Tech It Out Needs Your Input

Women in Cable Telecommunications (WICT) is embarking on a critical research project to measure the perceptions of career opportunities for women in technology, and to collect insights on women’s experiences, motivators, and career preferences in technology and potentially the cable industry.

If you are a woman working in a technical field and are interested in participating in a short telephone interview, please follow this link to enter your confidental contact information. A researcher will contact you shortly to conduct the interview. Please feel free to share this request with your female friends and colleagues working in technical fields.

The findings of our study will help to inform WICT of the most effective way for industries to promote careers in technology and help us better understand how the cable industry might be more appealing to women working in technology.

WICT is the oldest and largest organization serving women professionals in cable and telecommunications. WICT creates bold, self-empowered leaders through advocacy and leadership training.

WICT Tech It Out promotes cable technology opportunities to women who are already employed in the cable industry, but are not fully aware of the options available to them. Additionally, the program showcases the cable technology industry to women in other professions (i.e. engineering or IT) who have the necessary skills sets but not the knowledge of cable as a career path option.

Benita Fitzgerald Mosley is President & CEO of WICT.

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Game created in 2007 camp

Game Design Summer Camp for Rising 9th and 10th Graders

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courtesy BusinessWeek

Best Young Entrepreneurs of Tech

BusinessWeek has a special report out now on the Best Young Entrepreneurs of Tech. The report includes several features that look at groups of young technology innovators: Twentysomething Entrepreneurs, Tech's Next Gen: the Best and Brightest, Under-30, Cutting Edge, and Academia's Brightest Stars.

Guess what?  Of the more than 45 young people profiled in this report, only three are women.  The rest are men, or teams of men, and only a few of these are men of color.

The three women featured certainly deserve their recognition: Sandy Jen and Elaine Wherry are co-founders of the web-based, instant-messaging site, meebo (NCWIT interviewed Elaine for our Entrepreneurial Heroes series); and Christina Jones is a Harvard MBA grad and former software entrepreneur whose new company provides innovative fertility options for freezing eggs.

Interestingly, the article on under-30 entrepreneurs asked them what advice they would give to young, would-be entrepreneurs.  Here's a sampling of what they said:

Surround yourself with smart people.
Find a niche in the industry.
Take risks.
Love what you're doing.
Be patient. 

All of this advice seeems pretty gender neutral, right?

Let's take a look at some other numbers.  According to the Center for Women's Business Research, women-owned businesses account for 55 percent of new startups.  The Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics tells us that women hold more than half of all professional occupations in the U.S. workforce. Yet these same two sources also tell us that women represent less than 27 percent of the IT workforce, and that women start fewer than 5 percent of IT companies.  From these numbers, we can conclude that women are starting businesses, and they're contributing to the workforce.  But they're not doing it in tech. Why?

An NCWIT literature review on entrepreneurism and gender, sponsored by the Kauffman Foundation, found that there is no conclusive research that gender is a factor in the success of entrepreneurs. If gender differences do exist, they may be a product of differences in education and experience, effective business networks, and access to financing.

Why does it matter whether women become IT innovators? A growing body of research tells us that women's scarcity in innovative professions has potentially negative impacts on innovation itself: an NCWIT study on patenting found that patents created by mixed-gender teams of both men and women are more highly cited, for example; and a recent London Business School report found that work teams comprised of equal numbers of men and women were more likely to experiment, be creative, share knowledge, and fulfill tasks.

Notably, BusinessWeek's cover story, which ranks America's 50 most innovative companies and discusses what sets them apart, quotes Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos as saying that "scarcity can be pretty good at prompting new ideas.

"Constraints" he says, "drive innovation."

That old aphorism about neccessity being the mother of invention does say mother, not father, mind you.  Perhaps as we recognize innovation as the driver of economic growth and competitiveness in a global market, the need for increased technology innovation will give way to increased demand for, and participation by, women.

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Anita Borg (1949-2003)

Anita Borg Awards: Call for Nominations

The Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology (ABI) is now accepting nominations for three of its awards: the Anita Borg Social Impact Award; the Anita Borg Award for Technical Leadership; and the Denice Denton Emerging Leader Award. The awards will be bestowed at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing in Keystone, Colorado, October 1-4, 2008.

Nominating is easy -- you can do it online. Nominating is also a critical way to bring recognition to the many women whose work in technology goes unrecognized and unrewarded.

The deadline for nominating a candidate is April 30, 2008.

Anita Borg (1949-2003) moved women to embrace technology instead of fearing or ignoring it. She has touched and changed the lives of countless women in the computing fields and beyond, and helped to include women in the technological revolution - not as bystanders, but as active participants and leaders. The Anita Borg Social Impact Award and Award for Technical Leadership honor candidates who fulfill Anita's vision to dismantle the barriers that keep women and minorities from entering computing and technology fields, and change the way that we think about technology and its impact on our lives. Award-winners are honored with an awards banquet at the Grace Hopper Celebration and a $10,000 prize.

The Denice Denton Emerging Leader Award, now in its second year, honors a junior, non-tenured faculty member under 40 who has significantly promoted diversity in his or her environment. Professor Denice Denton (1959 – 2006) was a pioneer in many respects: a woman engineering faculty, who became the first woman Dean of School of Engineering in a major US institution, worked throughout her life to make engineering attractive to women and minorities, and helped many people to break barriers and find their path in life by strongly promoting and fighting for diversity in higher education.

If you know someone whose work merits recognition from awards such as these, please don't hesitate to nominate him or her. Help shine a light on the people who are revolutionizing the face of technology™.

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