The Broad Experience on This Week in Google

May 11, 2012

Yikes. I knew Jeff Jarvis was a sharer - after all, this is the guy who wrote a book called Public Parts and is famous, or notorious, for his belief that public is better than private. He may even tweet in his sleep. So I was a combination of shocked, embarrassed and pleased when I saw this plug he did for The Broad Experience on TWiG - This Week in Google - the TWIT TV show he does every week with Leo Laporte and Gina Trapani. It's ironic that I had just posted the silhouette of a naked woman on my website when they went on air and the camera focused right on it. I was making a point about a logo contest I'd started, but the way the camera lingered, an outside observer might think I was promoting a strip club (maybe that's why my site got so many hits that day?)

God knows how I'd deal with actually being on TV, if hearing myself spoken about on TV results in such a jumble of mixed feelings. It starts about 8 minutes in.  

Women in tech: links and tidbits

May 5, 2012

As promised in the latest episode of the show, here are a few links related to the topic of women in tech, and women's relationship to technology.

First, check out Adda Birnir's new venture Skillcrush, which is soon to launch.

This is a great Mother Jones piece on the so-called 'brogrammer' debate that's been a major topic of conversation in tech circles in the last couple of months. Basically, while I like to think educated Gen Y men are pretty evolved, this shows that is far from universally the case.

And here's a blog post by tech entrepreneur Dan Shapiro that backs up some of what Vivek Wadhwa told me in our interview that I couldn't fit into the podcast. Kind of a depressing read if you're female, but proof that a critical mass of women is needed in the technology industry so men get used to working alongside these strange beings and begin to see them less as sex objects, more as colleagues.