Geekspeakr - ‘We help you find technical women to speak at your events’

A wonderful resource for event organizers and the tech community in general. It’s incredibly important that women in technology step out of the shadows and start embracing the limelight. So ladies, if you have the tech knowledge and flair for public speaking, stop by geekspearkr.com and sign up. 

ana.g | women 2.0 | Toronto Co-founder

I love, love, love finding new blogs and women of interest via the net. Which is why I’m so excited to promote the 96 Bloggers to Watch For in Spring 2008 post by Virtual Women’s Day Celebrations.

Authored by Heidi Richards - author, business coach and entrepreneur - the Virtual Women’s Day Celebrations blog links to some pretty cool blogs and info related to women in business and women entrepreneurs.

Its mission:

The Mission of the Virtual Woman’s Day™ is to bring together women from around the globe to network together, learn together and grow together. We plan to do this by encouraging one another to share resources, promote our products and services, increase our circle of influence and have some fun in the process.

Check out the post I mentioned. There are a ton of different blogs listed (including this one - thanks Heidi!) that may just catch your interest.

Melany Gallant | Women 2.0 Canada | Ottawa Co-founder

One of many informative talks from this year’s SXSW. The attracting girls to technology raises some very good points on why girls tend to shy away from technology. It also provides some great tips and possible solutions for what many of us can do to inspire and influence young girls to see the value and possibilities in technology.

Listen to it here

Came across an interesting article today on ITWorldCanada that discusses the need to nurture and support women in pursuing careers in IT.

The article recaps many of the panelist discussions from the Women in IT National Forum held recently in Toronto and hosted by the Information and Communications Technology Council. According to one panelist - Microsoft Canada practice manager Elizabeth Carson - women tend to be project managers and business analysts, roles “that play upon their ability to understand communities and what users want.”

To get more women interested in pursuing careers in IT, the article discusses the following suggestions generated during the Women In IT National Forum.

issue: Women don’t network as much as men do.

solution: Come up with structured mentoring system - one that helps women to self-organize and create their own community of mentors, role-models and peers.

Women 2.0 comment: Women do network, however many aren’t comfortable with the traditional “schmoozy” networking events out there. And women still juggle the majority of responsibilities at home - caring for children and running the household. Couple those responsibilities with a full-time job and it doesn’t leave a lot of free time.

Women in IT need an environment that supports and nurtures a feeling of community. That’s Women 2.o’s whole purpose - to bring women in IT together as a community that encourages women to network, share experiences and learn from one another. We want to encourage women to work with and in the field of technology and to launch their own companies.

issue: The Information and Communications Technology (ICT) industry is perceived as boring and uninteresting.

solution: Make it look fun and sexy and offer a flexible work environment. Bring better education to the school-age generation. Offer a family-friendly, flexible schedule that honors the work/life balance.

Women 2.0 comment: I think “interesting” is a more appropriate word than sexy but the point is well made. With technology constantly advancing, careers in IT are exciting, challenging and rewarding. Women need to be more aware of the opportunities available to them in the ICT sector. And if this sector wants to attract women, then they need to provide more flexibility.

example: The article states that at IBM Canada, 30 per cent of the workforce works from home (one of my female friends who works for IBM takes advantage of this option and loves it.). IBM Canada also offers part-time positions and flexible work hours.

What are your thoughts on the above issues and solutions?

——————-

March 25, 2008 update - I came across this blog post about Norway’s efforts to reduce gender inequality in business through a Twitter discussion yesterday about the need for more women leaders/mentors in IT. The post is by @vendorprisey (aka Thomas Otter).

Norway’s reasons for increasing female presence in the boardroom mirrors that of Canada - battling labour shortages and an aging workforce. Ensuring gender equality is one way to overcome it.

And as @missrogue (Tara Hunt of horsepigcow) said yesterday on Twitter:

We need more women in technology in mentorship roles. And those of us with networks need to open ourselves up to be those mentors.

Melany Gallant
Women 2.0 Ottawa Co-founder

A while back I talked about Women and blogging - where are the techies? because we know they’re out there! Well, Jive Software CMO Sam Lawrence recently created a list of his top 10 female thought leaders, boiled down. It is a follow-up to a previous post he wrote on his top 10 thought leaders (where he realized “they were all dudes”.)

