Techmamas

International Women's Day - With Shout Outs To Techie Women!

I took alittle blogging break to focus on family but thought International Women's Day is a great time to jump back in! As moms across the world have done, I took some time to help my tween get settled in middle school, my twins settled with new twists and turns of 2nd grade and some very dear relatives with Cancer.

I had to put some professional opportunities on hold for the last few months, and while that may not be easy - I would not have it any other way (family is of course most important of all!). This of all days is a great time to share my story since women around the world have not only been influencers in business, but support to their families and communities around the world. Most recently the Women of Egypt stood up for what they believe in and hope that they will maintain a role in the building of a new Egypt.

I enjoyed reading Cool Mom Tech's post called "International Women's Day gives three multilingual cheers to women in tech". That post called out some women in tech so I thought I would add on my WomenTech Twitter List and my techmoms and techmom2 twitter lists. My mom tech twitter lists are not as much technical moms as it is a way to capture the interesting mix of moms that share their updates on Twitter.

In honor of Women's International Day, here is a post from April 21 2006 that captured my transition from techie to blogger mom. I hope to read many other stories today about Women and their transitions, accomplishments and dreams. For now, I am just happy to be blogging again. Best of all, I have a website redesign in the works so I will be sharing more news about TechMamas.com soon!

from April 21, 2006
From Techie to Blogger Mom

A Day of WomenTech: #140Conf SF - Women Talking Tech on the Real Time Web and Huffington Post article

Yesterday I had the honor of being on a panel for one of my favorite tech conferences: @JeffPulver's #140Conf (San Francisco). This was my second #140conf, the first was #140confNYC. Maya Bisineer @thinkmaya invited me (@techmama) to join her #140conf NYC "Innovating for our future" along with @alicewilder and Stephanie Aaronson @SAGalluch.

Our #140conf panel San Francisco was called "Women talking Tech about the Real-Time Web" with a fab panel: @techmama (moderater -thats me), Eliane Fiolet @ElianeFiolet from @ubergizmo, Elisa Camahort page @ElisaC from @BlogHer (*BlogHer also has @BlogHerSupport @BlogHerDeals and other co-founders @lisastone and @jorydj), Kristie Wells @kristiewells from @socialmediaclub and Liza Sperling @lizasperling from @scoutlabs. Even more fun was my virtual panelist Shireen Mitchell @digitalsista that tweeted from DC while we were in San Francisco!

On our Women talking tech panel we discussed the different ways we use Twitter to share our voice and interact with our communities. After the panel I was thrilled to meet an amazing tech voice from (drumroll) Twitter! Del Harvey @delbius spoke on a #140conf panel about Twitter.

As an attempt to organize a list to follow the unique womentech voices/organizations on Twitter, I created a womentech Twitter list (I hope to add lots more to that list as I just created it for the panel). Some of the amazing voices on the list that are also local to SF area are:  @jolieodell from Mashable (and another Mashable socal tweep @jbruin), @magicsaucemedia, @susanmernit,  @leahculver, @techiediva and @sairy. Some of the organizations are @anitaborg_org, @shesgeeky, @gitweet, @women2, @DevChix, @DigitalWoman, @ForbesWoman, @BlogHer, @MomBloggersClub and @WomenWhoTech.

I already have 2 techmom (techmom and techmom2) twitter lists - and growing!

My eyes are going blurry with all of the "@" Twitter names I listed on this post, but it is so hard to contain my excitement at connecting with amazing women tech on Twitter! My next step will be curate my women tech list on Pearltrees.com.

After I got home from the #140conf SF, I was thrilled to see an email that informed me that I was included in a geek girls post on one of my favorite blogs: Huffington Post. Kelly Feller wrote a post called "Despite Appearances, Girls Are Geeky Too" that included my tweep Eliane Fiolet and other women tech voices including Deborah Conrad. Just the day before I was so honored to be included on the Forbes (@ForbesWoman) list of "20 Best-Branded Women on Twitter". Both of these articles are so exciting because I have spent the last few years focusing on a brand built around moms, women and technology. An important part of my goals are reaching out to the community of tech women and moms through social media; and Twitter is one of my favorite social media platforms.

I have to say, other then building Lego's with my boys - I can't think of a better way to spend my day then with Twitter and WomenTech peeps.

If you want to follow any of the fabulous tweeps mentioned in this post, here are the direct links: