a bit hunk of material that over time will be whittled away into what you envision. The key is to just start writing.

What about writers block? I recently read a few great tips from CopyBlogger in “Why Writer’s Block is Your Secret Weapon.” As simple as it sounds they recommend you just take a blank sheet of paper and answer “what am I supposed to be writing now?” Sound simple enough? Then just start scribbling down thoughts, ideas, comments, etc. that relate to that project. That will get you going.

If you have ever thought about writing a book, now might be a great time to get started. I highly recommend taking a look at the two blog posts I mentioned here to give you a few other great ideas. FastPencil.com is a great place to write your book. They will help you by hosting the content (so it never gets lost), they will walk you through formatting and provide you with the tools you need to invite friends in to comment on or help you with your novel. FastPencil also has a marketplace where you can find professional editors, illustrators, graphic designers, etc. if you need them. They will also publish your book for a fraction of the cost of others as well as help you promote it. If you decide to write a novel for NaNoWriMo and complete the task, they will also offer you a copy of your printed book for free.

Happy writing.

Last Thursday I was lucky enough to attend SDForum’s 12th Annual Visionary Awards in Atherton and I have never been in a crowd of such distinguished people. Between past years award recipients, top tier press and this years winners, it was a group of people who have molded and shaped our world as we know it.

For the first time ever, this years Visionary recipients included two Girls in Tech, Judith L. Estrin, CEO, JLabs LLC, and Kay Koplovitz, Founder of USA Network, as well as James H. Clark, Co-Founder, Silicon Graphics and Netscape and Vinod Khosla, Co-Founder of Sun Microsystems.

It was such a privilege to sit and listen to the speeches and stories these four phenomenal individuals shared with the audience. Kay’s story was about the first live satellite television broadcast, the “Rumble in the Jungle,” George Foreman versus former world champion and challenger Muhammad Ali. Vinod reflected on being called a ‘visionary’ and saying he believed what is recognized as “vision” is “bumbling around long enough” to finally get something right. Jim gave us all a good chuckle when he said his first ‘vision’ was getting out of Plainview, Texas, which lead him into the Navy and then his “next visionary step was getting out the Navy.” Judy did a wonderful job of bringing us all back to college by recalling how she was “not completely sober” when she first discussed Ethernet with Bob Metcalfe.

Included is an excerpt of Judy Estrin’s acceptance speech captured by Tom Foremski:

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June 24, 2009
7:00 pm	to	9:00 pm

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!!!