A century of voting for women in the UK and the #BEGC campaign

The Mayor of London Sadiq Khan
announced his major new gender equality campaign
#BehindEveryGreatCity #BEGC
Photographer: Caroline Teo.

I've just been reading about London Mayor, Sadiq Khan's new campaign. To mark the centenary of the first women in the UK winning the right to vote, and to drive forward gender equality across the city of London, the Mayor has launched a year-long women's equality campaign called #BehindEveryGreatCity. You can read more about it here on Marie Claire and here on the Mayor's website.

The campaign includes a year of promoting women's art on the underground, a series of events, initiatives to tackle gender pay gap, including men in the conversation (after all, this is about equality for all and not men vs women) and in Parliament Square, the first statue of a woman will be unveiled - Suffragist leader Millicent Fawcett. If you're ever wandering around London, you will see that although there are a lot of statues in Central London, there are very few statues of women. This sounds like a great campaign and I look forward to participating in it next year. Maybe 2018 will be the year of the woman, at least in London.

It's hard to believe that both my grandmothers were born in an age where women did not have the vote. And although they got the vote as they grew up, their mothers and their grandmothers did not. It is worth noting that it was only some women who got the vote in 1918. You had to be over 30 and fulfil certain property criteria. It wasn't until ten years later in 1928, that all women over 21 got the vote and had voting equality with men. That's not very long ago.

I shall be mulling over all of this during the Christmas Holidays and thinking about how to support both the Mayor's initiative and also support the female entrepreneurs and female execs working in mobile. There will at least be some more of my meet-ups for women working in and around mobile, but with a bit of luck, I'll come up with something new. Meanwhile, if you have any ideas, feel free to share.

Day 20/25 Blogmas

Heading to Barcelona next week for Mobile World Congress?

I'll try and keep this one short as I know you have a busy schedule but I wanted to alert you to a few things that are going on that you may or may not know about.

• Win an expo ticket for Mobile World Congress courtesy of Trustonic - enter before 15:00 GMT Thurs 23 Feb. You can do that here.

• Fancy showing off what you're doing to an enthusiastic crowd on Sunday afternoon at NUMA? I have a few demo slots left. If you would like one of those, please register for a demo ticket here. There is no charge to demo. Anyone else who wants to come, please add yourself to the waiting list. I hope to release the last batch of tickets tomorrow. And if you fancy sponsoring the event and connecting with 200 mobilists, let me know.

• Last call for sponsors for Swedish Beers on Wednesday night. I have a super roster of sponsors this year led by DigitasLBi and joined by Headforwards, x-Mobility, 51 Degrees, ZZZ.co.uk and Inspiring Interns. There's space for one or two more if you'd like to join them. Get in touch if you'd like to sponsor at start-up or co-sponsor level. 

• The 12th annual ladies lunch is on Monday 27 Feb. Tickets available here for Euro 32.

• Further events are listed at http://mobileheroes.net. It's probably easiest to view by day: Sunday | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday

See you in Barcelona!

Quick links for registration

Happy Slapping 2.0 - Sex, honour, shame, and blackmail in an online world

I was in two minds about writing this post but I felt it was worth sharing.

If you've known me for any length of time or read much of what I write and talk about here and elsewhere, you'll know that I'm vocal in the gender debate in the mobile industry and beyond. I want to see more women in senior level jobs in our sector, more women at board level, more female investors (and to become an investor, you have to have worked your way to the top to earn the money or you've inherited it), and more women join our industry in all types of job from coding and programming to data science to marketing and ops and more (and not just in token sales roles to appeal to the male tech buyers thanks very much). 

Aside from the financial gains a company gets from having more balanced teams at every level, you may wonder why I'm so vocal on this issue. Google it. You'll find plenty evidence and solid research to support this if you don't believe me.

It's because of this: The shaming of women around the world for no reason at all except that they're women; The fact that there are still child brides; FGM; And rape culture in all strata of society. The everyday sexism I, and others experience at home and in the workplace is trivial in comparison to these issues but they are part of the same global problem. It's a continuum.

This article, 'Sex, honour, shame and blackmail in an online world', brought it home to me as to how much work there is still to much to do to change entrenched attitudes and make the world a safer and lovelier place to be for all people, of whatever creed, colour or gender. 

There is much in the article that is truly horrific. But this particular paragraph really shocked me. It had never occurred to me that this would be a 'thing'. This is happening in Agra. The home of the magnificent and awe-inspiring Taj Mahal - a monument to undying love - seen as the most romantic building on the planet. 

"In August 2016, the Times of India found that hundreds - perhaps thousands - of video clips of rape were being sold in shops across the northern state of Uttar Pradesh every day. One shopkeeper in Agra told the newspaper: "Porn is passé. These real-life crimes are the rage." Another, according to the same report, was overheard telling customers that they might even know the girl in the "latest, hottest" video."

I doubt this stuff is restricted to Agra or even India either. It's happy slapping gone to the extreme (that's if you're old enough to remember that). That doesn't make it better or worse. And you might say that technology is to blame as it makes distribution easy and cheap. Despicable scenes of war and terrorism have been distributed on phones for more than 10 years. But it goes much deeper than that. It's about changing attitudes whether it's the everyday sexism experienced in a business environment or on a political podium or the dreadful crimes that women across the world are victim to.

