Our education system is ignoring a vital segment
1306_ 11/05/12 - After hearing this, you will be scratching your head and wondering what the heck is going on in education and who establishes the STEM standards. STEM is known as Science, Technology, Engineering and Math standard in education. Next, you will realize a greater appreciation for the work of our own NCWIT. This is really important! We often talk about preparing our workforce for the jobs of the future, but our education system is ignoring a vital segment and failing to prepare our young students for the jobs that are waiting for them. We are talking to Ruthe Farmer of the National Center for Women & IT. This year Ruthe is the chairperson for the Annual Computer Science Ed Week. CSEd Week designated as the second week of December to honor Admiral Grace Murray Hopper, a visionary in the field of computer science. "We're going to be doing an event in Washington DC, on the Hill, with the STEM Education Caucus on December 12th; We're getting some national attention. We've got a goal of about 7500 pledgers (We reached 3700 last year, so we're doubling every year) to demonstrate to everyone at the policy level, that parents, families, employers, want computer science education in the schools. NCWIT is a partner in the CSEd Week, along with a number of other organizations and companies, working to get computer science education into the core curricula in the K-12 space in the U.S." Go to the CSEdWeek.org website and there are a bunch of activities for everyone to get involved in, individuals, and businesses, universities everyone along the pipeline. The goal is to demonstrate a grassroots interest in computer science education to drive demand so that at the national level policy makers will understand that computer science education is important. "Most people are unaware of the fact that the bulk of high schools do not offer anything that would be considered rigorous computer science. Many schools instead are offering word-processing, using spread sheets or using PowerPoint. Not that those are bad skills but they're not computation. They're not teaching that you should be a designer of innovation. It's like taking drivers ed - it doesn't teach you to be a mechanic. We're really trying to get computer science into... Listen for much more... CSEdWeek 2012, December 9 to 15, 2012, is a highly distributed celebration of the impact of computing and the need for computer science education. CSEdWeek is a call to action to shed light on the vital importance of computer science education for all students.
RELATED LINKS: CSEd Week || NCWIT Home || NCWIT Blog || Heroes Channel || KEYWORDS: Ruthe Farmer, CSEd Week, Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, NCWIT, Computer Science Education Week, STEM, National Center for Women & Information Technology, bytes=4701103
LISTEN TO: Ruthe Farmer, Chair, CSEdWeek; Dir. Strategic Initiative, NCWIT

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Corporations, non-profits and universities working together
Aspirations in Computing - Applications Open - October 1 - 31, 2012
1292_ 10/8/12 - The National Center for Women in Information Technology [NCWIT], is a national learning community of 300 organizations - that's corporations, non-profits and universities working together to increase women's meaningful participation in computer science and IT, and ultimately create an innovation workforce for the United States. We're talking with Ruthe Farmer, Director of Strategic Initiatives, NCWIT, about the Award for Aspirations in Computing which is open [Oct 1 thru Nov 30] to all high school girls in the United States. It is an award to recognize girls' aspirations, interests and aptitudes in technology, computing, web design - any girl who has an inkling that she might be into technology - that's who we're looking for. Super star, rock stars. We're looking for all girls that have an interest because we're a community of young women working together, to encourage and support each other in exploring this interest. The applications are open online. They apply at www.AspirationsAward.org and they have until October 31st to get their applications submitted. The winners get prizes and award events. The national winners get $500, a laptop and a trip to an awards gala that Bank of America puts on in North Carolina, that is like the Oscars - it is awesome! Ruthe tell us NCWIT is on target to recognize 1,000 girls in 55 events across the nation. That's up from 30 events last year - this is really growing. For example, last year here in Colorado, we had sponsorship from Google, ViaWest, Chase Bank, as well as the University of Colorado and the School of Mines ...Listen for much more...
RELATED LINKS: Aspirations Award || NCWIT Home || NCWIT Blog || Heroes Channel || KEYWORDS: Ruthe Farmer, NCWIT, Aspirations in Computing Award, High School Girls, Bank of America, Google, ViaWest, Chase Bank, University of Colorado, School of Mines, Technology Channel, National Center for Women & Information, bytes=5437965
LISTEN TO: Ruthe Farmer, Dir Strategic Initiatives NCWIT

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Seeing a need that wasn’t necessarily being addressed
1254_ 8/6/12 - Have you ever volunteered to buy a group present or to pay for a group trip? The stress begins when you have to go back around and collect money from family and friends? Brandy Alexander-Wimberly, CEO and Founder of Buyvite has created an online community that facilitates and simplifies this type of group purchase. Buyvite just went live in May after a year in development. Brandy said they've just closed an angel round and they are really excited about the future of social commerce and group payments in particular. It's kind of a Kickstarter or a crowd funder - but for the retailer and that's the essence of their platform. Brandy tells us she has her eyes on social commerce, responsive design and the future of mobile advertising. For Brandy, she likes to envision better ways of doing things and then trying to make the idea into a reality. Listen for more ideas about the future...
Related Links: Buyvite Group Pay || NCWIT Home || NCWIT About || NCWIT Blog || Heroes Channel || Keywords: Buyvite, NCWIT, Brandy Alexander-Wimberly, Group Purchases, Traditional Radio, TV, bytes=13576048
LISTEN TO:Brandy Alexander-Wimberly, CEO and Founder of Buyvite

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Benchmarking: Are women leading alongside men?
782_ 2/1/2010
In 1998, Marie Wilson founded The White House Project in recognition of the need to build a truly representative democracy – one where women lead alongside men in all spheres. Since its inception, The White House Project has been a leading advocate and voice on women’s leadership. An advocate of women’s issues for more than 30 years, Marie Wilson is founder and President of The White House Project, co-creator of Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work ® Day and author of Closing the Leadership Gap: Why Women Can and Must Help Run the World (Viking 2004). The National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) hosted the White House Project Benchmarking study. Marie led the eye-opening program. Lucy Sanders, the CEO for the National Center for Women and Information Technology (NCWIT) along with Larry Nelson from w3w3.com interviewed Marie after the program. The White House Project, a national, nonpartisan, not-for-profit organization, 501(c)(3), aims to advance women’s leadership in all communities and sectors, up to the U.S. presidency. By filling the leadership pipeline with a richly diverse, critical mass of women, we make American institutions, businesses and government truly representative. Through multi-platform programs, The White House Project creates a culture where America’s most valuable untapped resource—women—can succeed in all realms. To advance this mission, The White House Project strives to support women and the issues that allow women to lead in their own lives and in the world. When women leaders bring their voices, vision and leadership to the table alongside men, the debate is more robust and the policy is more inclusive and sustainable. Listen, there's much more...
Related Links: The White House Project || NCWIT Home || NCWIT Channel || NCWIT Share || Event Photos || Mastering Change || Keywords: Marie Wilson, The White House Project, Lucy Sanders, National Center for Women and Information Technology, NCWIT, > Channel: NCWIT 11286025 bytes - 2/1/10
LISTEN to Marie Wilson, President, The White House Project

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Lucy Sanders makes it her business to get women into technology! Lucy is the CEO and Founder of the National Center for Women and Tecthology. With a huge gap in our talent pool, we are facing a national crisis... and women can help save us... The Trend is Changing, statistics show that better than 50% of new entrepreneurus are female. NCWIT regularly introduces us to fabulous, successful women and technologies - Listen to her interview with Krista Marks, a Colorado Hero!...

Amazing story: Boulder to Disney
871_ 8/2/10- Lucy Sanders, Founder and CEO of the National Center for Women in Technology describes Krista Marks as, "A rare blend of technical accomplishment and social passion and entrepreneurial spirit. You cannot spend more than five seconds with Krista without getting all kinds of great information and energy and passion!" Krista is the co-founder of Kerpoof Studios which was acquired by Disney in 2008 and Krista is now the general manager of Disney Online Kerpoof Studios (and still based in Boulder). Lucy asked, "How did you get interested in technology?" Her interesting reply, "My entry into technology was not so smooth. When I went to college, I didn't even know about technology or pursuing a career in technology which for me, was electrical engineering. [But obviously there are a number of careers in technology.] For me, in high school, I gravitated to mathematics, science and problem solving, these were the areas I liked. Fortunately when I got to orientation for college, I sat next to a student who said they were going to major in electrical engineering. I didn't know what that is. "What is that?" And she said, 'I know that if you really like math and physics, it's the best major to have. I said, "Oh my god, those are my two favorite things. "So I fell into it. This is why NCWIT and the things you're doing, Lucy, is so critical, so important. I would like every student to be aware of the available opportunities when they're choosing a career. I did end up there and loved technology. In fact, from that point on I really wanted to be involved in designing technology. I spent the first eleven years designing custom electronics, and got to work around the world." In the first of many future integrations of Kerpoof technology, Disney.com has launched new features on its popular Characters portal (www.Disney.com/Characters). Now, when guests visit pages for characters such as Mickey and Friends, they will be able to create their very own customized pictures using an intuitive graphical interface. There's more...
Related Links: NCWIT Home || NCWIT Practice || NCWIT Blog || Heroes Channel || ATLAS || Kerpoof Studio || Disney.com/Create || Entrepreneurs Unplugged || Entrepreneurs Unplugged with Krista Marks, Event Photos || Keywords:Krista Marks, Kerpoof, Disney, Silicon Flatirons, ATLAS, ITP, Lucinda Sanders, NCWIT, Small Business Innovation Research, Grant, Entrepreneurs Unplugged > 3/8/10 Bytes:45382115  Chnl: Entrepreneurs LISTEN to Krista Marks, Entrepreneurs Unplugged

