She's Geeky -Fifth Unconference
On Friday, January 29th, I woke up super early to drive with other geeky women to the Tech Museum in Mountainview, California for the first day of the She’s Geeky Unconference. The event was set up by entrepreneur Kaliya Hamlin in order to bring together women from the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) Fields. Luckily, IP Society sponsored me and was able to attend this awesome gathering of superbly intelligent and influential women this past weekend.
I really had no idea what to expect or that I was even going to lead a discussion, so I was enthralled with the outcome of the event, to say the least.
Unlike most conferences, guess that’ s why it’s called an “un-conference,” Kaliya Hamlin invited us to share our names, twitter handles, professions, and “Why we’re geeky.” It was so awesome to realize that boys were not the only ones messing around in their rooms trying to develop video games or software, most of these women were doing the very same thing.
I attended a few notable workshops, two of the first ones dealing with entrepreneurship, then social media for social change both led by Vicki Saunders, CEO of Zazengo. Later on, I went to a session titled “Uncommon Leadership” where we talked about using technology to empower women in refugee camps. Fact: Globally, according to USCRI, over 3 million refugees have been in camps for over 50 years. Additionally, over 1 million Afghanis have been in Pakistan for 26 years. Furthermore, in all refugee camps around the world, women are raped almost daily, a sad fate that many women face once they are moved into camps. We were hoping that if we come up with a solution that women can use regardless of language barriers, it would be perfect for this kind of situation.
Lunch was awesome! As was the coffee cart! I took notes for a talk from Chelsea Rustrum from Freemania.net, she’s been clipping coupons so long, she knows her stuff like the back of her hand.
The next day, Saturday, I was asked by my fellow carpool geeks if I was going to present. I hadn’t thought about it, but I wasn’t really sure what I would talk about. I kept thinking about it until we arrived in Mountainview. After we went around the circle introducing ourselves again that Saturday morning at She’s Geeky, and Kalyia made the announcement to rush to the middle to write a discussion topic, I did it. I wrote something, then announced it, then put it on the board, then freaked out the entire day. First one woman came, then there were two, and at the end there were five of us. Small, but cool, because I don’t know if I could have handled a larger crowd, although more experts would have been cool to bounce ideas off each other.
I chose to name my discussion, “Online Discussion Platforms: what works for business and non-profits,” because I wanted to see if anyone else out there had tried other platforms besides blogs, forums, twitter, and facebook, especially good private discussion platforms, that would help to engage readers and members. After I led the session, I realized I should have just called it: “Online community management using facebook and twitter,” because that’s what it was mostly about. Nevertheless, I learned that people still need to know about how to use these tools for business, and more importantly, how to use them correctly.
Anyway, I went onto my favorite site to try to find the latest tools on the web: go2web20.net and tried to look for something new, but what I mostly found where twitter tools. Sigh. Oh well, I will still continue to look. But what I had learned earlier that day whilst at a discussion titled, “Engaging your Audience,” is that content is king and stories allow us to relate, thereby allowing you to engage that percentage of the population that are not contributing or are not engaged by your topics, posts or stories.
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New Drupal Site for IPSociety
Thanks to Margaret Rosas’ founder of Quiddites, Mikhail Xu and I were able to develop a functionally and visually improved site for IP Society’s founder, Patrick Reilly, an Intellectual Property Lawyer. He wanted a website that would allow him to share information in the form of documents and interviews, and an interface in which it would be easy to add content. In collaboration, we created just that.
As you can see, in the before picture, blog posts, events, the “About Us” and “Corporate Sponsorship” information was all on the front page. Web sites are not an online brochure, people aren’t going to know what to focus on when they get to your site. If it looks crowded, people will just move on. “White Space” is not only necessary in ads but also in sites. Give people some room to breathe and don’t make the font so small that it can’t be read.
The resources or library of documents page formerly required a visitor to IP Society to download a .pdf file in order to gain access to the document. No more. Now when you click on a document in the Resources page, you can browse through it using Slideshare. We uploaded all the documents and presentations to the slideshare site and set up a feed (RSS feed) so that when Patrick Reilly updates a document on slideshare, it will automatically become available to select from a customized drop down menu so that all Patrick has to do is enter the first few letters of the title of the document and is added to his blog entry or library, as opposed to him having to manually enter embed codes. See images below.
Create a blog entry and embed your social media without having to manually add the Embed Code.
View Document Using Slideshare on the site, as opposed to downloading it. This also allows you to use social media, where your document will become viral by allowing other people browsing Slideshare to find your documents and power point presentation slides.
Finally, create a favicon, so people can see most or part of your logo where the URL code is usually found!
Produce more dynamic websites through integration of third-party tools, sleeker style, and seamless integration of media for the client.
Read MoreForget the garage, just play drums at the beach!
Drummer on a Santa Cruz Beach Cliff
July 27, 2009: On a walk by the surf museum in Santa Cruz, many people took pictures of the guy who decided to play his drums on the cliff, in spite of the tall railing blocking passage onto the cliff. I decided to take this pic even though I only had my phone on me because he did something different and unexpected and that’s rated highly in my book.
What are you doing to stand out from the crowd? Are you thinking outside the box, or in this case, the garage?
Read MoreThe use of Social Media by Social Entrepreneurs
This is from a guest blog post I wrote and which can be seen at twibes.com. I’ve re-posted it here to share the links.
Recently I have been researching social entrepreneurship and wanted to highlight how social entrepreneurs use social media to leverage support for their causes.
Well, according to some research I’ve been doing, I found that the best use of social media is by making it easy for others to contribute to your cause. There are many tools out there, but you have to figure out which works best. For instance, Everywun.com and bettertheworld.com make it easy to give, which requires little effort and no money. They have all kinds of ways for users to interact or support a cause. When users post a badge on their blog, facebook page, or website, they earn credits when someone signs up after clicking on their badge. Both sites feature their top supporters who have earned the most credits. This in turn provides funds for the charities the individual supports. In addition, Bettertheworld.com takes ideas from their users on what the organization can do to improve the user’s experience. Another organization, Social Earth, who set up the twibes group for social-entrepreneurs to connect, also has the most up to date content on social entrepreneurship. Beth’s blog has great guest posts about how to use social media to promote your social entrepreneurship or non-profit organization. Even good “old-fashioned” email has evolved to implement sharing tools.
In this economy, fundraisers are too expensive; social media comes at no cost. The success of your organization largely depends on the way you interact with your donors, and what tools you make available for your contributors to promote your organization for you. The more we allow our friends to feel like they are contributing, the more they are willing to spread the message, since people want to be a part of something that is good.
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