Category: Blog

Top Reads #1

Girls in Tech London - Top reads 1

photo credit: opensourceway via photopin cc

All the relevant buzz in one, easy-to-read post!

Why is the tech industry still failing women?
Hootsuite CEO dishes on the scarcity of females in tech.
“Or you can blame it on the obstacles to building a culture of entrepreneurialism among women: According to a recent Global Entrepreneurship Monitor report, more than half of women doubt their abilities to start a business, while men report having a much more robust professional network for advice and inspiration.
But it’s hard to get around a simple reality: Computer science, the backbone of any tech startup, is still a male-dominated field. Women comprise fewer than 30 percent of U.S. computer science and engineering programs at the undergraduate and graduate levels,according to the National Science Foundation”
Read more

Meet the starts of the City
The Observer brings together London’s top 23 entrepreneurs for a who’s who photoshoot.
See who made the cut

Putting HER in Hero
On Ada Lovelace day, Little Miss Geek celebrated the HER in Hero to shine a light on those women who can inspire a generation and to raise the awareness around new role models.
“How many 12-year-olds do you know who have any idea about their future?
Currently, the UK’s tech workforce is only 17% female, and over the last 10 years this has been dropping by 0.5% each year. If the UK continues at this rate, by 2043 there will be fewer than 1% women working in technology despite more women being big consumers of technology.”
Read more here

The invisible helmet
Two women and the invention that will change cycling forever. In this video they tell about their journey, watch now.

Have you too read something interesting? Share it with us in the comments below!

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What do you know about Ladies Who Code?

It was such a pleasure to chat with Angie Maguire, co-founder of Ladies Who Code – an organisation that plans monthly meetups to bring the brightest female minds together to discuss tech, share ideas and innovate.

Ladies Who Code was founded in NYC in May 2011 by Angie and Shoshi Roberts. The two ladies used their strengths to team up: Shoshi the main inspiration/developer and Angie the event-planning and organisational mind behind it. To date the network has totalled 1500 women developers!

There are three main aspects behind what Ladies Who Code is about: visibility, retention, and most importantly community. Angie said “the whole point of Ladies Who Code is that one day it won’t exist” because hopefully one day being a woman developer in tech won’t be something people think twice about.

The movement has quickly spread to the UK and today has 3 chapters this side of the pond: Manchester, Birmingham, and London. This year marks the second annual conference and the first here in Europe, held this weekend on October 26th. It’ll feature a number of amazing speakers, and men are encouraged to join as well! It’s nearly sold out, so grab your tickets now.

The end of the conference will feature the launch of the speakers programme, which is meant to train women developers to have the confidence to speak in front of others and to provide scholarships for women to attend conferences.

Luckily if you can’t make it out this year, the conference talks will be hosted on the Ladies Who Code Youtube channel. Follow them on Twitter at @ladieswhocode for updates on that.

This movement is looking to spread, so consider if you’d want to lead a Ladies Who Code meetup in your city!

Enter the 2013 Power Part Time list

The Timewise Foundation, a social business that helps people to find the flexibility they need in their careers, has launched its 2013 search to find 50 of the UK’s most senior level part time workers, with the support of EY.

Founder Karen Mattison, MBE says “Thousands of people in the UK want work with flexible or part time hours, to fit with their lives.  They need to know that there are brilliant businesses out there, where flexibility is no inhibitor to success.  As such, we are calling upon those pioneering companies that have already enabled key talent to progress their careers on a flexible basis, to open up and tell us about it, by nominating their most senior part time workers for the 2013 Power Part Time list.”

Karen will sit on a judging panel that includes Steve Varley, UK managing partner of EY, Katie Bickerstaffe, the CEO of Dixons Retail plc, Andy Saunders, the Deputy Manager of Management Today magazine and Lynn Rattigan, the UK Deputy Chief Operating Officer of EY.

Nominations are entirely free to make, require just a few hundred words and can be made anonymously.  Timewise also welcomes individuals who want to nominate themselves. Please call Jo on 0207 633 4553 for more information or enter below:

You can make your nomination here.

Nominations close on the 23 September

Read more about the Power Part Time list initiative

Join the Girls in Tech UK team !

It’s been over a year since we launched Girls in Tech in the UK and a lot has happened in the last year.

We kicked off our launch with a full-day event at Google Campus, with over 100 attendees – and went on to reveal our GIT EURO 100 list that same day. The list was featured on tons of blogs, including both The Next Web and TechCrunch, helping to further recognise what exceptional female talent we have in the European tech ecosystem.

After our launch, we went on to team up with some of the UK’s top startup events and organisations, to help make these events more gender-balanced. We held our first Women’s Startup Weekend, held breakfasts with General Assembly and have helped integrate top women into other events and conferences throughout the UK.