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The daily struggle of creating something out of nothing
1167_ 2/27/12 - Lucy Sanders, CEO for the National Center for Women and Information Technology or NCWIT along with Larry Nelson, Director of w3w3® Media Network interviewed Celia Francis, CEO of WeeWorld. WeeWorld is social network for tweens and teens, one of the top ten sites for that age group in the United States and they spend their time visualizing and playing games and expressing themselves and being creative. We really are focused on an idea of personalized entertainment with the idea of thinking about more ways that you can get people in that age group involved in design, creativity and self expression. We've moved over to the mobile world on both iOS and Android, it's called the Weenie Avatar Creator - very popular, top 100 apps. She offers a great deal of useful entrepreneurship advice. Celia says her story begins when she was a kid. Growing up as a first generation American. Her German mother complained about how all the American products were not high quality, not beautiful, and how she wished she had more long lasting, beautiful products from Germany. Celia felt sort of a nationalistic pride and that started her on this journey of wanting to create great products for consumers. She spent a lot of her time as a student thinking about design and technology - and studying product development. w3w3® Media Network is proud and honored to bring another NCWIT interview to our audience. We've long since recognized the need for education and support for our youth and particularly for young women, in math and science, engineering and technology. The women we interview are bright guiding lights for the future of our youth, generously sharing their experiences - challenges and all. They are inspiring, often humorous and motivating. This series is a real jewel and a valuable set of tools for the future of young women and everyone who has the good fortune to listen...there's much more, listen now...
Related Links: Wee World || Wired Magazine Article || NCWIT Home || NCWIT Practice || NCWIT Blog || Heroes Channel || Keywords: Celia Francis, WeeWorld, Social Network, Tweens, Teens, iOS, Android, Weenie Avatar Creator, Lucy Sanders, National Center for Women and Information Technology, NCWIT, w3w3® Media Network - bytes=22096982
LISTEN TO: Celia Francis, CEO, WeeWorld

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Teach for America or a Peace Corps for Geeks
1135_ 1/2/2012 - The National Center for Women In Technology (NCWIT) is very proud to bring the stories of incredible young women to your attention. We are talking with Jennifer Pahlka, founder of Code for America. She recently described Code for America, "It's like a Teach for America or a Peace Corps for Geeks". People in government, senior managers with projects they think could benefit from web based solutions can make an appeal to Code for America to get volunteer help to build these projects out. This is not the first thing Jennifer has done, she's a serial entrepreneur and has extensive experience in gaming and media. Jennifer says they're a new organization having just finished up their first fellowship year. They had 19 fellows work with them all year long and work with the cities doing great projects. An example of one project is the "Adopt a Fire Hydrant App", which came out of the fact that fellows go visit their cities for five weeks. Their Boston team was treated to a massive 'snowpocalypse' and they saw the city struggling to clear the streets. They never really get to digging out the fire hydrants, but the citizens were right in front of them and they could dig them out. So the 'fellows' created a little web app that allowed the citizen to clean the fire hydrant and agree to dig it out when it snows. Jennifer's advice to a budding entrepreneur: You have to really care, deeply care about the problem you're trying to solve and think it's an important problem. And care about your people. If you don't deeply care about your work others won't either and you won't be successful. Jennifer didn't feel like an entrepreneur until she came up with the idea for Code for America. She suddenly felt she could be incredibly useful to the world and she could make a difference and it was the power of the idea and the notion that no one else was going to do it that made her start this organization. Listen for more...
Related Links: Code for America || NCWIT Home || NCWIT Practice || NCWIT Blog || Heroes Channel || Keywords: Jennifer Pahlka, Code for America, National Center for Women In Technology, NCWIT, Lucinda Sanders, Geeks, Entrepreneurs, People in Government, Apps - Bytes: 16827353
LISTEN to - Jennifer Pahlka, Founder/CEO, Code for America

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Developing faster access to relevant info on the web
1143_ 1/16/12 - "For me the biggest light bulb moment was seeing someone else who I thought was as dumb as I was, do something extraordinary. That was inspiring. In my logical computer science brain I thought, there's not a lot of difference between me and him - What made him do that? That was the biggest insight for me. Fast forward six years, when I talk to young entrepreneurs they're saying... Oh I have this great idea.. I need to do this thing... I need to get this hire... I need a business plan... I need to get the technology in place... and they keep putting up these roadblocks. Self imposed road blocks. The difference today in terms of technology is that it is so easy to get started. We have all these resources, and they're cheap. You can do a mobile app in like a week. That is extraordinarily powerful for a young, very ambitious entrepreneur who has an idea!" Lucy Sanders, CEO for the National Center for Women and Information Technology or NCWIT along with Larry Nelson, Director of w3w3® Media Network are interviewing Sandy Jen, Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and Cofounder of Meebo, a consumer Internet company that organizes the web around people, and helps build out their interest graph for easy, faster access to relevant info on the web. As CTO, Jen, formerly the Vice President of Engineering, leads Meebo's entire engineering team. She is responsible for shaping the company's engineering goals and spearheading both front- and back-end development for Meebo, while coordinating the department's communications with the rest of the company. Sandy, along with friends Seth Sternberg and Elaine Wherry, started Meebo in 2005 with one goal in mind: to connect people to their friends across the Web. Sandy is also a rock climber and Ultimate Frisbee player, mentors young entrepreneurs and students in her spare time...there's much more and you'll want to share this interview with others...
Related Links: Meebo || NCWIT Home || NCWIT Practice || NCWIT Blog || Heroes Channel || Why Facebook Matters for B2B || Keywords: Meebo, Sandy Jen, National Center for Women in Technology, Lucy Sanders, NCWIT, Entrepreneurs, The Facebook Era, Facebook, Twitter, Social Media - Bytes: 23929315
LISTEN to Sandy Jen, CTO/CoFounder, Meebo and NCWIT Hero

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Talent Pipeline: Awards for Aspirations in Computing
1072_ 8/29/11 - Being the father of four daughters, Larry has a high interest in the National Center for Women in Information Technology. Ruthe Farmer, is the Director of Strategic Initiatives with NCWIT, which is a coalition of well over 250 organizations (corporations, K-12 organizations, universities) working together to increase women's participation in computing and IT. The program that Ruthe is talking about, NCWIT's 'talent pipeline program' called the Awards for Aspirations in Computing. "Which is an effort to find and recognize high school girls that are active in computing technology right now and have the greatest potential to go on and major in that field in college. Ruthe said they started the award program in 2007 with twelve girls. In 2008 they went national and today the national event serves 35 national winners and those come from the top one percent of all applicants. They get about 3000 applications from approximately 35 states, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. In 2011 NCWIT recognized 355 girls, and in the 2011-12 round they expect to recognize between 500 to 700 girls. Ruthe's long term goal is to have a thousand girls per year recognized in approximately 70 affiliates that would cover all 50 U.S. states, and then a pool of 10,000 girls." Larry asked, "Who are these young women, how do we recognize them, what would we be looking for?" Ruthe said, "They could be your daughter, niece, granddaughter, your neighbor's kid, your babysitter - it could be any girl... What we're looking for is any girl with aspirations and interest in computing. We're not looking for the rock star, top of her class, valedictorian.. We are looking for that little bit of interest and how we can foster it from here." At the national level, the prize is $500 cash, a laptop and a trip for two [the girl and a parent] to the Bank of America 'Technology Stars of the Future Gala' which is comparable to the Oscars. The NCWIT Academic Alliance is committed to 100 schools offering scholarships by this next year. The opportunities really are there, this is a beginning point for these girls. A quick note to teachers. We want all of your girls, not just your top students. Often with the word competition, teachers think I'll send someone who has a shot at winning. Really everyone has a shot because we're looking for aspirations. So ask all of them to apply." Pass this interview along to others you know would be interested...
Related Links: Aspirations Award || NCWIT Home || NCWIT Practice || NCWIT Blog || Heroes Channel || Keywords: Ruthe Farmer, NCWIT, Aspirations in Computing Award, High School Girls, Bank of America, Technology Channel, National Center for Women & Information Technology 8/29/11 Bytes: 7869652
LISTEN to Ruthe Farmer, NCWIT, Director of Strategic Initiatives

