TECHNOgirltalk.COM

We came, we listened...

Techno Talk Girl — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 16:30:00 GMT

This post brings some bittersweet news: the TechnoGirlTalk podcast is coming to a close. We've decided to end our run on a high note. We had ten podcasts. All of them were popular and well-received. We talked about everything from how to restring a koto to women's urinals to the Oscars. We've laughed. A lot. And we've occasionally delved into the more sensitive topics around women in technology. Are women getting a fair shake? Are they sometimes ignored or underpaid? Are they able to find mentors? What kind of mentors can they be to others?

None of this would've been possible if we hadn't had such amazing, bright, insightful guests. Here is the list of all of them, in the order in which they were recorded:

Catherine Liao
Rachel Luxemburg
Elizabeth Zaborowska
Christina LeBlanc
Terri McClure
Gina Minks
Friea Berg
Chaffie McKenna
Jame Ervin
Jennifer Meyer
Tamar Weinberg
Kaliya
Cheryl Contee
Nancy Hurley
Victoria Livschitz
Jessica Faye Carter
Anne Hardy
Lori MacVittie
Ellyot
Beth Custer
Agnes Szelag
Stef Porter
Lara Sasken

Over and out.

Podcast #10 - March 17

Techno Talk Girl — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 22:41:00 GMT

Happy St. Patrick's Day. It sure is a lucky day here at TechnoGirlTalk, where we're celebrating our tenth podcast. Wow. What a long, strange trip it's already been. This week we delved into an issue that has many folks worried: your online privacy and image.

Lara Sasken is with a company that protects your online image, Reputation Defender. As she puts it, "Google is the new resume." And our second guest Stef Porter works in marketing at giant Oracle. She gave a window in life at Larry's place, as well as offering great insights about how social media affects selling and job searching.

We hope you enjoy listening!

Podcast #9 - March 10

Techno Talk Girl — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 05:54:00 GMT

This week we have a very special "music" edition of TechnoGirlTalk. Our panelists were all women composer/musicians, and we had a lot of fun mixing in talk and music into the podcast. We got the idea because our theme music is one of the most commented-upon aspects of this podcast.

One of our panelists this week is composer Beth Custer and that theme music is by her band Eighty Mile Beach. (Full disclosure, I've been advising Beth on her social media strategy.) Beth is a well-known figure in the San Francisco music scene. She's one of the few women band leaders in jazz. We caught up with her while she was in residency at Montalvo Arts Center. Her recent film score for comedic Georgian silent film "My Grandmother" won an Aaron Copland award, and she took it on tour across Europe. You can hear the Beth Custer Ensemble's newest release Roam on CD, and at the Noe Valley Ministry as part of their music series May 8.

As it turns out, there's plenty of techiness among musicians these days. As another panelist, Agnes Szelag explained, music can be "programmed" using an open source composition environment and programming language, "SuperCollider." Agnes is also a tinkerer. For example, she put the strings for a Japanese koto on a Chinese instrument known as a guzheng. Agnes has a collaboration called myrmyr with another woman musician, Marielle Jakobsons.They'll be performing live March 11 at Bluesix in San Francisco.

We also caught up with Ellyot, a Tel Aviv-based composer, DJ and rock star. Her music is in two recent independent documentaries: "Pizza in Auschwitz" and "Gay Days," about the gay community in Israel in the 1980s, a film in which she also appears. Her band Pollyanna Frank was called the "hope of Israeli rock" after its first performance in a Tel Aviv club.

Special Edition - Dare 2B Digital Digitized

Techno Talk Girl — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 00:50:00 GMT

This is a very special edition of TechnoGirlTalk featuring a video made by a group of teenaged young women at Dare 2B Digital. This one-day conference drew 250 female 7th-10th graders for a day of learning about computers and engineering. Held at Foothill College in Los Altos on February, the event was inspiring and energizing. For more about the event, listen to last week's podcast--one of the panelists, Anne Hardy of SAP was the driving force behind making it happen.

The five workshop participants took footage throughout the day using Cisco "Flip" cameras provided by the company, which was also one of the sponsors of the event. Some chose directly interviewing participants, others took sweeping shots of crowd scenes or workshop situations. The workshop that is most prominently shown here was one that taught participants how packets of data move through the pipes of the Internet. All of the videographers are credited at the end. In addition, credit goes to Crystal Yan for assisting with the workshop. Our roving tech reporters were as follows:

Deshia Frazier, 16, Edison Senior High School
Eliza Hunt, 15, Notre Dame High School
Katarina Stein, 13, Cuhna Intermediate
Natasha Stergiou, 15, Carlmont High School
Margaret Stratton, 15, Mountain View High School

Dare 2B Digital Digitized from Sunshine Mugrabi on Vimeo.

