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G ‘n’ G Women in Tech Week, Cate Sevilla – BitchBuzz.com

Friday, May 8th, 2009

Cate Sevilla

My name is Cate Sevilla, and I’m the founding editor of BitchBuzz.com, as well as being a freelance writer and professional blogger. I grew up in California and after meeting a rather handsome British Geek on Myspace, I moved over to London in the spring of 2006. After blogging a ridiculous amount about women’s issues on my personal blog, CupCate.com, I was asked to be an editor for the blog publishing company , Shiny Media.

Over the past few years I have written for a number of websites such as T3.com, Yahoo! Personals’s advice column, and have appeared in various newspapers, and TV and radio programs. After leaving Shiny Media in June 2008, I decided to launch BitchBuzz.com, as I was fed up with both reading and writing for websites that were “for women, by women”, yet seemed pretty out of touch with what a lot of women actually want.

BitchBuzz is a network for web-savvy women where we discuss everything from sex and politics, to the latest in pop culture and technology. We’re the happy medium between hardcore feminism and the fluffy, Cosmo-esque magazines that dominate the Internet today. Plus, we only write about stuff that we actually like and care about! There are enough iVillages and Handbag.com rip-offs out there – I wanted to create something that recognized that women care just as much about the latest political news and most useful iPhone applications as they do about finding unique and kitschy dinnerware.

Through my work on BitchBuzz, and experiences with feminism and the tech community in London, I’ve become incredibly passionate about getting more women involved in technology. Whether it’s through blogging, IT, social media or graphic design, we need more women in the tech! The female audience online is as massive as it is influential and I strongly believe our tech culture should reflect that. While I may not be a Ruby on Rails developer or understand exactly how the server that BitchBuzz runs on works – I still am a woman in technology.

So, my current mission is to help balance out our current tech culture, along with helping make younger women and girls aware of how many different cool jobs you can have if you work in the technology industry. I think most girls are unaware of how many tech jobs don’t just involve sitting in front of a computer screen staring at numbers and graphs all day! (Unless that’s what you want to be doing, and yes, there are plenty of those jobs, as well.)

My personal blog is CupCate.com and you can follow me over at Twitter: @cupcate. Please do check out BitchBuzz.com (and follow us at @bitchbuzz ) and if you’d be interested in working with us or contributing to the site, please do get in touch via our Contact form!

Click image to check out BitchBuzz.com

Tags: BitchBuzz, Cate Sevilla, Girls 'n' Gadgets, london, Twitter, women, women in tech, women in technology, Women who Tech
Posted in Internet, Social Media | No Comments »

G ‘n’ G Women in Tech Week – Diane Perlman, Branding Matters

Friday, May 8th, 2009

Diane Perlman www.brandingmatters.com

Closet geek and entrepreneur, Diane Perlman has spent time learning and practicing nearly every marketing discipline over her career, both agency and client-side, and the last 12 years focusing mostly on digital and working with tech and telecoms clients. Diane, now director of ‘virtual agency’ Branding Matters for the past 4 years, provides strategic consulting to direct to clients and often via agencies who retain her as a strategist and planner to work with their clients on a particular challenge, whether that be naming and branding assistance, digital planning or strategic account management.

Diane has worked both in the US and the UK with both large multinational clients such as Microsoft, Unisys, Nokia and T-Mobile on a global basis, as well as with smaller, early stage companies and start-ups. Check out one of her most recent projects: www.activinstinct.com – an end-to-end branding and ecommerce project for a large sporting goods retailer. Diane conducted the strategy, naming and branding, as well as overall project management for ActivInstinct and managed the other aspects of the project via a virtual project team of likeminded partners. She is also managing global email and search marketing campaigns on behalf of Microsoft. And, for a London branding agency, she recently participated in two naming and brand architecture projects for clients in the electronics industry. Other examples of recent projects can be found at www.brandingmatters.co.uk.

send someone a compliment today!