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User generated content is becoming more and more critical
1082_ 9/26/11 - Niniane has a great track record at Google and Microsoft. She started with Minted about a year ago and leads the technology team including engineering and technical operations. Lucy Sanders, CEO for the National Center for Women and Information Technology or NCWIT along with Larry Nelson, Director of w3w3® Media Network conduct another interview as part of the NCWIT Entrepreneurial Heroes series, with great women entrepreneurs. People who have started companies in all types of technology sectors and have told us fabulous stories. Today we have Niniane Wang, CTO of Minted. Minted is a startup out of San Francisco and it uses technology to crowd source graphic designs from a global community. Minted holds monthly design challenges for stationery, invitations, calendars, and other categories and all graphic designers are invited to enter. The Minted community selects the best designs in a highly competitive process; winning designers earn cash prizes, a place in the Minted collection, and commissions on all sales of their designs. It is a great site - you can go there and discover the work of great designers from all over the world. Lucy asked, "How did you get into technology? And as you look out, which ones do you see that are particularly interesting?" Niniane pointed out - I got into technology by programming in basic when she was five... Her parents had immigrated to the US so that her dad could get a PhD in math. They didn't have a lot of time or money. They bought a game counsel from Radio Shack because they couldn't afford Nintendo. It had a basic interpreter on it - it came with a book of basic programs and Niniane started copying in the programs. She said it was very visual and she would amuse herself in this way. It was fun, rewarding and instantly satisfying. Niniane loves disruptive technologies like the Kindle and says she carries hers everywhere and buys 10 times as many books now. User generated content is becoming more and more critical. First we saw user generated web sites, now there is a proliferation of people creating art. Niniane offers many insights...listen for more...
Related Links: Minted® Home || NCWIT Home || NCWIT Practice || NCWIT Blog || Heroes Channel || Niniane's Google+ - a must see! || Niniane's Blog || Keywords: Niniane Wang, Minted, National Center for Women in Technology, Lucy Sanders, NCWIT, Google, Microsoft, User Generated Content, Designers - bytes=21526019
Listen to: Niniane Wang, CTO, Minted

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Leverage and engage the millions of users of social network sites
1055_ 8/01/11 - The National Center for Women in Technology CEO, Lucy Sanders and w3w3.com Internet Talk Radio anchor, Larry Nelson are talking with Victoria Ransom, founder & CEO of Wildfire Interactive, and serial entrepreneur (3 companies all of which are operating today) and an adventuresome spirit - she once spent over a month living with a remote Amazonian tribe. Wildfire Interactive helps organizations leverage and engage the millions of users of social network sites like Facebook and Twitter. Their web applications allow companies to easily integrate branded interactive campaigns (across all types of social media networks) like sweepstakes, contests and give-aways, utilizing the viral features of the social web to create engaging campaigns. Wildfire also provides powerful analytics so you can measure the impact of these campaigns. Victoria has been an entrepreneur since her early twenties and has developed three companies. As founder & CEO of Wildfire, Victoria led the company to profitability in just one year and has built the company to tens of thousands of customers, over 140 employees, and five offices worldwide. w3w3® Media Network is proud and honored to bring another NCWIT interview to our audience. At w3w3® Media Network, we recognized the need for education and support for our youth, particularly for young women, in math and science, engineering and technology. Our partnership with Lucy Sanders and NCWIT is highly rewarding. The women we interview are bright guiding lights for the future of our youth, generously sharing their experiences - challenges and all. They are inspiring, often humorous and motivating. This series is a real jewel and a valuable set of tools for the future of young women and everyone who has the good fortune to listen.
Related Links: Wildfire App || NCWIT Home || NCWIT Practice || NCWIT Blog || Heroes Channel || Keywords: Victoria Ransom, Wildfire Interactive, National Center for Women in Technology, Lucy Sanders, NCWIT, Facebook, Twitter, Social Media, Interactive Campaigns - 8/01/11 Bytes: 18677240
LISTEN to Victoria Ransom, CEO/Founder, WildfireApp

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It is a fresh Web crawl of the worldwide web
1011_ 5/9/11 - We have another in this series of interviews with fabulous entrepreneurs. Women, who have started “IT” companies in a variety of sectors, all of whom have just fabulous stories to tell us, about being entrepreneurs. Lucy Sanders, CEO for the National Center for Women and Information Technology or NCWIT along with Larry Nelson, Director of w3w3® Media Network interviewed Gillian Muessig, cofounder and president of SEOmoz. She is an expert in search optimization, known as the 'Mom of Search Op'. SEOmoz provides the world's most popular Search Marketing applications. SEOmoz.org serves a community of 300,000 search marketers around the world. The SEOmoz blog is read by 50,000 SEOs each month. She also has a weekly radio show CEO Coach where she covers important entrepreneurial issues around funding, finance, staffing, marketing and branding and brand development. The latest and greatest, well, I guess we're taking social signals much more seriously these days. So we are the creators of LinkScape. It is a fresh Web crawl of the worldwide web. In other words we have code otherwise known as bots that run out along the web and catalog the pages just like Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and so on. LinkScape gives us a link graph of the web it's not a full search engine. Now we are taking a look at the social graph... the noise from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Yahoo Answers, Cora, just thousands of social media sites show up in the Search Engine Results Pages known as SERP. That's what's new at SEOmoz, we're looking at the social signals and incorporating them into our platform. Gillian had a very interesting take on entrepreneurs, "It is a hereditary disease, not a profession. Entrepreneurship is something you have to want and you have to want it so desperately that you are willing to walk through what I call the dip. So understanding entrepreneurship is: Have a great idea. You decide you want to bring it to the marketplace. But you must walk through this chasm of impediments to success. And, sometimes it gets very, very dark. It is not just that you need financial qualifications... there is much more! "People who say it cannot be done, are often interrupted by those who are doing it." Listen, there's much more...
Related Links: SEOmoz SEO Software Simplifed || NCWIT Home || NCWIT Practice || NCWIT Blog || Heroes Channel || Keywords: Gillian Muessig, SEOmoz, NCWIT Hero, National Center for Women and Information Technology, NCWIT, Lucy Sanders, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, 5/9/11 bytes=30121381 LISTEN TO: Gillian Muessig, SEOmoz

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The app market is really taking off right now
998_ 4/11/11 - Lucy Sanders, CEO for the National Center for Women and Information Technology or NCWIT along with Larry Nelson, Director of w3w3® Media Network interviewed Cathy Edwards, CTO and co-founder of Chomp.com, a search engine for mobile applications. Lucy loves it saying, "If you're like me, it's difficult to find all the applications that you can have on your mobile device today. Cathy created Chomp's proprietary algorithm that understands the function of each app. So you get to search for applications not just on what they're called, but what they do. For example you can search for puzzles, games, gardening, fitness, etc. It's a great app launched in January 2010 with a platform for the iPhone and just recently for the droid. Cathy said," Things are really going well. The app market is really taking off right now. If you look at the stats, the rate at which apps are growing, both in terms of the number of apps available and the rate of adoption, is very similar to the early days of the web. This is looking like something that is going to be very, very big. And of course as it gets really big people are going to need ways of finding those apps." Cathy was asked, "Why are you an entrepreneur, what about it makes you tick?" She replied, "I feel really privileged to do what I do. I love to get up in the morning and go to work. I really think very few people are in a position where they can genuinely say, I spend a lot of time working and I love every minute of it. To me being an entrepreneur is about two things. The first is about creating and building like really amazing products, the things that people use and that people love. There's this kind of very tangible feeling that goes along with being an entrepreneur of I built that. The second piece is about creating and building an amazing team of people. I really love working with people and I have the most amazing team of people at Chomp." Listen for more...
Related Links: Chomp dot com || NCWIT Home || NCWIT Practice || NCWIT Blog || Heroes Channel || Keywords: Cathy Edwards, Chomp, Apps, Search, National Center for Women and Information Technology, NCWIT, Lucy Sanders, NCWIT Heroes, iPhone, Droid - Channel:NCWIT 4/11/11 Bytes: 14072584 LISTEN to Cathy Edwards, CTO and Co-Founder, Chomp.com

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Target market leads to a big sale and much more
972_ 2/21/11 - She is an example of bootstrapping that few others can match. Lucy Sanders, CEO for the National Center for Women and Information Technology or NCWIT along with Larry Nelson, Director of w3w3® Media Network and Lee Kennedy, Founder, BolderSearch.com and NCWIT board member interviewed Alicia Morga, founder and past CEO of Consorte Media, sold in 2010 to Audience Science. Currently Alicia is the creator of GottaFeeling (iPhone App) and the founder of a new (in stealth) startup. Alicia is a remarkable young woman with great down-to-earth advice for other young women wanting to build a life in the information and technology space. She is an example of bootstrapping that few others can match. Her beginnings are humble and we encourage you to watch the 'Professional Bio' video on her blog - it's short (link below... About Alicia). Lucy Sanders wanted to know when Alicia got interested in technology. Alicia points out, "It was a circuitous route for sure." She didn't grow up wanting to be an entrepreneur, nor did anyone think she would be an entrepreneur. Looking back she realizes she had all the entrepreneurial traits that are usually necessary to become an entrepreneur, she was very curious and adventurous. Her first exposure was in high school with a basic programming language class. She built a baseball game and thought that was fun - 'you can build anything you want in this thing called a computer'. She did end up going to Stanford University which plunked her down right in the middle of Silicon Valley. She tells us she heard dribs and drabs about technology and entrepreneurship, but didn't connect the dots until she became a corporate lawyer after law school, also at Stanford University. Take the GottaFeeling App. Alicia had never created an app before, she didn't even own an iPhone or an iTouch. She decided this was something she didn't know anything about and said, "Why don't I just jump in and see what I can create." That's when she created GottaFeeling...listen now there's much more...
Related Links: About Alicia Morga || Consorte Media || Gotta Feeling iPhone App || NCWIT Home || NCWIT Practice || NCWIT Blog || Heroes Channel || Keywords: Alicia Morga, Consorte Media, Gotta Feeling iPhone App, Stanford, National Center for Women and Information Technology, NCWIT, Lucy Sanders, NCWIT Heroes, Lee Kennedy, Bolder Search, Entrepreneurs, Technology > 2/21/11 bytes=18453214
Listen to: Alicia Morga, founder, ConsorteMedia