I know these things are not easy to fix and change won't happen overnight. Poverty is playing its part in this as much as culture and tradition and wrong-headed ideas about the role of women in society and what we're good for. But change it must.

A little gender analysis of my social networks is revealing

I hosted a lovely dinner last week in London for ladies working in and around the mobile industry. I was thinking on the way home about hosting another one in a couple of months time and what I could do to attract more women to come along. And that got me thinking on how many women I'm connected to on social media. These thoughts were alongside those on the gender pay gap, women struggling to advance their careers (McKinsey), the advice that was circulating that women should remove their photos and resort to initials only on social media, why women don't seem to get pay rises and the depressing constant that women are not in senior roles in digital agencies or tech companies. So I did an analysis out of curiosity.

Twitter

My Twitter audience was easiest to analyse since Twitter does it for you via their advertising system. Just go to http://ads.twitter.com and check the analytics. It gives you a breakdown of gender, income, location and interests. What it doesn't do is measure who you are following so we'll have to leave that for another day when I'm truly bored and don't mind working it out one by one.

Out of just shy of 9000 Twitter followers, it's a 70/30 split male/female and my organic audience is 75/25 male/female. I'm guessing that's based on what tweets are shared and by whom. 

You might say that this kind of breakdown is to be expected due to my long history in the mobile sector. However, I actively follow a lot sewists and crafters to get some variety and balance in my find. This group of tweeters tend to be mostly female. And my perspective is that a lot of them follow me back. But without further analysis, it's hard to say.  

LinkedIn

I've been active in women's networking groups for almost 15 years including Digital Eve, WiMD, WiTT, Everywoman as well as my own female-focussed events. I'm also pretty good at adding people I meet to my LinkedIn as I use it as an outsourced contacts database if you like. I'm also good at weeding out fake or dodgy profiles. I do check people out before I add them due to the risk of spam, scame and phishing. I have about 3,500 contacts on LinkedIn as I've been active there since they first launched. I downloaded all of them.

Once I'd done some deduping, removal of people I knew to be deceased, accounts that were businesses rather than an individual and a handful of dodgy accounts, I worked out who was male and who was female based on either a) I knew them personally so could say male or female b) I checked their profile for evidence. 

On that basis, the gender split was 69/31 male/female. Hmm. I thought there would have been more women in there.

Facebook

Finally, I downloaded all my Facebook data and got my friends list. (Go to settings and Download your Data and follow the instructions). I use Facebook for both personal friends and family as well as business friends as a way of keeping in touch. The total number of friends, once deceased, duplicates and non-attributable accounts were excluded was just over 1200. I didn't count my followers as part of this exercise. And I followed the same process as I did for LinkedIn. 

The result - 60/40 male to female. A bit more balanced, but still skewed male. And that's with my having attended an all girls school for 9 years too!

What to conclude?

Without doing analysis on other peoples' accounts, it's hard to tell what is cause and what is effect and if this is a 'oh, it's just you, Helen' thing. I think there may be several contributing factors:

1. The fact that I've been working in mobile technology for the last 16 years has clearly meant that I've met more men in my line of work than I have women. And that's despite efforts made with hosting and attending female-focussed events. Where else am I supposed to meet other women in my sector for friendship, support and to do business with?

2. Women are more reticent about living life in public? I'm not sure about this, but anecdotally, it feels like there could be something in this. To counter this, do women in business need to step up and be more visible online so that other women will follow them and we can then see them too? According to Brandwatch in 2015, women are using social media as much as, if not more than men, but do not use it for business. Is that holding them back? How important is visiblity?

3. The women in the workplace, especially in the UK and US (where most of my network is) are not in the kind of roles where I'm likely to network and meet them. They're in lower paid or part-time work where networking is not part of the role nor would networking enhance the role necessarily. I'm thinking waiting staff, cleaners, teaching assistants, care workers, shop assistants and shelf stackers here. Is there any truth in that? Is that why I can't see women in mid-level or senior roles in any large number?

4. Women don't see the need for this stuff. They're too busy getting on with other things and have not embraced digital connections.

5. It is just a Helen thing, an anomaly, from 15 years of running Swedish Beers Mobile Networking parties!

Research has shown us over and over that companies are more successful if they have more women on the board and more women at senior levels. Mixed gender teams do better than single-gender teams. For those two reasons alone, I've been wanting to see more women in senior roles in mobile marketing, mobile advertising, digital, tech entrepreneurship etc for the last 16 years and still would like to see it. But it feels like I'm fighting a losing battle sometimes.

What have I missed? What other possibilities are there? Can this be addressed and if so, how? Does it matter? I welcome your thoughts and observations on this.

I'm planning to host another ladies dinner in London in the next couple of months and one in Manchester. Watch this space for details.

Ladies in Mobile Dinner in London next week - 28 Sept 2016

With 10 years of ladies in mobile meet-ups in Barcelona and one in Leeds last year, I thought it was time to host a dinner in London. I know some terrific ladies in the industry and I know that they know some terrific ladies in the sector too. So let's gather, exchange notes, have something nice to eat and drink and meet friends old and new.

I have not yet found a venue - it largely depends on how many of us there are. We may be a handful of people we could be 30, I don't know yet! However many we are, I will book a venue that can do us a fixed price menu for the evening at a reasonable price and afford us some privacy, but not necessarily a private room (unless we need it because of numbers). As a picky pescetarian myself, I will make sure that different dietary requirements can be catered for. Please let me know when you register of any specific needs. You can register on the form below or by clicking this link and registering on the Eventbrite page.