Podcast #8 - February 23

Techno Talk Girl — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 00:14:00 GMT

What a week! A plane crash left Palo Alto in the dark--almost (but not quite) preventing one of this week's panelists from attending. Computer Engineer Barbie burst onto the scene, causing all manner of comment and controversy. Our guests couldn't help but wonder, is "Social Media Barbie" next? And Women in tech were discussed everywhere from TechCrunch to the San Jose Mercury News.

Through it all, TechnoGirlTalk was there. Here is this week's lineup of guests--we hope you enjoy listening.

Anne Hardy, VP of technology in the office of the chief technology officer at SAP, and chair of events for Dare2BDigital, an event for young women in the 7th-10th grades to bridge the gender gap in computer science and engineering.

Lori MacVittie, technical marketing manager at F5 Networks and F5 blogger. She recently blogged on Computer Engineer Barbie.

Jessica Faye Carter, CEO, Nette Media and author of the book "Double Outsiders: How Women of Color Can Succeed in Corporate America" (JIST Works, 2007). She recently wrote an article on women and social media in Mashable, which we discuss.

Podcast #7 - February 15

Techno Talk Girl — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 16:23:00 GMT

This week TechnoGirlTalk may just have made history. Our podcast features two women CEOs of tech companies, plus a founder of an all-women-owned tech consulting firm. To say that our guests were breaking the mold would be such an understatement that we hesitate to even make a statement about them. Anyone who wants to know what it's like navigating one's way through the sometimes choppy waters of a career in tech will find something in this week's podcast.

Terri McClure of ESG cohosted the show with me, Sunshine Mugrabi. Our guests are as follows:

Cheryl Contee, Founder and Principal, Fission Strategy and co-founder, Jack and Jill Politics, a top African-American political blog
Nancy Hurley, CEO, Bocada
Victoria Livschitz, CEO, Grid Dynamics

Podcast #6 - February 8

Techno Talk Girl — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 17:37:00 GMT

This is the second of our recorded interviews at She's Geeky, the conference for women in technology held at the Computer History Museum. The theme of the conference seemed to be DIY--everything from "hacking your own genome" to beekeeping to writing your own command lines. Fun stuff, and a joy to pass on to the rest of you--including all you amazing male geeks who make up at least half of our listening audience.

The three panelists represent the immense range of what it means to be a "she geek"--Vicky Tuite has a degree in Electrical Engineering and worked at Tesla Motors among other companies. She's also a "bee geek" or, as it's known, a "beek." Rachel Luxemburg, a returning guest, is the group manager, developer relations at Adobe. Ellen Francik is a user experience consultant who also works with social entrepreneurship. Enjoy!

Podcast #5 - January 31

Techno Talk Girl — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 21:19:00 GMT

If you happened to be driving by the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif. this past weekend, you might've noticed that the parking lot was awfully full, but otherwise you would have no idea of the magic that was brewing inside. A group of over 100 women were sharing expertise with one another on everything from beekeeping to Ruby on Rails programming to personal DNA sequencing to yoga to public speaking and beyond. This could be none other than the She's Geeky Unconference, of which TechnoGirlTalk was a proud community sponsor.

As luck would have it, we were able to pull aside the organizer of the conference, the amazing person known to much of the social world as "IdentityWoman," Kaliya. She took time out and spoke to me about everything from what an "unconference" is, to why women ought to be in high tech decision-making (one word: "iPad") and many other fascinating topics. So here without further ado is a special, on-site She's Geeky edition of TechnoGirlTalk.

Podcast #4 - January 26

Techno Talk Girl — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 05:48:00 GMT

Sometimes the universe deals you a hand you never expected. This past week, I was honored with yet another remarkable lineup of women guests for our podcast. At the same time, California was hit with near tornado-like weather. As a result, every time the wind whipped over the house, my DSL line went dead, stopping our Skype call dead in its tracks. This must've happened half a dozen times at least. But in spite of this my panelists all continued to make insightful, compelling points, honestly revealing a great deal about who they are, what makes them tick, and how they came to the successful careers they now enjoy. This all proved beyond a doubt that techy women know how to keep their heads and be flexible no matter what gets thrown at them.

Thanks to my guests: Tamar Weinberg, social media marketing consultant, community and marketing manager at Mashable, and author of "The New Community Rules" (O'Reilly, 2009); Jame Ervin, implementation consultant at Echo Lane and tech industry insider; and Jennifer Meyer, global programs marketing manager at Dell. With that, here's this week's show.

Are women doing it all wrong?

Techno Talk Girl — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 22:12:00 GMT

Our friend the controversy fairy really does favor us over here at TechnoGirlTalk. This week, a blog post hit many a sore nerve with its provocative headline: "A Rant About Women." Written by Clay Shirky, a professor at NYU, the post suggests that women need to be able to bluff and bluster the way men do if they want to get ahead.

Writes Shirky, "I’m not concerned that women don’t engage in enough building of self-confidence or self-esteem. I’m worried about something muchsimpler: not enough women have what it takes to behave like arrogant, self-aggrandizing jerks."

The argument stung for a lot of women, many of whom said they were sick and tired of being told to act more like men in order to succeed. Deanna Zandt, author of the upcoming book on how we can use social media to change the world, "Share This" (Berrett-Koehler, 2010) had a much-retweeted response on her blog in a post entitled "Shirky to women: Ur doing it wrong:"

Wrote Deanna: "Asking women to be more like men (which is different than what Shirky claims we're doing when we ask men to be "sensitive" and "listen" —that's just asking for a little humanity, there) falls on a spectrum of prescribing feminine behavior that is dangerous and unhealthy."

And one of the more pointed comments I've read so far was on another blog, finslippy:

"Can yousee how it might chafe to have a man ... tell us ladies how to behave? I'm not saying his points are all completely out of left field, but do you see how infuriating it mightbe, while everything around us tells women to behave and shut up and look pretty and be thin and not complain, how every time we speak upwe're knocked down, for a guy to say, 'Hey, you know what you women should do? You should speak up!'"

In short, I can't wait to get into this on the upcoming TechnoGirlTalk podcast. Oh, and we'll also talk about social media, tech, and whatever else strikes our fancy. My guests will be: Tamar Weinberg, social media marketing consultant, community and marketing manager at Mashable, and author of "The New Community Rules" (O'Reilly, 2009); Jame Ervin, implementation consultant at Echo Lane and tech industry insider; and Jennifer Meyer, global programs marketing manager at Dell. What a lineup!

We hope you'll tune in.

Podcast #3 - January 18

Techno Talk Girl — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 22:28:00 GMT

Happy MLK Day to all! We're pleased to bring you yet another installment of TechnoGirlTalk, with a stellar lineup of guests -- Terri McClure, storage industry veteran and analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group, Chaffie McKenna, virtualization solutions architect at data storage company NetApp, and Friea Berg, marketing manager at NetApp.

If anyone ever worried whether there is a shortage of smart, funny, talented women in tech, this podcast will reassure you. Whether talking about the absurdity of finding out that a male coworker makes 50% more for the same job, describing playing hockey from a wheelchair,or discussing the niceties of Microsoft virtualization, my guests this week continually surprised me with their good humor, smarts and willingness to roll with the punches. I hope you enjoy listening.

Podcast #2 - January 11

Techno Talk Girl — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 06:39:00 GMT

What's it like to be a woman in the most aggressive, rough and tumble, and male-dominated sector in high tech? This week, we brought on three women who have built their careers in just that situation. Our panel was: Terri McClure, storage industry veteran and analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group, Gina Minks, senior technical educational specialist at EMC, and Christina LeBlanc, account executive at EMC.

The war stories they traded were alternately humorous and hair-raising. What struck me about all three of my guests was their open-heartedness and willingness to see the lighter side of even the most shocking stories of sexist behavior.

But I won't give anything away, and instead let you enjoy what they have to say--about wigs, corporate dominatrixes, high heels and oil and gas execs. So without further ado, here's the second installment of TechnoGirlTalk:

Maiden Voyage - TechnoGirlTalk Podcast #1 12/23/09

Techno Talk Girl — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 19:22:00 GMT

In this, our first week, the controversy fairy has sent us a story that is truly the talk of the blogosphere. Blogger James Chartrand has announced to the world that she is actually a woman. As she puts it in her post:

“This is not a joke or an angle or an analogy — I’m literally a woman.

This is my story.

Once upon a time, I found myself having to make some hard decisions.

The welfare application was on my kitchen table. …”

This bomb of a story has dropped just in time for the first ever TechnoGirlTalk podcast. As luck would have it, we brought in a panel that had a fresh and thoughtful take on the many issues this post raised.

We also got into topics that are often considered too hot too touch. Arewomen sometimes blockades to other women's success, while men can turnout to be the best mentors? What is most difficult about being a womanin a male-dominated sector of high tech? Do we laugh along with crassmale bathroom jokes... or make some of our own? And just what wasMotorola thinking with its recent "Princess" ad for the Droid?

Our three panelists weighed in with answers that may surprise you:

Catherine Liao, Technical Solutions Architect at Cisco Systems (@catliao)

Rachel Luxemburg, Group Manager, Developer Relations at Adobe Communities (@rlux)

Elizabeth Zaborowska, Principal and Founder of Integrated Digital Firm Bhava Communications (@bhavacom)

Special Thanks to Eighty Mile Beach for our theme music, and to Leor Mugrabi for technical direction and editing.

