girls in tech Archives - The Grassy Road

TechCrunch, TitStare and a Tale of Two Silicon Valleys

This weeks spectacular display of bad taste by TechCrunch Disrupt has lit up the Twittersphere with more analysis of how hostile tech is for women. In case you missed it, TechCrunch Disrupt opened with not one, but two awful presentations (awful unless you are a teenage boy). An app designed so you can capture people staring at other people's breasts, TitStare, and a demonstration of on stage masturbation (male masturbation of course), with an iPhone app counting the number of times you can shake your iPhone in 10 seconds. We [...]

By Penny Herscher|2017-12-06T09:52:21-08:00September 10, 2013|Equality|0 Comments

Three Disruptive Ideas

I love being asked to talk to groups of women or girls. Especially high school girls who are a future untapped resource for technology and so if I can move just a few of them to consider tech I'm happy. Last week I had the opportunity to do just this at Wycombe Abbey in England. Wycombe is my alma mater and one of the top girls schools in England. Really smart kids (and definitely privileged, but that is not their fault). It was surreal for me to go back for [...]

By Penny Herscher|2017-12-06T16:50:06-08:00February 20, 2013|Equality|0 Comments

The rewards of taking risk – at Dreamforce 2012

I'm living in a Dreamforce whirl this week, and am reminded again and again of the importance of taking risk. As T.S. Eliot said: “Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.” On the GirlyGeek panel last night - alongside of an EVP of salesforce, the CFO of Square (such a cool company), the VP running the party for 84,000 people, a very brave CEO of a salesforce consultant firm and an EloQueen - every panel member talked about the importance [...]

By Penny Herscher|2017-12-03T02:44:33-08:00September 18, 2012|Equality|0 Comments

Why Absolutely Everyone Needs To Be Software Literate

My opinion piece published in Forbes this morning... The average American teenager spends six hours a day texting, 90 minutes a day on Facebook, and more than three hours a day watching TV on the computer – and every interface they experience and every interaction they have is being run by a software application developed by software programmers. Teens aren’t the only ones being influenced by the vision of the geeks. On average, adults spend more than 10 hours a day intentionally interfacing with software applications and even more time [...]

By Penny Herscher|2017-12-06T16:55:20-08:00August 14, 2012|Equality|0 Comments