I currently do not have a sponsor but am very happy to welcome a sponsor or two that would help subsidise the price to make the event open to those less able to afford it and/or to provide some additional wine on the night. If you'd like to sponsor this event, please get in touch with me, Helen Keegan, by email.

Once I have an idea on numbers (currently about 20), I'll go ahead and book somewhere and advise on the price. You may be asked to pay in advance in order to secure our reservation. If that's the case, I will contact you with details of how to pay by by paypal, TransferWise or invoice/bank transfer.

Men are welcome to attend the evening but must be accompanied by a female colleague.

Know of a suitable place for us to go? Please let me know! I'm all ears.

Looking forward to seeing you all.

Best

Helen

This is a Heroes of the Mobile Fringe Event.

Photo credit Becky Gorman / aql. Taken at the Heroes of the Mobile Fringe Ladies Lunch in Leeds, November 2015

Powered by Eventbrite

Linkage on a Tuesday

A few things I've been reading and thought were worth sharing...

• A good read here from a Greek tech and food entrepreneur telling his story of idea to execution to early success to failure to learning to pivot to greater success. 

• How a fake food business won an award. A salutary tale of how to game social media via buying 'influencers' and what this means for your online marketing strategy. 

• Why am I being paid less than my male colleagues? TLDR probably because you never asked for more money and didn't negotiate. I've heard this before that women don't tend to negotiate. Men negotiate from their first salary so get ahead early on. It doesn't occur to women to do the same. A lesson in negotiation here for men and women of all ages.

• This next one isn't news to me, but it may be news to you and is one of the reasons why I keep banging on about gender discrimination. Having women on your team makes for a better business:

Companies with three or more corporate directors who are women (in at least four out of five years) outperformed those with no women on the board by 84% on return on sales, 60% on return on invested capital and 46% on return on equity.

Also

A 2009 study in Silicon Valley found that venture-backed companies run by women had annual revenues that were 12% higher, used an average of one third less committed capital and had lower failure rates than those led by men.

There's more in this article about addressing the gender gap in angel investing. 

•  This post from Terence Eden is great looking at user-centred design and creating personas when creating websites, apps and services. Entitled 'Debuffs, Enchantment, Equipment, and Players - an RPG Player's Guide to User Stories. I highly recommend.

Thanks for reading.

Friday Tidbits

I’ve been neglecting my blog in favour of Facebook and I think it’s time to get back to my blog and give it some tlc. I’m going to start with an easy post listing some things I’ve been reading and thinking about lately. So here goes...

Jakob Nielsen talks sense about UX in the corporate world. The older readers among you will no doubt remember Mr Nielsen from the early days of the web and his seminal book Designing Web Usability – The Practice of Simplicity. Well, he’s still around and still dishing out sound advice such as in this podcast and interview about how to tackle usability in the corporate world.

Male exec gets it completely wrong on diversity within the ad industry and has to resign his very senior and very well paid role within global ad agency. Read all about it here.

Brexit – A story in maps. This article is fascinating whichever way you did or didn’t vote. It’s not nearly as clear cut as we might have thought and the picture is more complex than London, Northern Ireland and Scotland are in and the rest of the UK voted out. It depends on which way you cut and interpret the data for a much more nuanced view. I don’t envy Theresa May and the job she has on her hands right now.

A great read on burnout here – a modern day and very real affliction. “Burnout is not simply a symptom of working too hard. It is also the body and mind crying out for an essential human need: a space free from the incessant demands and expectations of the world. In the consulting room, there are no targets to be hit, no achievements to be crossed off. The amelioration of burnout begins in finding your own pool of tranquility where you can cool off’.”

Excuses Excuses Bingo

This will look horribly familiar to many of you. But they are just excuses.

Source: https://www.facebook.com/helenkeegan/posts/10152279950267457

Where are the women in the creative department?

Dear Sue Unerman, are you really advocating that women need to do all the adapting and changing of behaviour in order to make it in advertising (or any business for that matter)?

 

Click through for an interesting discussion.

 

Post by Helen Keegan.

Eve Pollard Tells It Like It Is

A few week’s back, I attended the rather marvellous Sound Women Inspiration Festival 2013 held at the BBC’s facility in London’s West End. Soundwomen as an organisation is about supporting women working in audio and radio. Their first festival was a day to celebrate women’s achievements at all levels both within radio and audio, but also other sectors too. No I don’t work in radio, although I do like podcasts and podcasting, but I figured the issues facing women in that industry are very similar to the issues facing women in mobile, broadcast, science and more. And hey, the fabulous Eve Pollard (aka Granny Bonkers) was on the line-up and the ticket price would be worth it to hear her story alone, let alone anyone else’s. I was right. Eve was witty, insightful, engaging, energetic and motivating. I took lots of notes. Here are some of them. Bear in mind the talk was aimed squarely at women!

