U
D

Conversation

the

01/28/14 | Uncategorized

New Sessions for Engineers and Technologists at Our Upcoming Conference

Learn about the new tech sessions added to the Women 2.0 conference, led by senior coders and UX graphic designers. They are available to all #w2sf14 attendees.

By Jessica Schimm (Editorial Assistant, Women 2.0)

Hey engineers and technologists: listen up because we have some special sessions lined up just for you at our upcoming San Francisco conference! Here’s a taste of what they’ll be about:

Strategic Technical Decision Making: Fireside Chat With Sarah Mei and Sarah Allen

Feb 13th at 11:35 a.m. – 11:55 a.m.

How do we know when the hot new tech is part of an important trend we can’t ignore or just another flash in the pan?  As company founders, CTOs, engineering team leads or as individual contributors, there are key decisions that set us along a path that can accelerate development and support company growth. Sarah Mei and Sarah Allen will talk about how to approach making significant technical decisions about frameworks, languages and data stores.  From their combined experience, spanning web, mobile, and back end technologies, they will share stories of what works, what doesn’t, and how you can know the difference.

Sarah Mei has spent most of the last dozen years writing code, most of the last six doing Ruby, and in the last 18 months, she’s been on 7 different backbone.js Rails projects (and one using ember.js). In 2009, she co-founded Railsbridge, a nonprofit dedicated to making the Ruby and Rails communities welcoming to everyone. Sarah is a senior software engineer at Pivotal Labs in San Francisco.

Sarah Allen is a serial innovator with a history of developing leading-edge products, such as After Effects, Shockwave, Flash video, and OpenLaszlo. Most recently, Sarah worked as a Presidential Innovation Fellow focused on Open Data. Sarah founded mobile strategy, design & development company, Blazing Cloud, as well as her own startup, Mightyverse, which aims to help people communicate across languages and cultures.  Sarah is an expert in all things mobile, with a particular passion for effective animation and practical use of the mobile web.  

Mobile App Prototyping

Feb. 14th at 11:25 a.m. – 12:05 p.m.

How to create an app quickly, from idea to download. Anna and Kyle outline the steps, for non-engineers and engineers alike, in how to brainstorm, wireframe, create, test, and release an app quickly to both Android and iPhone markets. An overview for some, or an in depth look at app creation from two specialists in the field.

Anna Billstrom is an Android/iOS native developer, social (FB/twitter) developer, database architect, and full stack Ruby on Rails developer. She has a decade of architectural technical design and implementation to Fortune 500 clients (Disney, Microsoft, Sun, Amex, Wells Fargo).

Kyle Mock is a UX & Graphic Designer, creative with experience in a variety of business applications. Experience in working with seed and early stage startups. Passionate about social application design for web/mobile. Always interested in designing minimal and intuitive products– working both independently or within a team utilizing agile development processes.

Hear from some technologists who have attended our conference.

  • Saroj Yadav (Senior Software Engineer, Zendesk)

“I attended the Women 2.0 conference while working as the technical founder of a startup… I found it educational to share my experiences with and hear from other technical founders. The conference gave me an opportunity to connect with successful women interested in giving back to the new comers. I remain in touch with several women I’ve met through Women 2.0.

Hearing founders’ stories and watching them give product demos at the PITCH competition was motivational. The real time feedback from investors gave me a chance to learn about what VC’s look for in early stage companies… I highly recommend it for those looking to build a strong network of like-minded women.”

  •  Kyle Mock (Founding Partner and Designer, PickAxe Mobile)

“Whether or not I was a guy, or a designer, I got something out of every talk that I saw.  It was a great way to meet people from all over the world, and, all looking to change the world.  “Change” set the tone of the conference and it was easy to get into an open mindset.  Maybe because of this, the conference fostered creativity, collaboration, and forming new connections. I was happy to see that the audience was genuinely enthusiastic about sharing, listening, learning from others’ experiences. …There was a nice, balanced mix of both practical and thought-provoking conversations surrounding: “What will the world look like in the next 20 years?”, and  “How can we get the most voices to participate in this discussion?”

Being a designer, I was most drawn toward presentations focusing on innovation.  These included an ambitious plan to redesign a city for the future, (Tony Hsieh of Zappos) a discussion on the possibilities created from on-demand 3D printing (Marleen Vogelaar of ShapeWays), and demonstrations during a wearable fashion show.

  • Anna Billstrom (Founding Partner and Engineer, PickAxe Mobile)

“I was super excited to launch our app Connector for Women 2.0, and to see how it performed in the wild. I loved meeting other women who were doing super cool stuff like wearable tech, educating young women in STEM, and access to programming lessons and resources for young women. Getting entrepreneur tips from established and more experienced women– like taking financing and budgeting seriously– was priceless.”

Technologists: You can register for our conference here.

Photo credit (top picture): Wolfram Arnold photographed the first RailsBridge workshop in June 2009.
Jess headshotJessica Schimm (@JessicaSchimm) is the assistant editor at Women 2.0. She is a recent graduate of San Francisco State where she earned a B.A. in journalism and was the editor-in-chief of SF State’s Her Campus chapter. She has a strong interest in women’s issues and writes about them on her blog.

Editor

Editor

The Switch Editorial Team.

Straight to your inbox.

The best content on the future faces of tech and startups.

"*" indicates required fields

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

SHARE THIS STORY

NEW COHORT STARTS JANUARY 2024

Join the Angel Sessions

Develop strategic relationships, build skills, and increase your deal flow through our global angel group and investing course.

RELATED ARTICLES
[yarpp]