Web Start Women

So here’s some good news

Results of the latest audience survey conducted by Women 2.0 show that the percentage of the site’s users who identify as founders has doubled since their last inquiry in 2008—25% then to 50% now. If one allows the assumption that some of the same women completed the survey both times, this finding suggests that a number of women who were “thinking about entrepreneurship” in 2008 actually followed through and started something in the last few years.

Other insights from the survey include that the Women 2.0 audience has expanded past San Francisco (where the organization is based); 54% of users are now outside the Bay area. Audience interests have shifted from networking to predominantly education and funding.

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October 20, 2011

Woman with a vision for UCSF

Dr. Susan Desmond-Hellmann, chancellor of University of California, San Francisco, wants to make the university “the world’s pre-eminent health sciences innovator.” Dr. Desmond-Hellmann has a strong background in both medicine and business (she was president of product development at biotech giant, Genentech). She intends to increase collaborations between UCSF and the biotech companies in the Bay Area.

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October 16, 2011

WSW July Progress Report

Can we just pause for a second to express how excited we are about how WSW is blossoming?

In just about two months we…

Launched our Meetup which has steadily grown to about 100 members
Squirmed when our Facebook page sat pathetically at 5 members for a while but then watched with excitement as the likes steadily climbed to 150+
Decided there was too much tech goodness to not also be broadcasting at Twitter (where we now have 77 tweets and 75+ followers)
Hosted 2 Startlucks and met 17 awesome women
Kicked off our first class series (HTML/CSS) where we studied hard with 11 super-fantastic geeky gals
Got some great local community love from the likes of Geekadelphia and Technically Philly
Have had the pleasure of making friends with such awesome groups as Girl Geek Dinners Philadelphia and PyStar Philly
Have group members representing at the Wharton Web Conference as well as the Philly Merge Conference
Have begun planning a youth program with Girard College
Are scheduling a couple fun workshops for TechGirlz, a non-profit that primes young girls to be future technology leaders

And to top it all off, we’re super excited to officially announce the WSW love is now available in Pacific Time, ala WSW SF Bay Area. This new chapter is being headed by web developer Amanda Steigerwalt and we can’t wait to see what she does. We’re not even jealous that they already have about 60 Meetup members and haven’t even had their first event. ;-)

On the horizon - so many other ideas we sometimes fear our heads might explode. More specifically, our co-founder Nicole Noll has accepted a fellowship position at Harvard, so, look for exciting stuff coming from the Boston front.

Also, we’re investigating means for reaching beyond large, accessible cities by providing online classes. This means all you nerdy ladies in Podunk, Peoria, and Timbucktoo should stay tuned. :-)

Basically this is all a heartfelt fist-pump for all the wonderful people we’ve met (irl and virtually) over the past couple months. To some, the above numbers and connections might seem like small fries, but to us they mean a tremendous amount. Each add, like, RSVP, follow, email and shout-out reminds us that there’s a need for the community we’re creating, and nothing makes us happier than knowing we’re facilitating awesomeness to fill that space in the techiverse.

Nerd <3,
Susan + Nicole

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July 12, 2011