Ready to crush your coworkers?

Techno Talk Girl — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 18:42:00 GMT

With the holidays behind us, we're gearing up for yet another episode of the TechnoGirlTalk podcast. The guests are still being confirmed, but we can promise you that they will be just as gutsy and intelligent as our last panel.

The podcast will be recorded this coming Wednesday, and will be posted soon afterwards. One hot topic we'll discuss--the posted and reposted job listing created by serial entrepreneur Jason Calacanis, CEO of startup Mahalo. You can read it in full here. But essentially, as Calacanis puts it, he's looking for people who want to "crush it" and can "keep your head down" without even having time to do your laundry or walk your dog, all for **less pay** than industry standard. As one person put it, this sums up why women don't want to get into high tech.

The post would've passed us by if it weren't for our subscription to Louis Gray's shared items on Google Reader, which linked last week to the following commentary from Geek Feminism blog: Wanted: aggressive people with no lives.

Geek Feminism's Skud writes: "Who is this aimed at? Young single people, for starters. People who can move cross-country for a job. People without kids. People whose partners care for the kids. People who are aggressive. People who like working with other aggressive people, including the boss. People who are pushy enough to deal with a self-described meritocracy, or be fired. People who can identify with a long list of male names, representing people who previously enjoyed working this way."

Ouch.

Those who know Jason will probably defend him by saying that this job listing is really just an extension of his own personality. He's not necessarily looking to hire men--he's looking to hire people who are just like him. Energetic, tireless, and full of intense dedication to tech. But his detractors might point out that this is exactly what's wrong with our industry. We keep missing out on great opportunities to work with smart people (of any gender) because of our own prejudices and preconceived notions about what makes for a good employee.

Our guests will weigh in on this and other questions in this week's show. We also welcome your input in the comments field below. So please check back regularly. Or, if you don't feel like doing that, why not subscribe to us on iTunes? It's just a click away! You can also subscribe by clicking one of the RSS feed buttons to your left. You'll never miss an ep.

Getting Geeky

Techno Talk Girl — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 16:34:00 GMT

As part of our commitment to women in tech, TechnoGirlTalk is proudly sponsoring She’s Geeky,a women in technology “Unconference” that’s become quite the talk ofthe town. It will take place January 29-31, 2010 at theComputer History Museum in Mountain View, CA. Sign up here for the event. In fact, we were the first community sponsor to sign up–quite an honor! No doubt many more will follow.

Event organizer Heidi Nobantu Saul gave me all kinds of fascinating background on “She’s Geeky.”For one thing, it is clearly filling a huge need by creating a placefor women in tech to talk among themselves about their uniquechallenges and issues. It’s been so popular among women techies that,as Heidi explained, the organizers have been deluged with requests forsimilar events all across the USA. The recent Washington, DC eventyielded an amazing set of responses and posts, which are posted on the She’s Geeky blog.

She also noted that the venue–The Computer History Museum–is one of the more expensive options. But they are committed to holding itthere because it represents so much of what “She’s Geeky” is about–along, illustrious history that represents the best of both men’s andwomen’s contributions to technology. Indeed, at the recent Tech Field Day party, which was also held at the museum, I was thrilled to walk down the Hall of Fellows and see a number of women fellows pictured: Frances Allen, Jean Bartik, Grace Murray Hopper, and Jean Sammet.

The upcoming unconference is designed to be a place where any woman who defines herself as a geek can meet, talk, and find much-needed community connections with fellow women techies. As Heidi explained,there are women who are considering dropping out of tech altogether,who arrive and find so much affirmation and support that they have arenewed commitment to it. That, to me, is the best reason ever to have an event!

Rather than pre-packaged agendas, the participants themselves create the topics, a format she said has worked beautifully in the past.TechnoGirlTalk plans to be on the ground, podcasting, videoing andgenerally getting to know the women who make up this amazing communityof technologists, mathemeticians, and scientists. See you there!

Welcome to TechnoGirlTalk

Techno Talk Girl — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 00:10:27 GMT

This is the destination for an exciting new podcast, TechnoGirlTalk. Every week, you’ll be able to tune into interviews with female movers and shakers in high tech. Download and listen to each episode directly on this site. Upcoming interviews will feature women who are making inroads into some of the most male-dominated arenas of high tech, such as storage, networking, and virtualization.

These folks are boldly going where few women have gone before. We’ll learn what they did to succeed. They will also offer their advice and guidance to women who aspire to similar high tech heights.

For all the latest updates on the show, please follow us on Twitter. And if you know someone who you think would be a good interview subject, please DM us. You’re also encouraged to subscribe to this site’s RSS Feed so that you’re sure to remain up-to-date on the podcasts.