Tech Forward:

I almost NEVER attend networking meetings. Let’s just say I’ve got my reasons.

But last Thursday did find me using my two complimentary drink tickets at the TechCrunch NYC CrunchNetwork event at RedSky on East 29th.

How could I not? Email Center Pro was one of the sponsors. I rarely get to see the folks from Palo Alto Software (the makers of Email Center Pro), so I made my way down to NYC– in the rain, mind you–to support the effort.

The place was packed–as in about 300 people packed. The kind folks at TechCrunch had reserved the second and third floors for the “May Day” festivities.

At one point, there was a band playing on the third floor. Yes, a live band.

And it’s no surprise: Tickets went like hot cakes, and there was a pseudo hint of Senor Arrington himself being there.  I heard they were selling tickets on eBay.

Anyway, I shocked myself and actually had a blast. Who knew?

If you couldn’t make it out to the Forum for Women Entrepreneurs & Excecutives’ Business Applications of Social Networking event in California, the videos and presentations from the event are available online.

Here’s some of what you’ll see:

• Wendy Beecham’s “Intro to Business Applications of Social Networking”;
• Ross Mayfield on “Leveraging Social Software for Business Value”;
• Jeremiah Owyang’s “Best Practices for Online Communities as a Marketing Tool”;
• The panel discussion, “Strategic & Tactical Implementation of Social Networks in Business,” featuring moderator Erika Brown and panelists Karen Appleton, Katie Jacobs Stanton, and Teresa Valdez Klein;
• Robin Wolaner on “Purposeful Networking”;
• Gina Bianchini’s “Launching and Growing Your Online Community.”

Happy watching! Enjoy!

On May 6 and 7 at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, D.C., the Center for Women’s Business Research is holding a symposium called Research to Roadmap: Accelerating the Growth of Businesses Owned by Women of Color (Full disclosure: I serve on the center’s advisory board and as chair of the Social Media Executive Committee.)

You simply cannot imagine how close this event is to my heart. Finally, an organization has decided to put its money where its mouth is and deliver the results of a significant study about businesses owned by women of color directly to the legislators on Capitol Hill. The center’s survey results have finally put statistical relevance to the challenge of the growth of these companies. Now maybe someone will listen.

That said, we need women bloggers to cover the event . . . and we need them yesterday. I have arranged for a bloghaus–you might know this as a blogger’s bullpen–at the event, and we need the right women bloggers to be present to live blog.

The bloggers will be responsible for getting themselves to Washington, D.C., but I have secured complimentary registration for all live bloggers who want to attend. The people who are attending this symposium are of note. Bloggers who want interviews? Consider it done. Bloggers will also get first access to *the* study results that have been under moratorium for at least the past month.

Please help me use the power of social media to get bloggers on site at this event. Let’s show them what social media is all about. Feel free to blog about this, podcast about this, Twitter it, post it in community forums and shout it from the rafters.

Ask all interested parties to send me an e-mail (LWest@xynoMedia.com) with the subject “CfWBR May,” with a link to their blog. Then I will send them the registration link and code. Easy, peasy.

One note: most of the hotels in the immediate area are sold out. The good thing is the Omni Shoreham is a half block from the red line on the Metro (the stop is Woodley Park Zoo Adams Morgan). So one could stay anywhere and, in a short Metro ride, get to the event site without issue. In fact, I’m doing this myself.

I thank you for your support. It takes a village.

I wanted to share some information about the NCWIT Award for Aspirations in Computing.

The award recognizes young women at the high school level with aspirations in computing disciplines and raises the visibility of women’s participation in computing.

With Bank of America’s generous sponsorship, NCWIT is focusing on providing awards to residents of six metro areas for a round of awards in August 2008: Atlanta, Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Dallas, New York City.

If you visit the award web page you’ll see videos of past award winners, along with all the pertinent details on qualifications and how to apply.

Online self-nominations must be submitted by April 30, 2008.

Supporting documents must be received by NCWIT by May 2, 2008.

Each qualified awardee will receive:

• $500 in cash
• A laptop computer provided by Bank of America
• An expense-paid trip, provided by Bank of America, for each awardee and a parent/legal guardian to attend the Bank of America Celebrating Stars of the Future Technology Showcase and Awards Ceremony, August 1-3, 2008, in Charlotte, North Carolina
• An engraved award for both the student and the student’s school
• Inclusion in a video that highlights her accomplishments in computing, her
  aspirations and her participation in the award events in Charlotte,
  as well as a copy of the final award video.
• For awardees who will be high school seniors in the fall of 2008, an expense-paid trip for the awardee and an accompanying parent/legal guardian to attend NCWIT’s national workshop on Women and IT at the University of California, Irvine, November 5-6, 2008.

Now those are some serious winnings!

Get crackin’ and apply now…

If you’ve ever wondered how you can get your website to yield better results, you need to know about SitePal.

If you think you already know about SitePal, you seriously need to take another look.

As an expert about these matters, even I was able to get a good, old-fashioned schooling about SitePal’s capabilities from Yujin Sohn at the Small Business Technology Summit.

