Had an interesting time at She’s Geeky over the weekend – the feeling that I’m still ‘computing’ and processing all I heard and learned is a good sign for me of a great event. It will be interesting to see how the community around the conference develops and how technology aids or doesn’t aid in fostering that community – any community, really. There are clearly some great lessons to learn from this event and take aways worth exploring.
While we have the established template of community related conferences (see BlogHer’s yearly conference), there’s clearly a place for smaller, more intimate knowledge sharing type events especially if they’re run in an Open Space or unconference model. As much as an event can get into Self Promo Hell (see: most Meetups), smaller events that are more about connecting people to learn rather than simply to network seem to be far more of a successful lynch pin for sustaining a community. As I said to a fellow attendee, once you go Uncon you can’t go back.
To wit, here are some of the highlights that I remember – in no particular order:
- The attendees. The women who did stuff and continued to do stuff in a variety of disciplines and areas of their lives, both personal and professional. Seeing Dee demo her augmented reality app AR app that showcases public art in SF was fanastic – can’t wait to see her work with the art community/get a grant from the city/have SFMOMA give her a pile of money for what she’s doing. Having women connect with one another to share resources, ideas, contacts and how best to help one another was fun to watch. Additionally, the ability to have cross pollination of different affinity groups is a huge benefit. I didn’t attend much of the more tech topics per se because I went to other sessions, but knowing there was someone in the room leading a session on more dev related stuff was great. Hopefully the more biotech ladies can work on the whole ‘cloning ourselves to attend multiple sessions at the same time’ thing. 😉
- The mothers who brought their daughters to the event. I loved how they participated, and when the girls ‘pitched’ their topics in front of the entire group (which the speakers do), everyone hushed to listen to them, and applauded them. Creating a culture of mutual support for fellow girl geeks can happen at any age, but seeing something that helps young women before they start out in the work world is beautiful and much needed if we want to increase the ranks of woman who see tech as an option.
- The sheer variety of topics. from tech, to issues concerning the ecosystem around tech (how we deal with it, how to work with it more effectively), to the human and everything in between. Networking, WordPress, CMSes, how to dress for success, improve, Twitter, sex, wine. Mind boggling and inspiring to see such a variety of topics, how they’re presented in a variety of ways, and how we all grooved in real time as only great conversations that meander do.
- The people who lead and shared. Keeping on the ‘people and what they talked about’ angle, I was also heartened to see a lot of the presenters go from the self effacing, “well, I don’t really know about this and I’m not an expert…” view that can happen with women, to leading the conversation and imparting their knowledge as well as anyone else in the room. The dramatic change that happened from self doubt to thriving was fantastic to watch – a bit like the time lapsed photography that shows you a flower unblooming before your eyes. It’s good to see others have those pangs of self doubt at the beginning; by being in a safe space, everyone had a great time learning and sharing – and even leading – which helped erase the self doubt completely. This was true for me – often introverted and shy, who ended up proposing and ‘leading’ a session on Branding. The highlight for me? The group helping two other women in the session with their queries about branding and turning the session into more of a workshop than a lecture from a podium. I felt a bit of the high that a teacher must feel watching a student have the eureka moment – electrifying, and enough to make you want to go through that experience again. The trick for outreach towards young women interested in tech is to get them over that initial hurdle of fear and self doubt – and to just DO what you want without a fear of failure.
- The conversations – including a great dinner sponsored by the great folks at Emma Email Marketing). Thee hallway conversations about everything under the sun during the entire event and afterwards were incredibly rewarding The fact that more women are following up already with one another on Twitter than many other more tech centric events I’ve gone to. A room where almost everyone had a blog, Twitter, GitHub account or app and actively used them was a delight to experience, as people who are familiar with the tools and who take to them without hesitation help shape those tools through their usage.
- The practicalities – a great venue (Bohemian Loft – drool! And a teepee in it…double drool), great organization (Kaliya and team delivered it all as usual), and great food and espresso folks, which was an unexpected good thing. Another hugely valuable aspect: knowing that there was an extensive notetaking system in place, and seeing a wall of notes literally a few hours after the sessions made the event priceless in and of itself. One is definitely able to be present in the moment if that moment is being documented.
I hope that this community continues online and offline to connect and support one another – something I hope to tackle in another blog post because the topics deeply interest me on so many levels. To me, the idea of waiting a year for another event like this is frustrating, but the promise that more and more women geeks will hear about the event and attend it next year makes the anticipation a little easier to stand. There’s nothing more I’d love than to see the number of women in tech grow, and events like this are the garden that fertilize the dreams that make that plant a reality – and create more roots that grow and spread.
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