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18 years of leadership with early stage companies
951_ 1/11/11 - Today we are interviewing Sukhinder Singh Cassidy who is a leading consumer internet and media executive with over 18 years of leadership experience at global and early stage companies including Google, Amazon, Yodlee, and News Corp. w3w3® Media Network is proud and honored to bring another NCWIT interview to our audience. We've long since recognized the need for education and support for our youth and particularly for young women, in math and science, engineering and technology. The women we interview are bright guiding lights for the future of our youth, generously sharing their experiences - challenges and all. They are inspiring, often humorous and motivating. This series is a real jewel and a valuable set of tools for the future of young women and everyone who has the good fortune to listen. From 2003 to 2009,
    Ms. Singh-Cassidy was a key executive at Google, Inc, where she grew and scaled several leading businesses, including Asia-Pacific & Latin American Operations for almost 5 years. In this role, she was responsible for all of Google’s commercial operations in both regions, and built the company’s physical presence from inception to its current scale as a multi-billion dollar business serving users, advertisers and partners across 40 domains and 103 different countries throughout APAC and Latin America. Prior to her high-tech involvement, Sukhinder did the taxes for her father, a doctor. She gives some great advice on what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur including maintaining high energy and intensity, know how to sell and be self-aware. There's much more, listen now...
Related Links: NCWIT Home || NCWIT Practice || NCWIT Blog || Heroes Channel || Keywords: Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, Google, Amazon, Yodlee, News Corp, Polyvore, National Center for Women and Information Technology, NCWIT, Lee Kennedy, Bolder Search, Entrepreneurs, Technology 1/11/11 bytes=21248888 LISTEN to Sukhinder Singh-Cassidy

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New search: Patterns and pixels of images and videos
947_ 1/4/11- Here's another interview in the 'Entrepreneurs NCWIT Heroes series. Lee Kennedy, BolderSearch and NCWIT Director along with Larry Nelson, w3w3.com are interviewing Leila Boujnane, the CEO of Idée Inc., (pronounced Eday). Idée’s goal is to make images searchable. Idée Inc. develops advanced image identification and visual search software. The technology looks at the patterns and pixels of images and videos to make each image or frame searchable by color, similarity or exact duplicate. Leila said, "Our current image index, these are the images that we've crawled from the web and indexed, is close to two billion. This is really a very exciting undertaking for us because it brought what we call image recognition based search to everyone." TinEye is a reverse image search engine. "It's like a Google image search except you use pictures instead of text." - Los Angeles Times. If you'd told Leila that she would be involved with technology a decade ago, she says she would have laughed and would have said you didn't know what you were talking about. She was in med school, in France, to become a doctor. She was curious about technology, of course, but had more of a science and mathematics mind rather than an engineering or software interest. But, Leila realized that medicine was just not for her. She stopped her studies and took a year off to figure out what she wanted. Making her way to Canada, and quite by accident, she ran into a group of people starting a software company. "They were looking for an addition to their team, I turned out to be a good fit and decided to give it a try... After that I never looked back, but it was completely accidental." ...listen, there's more...
Related Links: Idée Blog || Idée Inc. || NCWIT Home || NCWIT Practice || NCWIT Blog || Heroes Channel || Keywords: Leila Boujnane, Idée, Search, Image Identification, Visual Search Software, National Center for Women and Information Technology, NCWIT, NCWIT, Lee Kennedy, Bolder Search, Entrepreneurs, Technology 1/4/11 Chnl: NCWIT bytes=20967239
LISTEN to Leila Boujnane, CEO and co-founder, Idée, Inc.

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Following a career path of politics lead to High-tech
941_ 12/13/10- Today she is the mother of two children under four and runs two companies. Lee Kennedy, Founder, Bolder Search and board member for the National Center for Women and Information Technology or NCWIT along with Larry Nelson, Director of w3w3® Media Network spoke with Amanda Steinberg, CEO and co-founder of Soapbxx & Dailyworth. Amanda started with an overview of her two companies. Soapbxx is a website consultancy most specifically focused on online fundraising and marketing strategies for non-profit organizations." DailyWorth.com is a long time dream coming to fruition for Amanda. "DailyWorth is very simple actually; it's a free daily email that teaches women about basic finance. We currently serve 50,000 members and it is growing quite rapidly." When asked about how she got interested in Technology, Amanda talked about her mother who in 1964 was probably the only woman in her class majoring in math and computer science. While most four year olds were doing arts and crafts, Amanda's mother plunked her down in front of a computer. Later, Amanda was actually following a career path of politics. In college she got an administrative position where she graduated into doing VB scripting for databases and just fell in love with technology and realized her brain actually works like this and decided this would be her career. Larry said, "Lucy Sanders likes us to ask this question. "Why are you an entrepreneur?" "Ahh, how could I not be an entrepreneur?" Because she's able to generate business and because she does have certain leadership attributes, she has to be an entrepreneur, it's just not a choice for her. There's much more, listen now...
Related Links: DailyWorth || NCWIT Home || NCWIT Practice || NCWIT Blog || Heroes Channel || Keywords: Amanda Steinberg, DailyWorth.com, Soapbxx, National Center for Women and Information Technology, NCWIT, Lee Kennedy, Bolder Search, ACLU, Entrepreneurs, Technology - 12/13/10 Bytes: 15575983 LISTEN to Amanda Steinberg, CEO, Soapbxx and CEO DailyWorth.com

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Interactive content for today’s digital kids
917_ 10/25/10- Lucy Sanders, the CEO for the National Center for Women and Information Technology or NCWIT along with Larry Nelson, Director of w3w3® Media Network and Lee Kennedy, Founder, BolderSearch.com and NCWIT board member interviewed Asra Rasheed, CEO of RRKidz. This is part of a series of interviews that we are having with fabulous entrepreneurs. Women who have started “IT” companies in a variety of sectors, all of whom have just fabulous stories to tell us, about being entrepreneurs. RRKidz develops and publishes engaging, educational interactive content for today’s digital kids. Curated by Reading Rainbow’s, LeVar Burton, RRKidz brings learning and skill based experiences to children within a safe social environment online and on handheld devices. Asra is an industry executive and accomplished entrepreneur. She possesses extensive experience in interactive media, entertainment, video games, online and offline business strategies and operations. When Asra was asked to define the qualities necessary to be a successful entrepreneur she was very straightforward. She said, "Be committed; Be passionate; Strategize; Have a roadmap; Be driven; Be balanced; Build relationships a network." It's easy to see why she enjoys advising companies. She possesses extensive experience in interactive media, entertainment, videogames, online and offline business strategies and operations. Recently, Asra was President of Thumb Media Group; content publishing platform for mobile and tablet devices. Previously, Asra was President and COO of Gottaplay Interactive, an online videogame rental service; aka: Netflix for games. Prior to that, she was Founder and Director of Interactive Media at Koyo Graphic International where she worked on creating online and interactive experiences for companies such as Bandai Entertainment, Warner Bros., Sanyo, and others." Listen now, there's much more...
Related Links: Asra Rasheed on Twitter || NCWIT Share || NCWIT Home || NCWIT Practice || Heroes Channel || Keywords: Asra Rasheed, RRKidz, Reading Rainbow, LeVar Burton, Lucinda Sanders, National Center for Women in Technology, NCWIT, Entrepreneurs, Lee Kennedy
10/25/10 Bytes: 14346765 LISTEN to Asra Rasheed, CEO, RRKidz