Now, we want to take things to the next level. We have more incoming requests for events and collaboration than we can handle. We also want to develop our content and make sure we’re leveraging the digital space as well. Therefore, we’re currently seeking talented and passionate people to join our team and our cause – men included.

If you’re interested in joining Girls in Tech UK in any capacity, please fill-out this form by Friday, September 6, 2013.

Call for nominations for the top 100 Girls in Tech in the UK

Who deserves your vote?

Last year we announced the top 100 women in technology in Europe. This year we’re looking even closer to home to name the top 100 women right here in the UK. The brief? To find, name and celebrate the best female innovators and leaders in technology market.

She could be a start up CEO, a journalist, an investor or someone who’s just beginning to make waves. We want the mavericks, the leaders, the connectors and the industrious.

Calling all those outside the M4! We know it’s not just London that has the talent. There are amazing women across the country so send in your suggestions. We are actively looking for nominations from Edinburgh, Cardiff, Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds and across the UK.

MAKE YOUR NOMINATION HERE FOR THE 2013 GIRLS IN TECH UK 100

Nominations will be open until June 30, 2013. The FINAL list will be announced in July.

Your nomination will also go towards the Girls in Tech Top 100 Europe list which will be open for nominations shortly.

Good luck!

The Girls in Tech UK Team

Pub Summit hits Cambridge and you’re invited

The guys at Web Summit are hosting their next Pub Summit in Cambridge tomorrow and you’re invited!

dwslogo

The Pub Summits are a great opportunity to meet startups, investors, media and advisors and make those vital connections in your hometown.

The Cambridge Pub Summit is co-hosted by Springboard and ideaSpace and will take place on Tuesday 26th of March 2013 from 8pm at The Fountain, 2 Regent Street, Cambridge, CB2 1DB

You’ll be able to invite some friends or colleagues to join you so you won’t be alone! You can RSVP here.

Girls in Tech & General Assembly Breakfast – Round 2

General Assembly LogoAs many of you know, last month we held a breakfast event with General Assembly London featuring some fabulous speakers. We knew the event would be good but to our surprise, the event was an even bigger success than we had imagined!

With a completely full house that left many standing and a waiting list of attendees, we decided that maybe we should give it another go 🙂 So here is your official invitation to the Girls in Tech London and General Assembly Breakfast – Round 2! We encourage you to sign-up ASAP because if this event is anything like the last one, we’ll sell out pretty quickly.

Please join us on March 28th from 9:30-11am at General Assembly London for a breakfast event focused entirely on COMMUNITY! We’ll be featuring some impressive speakers to discuss how they built and leveraged their communities – both in the UK and abroad, online and offline – for their respective businesses. Speakers for this edition include:

  • Reshma Sohoni, Seedcamp
  • Courtney Boyd Meyers, General Assembly London
  • Megan Zoback, Uber

Please be sure to sign-up here and we look forward to seeing you there! Oh yes, not a single man showed up to our last event. Let’s hope we change that this time, BOYS (VERY) ALLOWED 🙂

Girls in Tech London…this is just the beginning!

First of all, on behalf of the Girls in Tech London team, I’d like to thank everyone who turned up and helped to make our launch event on Friday such a success.

Photo: TechCrunch

We had some fabulous speakers and moderators, who shared their thoughts on everything from startup funding to security to how to network effectively at conferences. And of course, none of this would have been possible without our incredible sponsors and partners, including Google, Criteo, Eventbrite, London First and The Next Women.

Oh. And we’ll be posting more pictures shortly. 🙂

The 100 top women in tech in Europe.

For anyone who missed it, we also released our GIT EURO 100 list featuring some of the top women in tech in Europe. We received over 500 nominations from across Europe and would have loved to include everyone on the list. Clearly 100 just isn’t enough and we look forward to including more incredible women next year.

 

You can see this year’s selection, which was featured in TechCrunch, The Next Web and The Next Women – as well as publications from Israel (here and here), Italy, Greece, Russia and Turkey (here, here and here). If you’ve been selected and no publication from your country has published anything yet, be sure to let us know.

Some people have questioned why such a list is necessary. If you’re one of those people wondering why we even bother, be sure to check out Natasha Saxberg’s thoughts on why this list matters!

So…what’s next?

Now that our big launch event is over, you may be wondering what’s next! Well, we’ll be hosting regular events – evening panels/speakers and cocktails! – with more incredible women speakers.

If you’re interested in receiving information on our upcoming events, be sure to get on our mailing list. And if you want to get involved in organising, speaking or sponsoring future events with us, be sure to get in touch!

2012 GIT EURO 100: the top 100 women in tech in Europe

Yes, that’s right. We are pleased to be able to announce the top 100 women in tech in Europe.

