Girls In Tech

September 22, 2010
5:00 pm	to	11:00 pm

Girls in Tech LA is proud to announce its newest partnership – the Startup Demo event at Social Media Week LA.

Please join us for an evening of fun mingling with other startups, VCs, entrepreneurs, and technology enthusiasts.  StartupDemo (www.startupdemo.com) is an opportunity for early stage startups to showcase their new products and/or services. Founders use StartupDemo as an opportunity to get frank feedback from VCs, angels, peers and the technolust.  At StartupDemo, we’re all about one thing:  uncovering the latest and greatest technologies.  StartupDemo is produced by the same folks behind Schmoozd. Follow them  @startupdemo for more info and updates leading up to the event.

When: Wednesday,  Sept 22nd, 2010 – 5:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m.

Where: Wokcano, 1413 5th Street, Santa Monica, CA

What: A Startup Demo event

Price: FREE

Register Here

Open – it’s a web buzzword so buzzy you can practically see the vuvuzelas flaring behind it. But, what does it really mean? And, why does everyone care so much?

But first, a little background. Most websites run like their own unique countries. They have specific rules, structures and languages in place to help the site communicate with its users, with its databases, with its developers, etc.  Because every site operates differently, it’s been historically difficult for programmers to create sites that can clearly communicate with each other in an efficient manner. That’s where the API – or application programming interface – comes in. To really simplify things, an API is like an interpreter that allows different sets of site code to communicate with one another coherently and consistently.

The past few years have really seen the rise of the API as an important part of a site’s structure, and as a major selling point for companies like Facebook and Twitter, whose API’s have allowed them to become more than just stand-alone websites. Thanks to API’s, these sites are now more like platforms, from which other developers can draw on the site’s databases and core functionality to create new features, programs and applications. They also allow sites to use information about the entire breadth of a user’s internet use – from the music you like on Pandora being promoted on your Facebook page to the friends you chat with on Gmail getting automatically loaded into your LinkedIn address book. And that’s where the whole open web thing comes into play.

The open web is basically a movement to standardize certain practices across the web, and to share data between developers and the sites they work for. It’s being heavily promoted by groups like the Open Web Foundation, who works to foster communication and collaboration across the web. But, it’s more conceptual than concrete.

Open Social, OpenID and the Facebook Open Graph are all concrete, code-based examples of the movement towards making the web more open.

Open Social, which was developed by Google and MySpace with help from various other partners,  is basically a set of APIs that allow users to sign in and share with one ID across sites that have implemented the OpenSocial code. Facebook’s Open Graph allows users to use their Facebook login information and data across a network of partner sites, and send and share content between their Facebook profiles and their profiles on these partner platforms.

Similarly, OpenID provides users with a single username and password, which can then be used across a variety of sites, including LiveJournal, Google and Yahoo. And, services like OAuth, which Twitter uses,  use the same sort of concept to allow users to give a single set of sign-in information for multiple sites – often with some restrictions on what kinds of data the sites you sign in to using those credentials can get access to.

These are all examples of a single service trying to make it easier for a user to take their login information, personal data and any content they’ve created or shared from site to site across the web. But, that’s not where this story ends. Now that so many of these services exist, there’s a bit of a battle going on to see if any one service can become the standard for everything social and shared across the web.

If any one service can stand out as the single place for users to get login credentials, store their data and share their content from, then the company behind it will have all sorts of power and influence on the internets. Not to mention major monetization opportunities, and unmatched access to all sorts of interesting information about pretty much every person who uses the web. Forget that silly little ring. On today’s web, it’s all about one registration to rule them all.

Of course, it’s not all as big brother as it sounds. In fact, these open web services are responsible for some of the coolest cross-site mashups and mobile apps around, and giving sites the ability to easily communicate with one another and share information across the internet is a surefire way to guarantee even more amazing innovations in years to come – and to save developers a whole lot of money on the Aspirin required to cope with the dizzying array of different standards and systems on the web today.

At this point, only time will tell how all of the new open web standards and services shake out. All I can say for sure is that it’s a really interesting time to be a web user – not to mention someone who works on the web.

And that, my friends, is what all the buzz is about.