• Be honest
• Be angry (yes, it’s ok to be angry in the workplace or anywhere else)
• Be real (as in true to yourself)
• Have an opinion (This was one of Russell Buckley’s key pieces of advice to me when we first started working together back in 2000.)
• Make trouble (apparently we’re rather good at it, according to Eve).
• Believe in what you do – yes, women do have to work harder but believe in your work and what you bring to it.
• Pay attention to detail and to knowledge. You will have to be better at this than your male colleagues and this will give you an edge.
• Don’t miss out on the networking. Seriously, don’t miss out on the networking. It’s important. Eve would go home after work and put her children to bed (broadcaster Claudia Winkleman and son Oliver Lloyd] and then go back out and hang out with colleagues in her team. The drinking with colleagues thing was really important for bonding and team-building. She also shared some tips about how you don’t have to keep up with the drinking… take your drink into the loo with you and tip it down the sink; take a big bag with you and put your drink in your bag to chuck away later (ok, your bag might be a bit wet and sticky, but better that than a hellish hangover or getting yourself into state). (My personal tip here, don’t feel you have to drink alcohol. Give yourself some rules to stick by such as every other drink being a soft drink or not drinking after a certain time. People don’t really question them. Also, buy the round then you can buy yourself a soft drink and nobody knows.)
• Don’t use the S-word. What’s the S-word, I hear you ask? It’s the word ‘sorry’. Apologies don’t figure in a man’s world. They figure too much in a woman’s world. Learn from the men and don’t use it. (For the men reading this, we’d like you to apologise now and then where it’s due.)
• Read the book 'Rich Dad Poor Dad, what the rich they tell their children about money’

. Eve highly recommends.

Don’t iron. If you have a baby, put the baby clothes under the sofa cushion and sit on them. They’ll be nice and flat. When the child gets a big bigger, fold them in half and then put them under the sofa and sit on them. Seriously, life is too short to spend it ironing.

Marry the right partner. She was very clear on this. You need someone who will really share the home tasks with you and be able to support you in your work and your life as much as you can support them in theirs. Sheryl Sandberg says something similar in her new book, Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead.

Live near work. Eve was adamant about this. Don’t waste your life commuting. Little children don’t need leafy suburbs to thrive, they need time with their parents. They’ll get that if you live near work. Of course, Eve did add that that may be more difficult these days in central London…

You need your running away money. Don’t tell anyone about it. Don’t tell anyone else where it is. This is more about knowing that you have the stash and could run away if you had to than actually having to do it. It will mean you feel less trapped.

Don’t sweat the small stuff. Life is too short etc.

Stop being judgemental about other women. Even if you hate them. Women get a hard enough time without other women judging them. Sometimes it’s hard but do your best with this one.

Worry about your salary – this buys you time. Women typically don’t negotiate their salaries. Men start negotiating their salary from their very first job. Time for women to do this.

Don’t feel you have to be moving forward all the time. Things sometimes take a bit longer. Eve stayed in the same job for 10 years before making the leap up the career ladder. Don’t feel you’re lagging behind if you do this. You’re not. You’re just taking your time.

Decide early on about your uniform. It will save you masses of time in the mornings plus you’ll always know you look good and you’ll feel comfortable. One less thing to worry about.

Eve also noted that she’d dealt with both Murdoch and Desmond during her career and had some tips on how to deal with very rich, very powerful men.

• Be straightforward
• Be charming
• Be well read (so you can tell the multi-millionaires something they didn’t know. She suggested reading the Wall St Journal for this.)
• Be yourself.

On asking for more money… Murdoch once told her that no woman had ever asked for a raise when Pollard first started the Women in Journalism organisation in 1994. One of the most popular sessions the group ever ran (and now run regularly) was the one on how to negotiate for more money. I’m keeping my eyes peeled for that one. Eve told us:

• Be cool
• This is what I am doing and what I’m bringing to you.
• It’s not about you.

So there you have it. The notes really don’t cut it compared with being there in person but I hope you found them useful.
A big thank you to the Sound Women crew who put the event on. It lived up to its name of ‘Inspiration Festival’ and the speakers certainly inspired me. The stories I heard will stay with me for a long time to come.

Three simple actions to redress the balance

I’m going to keep this one brief. I’m bored of writing about this old chestnut. I expect you’re bored of reading about it, but the whole issue of the lack of representation of women at tech conferences has reared its ugly head again. I guess I’m partly responsible so that’s one of the reasons for writing about it, yet again.

I happened to mention on my Facebook page that I liked the look of the upcoming Edge conference but was disappointed to see no female speakers listed at all at the time of posting. Not an unreasonable comment – especially given my history in talking about the subject for many years and being a seasoned event organiser. That generated some debate, some interesting links and some feedback and comments from friends and friends of friends. You can read it here https://www.facebook.com/helenkeegan/posts/314598241984232?comment_id=1594410 

Following being name-checked in a few tweets, I read a stern criticism of the Edge Conference speaker line-up here where the (male) writer considers it inexcusable that there are no female speakers listed and the unwillingness of the producer to comment on the process. I think the term ‘inexcusable’ is strong. I doubt it was deliberate, but getting more women involved just wasn’t a priority for the organiser. It usually isn’t. In fact, they’ve often not thought about it at all. That’s part of the problem.

Meanwhile, I’m reminded that CES is happening in Las Vegas and I watch this telling video from the BBC on the topic of scantily clad booth babes from the 2012 event and ponder if anything much will have changed. I feel it’s unlikely and shared my thoughts here. And it seems from this year’s Voco campaign to drive traffic to its stand, nothing much has changed at all. You can read about the campaign to boycott Voco here. Their campaign just makes me feel queasy.