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Inspired by Bill Gates, Meg Whitman, Carly Fiorina
890_ 10/18/10- Larry Nelson and Lee Kennedy, interviewed Saman Dias, an award-winning entrepreneur who recognized the value of enterprise-scale business technical training when she founded AIM Computer Training... the global company was acquired in 2004 and Saman went on to lead other successful entrepreneurial efforts in real estate and social networking. She is currently staying quite busy as an advisor to entrepreneurs at different companies, including Astia's incubator. This interview is part of NCWIT's (National Center for Women in Technology) interview series with fabulous, successful women entrepreneurs who have started IT companies. Originally from Sri Lanka, Saman studied to become a doctor and was preparing to take the entrance exam for medical college. But she had a hard time passing the entrance exam. Saman was frustrated, she felt as though her sisters would be going into college and she'd still be studying to take the entrance exam. Her uncle came to her and said, 'what about computers'? Saman said, "I had no idea what it meant, it was early in the 1980s, but I said, sign me up. And that's how I got into technology." Lee, founder of BolderSearch and NCWIT board member, asked why did she become an entrepreneur? Entrepreneurs will really relate to her reply. "Because, I feel that you can create your own destiny, it gives you the independence and the opportunity to create wealth and be your own boss, I loved that. Looking back, I feel that your contribution really can make a difference not only for yourself, but to the community, the company and from there you make a difference to the world because you are helping to create wealth and jobs and helping to create new innovation." There's much more advice for entrepreneurs as she talks about as Bill Gates, Meg Whitman, Carly Fiorina...
Related Links: Saman Dias Linkedin || Astia || NCWIT Share || NCWIT Home || NCWIT Practice || Heroes Channel || Keywords: Saman Dias, National Center for Women in Technology, NCWIT, Astia, Entrepreneurs, AIM Computer Training, Lee Kennedy, Independence 10/18/10 bytes: 9093332
Listen to: Saman Dias

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Amazing story: Boulder to Disney
871_ 8/2/10- Lucy Sanders, Founder and CEO of the National Center for Women in Technology describes Krista Marks as, "A rare blend of technical accomplishment and social passion and entrepreneurial spirit. You cannot spend more than five seconds with Krista without getting all kinds of great information and energy and passion!" Krista is the co-founder of Kerpoof Studios which was acquired by Disney in 2008 and Krista is now the general manager of Disney Online Kerpoof Studios (and still based in Boulder). Lucy asked, "How did you get interested in technology?" Her interesting reply, "My entry into technology was not so smooth. When I went to college, I didn't even know about technology or pursuing a career in technology which for me, was electrical engineering. [But obviously there are a number of careers in technology.] For me, in high school, I gravitated to mathematics, science and problem solving, these were the areas I liked. Fortunately when I got to orientation for college, I sat next to a student who said they were going to major in electrical engineering. I didn't know what that is. "What is that?" And she said, 'I know that if you really like math and physics, it's the best major to have. I said, "Oh my god, those are my two favorite things. "So I fell into it. This is why NCWIT and the things you're doing, Lucy, is so critical, so important. I would like every student to be aware of the available opportunities when they're choosing a career. I did end up there and loved technology. In fact, from that point on I really wanted to be involved in designing technology. I spent the first eleven years designing custom electronics, and got to work around the world." In the first of many future integrations of Kerpoof technology, Disney.com has launched new features on its popular Characters portal (www.Disney.com/Characters). Now, when guests visit pages for characters such as Mickey and Friends, they will be able to create their very own customized pictures using an intuitive graphical interface. There's more...
Related Links: Disney Online Kerpoof Studio || Disney || Characters Portal || NCWIT Share || NCWIT Home || NCWIT Practice || Heroes Channel || Keywords: Krista Marks, Keerpoof, Studios, Disney, Digital Mosaic, Lucy Sanders, National Center for Women in Technology, NCWIT, Disney Online 8/2/10 Chnl: NCWIT bytes: 3693508
Listen to: Krista Marks, General Manager, Disney Online Kerpoof Studios

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852_ 6/1/10 - History of a successful female entrepreneur
Does this sound like an entrepreneur: Someone who is optimistic; likes people; likes helping people; likes networking; likes to start things? Lucy Sanders, the CEO for the National Center for Women and Information Technology or NCWIT along with Larry Nelson, Director of w3w3® Media Network interviewed Margaret Burd. Margaret is a founder, President & CEO of Magpie, Inc., a software company that offers a full suite of software development and consulting services for the Smart Energy, Telecom, and Healthcare industries. Margaret also is a founder and board chair of Magpie Healthcare, Inc., a software product company that provides hospital caregivers with simple, phone-based solutions for people-to-people and team communications that save lives by measurably improving quality of care. Margaret came to technology in a rather unusual way. Her first career was teaching math and science and coaching lots of different sports in public school in Missouri, for about nine years. In 1983 she was still earning $15,000/year and was pretty bored with the teaching thing. The University of Kansas let you get into their Computer Sciences Masters program if you had a math degree. She applied, they accepted, and Margaret ended up with a Masters in Computer Science. Right out of school she got an offer from Bell Labs, ended up in Denver, and that's how Margaret got into technology. Margaret said, "It was an amazing turn of events in my life, and probably just because. You know one of those things that just happened." Margaret has some great advice for entrepreneurs ...listen for more...
Related Links: Magpie || NCWIT Home || NCWIT Practice || NCWIT Blog || Heroes Channel || Keywords: Margaret Burd, Magpie TI, National Center for Women and Information Technology, NCWIT, Entrepreneurship, Computer Sciences
6/1/10 Chnl: NCWIT bytes: 15275261 Listen to: Margaret Burd, CEO, Magpie TI

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839_ 5/10/10 - "The truth is that I love to make money"
The company started in a rent controlled apartment in 1992, and over nine years built up to a profitable, self funding business providing software solutions to customers such as MetLife, Olympus, and IBM. Lucy Sanders, the CEO for the National Center for Women and Information Technology (NCWIT) along with Larry Nelson from w3w3.com interviewed ML Mackey – CEO & Co-Founder of Beacon Interactive Systems. Ms. Mackey is remarkable because she is a woman technology CEO who has built a successful company first in the private sector, and then again in the public sector. In the crash of 2001, Beacon successfully leveraged its core expertise to focus on SBIR and other government contracts, and has since become a preferred provider to the US Navy for workflow management solutions. Ms. Mackey has earned the respect of many in both private and government circles, and is actively contributing input at legislative and policy levels on how to bring commercial sector innovation to the Department of Defense. At one time in her life she was a ballet teacher. Lucy asked, "How did you get involved in technology?" ML replied, ""I wanted to give a profound answer, but the truth is that I love to make money. I couldn't see supporting the lifestyle I wanted teaching ballet, which I love." So ML applied for an electrical engineering scholarship, because they had the most available. "Turns out, luckily for me, that I really enjoyed what I was learning about. Engineering is a fascinating profession. It's a fun and exciting place to be. So I stumbled upon the place I needed to be." Explaining why she became an entrepreneur, "My partner and I like to do things, we like to make things happen, we like create things and be around smart creative people and we want to make an impact with what we are doing. It seemed like starting a company was a great combination for all these things. Now, I think it is the adrenalin, the challenge, the opportunity, the creativity and it's the great people I get to work with at my company, it's the interesting customers we get to work with, it's never dull."
Related Links: Beacon Interactive Systems || NCWIT Home || NCWIT Channel || NCWIT Blog || Find It || Keywords: ML Mackey, Beacon Interactive Systems, Lucy Sanders, National Center for Women and Information Technology, NCWIT, Entrepreneurship > 5/10/10 Chnl: NCWIT bytes: 14471526 Listen to: ML Mackey, Beacon Interactive Systems

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828_ 4/19/10 - Cutting edge analytics for B2B and B2C industries
Her experiences are a learning history. Lucy Sanders, the CEO for the National Center for Women and Information Technology or NCWIT along with Larry Nelson, Director of w3w3® Media Network and Lee Kennedy, Founder, BolderSearch.com interviewed Candace Fleming Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Crimson Hexagon. Candace worked with Gary King to take Crimson Hexagon from a nascent research technology to a successful commercial application. She and her merry band of believers in social media have created a technology that large and small companies use to derive meaning from the online conversation. Via a software-as-a-service offering, their clients can understand daily what thousands of people are saying about their brand, their competitors, and pretty much any topic being discussed (some of which sure are doozies). She does all the crazy things a small-company CEO does, ranging from negotiating big contracts and hiring an outstanding team, to reading Tweets on snack food fetishes (anything for their clients!). Candace pointed out that many entrepreneurs and executives strive for perfection but recommends to put things 'to bed' sooner than they think...the reason being good is okay, not perfection. She explains much more in the interview. When asked what are the winning characteristics of a successful entrepreneur she replied, "Be an optimist; don't be afraid of hard work; and be direct and honest." Listen for more...
Related Links: Crimson Hexagon || NCWIT Home || NCWIT Channel || NCWIT Blog || PodCast Directory || Keywords: Candace Fleming, Crimson Hexagon, Lucy Sanders, National Center for Women and Information Technology, NCWIT, Lee Kennedy, Entrepreneurship, 4/19/10 bytes: 11867536 Chnl: NCWIT LISTEN to Candace Fleming, CEO and Co-Founder of Crimson Hexagon

