Women in Tech-focused SF Mobile Meetup

An evening focused on engendering change in Silicon Valley draws crowd and shares studies

You can’t deny that when attending tech events – most of the time, you’ll find a good portion of the audience to be male.  

Last night was a different story when checking out Pascale Diaine’s, Women in Technology event, organized through SF Mobile Meetup.  Diaine created the meet-up to bring together women working in the tech industry and women looking for jobs in the industry.  She also presented ‘Her Code,’ a 20 page publication showcasing findings on where women currently stand in the industry.  Diaine conducted the studies through Orange Labs.  

The evening began with a short film produced by Diaine encouraging women to take on harder sciences, a key line from it being, “I think the world would look a lot different if half the developers were women.”

The gathering featured entrepreneurial woman figures presenting the companies and projects they are currently working on.   Sandy Jen, Co-Founder of Meebo, had the audience in laughter as she shared her adventures of raising funds for her company with Sequoia Capital.  Jen also explained, “I didn’t realize I was different,” further elaborating she didn’t have to dress special to spark interest in the VC’s, she simply had to be herself.  

On the other hand, Beatrice Tarka, CEO and Co-Founder of Mobissimo, a travel search engine explained that, “brains and beauty are a great door opener.”

Other keynote speakers included Heather Harde, CEO of TechCrunch, Rashmi Sinha, CEO of Slideshare, Leila Chirayath Janah, Founder of Samasource, and Silvia Console Battiana, Co-Founder of Auctionomics.

The event was humble with about 100 attendees.  We caught up and spoke with Diaine after the presentations where she told us the evening was a success.  Diaine explained, “In three days, everybody signed up, I stopped the registration at 150 people, it sold out and I had to say NO to a lot of people.”  See the video for the rest of our conversation with Diaine.

Originally, Diaine planned on this being a one-time event, but she explained that last night's success sparked much interest and potential for future events.

This will take you to the Web version of 'Her Code' publication.

Here's a link to the 'Her Code', video.