100 women. 19 countries.

We’ve had literally hundreds of nominations from across Europe and we’ve nailed it town to the following women, which represent 19 different countries (including the UK, Ireland, Spain, France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Turkey, Greece and Israel.

THE LIST.

The top 100 are not ranked in any particular order. They’ve been selected because of their leadership and excellence in innovation and technology.

Veerle Pieters, Duoh !

Natasha Friis-Saxberg, Gignal

Tine Thygesen, Everplaces

Caitlin Winner, Amen

Claudia Helming, DaWanda

Verena Delius, Young Internet

Julana Chondrasch, Fashionism

Ann Marisa Freese, Pure Equity

Lydia Benko, Corporate Finance Partners

Paula Marttila, Startup guru and mentor

Verena Delius, Goodbeans/Panfu

Constanze Buchheim, i-Potentials

Stephanie Kaiser, Wooga

Catherine Barba, Cashstore.fr

Celine Lazorthes, Leetchi

Anne Sophie Pastel, Aufeminin.com

Marie Ekeland, Elaia Partners

Claire Houry, Ventech

Robin Chase, Zipcar/BuzzCar

Amelie Faure, entrepreuer and startup mentor

Lara Rouyes, Dealissime

Tiina Zilliacus, Gajarti Studios

Ela Medej, Applicake/FutureSimple/Credictive

Agata Mazur, Applicake/FutureSimple

Ola Sitarska, MyGuidie

Liz Fleming, Venture Lab

Raquel Iglesias, Totfan

Sandra Mesonero, Uniccos

Crsitina Galan, BitCarrier

Sylvia Diaz-Montenegro, Leelo

Barbara Labate, Risparmiosuper

Diana Saraceni, 360 Capital Partners

Juliette Bellavita, tipsandtrip.com

Viktorija Trimbel, Quantum Capital

Monika Garbaciauskaite, Delfi

Irina Anghel, South East European Private Equity and Venture Capital

Demet Mutlu, Trendyol

Kristin Skogen Lund, Telenor

Charlotta Falvin, TAT

Sara Ohlsson, HinnerDu

Elaine Coughlan, Atlantic Bridge

Julie Sinnamon, Enterprise Ireland

Helen Ryan, Creganna Tactx Medical

Marina Kolesnik, Oktogo

Elena Masolova, Pixonic

Alisa Chumachenko, Game Insight

Linda Summers, Skype

Moran Bar, VentureGeeks

Helena Chari, TSN ICAP

Baiba Kaskina, CERT/SigmaNet

Marina Tognetti, Myngle

Christine Karman, Stratix

Colette Ballou, Ballou PR

Eileen Burbidge, Passion Capital

Jessica Powell, Badoo

Joanna Shields, Facebook

Judith Clegg, Classhouse

Kathryn Parsons, Decoded

Nathalie Massenet, Net-a-porter

Rachel Bremer, Twitter

Reshma Sohoni, Seedcamp

Sherry Coutu, entrepreneur and investor

Wendy Tan White, Moonfruit

Bindi Karia, Microsoft

Clare Reddington, iShed

Deborah Rippol, Startup Weekend

Elizabeth Varley, TechHub

Jude Ower, Playmob

Martha Lane Fox, Lastminute

Sonali De Rycker, Accel Partners

Simone Brummelhuis, Astia/TheNextWomen

Nathalie Gaveau, Shopcade

Georgina Atwell, Apple

Tracy Doree, Llustre

Sabine Fillias, Chasson Finance

Jennifer Hicks, Forbes

Olivia Solon, Wired

Jamillah Knowles, The Next Web

Sarah McVittie, Dressipi

Ingrid Lunden, TechCrunch

Sofia Barattieri, Motilo

Rebecca Barr, LivingSocial

Erin Noordeloos, NBC Universal

Kresse Wesling, Elvis & Kresse

Sophie Cornish, Notonthehighstreet

Avid Larizadeh, Boticca

Orit Hashay, Brayola

Gali Ross, Razoss

Amit Knaani, ooVoo

Mel Exon, BHH Labs

On behalf of Girls in Tech, we’d like to congratulate everyone on the list and thank them for their amazing contributions to tech and innovation.

A huge thank you to our partner judges who helps us make the final list: Max Niederhofer (Accel Partners), Alex Farcet (Startupbootcamp), Patrick De Zeeuw (Startupbootcamp), Audrey Soussan (Ventech), Christian Thaler-Wolski (Wellington Partners), Paul Papadimitriou (Constellation Research), Marco Magnocavalo (Principia), Martin Kelly (IBM), Carl Sibersky (Poprigo), Cristobal Alonso (Bite Group), Oana Calugar (Neogen), Thibaud Elzière (Fotolia), Ciara Byrne (VentureBeat).