Diane is also the co-founder and marketing director of ililkeucoz the world’s first appreciation engine. Diane helped establish ilikeucoz along with a small team of passionate entrepreneurs at Launch48 in London where attendees were challenged to create and launch four new web app in 48 hours. ilikeucoz was one of them. ilikeucoz encourages people to spontaneously send Twitter-esque compliments to the people they like in their life. It’s all about bringing the feel-good factor back in a time when, more than ever before, people need a bit of a boost. Follow ilikeucoz on Twitter @ilikeucoz and check out the ilikeucoz blog.

Diane’s initial introduction to technology and the world of all things geeky came when she joined a start-up called Cyveillance in 1998. Prior to coming to the UK, Diane was the marketing director at Cyveillance, where she named the company and developed its early-stage branding and marketing strategy in the US and later launched the brand in the UK and Europe. After the bubble burst, Diane left Cyveillance, but stayed in the UK and continued on the technology track and joined global ad agency Grey London where she looked after the Unisys and Nokia accounts and managed Nokia’s first ever global ad campaign for its N-Gage gaming product. Then, getting back to digital, Diane joined top digital agency Wheel (now LBIcon) as a Group Account Director where she was advising retail brands like Laura Ashley, Dixons and Disney, among others, on their online advertising and marketing campaigns, as well as website design and development.

Follow Diane on Twitter!

Tags: activinstinct, branding matters, brandingmatters, diane pearlman, Girl Geek Dinners, Girls 'n' Gadgets, GnG, ilikeucoz, london, web, women, women in tech, women in technology, Women who Tech
Posted in Internet, Social Media, Technology, e-commerce | 1 Comment »

G ‘n’ G Women in Tech Week – Sarah Blow, Girl Geek Dinners/ TweetMeme

Thursday, May 7th, 2009

Ha ha… I’ve finally managed to take over Leila’s site… Well only for one blog post for now. But how on earth do you start a blog post about who you are and what you do…. geez… I have no idea… so I thought I’d just write and see what came out! So I’m Sarah Blow, Founder of the Girl Geek Dinners and Community Manager at TweetMeme. (formerly a software engineer at Cardinal Health). And I’m betting that you are trying to figure out what that lot means.

So let’s go from the top… Girl Geek Dinners… what are they… Girl Geek Dinners are technical events for females in the IT industry where they get together over food & drinks, network and hear a talk or three on a technical subject. Guys are allowed to attend so long as they are invited by a girl attending the event. (each girl has one invite to give out to a guy should they choose to do so) Why the events I hear you say… well I got tired of justifying why I was at technical conferences and informal tech gatherings. As such I decided something needed to change and I needed to find others like me… Female but geeky. There was no way my 4 years of university were going to be thrown out and replaced with stereotypical expectations. I wanted to be taken seriously as someone female in IT. And so the Girl Geek Dinners were born in 2005. today there are over 50 different groups around the world all with the same focus. To make the IT industry less stereotypical and more about the technology.

Interestingly it was due to my experience of taking Girl Geek Dinners world wide and learning how to install, create and use online media tools for creating online communitites that I ended up in the job that I am now as the Community Manager at TweetMeme. The two roles really do compliment each other well. My previous role to that was some what different and was more systems & software development and design than anything web focused. It was totally about programming, software testing, following the ISO 9001 standards and so on. I’m not sure that I could have got much further from one end of the technical spectrum to the other really if I’d tried to. Now I get to play with the latest and greatest technical tools like the Twitter API and so on. The interesting thing is I love both skills sets and no matter which set I use as a day job I’ll always end up using the other as a hobby one way or another. For example this weekend I’ll be down at the Yahoo Hackdays Event doing some coding and playing with their latest API’s just for fun.

So I guess the thing to take away from hearing from me online is, don’t always believe everything you hear about the IT industry, it’s fun to be here! Dare to give technology a try… don’t just accept stereotypes people try to pin on you if you think they are incorrect. And above all believe in yourself, work hard and dare to try to achieve your goals whatever they may be. My latest one is learning to kite surf!

Also just because you aren’t doing coding etc as your day job it doesn’t mean that you can’t do it at all. Have a play and come to the weekend events where you can learn how to do this stuff if you are interested in learning it! You never know it may just be the steps to getting your next job.

Tags: api, ggd, girl geek, Girl Geek Dinners, industry, sarah, sarah blow, sarahblow, Social Media, Technology, tweetmeme, Twitter
Posted in Social Media, Technology | No Comments »

G ‘n’ G Women in Tech Week – Cat Burton, Mind Candy

Thursday, May 7th, 2009

The Girl Geek and the Monsters

I’m sat pondering the life of a London girl geek, cup of tea in hand and admiring a lovely view of the Thames. It’s hard to believe that just a few years ago I was living in rural Lincolnshire, with big dreams of working in the games industry.

Cat Burton www.mindcandy.com

I can’t remember my first gaming experience as I grew up surrounded by games. From a young age, our household was full of glorious gaming gadgetry, from our old Spectrum, to a NES; from Gameboys to Segas. What I can remember, however, are some of the games that ultimately inspired me to break away from the traditional girly stereotypes and follow a path of geekery. Whether it was Civilization II, Theme Hospital, Mario Bros or Monkey Island, one thing was for certain – I knew I wanted to work in the games industry.

When I left sixth form at 18, I moved away to attend Nottingham Trent University where I studied a BSc in Computer Science. In my first two years on the course, I got a good overview into many different subject areas, developing a real passion for games development and artificial intelligence. The end of that second year brought with it my placement year and my first experience of life in London. For just over a year, I worked as a developer at (what was) Lehman Brothers. Whilst this didn’t give me the games dev experience I craved, it gave me a wonderful insight into global corporations and how business works. All in all, a year well spent.

Upon returning to university for my final year, I was determined to do more work in the fields of AI and games dev. That year, I worked on many wonderful projects, from creating a 3D asteroids game for the PS2, to developing an artificial neural network capable of predicting foreign exchange rates. Here’s where I should say thank you to my tutor, Dr Jonathan Tepper, for sharing his valuable experience and helping make the project a success.

And so, in summer 2007, I graduated and moved my life back to the big city, accepting a role back at Lehman Brothers. After about a year, the games dev craving became too strong and I began looking around for a new role. I didn’t just want a games dev job though; I wanted to work on a game of which I was a fan; one which I could see grow and feel proud to be a part of. After a long search, it eventually became clear that there was one game I really wanted to be part of. And so, in October 2008, I began working at Mind Candy.

At Mind Candy, I work as a developer (predominantly working with Actionscript) on the wonderful Moshi Monsters. Moshi Monsters is a world of adoptable pet monsters, an exciting cross between a virtual pet, social network and educational puzzle games site for kids. The game allows users to adopt their own pet monster, and play games online with the 2.4 million of other players across the world.

: Click to adopt your monster now!

One of the most rewarding aspects of working on Moshi Monsters is the feedback from the players. There’s no better feeling than releasing a big new element of the game, and seeing the positive reactions from the users. Their wonderful comments make the hard work worthwhile, and confirm that the games industry is definitely the right one for me.

Cat’s personal blog can be found at www.catburton.co.uk. You can also follow her on Twitter!

Tags: cat burton, gaming, Girls 'n' Gadgets, mindcandy, moshi monsters, moshimonsters, web, women, women in tech, women in technology, Women who Tech
Posted in Internet, Social Media, Technology, gaming | No Comments »

G ‘n’ G Women in Tech Week – Meaghan Fitzgerald, Spoonfed

Wednesday, May 6th, 2009

A Silicon Valley Girl Getting Spoonfed in London

Meaghan Fitzgerald www.spoonfed.co.uk

I sit staring at source code in an empty computer lab, trying to embed a flash animation of a fish into a website for my sixth grade science project. If I could go back and speak to my eleven-year old self now, the message would be clear: don’t fight it, Meg, you’re destined to be a geek.