June 24, 2010
5:30 pm	to	6:30 pm

Girls in Tech, Minneapolis welcomes Summer of 2010 with friendly drinks and sparkling conversations among our women in  technology, industry and academia, and all enthusiasts.

Please attend Girls in Tech Minneapolis for our “Geek Girl” Happy Hour!

This is a “just for fun” event . Let’s get to know each other well in fun non stressful way

When: Thursday, June 24th, 5.30 PM – 6.30 PM

Where: Joe Senser’s, 4217 American Blvd, West Bloomington, MN 55437

Cost: Free admission to this event.

RSVP: (required, in advance) http://gitmspgeekgirlhappyhour.eventbrite.com

Happy Hour Specials:

$2.50 short domestic taps/bottles, rail & call drinks, house wine, short senser teas, more…

Visit our website: Girls in Tech Minneapolis Chapter

Become a member: Register here!

Follow us on Twitter: @GitMinneapolis

Join us on Facebook: Girls in Tech Minneapolis

Attend This Event

I admit that this is a pretty self-indulgent blog post, but so many people ask me about my work experience and the launch of my new company, that I thought I’d dedicate a post to it.

I’m Christine Kirk, but many simply know me by my Twitter handle, @LuxuryPRGal. I definitely respond to both names so feel free to call me whichever you prefer. I started my career in PR at various in-house positions including a law firm, and renewable energy company. I eventually merged into agency life at a tech/consumer lifestyle shop in LA, where in the early 2000s, I was introduced to social media as we know it, with the start of Friendster and developing my blogger relations skills. I was hooked right away, and was then brought on-board at a luxury hospitality agency to introduce many of their high-profile clients to social media. In December 2009, I finally took the leap and launched my own company, Social Muse Communications, a social media marketing consultancy firm for luxury travel, restaurant, tech and lifestyle brands in Los Angeles.

PR agencies across the board have gone through hell and back in the past 2 years — due to the economic climate, and the rapid changes in traditional media as we know it – and at the same time. Let me be clear here — traditional media is not dying. It is changing, and in my opinion, for the better. Print and boradcast media outlets are interacting with their readers and viewers in ways they never had the opportunity to before — and it’s making the news much more relevent..and even accountable. For various reasons (including finances, fear, ignorance, etc.) many PR agencies have not quickly adapted to the changes taking place all around us. Some have done a great job, while others are still playing catch-up. Personally, I never want to “catch-up” to anything, and would prefer to be at the forefront of one of the most exciting revolutions in recent history. There are many PR people who have embraced this “new PR” and who are inspirations of mine including, @NicoleJordan, @BrianSolis, @skydiver (Peter Shankman).

Social Muse Communications is employing a whole new type of public relations and Return on Influence (the new ROI) – there is no one way for a brand to reach their target audience. Simply securing a placement in a glossy magazine, or a news segment on television, is not going to cut it anymore. To go from a good, to an excellent communications strategy, a brand must get in front of consumers through many different levels of media – print, broadcast, online, blogs, and social networking sites. This new world of PR gives PR practitioners the opportunity to communicate not only with media, but also with a brand’s customers directly — and that “high-touch” level of communications is what is most effective to enhancing a brand’s bottom-line. Through real relationship building, both online and offline, people (consumers) are more receptive to hearing and acting on PR messages when it comes from a PR person who has taken the time to get to know them. I personally have over 7,500 followers on Twitter and cannot believe the amazing wealth of knowledge, expertise, inspiration, new business leads, media contacts, bloggers contacts, humor, and friends I have made.

Social media is not, and should never be the only tool in a PR pro’s toolbox, but it just might be my favorite.

Christine Kirk is founder and principal at Social Muse Communications, a social media marketing consultancy firm for luxury travel, restaurant, tech and lifestyle brands in Los Angeles. She also holds the position of PR Manager for the Los Angeles chapter of Girls in Tech. She can be reached via e-mail at christine@socialmuse.com or on Twitter @luxuryprgal.

May 15, 2010
4:00 pm	to	6:00 pm

Girls in Tech’s Minneapolis Chapter, is launching and we want to see YOU at the celebration!

Come and connect with your fellow tech ladies and enthusiasts, and find out what the Minneapolis chapter has in store for you.

(PS: This event is co-ed. All  are welcome!)

When: Saturday, May 15th, 4.00 PM – 6.00 PM

Where: Grumpy’s Bar and Grill, Downtown Minneapolis, 1111 Washington Ave. S

Cost: Free admission to this event.

RSVP: no later than 11.00 AM on May 15^th

http://gitmsplaunch.eventbrite.com

Visit our website: Girls in Tech Minneapolis Chapter

Become a member: Register here!

Follow us on Twitter: @GitMinneapolis

Join us on Facebook: Girls in Tech Minneapolis

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Urvashi Mishra

Managing Director, Girls in Tech, Minneapolis

@urvashi_mishra

In celebration of Women’s History Month, Girls in Tech is offering the fourth in a series of interviews with leaders in the technology field. Today, we’re featuring Sophie Farrell, account manager with Google Online Sales. Stay tuned for the final in our series of posts Leena Rao, TechCrunch.

Cheers,
The Boston GIT Team

1. What’s the biggest mistake you’ve ever made and what did you learn from it that’s worth passing along to others?
While it can be uncomfortable to take a problem with a teammate and tackle it head on, I have found that the most difficult situations I have been in and the biggest mistakes I have made have come from times when I chose to shy away from a difficult conversation. These are times when just one meeting or discussion would have undoubtedly fixed the problem, repaired a line of communication or mitigated frustration before it grew into something bigger. If you see a problem or identify a teammate who is not holding up his or her end of a bargain, tackle the situation head on as quickly as you can – you’ll thank yourself later.

2. What’s your biggest success in the workplace?
Diversity of experience. I take great pride in the fact that, during my time at Google, I have had the opportunity to develop a variety of skills at work. Whether fulfilling the role of strategic advisor to my clients, mapping out the global roll out of a new Sales operation or partnering with marketing to drive user adoption across Google products, I have created and taken advantage of an array of opportunities. While these experiences have afforded me opportunities to succeed, I consider my greatest success to be the variety of situations that I have pushed myself to succeed in.

3. What’s your life or work motto?
“Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from indomitable will.” This is a Mahatma Gandhi quote that I have always kept on a note above my desk. I have heard it recited by Lance Armstrong and co-workers alike and I believe it speaks to the true source of our power. There will always be someone more qualified, smarter, faster or more experienced, but it is completely up to you as to whether or not anyone will have a stronger will than you. I believe an indomitable will can translate to incredible success.

4. What woman in history inspires you most and why?
While she is not a historical figure, I have a genuine admiration for Ursula Burns, CEO of Xerox. As the CEO of a major American company, Ursula remains true to herself and the principles of hard work. She worked tirelessly to rise to where she is and appears to balance assertive and respectful in a remarkable way. As she says, there is “stuff that happens to you and then there is stuff you happen to.” I admire the grace with which she handles the stuff that happens to her and the tenacity with which she makes the rest of it happen.

5. What piece of technology can you not live without?
In thinking about this question, I have realized that, during the past year or two, my answer has transitioned from my computer to my cell phone. Assuming that is the case for more people than just me, it speaks volumes to the potential that lies ahead for the mobile industry as we continue to transition our dependence on the Internet from desktops to mobile devices. That said, whether it’s talking to my friends and family, checking my email or listening to Pandora, I couldn’t live without my cell phone!

6. What tech trend are you following for 2010?
Geo-located social networking. This space is flooded with innovation from small startups (Foursquare, Toodalu) and strong companies (Google, Facebook, Twitter) alike. I am personally drawn to the way Toodalu.com is building a visual, maps based approach. This type of technology will transform the way we interact within our social circles.

7. What one piece of advice would you give the Girls in Tech of tomorrow?
If you want it, ask for it. If you’re inspired by somebody, ask to have coffee with him or her. If you have an idea, find someone who can help your grow it. If you have a passion, chase it. I believe most people fall into three buckets. Those who wait for things to come to them, those who work hard and believe that in time that will get them where they need to go, and then those who not only work hard but spend time knocking on doors, tackling challenges, and asking for guidance, advice and a seat at the table. It’s the third group, the trailblazers, that not only get to do exciting things, but they accomplish great things.