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820_ 4/5/10 - Venture Capital and Board of Directors
Lucy Sanders, the CEO for the National Center for Women and Information Technology or NCWIT along with Larry Nelson, Director of w3w3® Media Network and Lee Kennedy, Founder, BolderSearch.com, spoke with Maria Cirino, CoFounder & Managing Director, .406 Ventures for the NCWIT Toolbox Series. The topic today is forming as well as learning from all kinds of boards, advisor boards, boards of directors, etc. Maria explained their unusual name, "We are a Boston based venture capital firm, focusing on early stage technology investments. We dug into .406 and it was a strong Red Sox player, Ted Williams, who batted a .406 average in 1941 and that has not been beaten since. The reason Ted was able to achieve this was, he had extraordinary vision, and he'd taken the time over the years to analyze where, within the strike zone he could hit best. We thought that measured selectivity was a great metaphor for this business. Because while we see upwards of 800 very talented entrepreneurs every year, we invest in half-a-dozen of those. Her advice for avoiding a bad situation "Do your homework upfront. Find names that might not be on that VC's reference list, and find out why. If they had a bad experience, try to understand that, sometimes it's a personality conflict, but the more homework you can do upfront the better off you'll be. Remind everybody the board's role is not to run the company. The board's role is to advise the company, the board's role is to assist the company, provide oversight to that management team and ultimately to hire and fire the CEO." Listen for more details about boards...
Related Links: .406 Ventures || NCWIT Home || NCWIT Channel || NCWIT Blog || Keywords: Maria Cirino, .406 Ventures, Lucy Sanders, National Center for Women and Information Technology, NCWIT, Entrepreneurship, Board of Directors - 4/5/10 bytes: 15823206 Chnl: NCWIT LISTEN to Maria Cirino, CoFounder & Managing Director, .406 Ventures for the NCWIT Toolbox Series

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768_ Reform legislation, reform the way people think
National Center for Women & Information Technology, NCWIT is a non-profit coalition of corporations, other non-profits and universities from all around the country who believe women's participation in technology and computer sciences needs to be increased. They work together from the K-12 through the IT workforce to run programs that increase, promote and advance women's participation in IT. Larry interviewed Jenny Slade, Communication Director of NCWIT about an important project they are working on. Jenny pointed out, "Women represent 50% of the workforce and in part because technology is inherently a creative venture. If you're not including 50% of the population in the creation of technology, then you're losing a lot of innovative ideas. Women comprise about 24% of the professional IT workforce and at universities women bring home between 12-14% of computer science and information degrees and in the K-12 space, girls comprise 17% of ACT computer science test takers and that's given that young women take more than half of ACT tests. We've launched our first fundraising campaign. We've been very successful in the past raising funding from our constituents, to perform our work. If you donate $25 to NCWIT for our work in DC, what you're doing is putting statistics and important data into the hands of policy makers...people who make decisions about whether, and how computer science is taught in our schools. One of the ways we're going to recruit more women into IT is to reform legislation, reform the way people think about computer science both in our schools and in our workplaces." More info... NOTE: Google incentive: Random Drawing for Trip to Sydney, Australia - for two! Learn More...
NOTE: Google incentive: Random Drawing for Trip to Sydney, Australia - for two! Learn More... Related Links: NCWIT Share || NCWIT Home || NCWIT Practice || NCWIT Blog || Heroes Channel || Keywords: NCWIT, Jenny Slade, Lucy Sanders, Women in IT, National Center for Women & Information Technology NCWIT Heroes, Google > Channel: NCWIT 7547432 bytes - 1/4/10 LISTEN to Jenny Slade, Communications Director, NCWIT

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764_ NCWIT Needs Your Help

NCWIT is a strong advocate in DC for innovation, for the importance of IT/ computing, and for assuring that girls and women are involved in inventing the technology of the future. "We provide research and statistics to policy makers and convene important discussions throughout the year. Although we are generously supported with National Science Foundation and corporate funding, we cannot use these dollars in DC. Hence the need for this campaign. If this cause appeals to you, please help us pass it along."

Warm regards for a very happy holiday,
Lucinda Sanders, CEO & Co-founder

NOTE: Google incentive: Random Drawing for Trip to Sydney, Australia - for two! Learn More... Related Links: NCWIT Share || NCWIT Home || NCWIT Practice || NCWIT Blog || Heroes Channel || Keywords: NCWIT, Lucy Sanders, Women in IT, National Center for Women & Information Technology NCWIT Heroes > Channels: NCWIT

806_ 3/15/10 - Be ready to own your destiny
When Gail was in high school, they didn't have personal computers, you had to go find a big computer, about the size of a refrigerator. Lucy Sanders, the CEO for the National Center for Women and Information Technology or NCWIT and Lee Kennedy, NCWIT Director, serial entrepreneur and founder of Boldersearch, along with Larry Nelson, from w3w3.com interviewed Gail Goodman the President, Chairman and CEO of Constant Contact for the NCWIT Hero Series. Gail joined Constant Contact in 1999, when there were six people, today they have 625, and has more than 300,000 customers worldwide. When asked about her personal characteristics ... she had four: 1. Tenacity, she refuses to fail! 2. She is an analytic animal. When she sees a challenge she doesn't react emotionally, she reacts analytically. Diagnose it, do a causal analysis and then fix it. 3. She is a continuous learner. I understand that I don't know what I don't know and I'm not afraid to get help from others. I'm always reading, I'm always talking to others and I'm always picking other people's brains. 4. The final piece is not natural for me but I think it is immensely important that you be open to the feedback of others. Recognize the weaknesses in yourself - then you can compliment them with the team. Gail's advice to young entrepreneurs: "Get experience; earn your stripes somewhere else. Not only will it give you experience and a guide to your own leadership and management style, I think it'll make you much more fundable." There's much more...
Related Links: Constant Contact || NCWIT Home || NCWIT Channel || PodCasting Directory || Keywords: Gail Goodman, Constant Contact, Lucy Sanders, National Center for Women and Information Technology, NCWIT, Lee Kennedy, Hero Series, Entrepreneurs >> 3/15/10 Bytes: 14435477 Channel: NCWIT LISTEN to Gail Goodman, Constant Contact

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726_ Computing Awards - Designed for High School Girls, Grades 9-12
ATTENTION: Employers, parents, teachers, grandparents, aunts & uncles; It's time for the 2009 NCWIT Aspirations in Computing Awards - Designed for girls in High School, grades 9 -12. Girls all around the country are submitting their applications - Due: November 15th, 2009! Larry talked with Ruthe Farmer, Director of Strategic Initiatives, NCWIT about this fascinating program. Ruthe said, "The awards program was designed to recognize and encourage girls who are interested and active in technology at the high school level (grades 9 through 12) and keep them in the pipeline so they can work for you one day. The program is open to any girl in the United States (so any girl with a U.S. Zip Code) is eligible." Larry asked what are the awards? "At the national level, the girls win $500 cash; a laptop which is a gift from Bank of America our National Sponsor; a trip with a parent to the gala "Technology of the Future Showcase" at Bank of America's Headquarters in Charlotte, NC; So it's a pretty big prize package. At the event they'll receive a 'Goodie bag' with a beautiful Crystal/glass Trophy for both them and their school because we really want them displayed in the trophy case right along with the football trophies, creating a tradition that girls at that school apply and win this award. Essentially the girls apply on line and they provide a name and address for their teacher and parent, who also get to view and endorse the application. The application asks questions about the kind of computing they've done..." Listen for more...
Related Links: Applications for Aspirations in Computing & Info for Parents || NCWIT Home || NCWIT Practice || NCWIT Blog || Heroes Channel || Keywords: NCWIT, Aspirations in Computing Award, Ruthe Farmer, High School Girls, Bank of America, Technology Channel: NCWIT > 6477012 bytes - 10/26/09 LISTEN

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328_ The Trend is Changing for Start-up Entrepreneurs
Statistics show that better than 50% of new entrepreneurs are female. Many business people are surprised to hear that there is a growing number (contrary to popular belief) of women getting into and making a very productive and rewarding career in Information Technology (IT). As a result, many women of varying ages and interests are taking the entrepreneurial plunge. In walks Lucy Sanders, CEO and Founder of the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT), headquartered at CU Boulder. Lucy is a Bell Fellow and points out (proves) there are many female entrepreneur success stories or as she and her team states it, they are “NCWIT Heroes”. If you have any interest in this burgeoning growth phase of Women and IT, check out the first in this series of amazing true-life stories.

