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04/01/14 | Uncategorized

Students: Tech Has Taken Over

Our Women 2.0 Intern, who is earning her B.A. in journalism, describes how the Women 2.0 City Meetup Event woke her up to the realities of the all-consuming tech monster.  

By Ayesha Rizvi (Intern, Women 2.0)

When you live in the tech hub of the world (San Francisco), you’re bound to attend at least one or two events that force you to think about the future of technology. As a journalism student, I feel I’ve been forced to think about it more than the average twenty-something young woman. With new ways of telling a story becoming more and more common, it is now every journalist’s responsibility to use effective ways to compete with each other for the attention of his/her audience and keep them interested. One way journalists are growing in popularity is through their multimedia skills (think video, photo, audio, etc. – all tech skills) which is essentially a way to spread the news online. This alone has dramatically changed the way people digest the news, and its not going to stop here.

Late to the Tech Party

This mix of curiosity and being constantly thrown into situations of dubiety about technology is what landed me with the opportunity to intern for Women 2.0 in February of this year; I started with helping put on their annual San Francisco conference. While I’ve been here, I’ve discovered an overwhelming amount of progress being made in technology by people around the world over a very short span of time and was puzzled for days over the fact that I was so late to this tech party.

When you’re a student, striving to keep your grades up and making sure budget cuts don’t make it impossible for you to enroll in your required classes, you don’t necessarily pay attention to how technology is pushing all of us forward, and rather quickly too. All of this changed for me at the Women 2.0 City Meetup.

As soon as I walked into my first Women 2.0 City Meetup, which was still known as Founder Friday at the time, I was amazed by how comfortable everyone was. The room, downtown, in the space of a cutting-edge female-founded company called IndieGoGo, was full of about 50-60 people that included women, men, young and old, experienced and inexperienced.  All I could hear were conversations echoing through the room, and though I was mostly working throughout the event, I definitely got the gist of what was going on around me.

The Realization That Tech is Everywhere

As I interviewed attendees and roamed the room, I realized they were all there to see how they could connect with each other and build on ideas together – and that they all came from different backgrounds. I was surprised to find artists, marketing enthusiasts, inventors and many others amongst the attendees. My mind exploded as I watched how people just clicked together, as if they had known each other before they walked through the doors when they really didn’t. Where one conversation ended, another started.

After this experience, it has become clear to me that technology is already playing a huge part in journalism. From the people I’ve come across who are from different backgrounds, I strongly feel that technology is also changing methods across all professions and areas of study; it is no longer limited to one or two areas. Whether you’re an undergrad studying sociology, business or even hard sciences, technology will infiltrate your industry if it hasn’t already, and so, it’s important to pay attention to the trends now. If you want to get a head start in familiarizing yourself with these trends, then I highly recommend you look into Women 2.0 City Meetup.

RSVP to Women 2.0 City Meetup here.

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