Cell phone, a pen and sunglasses. The phone is my connection to everyone and everything. The pen is because I have found myself in some of the most inspiring and interesting conversations that I have ever had while living in Silicon Valley – having a pen to write down ideas, contact information or even questions has become crucial. Finally, the sunglasses are for the weather in California. After growing up in the Midwest and then spending four years in Boston, it wasn’t difficult to get used all the sunshine out here!

Since its launch in February, Google Buzz has dominated headlines from the blogosphere to the twittersphere, and every social media sphere in between. From people decrying it as yet another nail in the coffin of personal privacy to people applauding it as a bold step forward for communication and collaboration, Buzz has certainly lived up to its name – at least in terms of all the attention its gotten in the past month.

So what is Buzz? Well, according to Google itself “Google Buzz lets you share updates, photos, links, and pretty much anything else you’d like with your Gmail contacts; it’s an easy way to follow your friends, too. When you click Buzz in your Gmail account, you’ll see the stream of posts from people you’re following, and a box for you to post your updates.” So basically, Buzz is a way for you to post items that are shared with your Gmail contacts, and people who follow you on the service. Sort of like a Facebook status update for your Gmail.

Of course, like any good web product, there’s a lot more to it than just the elevator pitch. Buzz is already proving to be a valuable tool for soliciting feedback on a project, gathering opinions on a popular topic and finding targeted information that’s relevant to you. Which, of course, makes it a social media marketer’s wet dream, and has advertisers salivating over the possibility that Google may now have yet another place to distribute its patented brand of extremely targeted ads.

But, if you’re not looking to solicit feedback from your friends or sell something to your followers, why should you use Buzz? Well, the answer lies in that whole targeted information thing. That’s right, Buzz is yet another stream of information you can tap into to find out what’s trending and what your friends are talking about. But, because it maps back to your Gmail contacts, the theory is that it’s even more targeted than Twitter, more focused than Facebook and more interesting than random RSS feeds. The idea is that if you’re subscribing to people you already communicate with regularly via email, you will be more interested in what those people have to say than what Followed #4,238 on Twitter is talking about. And, of course, there are all those nifty Google algorithms to help really steer your Buzz stream.

I’ve been using it for a few weeks now, and I have to say my feelings are mixed. Mostly because I haven’t yet been able to really slot Buzz into my daily social media habits. Between Twitter, Facebook, Google Reader, Reddit, Delicious, Stumble and the occasional email update from my mom, I’m pretty well situated when it comes to keeping abreast of the news and information I care about. So far, Buzz hasn’t yet evolved from a fun distraction into a daily information addiction the way those other services have. That said, now that there’s a Buzz iPhone app, I might finally be able to find a way to fit that fun new distraction into my daily routine. If only so I can make more “I just got so buzzed” puns on Twitter.

Just two months ago, DARPA, headed by Dr. Regina Dugan, conducted an interesting challenge to find ten red balloons strategically “hidden” throughout the United States. Seekers had a time frame of nine days to correctly map-out the whereabouts of those balloons. In nine hours, an MIT team had located all of the balloons—that was just with real-time social networking technologies—no augmented-reality mapping involved.

Two months later, social networking has new pal. At the annual TED Talks gathering, Microsoft unveiled its latest augmented-reality mapping. This technology will take social networking and seeking & find projects to a new level.

For education, all I can say is that if school districts don’t take this summer to get their teachers up to snuff with technology skills, there will be more of us teachers retiring as parents can create national and global networks of real-time information exchange (For educators: check out Natasha’s post below). Students no longer have to wait until gets dark to experience Orion or wait until their parents can take them to a famous landmark in a foreign country, with an iphone, internet, and augmented-reality mapping, they will be well on their way.

Though I have my hesitations about safety and privacy issues, the potential advantages to rescue missions, law enforcement, education and network publications could far outweigh the cons of such a technology. I just wonder if Dr. Dugan is willing to create another $40K DARPA Balloon challenge using augmented-reality mapping—maybe the nine hour search will become nine minutes!