Growing up in Palo Alto, California, now famously home to Google and Facebook, I had not encountered “women in technology” as a debate topic – it was an expectation, especially at the all-girl’s school I attended where speakers like Carly Fiorina and Melinda Gates were common. As far
as I could tell, the industry was so full of women, they’d be my main competition on my future career path – an optimistic world view brought
about by my unique upbringing.

Although I studied biology and English at university in New England, my interest in tech led me to internships back in the Valley, with PageOne PR, a tech-focused PR firm; then with IMVU , a 3D chat service. I even briefly directed my own company, DormWise, while I was at school, something which caused no end of bemusement amongst my friends as I coded, designed, wrote for and promoted my website myself.

It wasn’t until moving to London after graduating last May, however, that I really felt I could begin to call myself a woman of technology. Shortly after arriving, I joined the team at Spoonfed , the definitive guide to things to do in London, and haven’t looked back. Spoonfed is a web startup that uses innovative technology to help Londoners find events throughout the city with localised search functions, online planning features, and an upcoming range of mobile support for finding what’s on in London.

While I’m officially doing marketing for Spoonfed, one of the benefits of working with a startup is the opportunity to affect a virtually limitless range of projects and aspects of the company. My current projects with Spoonfed focus most heavily on SEO, promoting our iPhone application and building the Spoonfed online community but I am also involved in creating editorial content for the site, bug testing, reaching out to bloggers, assessing site analytics and many more day to day tasks to keep Spoonfed growing.

the definitive guide of things to do in London

With the Spoonfed team, I work at the forefront of technology in a startup that has the power to shape the industry. This was driven home when the recent release of our iPhone application, the Spoonfed Radar, made waves in online publications including TechCrunch and Stuff.TV . The Radar literally scans your location for nearby events and searches a database of over 30,000 events a month for more complete listings than any other service.

I am consistently impressed with the social and friendly nature of the tech community in London and now, armed with a guide to the best events in the city through Spoonfed and a drive to meet and share knowledge with other London women in tech, I look forward to recreating my youthful vision of a tech world full of intelligent, empowered women working on the forefront of a tech evolution.

Meaghan Fitzgerald is a 22 year old woman from Palo Alto, California working for www.spoonfed.co.uk, in London. Her personal blog can be found at http://www.thetopfloorflat.com/ .

Tags: Girls 'n' Gadgets, Internet, location, london, spoonfed, web, women, women in tech, Women who Tech
Posted in Internet, Social Media, Technology | 1 Comment »

G’n'G Women in Tech Week – Amanda Lord, Fund it Frog

Tuesday, May 5th, 2009

After a long Bank Holiday weekend, Girls ‘n’ Gadgets are back and we’re celebrating the wonderful women in tech. Over the following week, we will be bringing you profiles and tips from some of the finest UK based bloggers and startups.

Our first lovely lady is Amanda Lord who is the Managing Director at ’Fund it Frog’ :

Want to see more money going to your favourite Charity? Get Frogging!

Frog on Coins Few of us have cash to splash at the moment but this is a Frog that can squeeze a charitable donation out of the money that you have already decided to spend: on a holiday, clothes, wine, gifts or gadgets.

1000 Retailers, 3m products

Whether its Cancer, Homelessness, Children, Animals, Eco or Development that you feel is most deserving, or even a small local project you’d like to see succeed, you can send money their way just by remembering to route your shopping (through all the usual shops like Apple, Dell, Ebookers, even Tesco (although not groceries) and some great designer outlets via www.funditfrog.co.uk.

The frog is the brainchild of Amanda Lord, a self-confessed gadget-addict, who realized that the various commissions paid to internet and other middlemen on all the stuff we buy everyday could go to a better place! She hooked up with business partner Geoff Hughes to build a site that not only looked good and worked beautifully, with lots of terrific features to improve people’s everyday online shopping experience, but also used the commissions paid for their traffic to fund charitable donations to the causes each individual shopper cares most about.

So what are you waiting for? Every time you buy something NOT via the Frog, that’s money NOT going to charity– and you know the charities are hurting at the moment! We have made registering and setting up a Fund super quick and simple, and then you can get on with the shopping…. in a good cause!

Start a Fund in 15 seconds

If you’re a Facebook user, search Apps for Fund it Frog; or you can log in to the website using your Fb account :

Registering is super quick and simple

There is also a terrific Offers Page to save you money and so many other cool features we don’t have time to tell you about! Check it out – now, while you remember. Your favourite charity is needing free money!

Tags: charity, facebook, tech, web, women, women in technology
Posted in Internet, Social Media, Technology | 1 Comment »

Pingg – A new way to invite by Sarah Cooley

Thursday, March 5th, 2009

Planning a party or event in the near future? Let me introduce you to Pingg. Pingg is an evite-like service that allows you to send online invitations to your guest list. What I liked about Pingg at first glance was that in addition to beautifully designed email invites, Pingg will also send out print invitations for you. Making it ideal for those events where you might be inviting your very tech savvy friends who are social networking addicts, and your not so tech savvy friends who never check their email.

“Pingg is the result of a few of us socially-conscious, design-oriented, tech-geeks who couldn’t find an online invitation website that fit our needs aesthetically, functionally or personally. What we realized was that although it seemed easy and cost-efficient to send online invitations, the final resulting invitations felt impersonal, uninspiring, and didn’t represent us or the events we were throwing. “

Create an actual invitation, as opposed to a mere link to a webpage, by choosing from a variety of unique images that reflect your own personal taste, including our Designer Series. Or you can upload your own images for a more personal touch.
Choose to send invitations via ONE or ALL of pingg’s methods- email, print (pingg will print, stamp and mail the invitations to your selected guests), sms/text, or easily share it with your social network. By integrating online and print invitations, pingg makes it easy to reach your guests in a variety of ways, while managing all guest replies online.
Customize your event webpage by uploading photos or videos, writing longer personalized messages and attaching additional information about the event. Pingg also has advanced features for gift & charity registries, money collection and ticketing.
Manage all RSVPs, lists, guest messaging, follow-ups, reminders, last minute changes and Thank You notes efficiently and easily from one place.

Pingg makes it easy when planning an event, from the invitations to the guest list and so much more. They have a great list of features. It goes so far beyond just sending out invites, Pingg deals with guest list management, sending out reminder emails, and automatically sending out thank you notes after you party or event has ended. Pingg is more proper with the invitation etiquette then I could ever be, and that’s why I love it.

Pingg goes above and beyond just an invitaion service. You get a whole event web page to play around with, and they have some great features you can add to it.

Integrated Gift Registry – allows guests to RSVP and purchase a gift simultaneously from your event web page.
Integrated Charity Registry – allows guests to donate to a charity of your choice directly from your event web page.
Collecting Money – allows guests to send money simply and easily in advance of the event.
Ticketing – allows you to sell tickets directly through your event web page.
Photo Sharing – allows guests to submit their favorite pictures. Our functionality will combine them into one fun album for all to enjoy on your event web page.

Pingg is a fairly new service but I would keep my eye on these guys. I know that they have a lot more in store and a ton of potential. I know brides-to-be that would die for this kind of functionality if Pingg could get their pro service off the ground, I’m sure we will see some great wedding stuff coming from them.

Tags: e-cards, evite, invitations, Invitations and Announcements, pingg, postcards, Thank You
Posted in Internet, Social Media | No Comments »