Yesterday, Boris threw down the gauntlet and asked why so few women are applying their smarts in the tech industry. Why aren’t we rising to the top as web entrepreneurs, leaders and speakers? Is it true that “most women never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity?”

So, in the interests of getting all of us – men and women – thinking about why women are often less represented in the tech field, I’m taking Boris up on his offer of a right of reply, via guest post here at The Next Web.

As a longtime tech journalist and editor turned web publishing teacher and communications consultant, I’ve spent the last decade working in Australia’s male dominated tech industry. So I have experienced my share of frustration at the fact that the gender balance is so poor. In the open source tech community in Australia, women make up just 7 % of participants.  I hate the fact that so many Australian girls drop out of maths and sciences at high school, that their enrolments in tech related courses at uni are so low, and that girls are often absent from tech events for students. (more…)

men, technology, women

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Today I sent out a newsletter with a nice infographic as an illustration. I’m showing it here in full glory on the right. As you can see it lists “prerequisites 2 be my girl” based on the famous song “Kiss” by Prince.

We featured a similar one before based on Rick Astley’s ’never gonna give you up’ which was just as funny.

Or so I thought. Minutes after sending the email I got a message from one of our readers:

“Really? Really? What were you thinking with the “Prerequisites 2 Be My Girl” sidebar? You should issue a public apology.”

I had no idea what she meant so asked

Really? Why???

Her reply:

I’m surprised that you don’t understand. In the united states, sexualizing women in a business context is considered extremely inappropriate, and in certain cases legally actionable.

I’m not interested in having a lengthy conversation about this, as I’m busy and you can easily educate yourself. A quick search of amazon or google would probably yield all the material you need to become savvy in this area. Here’s a start –

Google Book Results: http://bit.ly/14nuJo

I figured she just didn’t know ‘Kiss’ from Prince so I explained it to her with a link to a videoclip of the song and  included the Rick Astley image too.

Issue solved? No such luck. Her reply: (more…)

"sexualizing women in a business context", woman, women

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I always seem to mixup Padding and Margin when designing in CSS. It looks like Exey Panteleev had a similar problem so he came up with a few photos to remind him of a some CSS elements and their properties. I don’t I will ever forget what Float:left and Z-Index do after seeing these. Now can someone also get me one of these to help me with padding and margin?

css, nudity, sexy, women

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This is a photo by French photographer JeanYves Lemoigne. He made a whole series of sexy pixelated women for the #3 issue of Amusement magazine. That particular issue deals with video games and interactive culture. See all the photos on JeanYves Lemoigne’s beautiful website.

art, pixels, sexy, sfw, women

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We have been using Lookery.com, the service Scott Rafer founded after he sold MyBlogLog to Yahoo, for almost two months now to get a little more data about you and we like what we see!

According to Lookery more than 37% of our readers are female and the majority of our visitors are between 18 and 24 years old/young.

Should this influence our blogging? Of course! It is important to know who you are writing for. So what should we change? How do you write for 18-24 women? What are 35-44 year old men interested in?

Another question: is Lookery right? Is the collected data correct? Lets find out!

[poll id="5"]

audience, female, lookery, male, men, scott rafer, stats, women

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Women are beautiful. Street photographer Garry Winogrand stated this in 1975 and he’s absolutely right. Online marketeers also agree with him and they don’t leave any chance unused to make some money out of their online presence.

Ask Glam Media, the publishing company that focuses on women and recently acquired ad agencies in the UK and Germany. But the big women marketing-related news of today is the $125 million dollar acquisition of online women’s magazine Daily Candy by Comcast.

Daily Candy – formerly owned by Pilot Group Ventures – sends its subscribers a daily email with tips, news, and info about fashion, food, travel and other glossy magazine-like topics.

Comcast was battling with Viacom to acquire DailyCandy, which allegedly makes 25 million dollars a year. Comcast has beaten the other advertising giant with 5 million dollars. Women are beautiful, especially in the world of online publishing.

acquisition, Comcast, DailyCandy, Garry Winogrand, Glam Media, publishing, Viacom, women

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Yesterday, I read in the press that Queen Elisabeth has urged Kate Middleton, Prince William’s bride to be, to get a proper job. Without having decided exactly what she wants to make a career in, so the story goes, she won’t be a viable candidate to take over the Queens position next to Prince William in the future. Her current work is obviously not a serious job according to the Queen. The Queen believes in a modern Monarchy and feels very strongly that the Royals should be leading by example.