I also read about The Atlantic’s idea about boycotting all male panels ‘Men: You can fix this. Refuse to participate unless there are women on stage with you.’ And a friend points me to this useful infographic explaining how women contribute to the entrepreneurial scene.

And finally, I stumble across this blog post and words fail me.

So why am I bothered about all of this?

Technology is a huge part of all of our futures and I want to make sure that female voices are heard so that we play a part in building that future, so that we have a stake in it. So that we can make the future a better place.

Mixed gender teams do better. That’s what the research tells us, over and over. You’re better off with an average ability mixed gender team than a high ability single sex team if you want to be more profitable, more productive, happier. My conclusion is that mixed panels and mixed line-ups will mean a better conference, a more productive networking event and more knowledge sharing. And more women in tech will mean we’ll have created a better future for ourselves.

And my hunch is that if we can get more women to participate, then we’ll get more of everybody to participate. This will make it better for everyone.

Maybe I’m naive. Maybe I’m idealistic. But I don’t think this is too much to ask. It also isn’t down to one group of people to fix this. We all have a part to play.

There are three simple things that, I believe, will help make the situation better. (I’ve talked about them on Facebook as well)

1. Conference and event organisers need to be more mindful about getting more female speakers involved and make a concerted effort on this. Different people need to be approached in different ways. Try new ways to get more women involved.

2. Women need to step up and get involved. Be counted. The more you do this, the easier it gets. Get on with it. [Need some tips on how to be a good speaker? There’s some great advice here.]

3. Men need to defer to their female colleagues once in a while. When you're asked to speak, why not suggest a female colleague instead so they can get the experience and exposure? Your company still gets the kudos. The knowledge is still shared.

In doing these three things, there will be a knock-on effect that more people will get involved from all aspects of our society and from all backgrounds. This is a good thing and I don't think it's too much to ask.

And finally. I know that getting more women into tech needs to be tackled in our schools as well. I fully support that. The two are not mutually exclusive. Every little action counts.

I sincerely hope, that this is the first and last time I feel compelled to blog about this in 2013. But it’s not up to me. It’s up to all of you out there to do your bit too. Are you in?

Chestnut photo used under Creative Commons License. Photo by PracticalOwl.

It’s complicated…

A friend on LinkedIn sent me the link to this thread about women's conferences being boring http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20121120021154-13583-why-i-ll-never-attend-another-women-s-conference. The comments are a real eye opener too. But that’s because the issue is complicated. There are pros and cons to women-only and women-mostly networks.

Sexism is still rife in this world. I’m astonished that inequalities in pay still exist. It saddens me to see all-male line-ups at conferences and all-male boards for any kind of company and dominance of men of a certain background in politics. I hate to see gender stereotyping when it comes to technology (although, admittedly, much of that is culturally specific to The West). Women’s voices need to be heard. There needs to be ways that women can get involved in society, in business, in how things get done. Our voices are just as valid as anyone else’s. In developing nations, it is even more important where violence to women is more commonplace. It is because of these issues that women-only and women-mostly networks exist.

As many of you will already know, I am a strong supporter of women in business. I like to see women speak and hear them on panels. I want to see that women are doing well at senior level. We know that mixed gender teams and boards means more profit and happier staff. You can look up the research. It’s all there and it’s not rocket science. It’s better to have a mixed gender team of average competence than a single-sex team of high competence.

I have also been a strong supporter of women’s networks in my career. I cut my networking teeth a long time ago at Digital Eve in London. It was a great place to learn about networking in what felt like a safe and non-competitive environment to do so. Mixed networks, or should I say, predominantly-male networks were just so unappealing with the sea of grey suits, the posturing, the competitiveness and the unwelcoming nature of them. And not long after that, I was a founder member of the Women in Mobile Data Association. Again to show that women had a voice in the male, mobile industry. I have met some amazing women in both those networks, and others I have participated in. No question. But there are limits. I soon realised that you can’t just do business with women. In fact, if you had any business development to do, you actually had to go and play with the big boys and hold your own. So I did. But I couldn’t have done that without testing the waters first in women’s networks.

And what about today? There’s a very high-level, high profile women’s networking event happening in Brussels right now organised by the GSMA. The aim of the event is to incorporate more mentoring and structures in place for women to better succeed in corporate life. Not a bad thing to be supporting at all and it complements their mWomen initiative for developing countries too. Women in Wireless is growing and the London chapter has held some interesting events and is attracting a steady stream of intelligent, capable, enthusiastic women – entrepreneurs to life-long corporate employees and everything in between. There are even a few men who come along (and they’re very welcome).

But. And yes, there’s a but. I know what Nancy means in her flippant comments about women-only events. They do tend to focus on ‘how I made it in a man’s world’ and other such-like women’s issues. And it’s easily done as there are still issues to address. The trouble is, we don’t want to be silo’d and be included on token women-only panels at an otherwise all-male event. Would you have the Chinese-only panel or Turkish-only panel at an event? No, you wouldn’t. Well, I wouldn’t anyway. We want to participate fully. We want to be included. We want to see other women included. We want to see some diversity dagnamit.

