What it takes to be a digital woman
I was honored to be invited to speak about digital women at Microsoft’s Women Think Next conference. About two hundred women engineers and tech developers from top leading companies were invited to participate in an event which was dedicated to those rare ones.
Dina Dublon, one of two women members in the Microsoft’s Board of Directors gave an inspiring speak on her personal struggle to reach the top. She shared very important insights and tips. Yoelle Maarek, one of the world’s leading search expert, now working for Yahoo Research presented her women role models, and Orit Zuckerman presented few of her amazing interactive media projects .
I named my talk “What it takes to be a digital woman”. In the presentation I reviewed the current state of women in the business world, and focused on digital women. I used research done by Harvard Business Review to show the age breakdown where women leave technology professions and simply break out from the industry.
I have included some personal experiences, out of my entrepreneur journey in technology, developing TrendsoScope, the trends discovery platform. I felt comfortable among the women audiences to share my struggle through masculine venture capital companies while trying to get their attention to a woman presenting financial predictions and technology development (it turns out that they have a real hard time confronting women..). My presentation ends with practical tips: how women working in IT companies can use the Social Media to professionally lead and influence.
I have described that as a “work around” option. Companies’ success in Social Media relies on professional team members sharing their insights and works. I believe that women can find that stage as a source for learning, improving and leading.
Think Next Women event was part of Microsoft bigger initiative – Think Next.
Twenty promising tech inventions were presented there together with exciting projects created by Microsoft’s innovation labs. Craig Mundie (chief research and strategy of Microsoft) gave an overview of Microsoft’s involvement in all things to come. Project Natal was also presented with its motion control system (which now includes gender-facial recognition and ability to track and differentiate between two players within one frame). As we already have covered here – women are getting to be dominant game players. Moshe Lichtman – Corporate VP Microsoft who was responsible for the two meetups, has cleverly suggested that women are needed in the games industry. He said that women must take part in the development of games and contribute in identifying new environments different than the masculine ones of fighting and killing.
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April 19th, 2010 at 8:03 am
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RT @TrendsSpotting What it takes to be a digital women [link to post]
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April 26th, 2010 at 3:15 am
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What it takes to be a digital woman [link to post]
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May 2nd, 2010 at 12:45 pm
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@optimisc Zu Digital Divide & ergänzend zur Diskussion bei der #netzag: “What it takes to be a digital woman” [link to post] #bib3
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May 2nd, 2010 at 1:18 pm
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@xenzen Ah das ist aber noch ein anderes Problem als bei der #netzag diskutiert. Lass uns darüber beim #bib3 nochmal sprechen.
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May 2nd, 2010 at 2:17 pm
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@optimisc Sehr gerne! Ich sehr das Gender-Thema aber durchaus als, hm, Facette des Digital Divide – speziell im Frauenberuf Bibliothekarin!
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