720_ New technologies are emerging at a faster pace than companies can swallow
Despite the new technology flood, companies lack a strategy to on-board these disruptions. As a result, they often react, flounder, or simply ignore them. Lucy Sanders, CEO and Founder of the National Center for Women & Information Technology and NCWIT founding board member, and Lee Kennedy NCWIT board member and founder of Bolder Search along with Larry Nelson interviewed Charlene Li, founder of Altimeter Group and co-author of the business bestseller, “Groundswell: Winning In A World Transformed By Social Technologies“. She frequently consults and speaks on social and emerging technologies and publishes a blog, The Altimeter. This interview is part of the NCWIT Entrepreneurial Tool Box series was focused on the social media in the future. Charlene had a very straight forward about the topice and defined it as technology allows people to connect with each other. She started getting involved with social technologies in 1996 and has seen it evolve. Besides enabling others to connect it can have differing impacts on relationships ...enriching them as well as exploiting them. Charlene also talked about how leaders win by letting go and ROI. Listen for more...
Related Links: Altimeter Group || NCWIT Home || NCWIT Practice || NCWIT Blog || Heroes Channel || Keywords: Charlene Li, Altimeter Group, Lucinda Sanders, National Center for Women & Information Technology, NCWIT, Social Media, Lee Kennedy, Larry Nelson, Change - Channel: NCWIT - Bytes: 23798912 - 10/5/09 LISTEN

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692_ Founder and Chair of the Mozilla Foundation discusses open source software
Lucy Sanders, the CEO for the National Center for Women and Information Technology or NCWIT along with Lee Kennedy and Larry Nelson, spoke with Mitchell Baker, founder and Chair of the Mozilla Foundation. She just received the "Women of Vision Award" from the Anita Borg Institute. This is the next in the Entrepreneurial Toolbox Series - a series focused on different subjects entrepreneurs need to know about. We've talked about networking, failures, business competitions, how to get an NSF SBIR grant, and today they are discussing open source. Mitchell went onto define the parameters, "Open Source is software which is available for use under license, meaning under terms which meet certain criteria. So the software has to be available in a way that says it's free of charge; you're free to access and have the source code version of the software (that's the version that human beings can understand) - you can get the source code version free of charge, you can use that version however you want. I can take a piece of open source software, I can change it, I can modify it, I can brand it differently, I can make a new product out of it and I can use that product either myself or as the basis of a commercial business. So the ability for you to get access to the source code, to change it and the ability to do what you want with it is the core criteria for being open source." There's more...
Related Links: Mozilla Blog || NCWIT Home || NCWIT Practice || NCWIT Blog || Heroes Channel || Keywords: Mitchell Baker, Mozilla Foundation, Open Source, Lucinda Sanders, National Center for Women and Information Technology, NCWIT, Lee Kennedy, Entrepreneurial Toolbox Series > Channel: NCWIT 35998409 bytes 7/13/09 LISTEN

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668_ Entrepreneurs are people who would just be dreadful employees
When Ellen Siminoff was asked, "What is it about you that makes the entrepreneur part tick?" Ellen, who was a founding executive at Yahoo said, "When I started Yahoo, we were a small group of folks and thought we were changing the world! For me, it's about the idea and the people and the excitement of creating it." Lucy Sanders, CEO and Founder of the National Center for Women & Information Technology and NCWIT founding board member, along with Larry Nelson interviewed Ellen, CEO and president - their mission,. "Shmoop wants to make you a better lover (of literature, history, poetry and writing)." About 18 years ago, Ellen and her husband started a different company, they were distributing television programming in Eastern Europe and she fell in love with the media industry. In 1994, at the Los Angeles Times, Ellen started running their online classifieds (this was really early), and she realized technology could be used to deliver media in a really interesting way. Today she's a great fan of the Kindle. Lucy asked what's next for Shmoop? Ellen's reply, "Well, I think we've done a really great job on Lit, history and poetry. We're going to do more in Civics, and get some of the maths and sciences up there because I think it's really important to be able to read, write and do arithmetic." There's more...
Related Links: NCWIT Home || Shmoop University || NCWIT Blog || Heroes Channel || PodCast Directory || Keywords: Ellen Siminoff, Shmoop University, Lucy Sanders, Lee Kennedy, Entrepreneurs, National Center for Women & Information Technology, NCWIT Heroes 6/1/09 > Bytes: 18852679 - 6/1/09 LISTEN

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This is NCWIT week at the w3w3.com! April 27, 2009...
The National Center for Women and Information Technology, located right here in Boulder, Colorado, and Lucy Sanders, CEO and Co-founder will be celebrating their 5th anniversary. On May 11, 2009 they will hold the NCWIT Symons Award (In Memory of Jeannette Symons) honoring Anousheh Ansari. Background here. Next is the NCWIT "Global Status of Women in Technology" event which will be held May 12-14 at Google headquarters in Mountain View, California.

655_ Reaching more than 14 million women each month with blogs and more
Lucy Sanders, CEO and Co-Founder of the National Center for Women & Information Technology and NCWIT founding board member, along with Larry Nelson interviewed Elisa Camahort Page the co-founder and COO of BlogHer for the NCWIT Entrepreneurial Hero Series. BlogHer is the leading community and media network for women who blog. BlogHer reaches more than 14 million women each month via annual conferences, a Web hub, and a publishing network. She is a blogging pioneer and marketing executive with 18 years of experience in Silicon Valley. Elisa was at the vanguard of professional and business blogging. Among the seven blogs she writes are blogs with personal, professional and political focus areas. Elisa opened her own high-tech marketing consultancy, Worker Bees, after a successful career as a marketing executive in the cable broadband sector. Founded in February 2005 as a labor of love by three bloggers, BlogHer's mission is to create opportunities for women who blog to pursue exposure, education, community and economic empowerment...listen for more entrepreneurial ideas...
Related Links: BlogHer Home || NCWIT Home || NCWIT Blog || Heroes Channel || w3w3® Media Network Blog || Keywords: Elisa Camahort, BlogHer, Lucy Sanders, Blogs, Entrepreneurs, National Center for Women & Information, Silicon ValleyTechnology, NCWIT Heroes > Channel:NCWIT Bytes= 28647552 > 4.27.09 LISTEN

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656_ Everything You want to know about working with non-profits and technology
Confluence is an information technology services firm dedicated to supporting the culture, mission and budgets of the nonprofit sector, and select local government clients. Lucy Sanders, CEO and Co-founder of the National Center for Women & Information Technology and NCWIT founding board member, along with Larry Nelson interview Lisa Rau, Chief Executive Officer of Confluence for the Entrepreneurial Tool Box series. Lisa is also on the faculty of the Center for Nonprofit Advancement's Learning and Leadership Institute. She shared some great ideas about partnerships, social networking and strategic strategy assessments. Lisa said, "Non-profits are all about building community, outreach, advocacy, education and these are all things that social networking can be very instrumental in. It's better to have one or two widgets you can work with than a whole group of them. Even with a blog, the technology is the easy part. It's the organization part where someone has to work with the blog, post it and review comments in order to make it fresh and worthwhile." Listen for more...
Related Links: NCWIT Home || NCWIT Blog || Heroes Channel || Confluence Corp || Find It Archives || Keywords: Lisa Rau, Confluence Corporation, Non-profits, Lucy Sanders, Entrepreneurial Tool Box, Entrepreneurs, National Center for Women & Information Technology, NCWIT > Channel:NCWIT Bytes= 19066883 > 4.27.09 LISTEN

653_ The reinvented web is a more social, more connected place
Lucy Sanders, CEO and Founder of the National Center for Women & Information Technology and NCWIT founding board member, along with Larry Nelson interview Mena Trott, Co-Founder, President, Six Apart. Mena has been involved in the weblogging space since she began publishing to her own weblog, dollarshort.org, in early 2001. She speaks regularly at industry conferences. Mena can be found writing about weblogging and Six Apart at Mena's Corner. Mena pointed out, "At Six Apart, we provide the tools that have helped reinvent the web as a more social, more connected place full of distinct voices and lively conversations. In just a few years, millions of bloggers have dramatically changed the face of media, communications and society. We believe in the power of blogging, and that's why we make the most powerful and expressive platforms and services available: Movable Type, TypePad, Vox, Blogs.com and TypePad AntiSpam." Six Apart and its famous products Movable Type and TypePad helped pioneer the blog category and move blogging into the mainstream. Since 2001, it has enabled millions of individuals, media companies and enterprises to create blogs and form rich, interactive communities. Six Apart powers conversations among passionate people and leading organizations around the globe. Listen for more...
Related Links: NCWIT Home || NCWIT Blog || Heroes Channel || Six Apart || PodCasting Directory || Keywords: Mena Trott, Six Apart, Lucy Sanders, Movable Type, TypePad, Vox, Blogs, AntiSpam, Entrepreneurs, National Center for Women & Information Technology, NCWIT Heroes > Channel:NCWIT Bytes= 21183323 > 4.20.09 LISTEN

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633_ Realini named one of 50 Top Women in Technology by Corporate Board Member
In 2005 Carol Realini founded Obopay after traveling in Africa and recognizing that while mobile phones were ubiquitous, many people didn’t have access to even the most basic banking services. Recognizing the need and opportunity in both industrialized and developing nations, Carol designed Obopay’s business model to promote social and economic development throughout the world, by providing mobile savings, money transfer, and payments to people everywhere. In 2008, Carol was named one of the 50 Top Women in Technology by Corporate Board Member magazine. If you’ve not heard of Obopay, here’s a quick rundown; Obopay is simple, convenient, instant, secure, easy-to-use and available to everyone, working on any mobile phone with any carrier. Obopay does not run credit checks and transfers money in seconds. Obopay customers can use their existing bank accounts—at any American bank—to send and receive money via their mobile phone. Users send and receive money through mobile application, text message (SMS), mobile Web browser, secure Web site, widget or AOL Instant Messenger. Anyone can pick up money received by having it deposited directly into their existing bank account or by requesting a check, without having to sign up with Obopay. Obopay takes the time and hassle out of costly wire transfers, and lets businesses, banks and carriers connect with and deliver real value to America’s 200 million mobile consumers. Listen to Carol in her own words.
Related Links: Obopay || NCWIT Channel || Entrepreneurial Heroes 2007 || Entrepreneurial Heroes 2008 || Keywords: Carol Realini, NCWIT, Women in IT, Obopay, secure mobile money transfer, Channel:NCWIT Bytes= 23834856 > 3.16.09 LISTEN