So - Sam has put together a list of women he thinks are savvy and smart and worth your time. And he’s created a tag cloud for each woman that essentially pulls together the top 10 words for each. A tag cloud, for those of you unfamiliar with the term, is like a visual list (of words) for content from a website. The clouds for each woman are interesting in that it gives you this great visual overview of what they are all about.

BTW - you can follow Sam on Twitter: @SamLawrence.

Also - for your reading pleasure…

Check out The Social Organization blog by Rachel Happe, who is an analyst with IDC. As an analyst, Rachel covers the digital business economy and how all these new online technologies are impacting business, corporate culture and more. And she blogs about it too! She also links to some other noteworthy bloggers and tech gurus so take some time to read through Rachel’s site.

Happy surfing!

- Melany Gallant
Women 2.0 Co-founder

Women 2.0 Ottawa loves profiling women entrepreneurs and so we are pleased to share the news that Ottawa-based Sandra Lowenstein recently launched her company Lionstone Market Development.

Lionstone Market Development provides market intelligence, content development and sales related services to companies entering or expanding into new market areas. With these services Sandra helps companies to define a business strategy and to align product development with marketing plans.

Sandra has targeted her company’s services to “resource-constrained organizations wishing to augment a current marketing program, launch a new product/service or implement elements of a marketing program on a project-by-project basis.”

Sandra is a senior professional with marketing, product management and business development experience that spans the telecommunications, information technology, healthcare and defence industries. Her roles have ranged from developing and executing market strategies for new products at companies such as March Networks and FN Technologies, to program promotion at Lockheed Martin Canada and Mitel.

If you’re in need of some marketing help, email Sandra at sandra [at] lionstonemarketdev [dot] com.

Are you a women entrepreneur in Ottawa?

Well we’d love to profile you if you are! Send your bio / company background to ottawa [at] women2 [dot] ca and we’ll profile you on our blog.

- Melany Gallant
Co-founder, Women 2.0 Ottawa

A great outcome of our fourth Women 2.0 Ottawa event - held last night at Bridgehead in Westboro - was a brainstorm on a theme for our next series of events (after Pass the Torch with Maggie Fox on Feb 26th). We’ve dubbed the series “technology purse” - aka toolkit - essentials.

What are the essential tools and skills you need to run your small business or startup smartly? Read more »

Below are some of the female bloggers I follow. Who do you follow?

Technology Starlet - Technology Starlet, who describes herself as a “Professional graphic designing and tech training geek”, wrote this post a few days back about successful female bloggers and what makes them tick.

Charlene Li/Groundswell: Winning In a World Transformed by Social Technologies - Vice-president and principal analyst for Forrester Research. Charlene covers the impact of social computing and web 2.0 on business.

Blogher - a community of female bloggers with 13,000 members and 10,000 blogs on their blog list. They have a technology and web section but also offer up a list of blogs covering a wide variety of topics like family, politics, travel, etc.

Tracy Sheridan / The Long Blonde Tail - founder and CEO of Waxxi, a new media company which has pioneered interactive, or participatory, podcasting. Tracy writes about artificial intelligence, emerging technologies and so much more.

Some Canadian favs to catch your interest…

W2.0′er Natasha / EyeSee - Natasha is an Ottawa blogger writing about technology, business, photography and whatever else takes her fancy.

Kristina Mausser - WordUp! - Kristina’s is a web copywriting and communications consultant based in Ottawa. Her blog is about technology, consumer electronics, the Internet and all things geeky.

Maggie Fox / Social Media Group - Maggie is a social media expert and co-founder of Social Media Group. Maggie shares her insights and expertise via the Social Media Group website and blog. Women 2.0 Ottawa is also excited to have as a guest speak at our February 26 Pass the Torch event.

Tara Hunt / HorsePigCow - Tara is an online marketing professional writing about community marketing. She covers a lot of topics about new media and interactive technologies and even wrote an article for O’Reilly Media titled Women Who Risk: Making Women in Technology Visible. (Note our Women2.org sisters also contributed to the O’Reilly Media’s Women in Technology series. Access the Women in Technology articles here.

Goaliegirl - an IT consultant who blogs about hockey, gadgets and geekiness in no particular order.

So who do you follow?

Post your fav female tech bloggers below so we can keep this list growing.