Ever felt that the blogging world is primarily addressed to men by men?! Thanks to these sites, girls get to have their say and are making a big impression online…
Girls ‘n’ Gadgets is a Web and Tech news/review site for women, by women. Whatever your passion, mobiles or gaming consoles, Mac’s or PC’s - they have it covered! With an ever growing supply of bloggers, special features as well as regular prize draws and competitions this site promises to open your eyes as to the various roles commanded by female techies today:
Closet geek and entrepreneur, Diane Perlman has spent time learning and practicing nearly every marketing discipline over her career, 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 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.
Sarah is Founder of the Girl Geek Dinners which 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. 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 her experience of taking Girl Geek Dinners world wide and learning how to install, create and use online media tools for creating online communitites that she ended up as Community Manager at TweetMeme. The previous role was some what different and was more systems & software development and design than anything web focused. It was totally about programming and software testing. Now she gets 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… 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.”
Cat grew up surrounded by games. From an old Spectrum, to a NES; from Gameboys to Segas. Cat is convinced it was her fascination with computer games that inspired her to take 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 Lehman Brothers which gave me a wonderful insight into global corporations and how business works.
Upon returning to university for my final year, I was determined to do more work in the fields of AI and games development. 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.”
After leaving University, Cat began working at Mind Candy. She began 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. Check it out here!
Meaghan Fitzgerald, Spoonfed
Meaghan recalls trying to embed a flash animation of a fish into a website for her 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!”
“It wasn’t until moving to London after graduating 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.”
Hermione is an entrepreneur, journalist and super-networker. She set up Newspepper, an innovative broadcast production company, in the second year of a Journalism degree, and has been taking London by storm ever since. The younger sister of entrepreneur Ben Way, she quickly became a key figure on the tech and start-up scene in London, both in business (with Newspepper recording many of the business events), and socially. Currently Host of Techfluff.tv – a company which showcases some of the great events and companies coming out of the UK and European tech start-up scene.
Follow Hermione on Twitter at twitter.com/hermioneway