Just spent two days at Techcrunch40 and it felt as if I were in a men's college, boarding school, monastery, or men's prison with people shackled to their monitors. Most of the attendees at this start-up launchpad were men; ditto for the panelists, with the occasional exception like the ubiquitous pundit Esther Dyson, what-has-she-done-since Flickr Caterina Fake, and what one reporter I know calls the Google fembot, Marissa Mayer.
To add a little balance, there were a few boothbabes, nice little Britney-like lasses whose bodies drew more interest than the products they were promoting.
Not to complain...it was a very energetic crowd and the start-ups demonstrated some interesting new mashup services, combining technologies in search with media sharing, social networking, and crowd sourcing. We used to call it convergence.
So what are women in tech to do? My friends Kaliya Hamlin and Mary Hodder, CEO and founder of Dabble, decided to create a conference for us. It's called Shesgeeky at www.shesgeeky.org and it's billed as an unconference that takes place Oct. 21-22 in Mountain View. I'll be there, and I hope you join me....i don't think they're doing a gender check at the door, so I assume it's open to guys as well.
In technology, inclusion might benefit us all.
Shesgeeky sounds like a blast. As usual I wish I could go and as usual, can't. But good to be able to read about all this.
Adele
Posted by: Adele Aldridge | September 21, 2007 at 05:40 AM