Kate announced last September that she was giving up her job as an accessories buyer to become a photographer. She has been working and taking pictures for the website of party company Party Pieces since. That company was founded by her parents, Micheal and Carole Middleton in 1987 and is the UK’s leading online and catalogue party company.

That makes Kate the daughter of a Female Internet Hero, co-founder Carole Middleton. And when Kate takes over the company as a CEO, she will be a Female Internet Hero herself, and thus, leading by example. Just what the Queen wants. But before that, Kate may need some work experience in other internet companies.

I am sure there are many companies interested, but I would love to have her on board in one of my ventures. So the question is: Kate, how can I get in contact with you to offer you a job in the Internet Industry? To offer you the possibility to become a role model als Female Internet Hero yourself?

Or maybe you, as readers, know someone who knows her and so on? I am curious to know whether the six degrees of separation works in this respect? Anyone?

female internet heroes, job, kate middleton, queen, women

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Last week I attended two events in Amsterdam specifically aimed at women. What I took from those events as a message is interesting for men and women. At Diversity, a network event for professional women, female Internet hero Nancy McKinstry held a very clear and interesting lecture about her Wolters Kluwer, which generates 50% of its turnover of 3.4 billion from online products.

She concluded that because of macro trends affecting the information industry, all Internet and media companies need to deal with diversity. In 2025 Internet users will be diversified, mainly consisting of female information users and aging information users. And they use the information in a different way, other than all the white, geeky, male, young Silicon Valley whizkids may think! So try to get inside the brains of these women and senior citizens, try to understand the information gathering and buying habits of these groups.

A solution to the issue is to support this notion of diversity and to let those target groups jump on the band wagon of the Internet companies by letting them become part of the team. A company like Apple understands this trend; it may be the reason why it has appointed Andrea Young of Avon, the beauty power house to its board.

Another company which may have seen the start of a light in this issue is Microsoft. After my comments about the Dev Days and their lack of female speakers, I was invited to a small Women in Technology booth that was set up this year for the first time to try to meet the 2% women that visit this event. Female Internet hero Astrid Hackenberg, founder and CEO of Class-A and Jacqueline van der Holst of Avanade were invited to welcome other, younger developers, let’s assume the female CTO’s of the future. Here too, the notion of data being used differently by a diversified group led to solution of a diversified team.

But are enough internet companies taking this diversity trend into account in setting up their team?

CTO, female, heroes, trend, women

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Visibility is a major thing for start-ups, and one thing to be able to get that is to pitch your company in an event or for an award. Winning an award means media coverage, some times real money and access to investors. There are several competitions in which a start-up can submit its business. Strangely enough, there is no website which lists them all in an overview.., so I had to do some research on the web in order to come up with the following suggestions.

I want to create a complete list of awards here. So if you know of any other awards, please comment on this post so I can add it to the list.

Upcoming competitions

• Accenture Innovation Awards – Dutch companies in media, entertainment or communication that started in the last 3 years can participate.
• The Strands awards – competition for early stage international startups in the area of recommendation technologies with a very appealing price of $100.000.
• CNET Networks UK Business Technology – this competition has some 17 prestigious awards for UK business technology innovators. Final deadline to submit applications is May 31, 2008, but maybe it is enough to become the IT Community Hero of the Year.
• The Startup Awards major competition for UK start-ups in October 2008.
• Vodafone Mobile Clicks for mobile start-up companies to develop new, innovative, creative and technically viable mobile internet products and/or services. Date to be submitted June 25, 2008. Awards during Picnic in October 2008, Amsterdam. Awards of Euro 100,000.
• Google Android Competition, with total monies available of USD 10,000,000.
• Web Marketing Web Awards, in 96 categories, including best websites, to be submitted till June 15, 2008.
• Startup Awards in the UK, including the Online Startup of the Year, Young Entrepreneur of the Year and Innovative Business of the Year. Deadline entry 4 th July 2008.
• London Technology Fund Competition, for potentially high growth seed, start-up early stage technology companies, based in London. Price from 100,000 till 1M Pounds sterling. Deadline 30th June, 2008.
• DEMO GOD AWARDS and the DEMO People’s Choice awards.