I’m amazed at what SitePal is up to right now. And the future? Fuggedaboudit! Break out your shades.

You Need to Be A Little Crazy to have a conversation with Barry Moltz, but that’s a good thing.

People who are as creative and inventive as Moltz break molds and don’t follow conventional thinking. I like-y. As my mentor-in-my-head, Roy Williams, would put it, “Barry is my brand of crazy.”

After thoroughly enjoying his keynote–complete with Nerf ball blaster and the permission to be a bit of a slacker (thanks, Barry!)–I cornered Moltz at the Small Business Technology Summit and spoke with him about his latest book, Bounce! Failure, Resiliency, and Confidence to Achieve Your Next Great Success.

Check it out…

If you’re tired of hearing about SecondLife and virtual worlds and not knowing what they are or how they impact your business, you might want to check out “Virtual Worlds: Innovating & Investing in The Metaverse” on April 8 at the University of California, Irvine.

And at $50, you can’t beat the price to get the skinny on virtual worlds from experts from Cisco & SAP.

Check it out…

Every now and again, I need to brush up my skill set in a particular area–whether it’s writing, public relations/marketing or just getting ground-floor information on a new market.

From now on, instead of doing all the around-the-barn search engine, Wikipedia legwork, I’m going to take a Mediabistro course.

I was supposed to interview Laurel Touby at the Small Business Technology Summit, but somehow I missed her fuzzy orange sweater (that’s what people who saw her told me she was wearing whenever I asked, “Have you seen Laurel Touby?”) and she missed me in my aqua-green fuzzy sweater. Be that as it may, I did have a chance to catch up with her to get the skinny on Mediabistro.

I was amazed to find out that they had built *ALL* the technology for the Mediabistro site from scratch, AND they’ve got this cool conference circus coming up AND, AND, AND…well take a listen…

I’m not sure what’s going on in your company, but we’re growing every day.

When I founded xynoMedia, my intention was to build a completely virtual company with low overhead and enough flexiblity so that our team can enjoy their lives and get work done. I wanted our company to benefit from the input of global citizens, which is why we have teams working all over the world.

We have administrative assistance in Australia, development teams in the States and in South America, and writers in Canada.

If you want to build this kind of an orgnization, you need some sort of secure online collaboration tool. Something like CatalystWeb’s product CatalystOffice.

At the Small Business Technology Summit, I asked Bob Mathew every single hard question I could come up with based on how my team uses our online collaboration tool, and I was mucho impressed (it’s not that easy to impress a New Yorker).

Listen for yourself…

Right now, CatalystWeb only works with Firefox…but, you’re using that as your default browser anyway, right?

While I attended the Small Business Technology Summit in February, I had the opportunity to have a Tech Forward Convo with Jennifer Walzer of Backup My Info (BUMI).

Jennifer’s company offers a much-needed service to businesses–you already know how I feel about proper backups, and Jennifer offered some really critical information about new legislation involving the use of Social Security numbers online…along with a tip about BUMI’s new service, Qwipit, to help businesses bypass such challenges. Can you say, $250,000 fine?

Take a listen…

Some social media pals of mine want to know exactly what California businesses are up to when it comes to Web 2.0 and social media, so they’ve decided to ask in the Web 2.0 Adoptions & Challenges Survey. The survey deadline is February 29, so move your feet or lose your seat.

Here’s the skinny:

Web 2.0 media and technologies are transforming business, society and life. Although Web 2.0 is a lively topic of debate in boardrooms, blogs and in the mainstream media, there is a lack of practical insight into how businesses are using these emerging technologies. What does Web 2.0 mean for your business?

Invest three minutes telling us what’s in your 2008 emerging technology project plans, and we’ll provide you with the data on how other California businesses are using Web 2.0.

Click and be counted.

Bottom line: Invest three minutes, get access to the data when it’s available–and leverage the data to make key business decisions.

It’s no wonder many entrepreneurs are totally intimidated–or plain ol’ confused–by technology.

I attended the AlwaysOn OnMedia NYC conference last week in NYC at the luxurious Mandarin Oriental Hotel. The event was top-notch all the way–until I sat next to Snarky Guy.

You know him:

• He always has a smart answer for everything, yet never really answers a question.
• He throws around jargon and talks about CPC and SEM as if he ate alphabet soup for breakfast.
• He just has to show off that he reads about 10 online publications each day because he’s like a walking Yahoo! newsfeed–which says he isn’t making much money.
• He says oddball things just to get attention. And his comments become even more weird, bordering on non-sequiturs, as the day goes on.

You leave an interaction with him feeling at best like a stupid, ill-informed idiot or at worst like you’ve just been through a technology blender.

Sigh.

I have to say that Snarky Guy is not a full representation of us tech experts. Most of us really are approachable people who want to explain things in a jargon-free way. Honestly.

Computers do weird things to certain people. You know how some people let a smattering of perceived power go straight to the old noggin’? Yep, that’s Snarky Guy.

So, I humbly ask that when you encounter Snarky Guy, just exchange cards quickly and avoid him for the rest of the day. And please remember, one bad apple don’t spoil the whole bunch. Don’t hold it against all of us.