The Daily Beast: Leah Culver: Is There a Gender Divide in Startups?: The situation for women in technology isn't ideal. When I show up to tech events, I worry about looking out of place. For every job I apply for and don't get, I wonder if I just didn't fit the interviewer's mental picture of the perfect candidate. When I'm invited to speak at a conference, I doubt that I'm qualified. When most of my coworkers are men, I can't help but wonder why..... we need to criticize less. Blaming other members of the community (especially men) provokes a knee-jerk defense and doesn't help solve the problem. Instead we need to congratulate more women on their accomplishments and praise those who helped them along the way...... I could keep writing about the lack of women in tech, but starting a new company sounds like a lot more fun
Wall Street Journal Blogs: Venture Capital Dispatch: Shira Ovide: Addressing The Lack Of Women Leading Tech Start-Ups: a dearth of women in top positions at emerging tech firms...... Y Combinator has had just 14 female founders among the 208 firms it has funded. ...... in start-up land, where the good idea is supposed to trump social status and everything else, the lack of women in positions of authority stands out...... some techie women are – in true start-up fashion – attacking the problem with meetups, money and social networking ...... Ms. Ziv said she tries to encourage women to integrate more forcefully into male-dominated tech events such as the New York Tech Meetup....... Mr. Wilson, who said 3% of investment pitches he fields are from women, said he has become more attentive about the challenges of women tech entrepreneurs
FoodSpotting Is The Next FourSquare
Mike Arrington Is A Sexist Pig: Say PeeeeG!
Tech, Women, Diversity
Gender in tech is one of those topics where I feel like progress is being made simply when people are willing to talk about it. You will come across defensive men, sure. You will come across women who have internalized the wrong order. And there are people who are simply not interested in the topic any more than they are interested in calculus or robotics.
What's interesting to me with this debate is that the startup world is supposed to be meritocratic and the gender ratio is not that much better in the startup world either. That seems to surprise a lot of people, but not me. Gravity is in effect in Nevada, but it is also in effect in California. That is how I feel.
Men and women could create microcosms of progressive realities. Major social changes will hopefully take place. But they will not take place on their own. I personally see a clear politics, policy angle to this.
A lot of people make the mistake of thinking coding might be a specialized skill, but politics is just common sense. Politics is also a specialized skill. (September 14 Will Birth The New Woman)
I just hope we can keep the topic current, and keep making steady progress. This is not a men versus women thing. Sexism is not good for men either.
The impending Age Of Abundance was prophecied in the scriptures thousands of years ago.
Wednesday, September 01, 2010
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
My Gmail Prayers Heard: Multiple Inboxes
Image via CrunchBasePeople kept saying, but you can already do that. You can set up filters and all. To that I said, Geocities allowed for a lot of what Blogger allows for, but you needed a Blogger to come along. Simplification gets in the crowds. Your average user wants multiple inboxes, not complex filters that you have to keep tweaking like you were some kind of a software programmer. Real Time Search: Where Google Can "Get" Social
Reimagining The Inbox The Simple Way
And now we have it. It is here. Multiple inboxes are here in Gmail. This is my idea of Google "getting" social. Before this the inbox had become scary to many people. Now the inbox is back with a vengeance. Email is the original social application.
The Official Gmail Blog: Email Overload? Try Priority Inbox
At this rate I am going to be sitting on the Google Board some day. I'd love to.
Monday, August 30, 2010
FoodSpotting Is The Next FourSquare
I am very proud of this blog post of mine: Fractals: Apple, Windows 95, Netscape, Google, Facebook, Twitter. It is one of my popular posts. It keeps getting page hits from showing up on search results.
What I missed out on was FourSquare. I erred in thinking Google Wave was the next big thing after Twitter. (Whatever Happened To Google Wave?, Craig Newmark, Dennis Crowley, Jennifer 8 Lee: Koreatown)
I was there in the hall when FourSquare presented at the NY Tech MeetUp, and I totally did not see the promise that day. The idea of checking in felt just so lame. And over time I have realized that checking in is so fundamental to the mobile web.
I was not the first person to say FourSquare is the next Twitter.
I erred again in thinking maybe Venmo is the next big thing after FourSquare. (Could 2011 Be Venmo's Year?)
I have not done a background check on this yet, and maybe someone else has said it already, but I am today saying it loud and clear, I think FoodSpotting is the next FourSquare. (Soraya Darabi)
Calling FoodSpotting the next FourSquare totally fits into my original fractals talk. The math just feels right. FoodSpotting has hinted at going into other verticals as well, and I can't wait to see what those might be.
I think I am one of the very first to state it so very explicitly, although others have said FoodSpotting is like FourSquare. There is a check in feel to how the app works.
Tweet 1
Tweet 2
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Mike Arrington Is A Sexist Pig: Say PeeeeG!
Image by Getty Images via @daylifeThe father of Quantum Mechanics Max Planck said once, people don't change their ideas, they die with them. When I think of Mike Arrington of TechCrunch and gender relations, I get reminded of that Max Planck quote. This guy will never "get" it. That's the impression I get. Like Hillary says in her autobiography, how her father was still homophobic all the way to his deathbed. Gays are just wrong. I feel sorry for Mike Arrington. This guy is missing the forest, he is missing the trees. Those who manage to cross over get to experience the richness that women bring to work and to organizations and to excellence that the sexist pigs miss out on. It is like they are color blind or something. They just can't see. It is almost biological. It is as if Mike Arrington was born with a tail and there is no surgery for it. When Mike Arrington humiliated the female CEO of Yahoo on a public stage in New York City a few months back, I literally cringed. Sexism is the only word that describes the experience. The Yahoo CEO is older, much more accomplished, she is a role model to women. There are so few women CEOs out there that you become a role model whether or not you want to, and Carol Bartz strikes me as someone who really does not want to. But what you gonna do? You are a woman. So put on the pin. You are a role model now.
Months before that Mike Arrington hounded Anu Shukla who has been a trailblazer. Some of her cutting edge company's work is equivalent to the ongoing click fraud with Google's AdWords, but that does not change the fact that Google's money minting machine is a revolutionary product. (Anu Shukla Has Found The New Frontier In Advertising)
Mike Arrington is dripping with sexism.
And I actually like the fact that the guy is the founder of the top tech blog in the world. That tells me the only reason at least half of the excellent work done out there has not been done by women is sexism. I dig it that this dude's product is so very visible. On a non sexist planet, the founder of TechCrunch would have been some Maya Arrington.
Sexism is like communism, it is like Islamofascism, it is an ideology, it is a worldview. And Mike Arrington is dripping with it.
Tech, Women, Diversity
Mike Arrington: Too Few Women In Tech? Stop Blaming The Men.
Fred Wilson: Women In Tech and Women Entrepreneurs Discussion
Finally TechCrunch "Gets" Disqus
Image via CrunchBaseI just noticed that now TechCrunch has Disqus served up in its comments sections. At first it had the in house thing. Then they had IntenseDebate, then they went back to the in-house thing, and now finally they got Disqus. This "outsourcing" is a smart move. Now I am much more likely to read more TechCrunch articles and to comment on them and to share my comments over Twitter. Mashable has always had Disqus. My blog has Disqus.
Smart move, TechCrunch. Let us all welcome the latecomer.
On Disqus And Disqussions
Content, Microcontent, Blogging, Microblogging
Real Time Search: Where Google Can "Get" Social
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