Completed competitions

Make sure you set your agenda for next year awards.

• Blackberry Women in Technology awards – Female internet hero Professor Lizbeth Goodman of the SMARTlab Digital Media Institute was named the BlackBerry outstanding woman in technology, while Beatriz Alonso Martinez of Avid Technology Europe Ltd was awarded the ‘Best use of technology within the multimedia industry by a woman’.
• The First Women Awards – UK competition created to acknowledge women who are pioneers in business. Female internet hero Fru Hazlitt, former Managing director, Yahoo UK and now CEO of GCap Media, was one of the price winners in the past.
• 2008 Fast Growth Business Awards – Margeret Manning, CEO of award winning digital communications agency, Reading Room won the Female Entrepreneur of the Year Award 2008.
• Broos van Erp Price, A Dutch ICT competition with an award of euro 50.000.
• UK Internet Industry Awards
• The Webby Awards, recognizing outstanding Websites in 65+ categories!! Ans also a Webperson of the Year. The Oscars of the Internet.
• Startup Camp, arranged through Speed Geeking sessions during the Camps in SF, London, with an impressive attendee list.
• Plugg Start-up of the Year Award, with the European Focus on web 2.0
• Innovation and Technology awards for Swedish startups.

Tech conference competitions

• Crunchies Techcrunch awards
• The Next Web Awards
• Women 2.0 Business Plan competition – took place at the recent Women 2.0 Conference and Pitch Night in San Fransisco.
• Web 2.0 Expo – Keep an eye on the blog to check for awards during the Web 2.0 Expo editions in New York and Berlin.
• PICNIC Green Challenge 2008 – is your start-up doing something to stop climate change? Enroll in this competition.
• Seedcamp, who at least once a year, brings together Europe’s top young founders and a world class network of mentors in one place.

award, competition, female internet heroes, Start-ups, women

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It may be pretty good that Sharon Bigger, Wendy Braver, Pamela Fox of Google , Jennifer Kilian, Lisa Parks and Aimee Stewart have signed up with 95 male developers, technologists, CTOs, researchers, geographers, academics, business developers and entrepreneurs, for a speaker session at Where 2.0. But in a conference ‘that brings together the people, projects, and issues building the new technological foundations and creating value in the location industry’, you think that women are more interested.. Indeed, ” why women cannot read maps’ has been a bestseller for ages.

However, in order to speak at a conference, one should submit a paper or proposal. So it is one thing for women to sign up at Geekspeakr, a great website by geek Brenda Wallace, and to show that you are a great speaker or knowledgable on a certain subject. But the next thing to do is to think about a specific topic for a session, a workshop or keynote and to schedule some time to write down your proposal.

Take Developerday at the Microsoft campus end of November 2008. The organisation calls for speakers to submit topics that they would like to talk on – first-time speakers or experienced trainers are equally welcomed. Then the community will vote on-line for which sessions they would like to see happen on the day and from that the agenda will be decided. Many proposals have been already submitted. However, a women speaker has yet to act.

Generally, conference organizations provide you with guidelines on the target audience, the length of a topic and how in-depth the session should be, such as in the Gilbane conference.

Some tips for writing a good proposal for a good talk, which I read at an upcoming hosting conference:

• Keep it free of marketing
• Keep the audience in mind: are they technical, professional, and already pretty smart?
• Clearly identify the level of the talk: is it for beginners to the topic, or for gurus? What knowledge should people have when they come to the talk?
• Give it a simple and straightforward title: fancy and clever titles make it harder for people to figure out what you’re really talking about
• Limit the scope of the talk: in 45 minutes, you won’t be able to cover everything. Make sure your talk is focused and not too widely targeted.
• Explain why people will want to attend: how will the talk impact their business? will they be able to apply the principles immediately?
• Explain what you will cover in the talk in as much detail as possible

So go ahead and good luck!

conference, female speaker, proposal, women

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