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603_ Receiving a $100,000 Grant from the US Government for Research
Every federal program with a large R&D budget has to use a percentage of their budget to fund small businesses with these SBIR Grants. That was the topic of discussion with Krista Marks, founder of Kerpoof. Lucy Sanders, CEO and Founder of the National Center for Women & Information Technology and NCWIT founding board member, along with Larry Nelson continue with the NCWIT series the Entrepreneurial Toolbox Series. This is a new interview series designed to promote fundamental skills of entrepreneurship. The series interviews both men and women about a range of topics critical to entrepreneurial success, such as networking, how to procure funding, writing a business plan, raising money and the importance of failure. The series is sponsored by the NCWIT Entrepreneurial Alliance with support from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and Qualcomm. Krista said, " The NSF (National Science Foundation) has many different programs aimed at advancing the cause of research and science in the United States and even internationally in some cases. SBIR stands for small business innovation research, so to qualify for an SBIR Grant you have to be a small business (fewer than 500 employees), and the grant has to be used specifically for funding research. A phase one grant is $100K and this funds the first part of that research, typically a feasibility type of analysis. The SBIR Grant is not unique to the NSF. Every federal program with a large R&D budget has to use a percentage of their budget to fund small businesses with these SBIR Grants. At the time Kerpoof wanted to do research on delivering an activity, entirely in a browser that would introduce kids to basic programming constructs and to do that in a way that is as responsive as traditional software. So we submitted an SBIR proposal and received a SBIR Phase I grant for $100,000.00 to complete that research." Krista shares a number of 'must knows'.
Related Links: Kerpoof English || Kerpoof Spanish || NCWIT Channel || SBIR Information || Entrepreneurial Toolbox || Keywords: Krista Marks, Kerpoof, Lucinda Sanders, NCWIT, SBIR Grants, Larry Nelson, Entrepreneurial Toolbox
Channels:NCWIT Bytes: 15353023 - 1/12/09 LISTEN

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598_ David Cohen says, "We invest a small amount of money in about 10 companies."
Lucy Sanders, CEO and Founder of the National Center for Women & Information Technology and NCWIT founding board member, along with Larry Nelson had a great conversation with David Cohen about the learning experiences of a new entrepreneur for the new NCWIT series, The Entrepreneurial Tool Box. David is a serial entrepreneur and investor in other startups with his company aptly named, Colorado Startups. David started 3 software companies here, two worked out pretty well, one didn’t. The first was a public safety software company started in ’93, still going in Broomfield, CO with a couple hundred employees now. The 2nd was a startup around mobile social networking – "We were a little early on that one." The 3rd was around music and RSS, we sold to a Silicon Valley company two years back. The subject of the 'Tool Box' interview is 'Business Planning Competitions. David gave an overview of TechStars and at the same time shared some insights every entrepreneur should listen to. "It is mentorship driven. We invest a small amount of money in about 10 companies that come to Boulder every summer for three months. We surround them with some of the best and brightest mentors and at the end of the summer they pitch their ideas to investors and hopefully keep going. We started with my own experiences and what I wished I had known back when starting my first company. The value of TechStars is the mentorship. The reason for that is because they are surrounded by expertise, people who’ve been there and done that, made those mistakes and had those successes and can really give them some critical feedback in a very compacted time frame. Then he detailed the quaities they are looking for. BTW, applications open January 19, 2009.
Related Links: TechStars || TechStars Scedule || Colorado Startups || NCWIT Channel || NCWIT Practice || Keywords: David Cohen, TechStars, Colorado Startups, Lucy Sanders, NCWIT, Mentors, Entrepreneurial Tool Box, Blog, Investors >> Channels: NCWIT, VC, Bytes: 16188293 >

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575_ From Venture Capitalist to Entrepreneur Music Producer
(Part 1 of 2) Lucy Sanders, CEO and Founder of the National Center for Women & Information Technology and NCWIT board member, Lee Kennedy along with Larry Nelson interviewed Heidi Roizen, CEO of Skinny Songs. Heidi Roizen has achieved success as an entrepreneur, a corporate executive, a corporate director and venture capitalist. She has held positions of leadership within a number of industry organizations, and is a recognized and popular spokesperson for the technology industry and entrepreneurial community. Currently, Roizen is CEO of SkinnySongs, which she launched in January of 2008. SkinnySongs introduced the first-ever collection of radio-hit-quality music in which the lyrics are specifically designed to motivate people to reach their weight and fitness goals. This is the first in this new NCWIT series, The Entrepreneurial Tool Box. Each interview will have a particular focus this interview addresses the best way to network. Many listeners will be very surprised at some of her comments, but remember Heidi is royalty when it comes to networking...ask Bill Gates. Lucy asks her to define Networking and references a comment made by Heidi that it isn't stalking. Lee wanted to know what entrepreneurs need to do to be prepared. Larry asked, "What types of people are in your network and how do you avoid compromising them?" Heidi has some great advice about the best way to reach out to venture capitalists and what not to do. This is a great series, listen now...
Related Links: Heidi Roizen Website || SkinnySongs || USA Today || NCWIT Heroes || NCWIT Home || Keywords: Heidi Roizen, Networking, Venture Capital, National Center for Women & Information Technology, NCWIT, Lee Kennedy, Lucy Sanders - Channels: NCWIT on w3w3 & Social Entrepreneurship Bytes: 14773919 > LISTEN - 10/27/08

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581_ Networking 2.0 from a Venture Capitalist and Entrepreneur
(Part 2 of 2) "Networking is not an event driven thing. It’s not something you go out and do and then you’re done. It’s sort of a lifelong component of building your career. Frankly so many of the people in my network are my personal friends, I think it’s a lifelong component of building an interesting life", said Heidi Roizen during an interview with Lucy Sanders, CEO and Founder of the National Center for Women & Information Technology and NCWIT board member, Lee Kennedy along with Larry Nelson. The long-term strength and stability of an organization is dependent on networking. Lucy is always intersted in looking into all the aspects of a topic asked Heidi, "Do you have examples of bad networking or the right way to act?" Heidi replied, "There are a number of trade associations in any industry, and that has always been part of my (I don’t want to call it networking) but building relationships and learning more about your industry. First of all it is a way to give back to the industry and a way to do some constructive things and you build relationships outside of what your immediate needs might be, but ultimately come in very handy for you as well. And I definitely would credit my affiliations with the trade associations within my industry as things that really helped me build out my network. Pitfalls – When you’re going out to meet someone, you have to think, ‘what do I have to offer?’ I think that people have more to offer than they think they do. Every other person you meet out there is a human being and they have interests, children, and hobbies and passions and causes they support. I think you can build relationships with people by looking more deeply at the whole person." There's more great advice...
Related Links: Heidi Roizen Website || SkinnySongs || USA Today || NCWIT Heroes || NCWIT Home || Keywords: Heidi Roizen, Networking, Skinny Songs, Venture Capital, National Center for Women & Information Technology, NCWIT, Lee Kennedy, Lucy Sanders > Channels: NCWIT Bytes: 14773919 > LISTEN 11/3/08

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549_ Building a Successful Online Business for a Female Entrepreneur
Lucy Sanders, CEO and Founder of the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) and Larry turned the table on NCWIT board member, Lee Kennedy. Lucy, Larry and Lee (the 3 L's) interview successful female entrepreneurs. Lucy and Larry decided to turn the table on Lee, and put the spotlight on this CEO/Founder of TriCalyx, a consulting business focused on helping people build an online business. She has worked with Brad Feld, and had been the CIO at Webroot Software. Lee has been on a number of other startup teams and moved to Boulder from the Silicon Valley. Like so many others, she quickly saw and experienced the entrepreneurial excitement and supportive cluster. She has an interesting makeup of strengths and interests. Lee is very technically inclined and has a marketing background. Her two partners really carry the ball in in the software development and other techie areas...that's building a well-balanced team. TriCalyx does a great deal in Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Lee pointed out that 85% of the world’s online population, purchase online! And that’s up 40% over the past two years. Then for people in the 75K and higher income bracket it’s more like 90+%. She has some great advice for parents of young people that can help in supporting their children’s move into IT. In fact, you might want your children to listen to this interview also.
Related Links: Tricalyx || NCWIT Heroes || NCWIT Practice || Find It ||
Keywords: Lee Kennedy, TriCalyx, Lucy Sanders, NCWIT, Search Engine Optimization, Online Business, Entrepreneur > Bytes: 13755771 > LISTEN 9/8/08

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