Nevertheless, Microsoft has taken social networking to a new level, and it’s quite impressive!

Thanks to Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement yesterday about the changes being made to Facebook’s privacy structure, it looks like #privacy is about to have yet another run as the trending topic du jour. Well, that and that couple that crashed the White House dinner — as Demetri Martin would say, they’re like the herpes of hyped up news stories. Scheming social climbers aside, privacy is one of the web’s biggest concerns. As girls in tech, we talk about it all the time. Are our identities safe? Are our personal and professional brands secure? Are the kids in our lives making smart choices when they surf?

Months worth of memes have been made out of relatively minor changes to Facebook’s privacy policies in the past, and the comments are already piling in to the Mashable Article discussing this most recent development. It’s easy to understand why people get so worked up over what happens to their information on the internet. From cookies that track our every click to the fact that between docs, mail, maps and search, google knows more about you than your parents probably do, it’s clear that there’s plenty of reasons to make even the sanest surfer paranoid about what they post. As the product manager at a growing user generated content site, I deal with difficult decisions having to do with privacy all the time. What our decision making process always comes back to is a simple question: what would we want someone else to be doing with our data? Nine times out of ten, the answer is simple: give the user as much control over their content as you can.

Of course, as a user, it’s up to you to take advantage of that control. Fortunately, there are as many tools to track the people tracking you as there are mistresses in Tiger Woods’ skeleton closet. There’s google privacy dashboard, which allows you to see all the data points that google’s got about you. You can also set up a google alert that will let you know when new content about you is indexed by the search engine’s spiders. Keotag lets you put in a key word, and see what people are saying about it everywhere from Technorati to Twitter. And, Boardtracker lets you do the same sort of thing across multiple comment boards. Which means you can post your complaints about the new Facebook privacy policy today, and see all the trolls’ responses tomorrow.

It ain’t exactly privacy per se, but it’s pretty powerful stuff nonetheless.  At the end of the day, I strongly believe that the best privacy policy on the web is still the one you set up for yourself by watching what you post, where you post it and what gets said about it after you leave. However, if that’s too complicated for you, then just remember this simple rule: if you’re going to crash a White House dinner, don’t post photos of your uninvited self shaking hands with the president on Facebook. Unless, of course, your personal privacy policy involves a camera crew from Bravo and a hefty chunk of reality show change. In which case, I’ll see you on Thursdays at 10 in my living room.

A little over a year ago, Helen De Michiel in an editorial to the SF Chronicle suggested something very interesting in light of today’s economy and the technological ranking of the US among other countries of the world: What this country needs, she claimed, is a “Digital New Deal.”  So, what exactly did she mean by this?
She founded this proposal on the fact that, although one of the world’s wealthiest countries, the US ranked surprisingly low in its Internet infrastructures. We ranked “4th – in network readiness to compete globally” and only “24th among industrialized nations in broadband.”  This was shocking to me; and I thought – How is this possible — We are in the Silicon Valley, the home of nearly every other Internet start up, right?

To change this, she suggests that we need to encourage the youth of this country to engage widely in an effort to create a “new online public sphere” or a national public media depository, if you will. Thus, after graduating college they can become part of the solution to create an even greater and larger social networking/information exchanging/fully- connected online community. This in turn will create jobs, bolster the sharing of ideas and innovation, and create a new generation of broadband access.  This can be achieved by teaming with more experienced specialists in the area, and will hopefully also bolster community-building and multi-generational participation.

De Michiel invited us to “Imagine after the 2008 election, a swarm of arts and culture leaders, public interest and policy advocates, energetic young software developers, philanthropists, media reformers and forward-thinking politicians banding together in a broad coalition to construct this Digital New Deal.”

“Creative potential will be unleashed through new media and social networking pathways in ways we have never experienced, influencing where we live and how we work.”
With Twitter, the iPhone & its many apps on the App Store, among other applications to do what we want in this realm…perhaps we are getting there!
- quotes copyright SF Chronicle, 2008
(To read De Michiel’s full OpEd, go to www.sfgate.com, Opinion, & search archives: “Digital New Deal” -or- http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/04/11/EDJU103F1U.DTL)