So, Nancy. I think your comments were flippant and not at all well-thought through. But I hear you. I don’t want to see token female panels. I don’t want to be limited to just talking about women’s issues or women’s careers in male dominated industries. I just want it to be normal for women to be included and seen in these things as a matter of course. And if having women’s networks and women-only events means that women can learn their craft better so they can better succeed in mixed gender public platforms, then let them continue. And if it means we get better representation at board level, even better. Because that will lead to growth and success. And that’s what businesses are after isn’t it?

The Guardian Tech Weekly Podcast–I’m in it!

In case you missed it a couple of weeks ago, I was lucky enough to be invited in to The Guardian’s offices to join Alex Krotoski, Jemima Kiss, Martha Lane Fox (yes, *the* Martha Lane Fox) and Suw Charman-Anderson to discuss why the tech industries need more women and what we can do about it. This was part of Ada Lovelace Day on 16 October.

We clearly didn’t have long enough to chat and we didn’t have all the answers for sure. But hopefully there are some gems in there that makes it worthwhile listening to. This is a recurring theme. We know that where there is a gender balance on high performing teams – they do better than single-sex high performing teams. Boards who have female directors have more profit. This isn’t rocket science. So have a listen and let’s do something about it.

Click here for the links to download or listen http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/audio/2012/oct/16/tech-weekly-podcast-women-in-tech

To pink or not to pink it, that is the question

What a furore I have seen this week in the tech press about Fujitsu’s latest ultrabook launched in Japan. It has been designed by female engineers at Fujitsu in Japan and is aimed at the female market in Japan. It is an elegantly designed piece of kit with smooth lines and some feminine details that, no doubt, will appeal to some. And actually, the pink one is a very pale pink and some people like pink things so why not?

So what’s the fuss about? Well, the Western media, particularly female journalists, have taken offence to the advertising video and the press release which they feel is patronising. It probably is. The apps the laptop comes with have been derided as one of them is an astrology app. For that target market, that app may be entirely appropriate – I don’t know the market well enough to judge. I know I would find the scrapbook app useful – not for shopping for shoes, but for keeping track of craft projects I might like to do, articles I want to read again and recipes I want to keep. And maybe they did get the tone wrong, but I have no problem at all with bringing elegant design into computing. I’d like to see more of it. We use these things day in day out and to have something that is more pleasurable to use because it appeals to your aesthetic sensibilities is great. If you like a bit of bling, why not show that in your choice of laptop or how you choose to decorate your laptop?

But what price does that come at? Are women being ripped off? Well, it looks like we are in this instance. I’ve had a cursory glance at the specs of the new Floral Kiss and the Fujitsu Lifebook UH Series laptops to see how they compare. The Lifebook spec seems to be very similar (perhaps someone more familiar with laptop specs would like to comment?), and it also looks to be a stylish piece of kit. And it works out about £200 or so cheaper than its equivalent Floral Kiss model. Now I haven’t seen either model in the flesh so it’s hard to compare the quality and the workmanship, but I’m pretty sure that they will be of a similar high standard. These are, after all, premium products.

I don’t know how the launch has gone down in Japan. I suspect there are many women there who are up in arms about it too. Equally, I expect there’s a whole bunch of women, probably young women, who think it’s lovely and would like to own and use one. The real point here isn’t that they’ve chosen to make a laptop with a feminine design, and I can even live with the patronising tone of the marketing video and press release if it’s priced fairly and we’re not being taxed for being stupid women. Therein lies the real rub. Adding a crystal to the adapter lead is not worth two hundred quid to me…

On the other hand, I’m really interested to learn more about the female engineers who worked on the product and how and why they designed it like they did. I wonder what their vision was and if it was delivered?

Further References:

Original press release http://www.fujitsu.com/global/news/pr/archives/month/2012/20121019-03.html

Floral Kiss Facebook Page https://www.facebook.com/FujitsuFloralKiss

Belinda Parmar’s article at HuffPo http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/belinda-parmar/floral-kiss-laptops-women-more-like-awf_b_2008162.html?utm_hp_ref=uk

CNet article http://crave.cnet.co.uk/laptops/fujitsus-floral-kiss-laptops-for-ladies-fail-to-woo-50009575/

Even the Daily Mail is critical http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2222136/Fujitsu-Floral-Kiss-The-ladies-laptop-open-chipping-manicure.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

The Mary Sue doesn’t like it much and some of the comments are interesting http://www.themarysue.com/fujitsu-floral-kiss/

Ladies-only informal lunch at Mobile World Congress–Tuesday 15 February

Yes, it's that time of year again when we all descend on Barcelona for Mobile World Congress. And this lunch is a chance for us ladies to get together for an hour or so over a relaxed lunch and chew the fat with our peers away from the main drag. Priority will be given to ladies to attend. If there's room, then we'll be able to have some gentlemen join us too. However we are limited in space.

We have the upstairs of a local tapas restaurant all to ourselves. It's the same one as last year - Restaurant Aranega. And it's about 5 minutes walk from the entrance of La Fira on Avenida Paral-lel. http://www.aranega.es/ They looked after us well last year so I’m sure they’ll look after us well this year too.

If you're interested in joining us, please let me know by RSVP'ing on Facebook (or you can search on facebook for ‘MWC11: Ladies-only lunch’. I’ll be taking payment in advance and it will be 20 Euro per head (or thereabouts). That's because we need to pay for the food in advance as the restaurant will be busy so we’re pre-ordering. I'll be able to take payment by PayPal. The lunch will be a range of tapas to share with soft drinks provided. Wine and additional dishes can be ordered on the day and paid for separately.

Of course, if we get a sponsor, then we won't need to worry about payment... so if anyone is up for that, or knows someone who is, please get in touch with me by email.

The Lowdown:

Date: Tuesday 15th February at 12.30 until 14.00

Venue: We have the upstairs room booked at the lovely Aranega - just like last year - http://www.aranega.es which is on Avenida Paral-lel 188. Come out of La Fira, walk down Avenida Paral-lel, and it's on the * left* hand side at number 188 -just over the road from Congress and less than 10 minutes walk.

Agenda and timings: 12.30 Doors will open at for drinks and mingling.  We’ll be closing around 14:00 and going back to Congress.

Cost: 20 Euros – or thereabouts

Do tell your friends and look forward to seeing old friends and new.

Technorati Tags: mwc11,mobile world congress,barcelona,lunch,mobile,event

Ada Lovelace Day Potluck Unconference

This sounds like it could be fun. If you’re in London Town on Wednesday 24th March and are interested in helping women do more in technology, then why not join the fun? Maggie Philbin and Suw Charman-Anderson will be on hand to kick start the proceedings and then it’s up to the attendees to chip in with what and who they want to talk about.

The potluck bit also refers to the self-catering aspect of it. There won’t be any refreshments provided but everyone who attends can bring their own food and drink to share.

Schedule

6.00 pm: Arrival, drinks, networking, attendees sign up to talk if you want to.
7.00 pm: Introduction by Suw Charman-Anderson, Maggie Philbin talks about her inspiration
7.15 pm: Unconference! Those who signed up can give a short, 3-4 minute talk about their tech/sci heroine.
8.00 pm: Drinks and networking.

It’s being held at the Centre for Creative Collaboration which is near Kings Cross. Find out more about the event and RSVP here.

Technorati Tags: Ada Lovelace Day,women in technology,events

I’m supporting Ada Lovelace Day this year, will you?

Last year, I supported Ada Lovelace Day, the international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology and science.

The team behind it are now planning this year’s effort for 24 March 2010 and they’re looking for bloggers, old and new, male and female, whether you blog in audio, video, images or written word, and from all sectors to sign the pledge to write a blog post about a woman or women you admire in technology.

Last year, 1200 of us wrote blog posts, there was a great amount of press and it was even covered by the BBC News Channel.

I support this initiative, as women’s contributions, for whatever reason, often go unacknowledged, their innovations seldom mentioned and their faces rarely recognised. So the Finding Ada initiative aimed to do something about that.

It’s a topic dear to my heart, as too often, women are invisible in the mobile industry. Yet as organiser of various mobile events, including the Women in Mobile Data Association, I know there are lots of women in the mobile industry, yet it’s the men in the industry whose voices are heard more often than not. And since women are more than 50% of the mobile phone customer base, it’s increasingly important for women’s voices to be heard and recognised and to be acted upon instead of ignored or sidelined, whether intentionally or not. This is one effort to do something about just that.

So the goal is to reach 3072 names this year – more than doubling last year’s effort. And there’s just over a month to go. There are 72 names on the list at the time of writing, so 3,000 to go. Will yours be on it?

Please sign the pledge at http://findingada.com/ and let all your friends know about it too.

To keep up to date with what is happening:

     The Pledge: http://findingada.com/
     The Blog: http://blog.findingada.com
     on Twitter http://twitter.com/FindingAda
     on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=253179284089

Technorati Tags: findingada,women,wimd,blogger,blogging

Women in Mobile Data Association informal lunch in Barcelona

Update: Venue is confirmed!

It's that time of year again and Barcelona and a bit of sunshine beckons us to the spectacle that is Mobile World Congress. And I know there'll be quite a few of ladies there. So I’m organising an informal lunch on Tuesday 16th February for the Women in Mobile Data Association. The restaurant, Aranega, is a short walk from Congress (less than 10 minutes) on Avenida Paral-lel and thanks to our fantastic sponsor, HipLogic, there'll be tapas and refreshments for everyone. So that's your lunch break sorted then!

The Lowdown:

Date: Tuesday 16th February at 12.30 until 14.30

Venue: We have the upstairs room booked at the lovely Aranega - just like last year - http://www.aranega.es which is on Avenida Paral-lel 188. Come out of La Fira, walk down Avenida Paral-lel, and it's on the * left* hand side at number 188 -just over the road from Congress and less than 10 minutes walk.

Agenda and timings:

12.30 Doors will open at for drinks and mingling.
12.50, HipLogic's CEO, Mark Anderson, will give us a short talk on his vision for HipLogic followed by a few questions and some discussion. He wants to know what women like us think of the service and how we might use it.
13.10 - Tapas and more drinks will be served. Lots of chat and networking.
14.45 - Doors close and it's back to Congress we go.

It’s free to attend, but space is limited and because of this, priority will be given to the ladies in our group. If any gentlemen would like to join us, please contact me and I'll be able to confirm any remaining places at the weekend.

Please RSVP to me by email or on Facebook http://bit.ly/dr3eH2. Spaces are limited.

About our sponsor HipLogic

HipLogic Live delivers content from real-time sources like Facebook, Twitter, Sky, Disney, Sports, Weather, newsfeeds and more, through a smartphone-like interface that works is delivers push content notifications to the phonetop without using SMS. This means that they bring the world of applications, widgets, live search and real-time notifications to the mass market without the need to invest in a new smartphone. You just need one, simple, free download. The technology relies on a JavaScript virtual machine running on the device that is connected to the cloud that aggregates information and feeds from network operators and the Web to create mash-ups for use on Symbian, Windows Mobile and Android mobile devices. The aim is to provide always-on, fast access and logical presentation of content and applications that can be cumbersome to access through current mobile phone browsers - especially on multimedia-phones.

CEO Mark Anderson describes HipLogic as being an “extreme makeover” for your phone that will deliver an iPhone-like experience to the mass market. And he wants our feedback - that's why he's sponsoring our WiMD lunch. He wants to know what women think about this since we're the ones who are predominantly sold feature-phones and have less time and inclination to explore the world of applications and content - or so we're led to believe. Is this true? Let's find out on Tuesday 16th February.

HipLogic Live is available as a free download from http://www.hiplogic.com

Technorati Tags: wimd,mwc10,mobile world congress,barcelona,lunch,hiplogic,mobile content

January linkage

I know I haven’t been blogging as much of late. It’s just so much easier to play on twitter. But I’ve made a sort of pact with myself to do more blogging this year and better capture some of my thoughts, projects and reading. I can’t promise I’ll keep it up mind, but let’s see how we go…

There’s a new UK Strategy Group which is looking at the Future of the Internet. Details about this Technology Strategy Board initiative is here. This is as much as I know about at the moment, but it’s something I’ll be keeping an eye on.

Victor Keegan’s (no relation!) view of the upcoming challenges for the mobile phone including LBS (location based services) and metadata so that we know more about where we are and who we are to give more relevance for mobile services.

Nice use of SMS for customer service by La Trouvaille restaurant in London’s Soho is noted here.

I’m pleased to be the first Female Friday interviewee for GomoNews. The fairly in-depth interview is here outlining my journey into the mobile world, what I think of mobile marketing and, in particular, the role of SMS and mobile internet.

I’ve been travelling a fair bit too. I had the pleasure of speaking at Hostelworld’s annual international conference for hostel owners in Dublin last week. Cian from GomoNews was in attendance so he captured my keynote speech including tips and hints on how to do mobile marketing on a tight budget. As an aside, Hostelworld has launched its iPhone app which has done amazingly well since its recent launch.

A comprehensive article on the smartphone market by Guy Agin. Well worth a read to put the different smartphone vendors and platforms into some kind of perspective and redraws the mobile platform map and explains the graph below in more detail.

Conceptual design and thinking behind a ‘five year phone’. Food for thought, especially after our Mobile Monday London goes to Brighton event on sustainability in mobile back on 18th January.

Technorati Tags: platforms,handsets,mobile internet,customer service,sms marketing

It’s Wednesday, there must be mobile stuff to write about…

Whilst I have a bit of blogging mojo going on, best share a few links with you and why I think they’re worth a look.

There’s an app for that. Or so the saying now goes.

The English National Opera joins the iPhone bandwagon and have put together a rather nice mobile application for opera buffs. I would test it, but I don’t have an iPhone. But since iPhone apps are essentially skins to a browser it shouldn’t be *that* hard to make a mobile web friendly version. I await with anticipation. And if the ENO can do this, surely it can’t be long before the rest of the West End realise that mobile is core to their digital strategy. I live in hope being partial to live theatre ‘n all.

And for the tiny tots in your life, there’s an app for potty training too. Read all about it here.

And with 65k other applications in the iPhone app store, marketing is even more critical to get your app noticed and sold. So there are some tips in this article ‘How to get to number one in the App store’. My caveat being that there is more than one App store out there and there’s more than one device where you can use and download apps. Also, the article isn’t as in-depth as one might like, but it’s a start.

There’s another ‘top tips for the iPhone app store’ type article over at AdAge as well which is also worth a look. It includes a handy checklist which they expand on in the article:

1. Make it useful or entertaining.
2. Use an analytics tool.
3. Make your app free, at least initially.
4. Release your app midweek.
5. Promote it.
6. Make it social.
7. Collect feedback.
8. Refresh continuously

Where are the women in mobile? Well Mobile Marketer wants to know and are asking the mobile community to nominate some lady experts in mobile marketing in particular. Of course, they’re hot on the heels of Mobile Entertainment Magazine’s Top 50 Women in Mobile Content 2009 list (I’m thrilled to be in the ME list, 2nd year in a row no less, alongside some eminent colleagues and friends). My take on this is simple.

Tanla Mobile Marketing & Advertising Guide 2008

View more documents from Helen Keegan.

And last, but by no means least, I’ve uploaded The Tanla Guide to Mobile Marketing and Advertising 2008 I wrote up to Slideshare. I wrote and compiled it at the end of 2007 so it’s a little out of date, but there are enough case studies and examples to keep you going that are still more than relevant today. The guide also includes essays and articles from fellow mobilists including Tomi Ahonen, Russell Buckley, Jessica Sandin, Daniel Appelquist and Mike Short. The font size is miniscule so make sure you increase that before you print off or read off your screen. Go download it, it’s free!

Technorati Tags: iphone,app store,mobile marketing,mobile advertising,guide,opera,potty training,mobile internet,marketing campaign,marketing