horsepigcow

She’s Geeky

Friday, January 30 and Saturday, January 31
in Mountain View, CA at the Computer History Museum

They have an amazing list of proposed topics developing on the wiki.

• Technical Topics
• Including Quantum Computing
• Physical Computing
• All kinds of programing languages
• Social Platform Debugging sessions
• Open Source Hardware
• Women’s Issues Topics
• Business Topics
• Career Topics

The best place to see who is coming is on the facebook group and on Eventbrite.

You can bring your daughters – please register them though

Your admission gets you lots of yummy food free.

We have the movie on the home page really fun.

All of our women in technology collaborating organizations (cause we are an “event” not an organization)

• Linux Chix
• Dev Chix
• Women 2.0
• Bay Area Girl Geek Dinners
• Girls in Tech
• Gaming Angels
• Glass Hammer
• Anita Borg Institute
• Women Who Tech
• Digital Sisters

CBT Model Explained by My Counselling Site

I used to have this affliction where I would make mountains out of molehills – whether the news was good or bad, I would hyperbolize and dream it into Never Never Land. For instance, someone could approach me after I gave a talk and say, “That was interesting,” in that “I question the usefulness of your information” kind of way and I would go from the receipt of potentially banal or at the very most slightly negative feedback to “OMG, I should never speak in public again. I have no idea what I’m talking about” in zero to 30 seconds. Then I’d stay in that awful spiral for hours…sometimes even days.

Similarly, I could take good news and start to spiral upwards. Even the smallest possibility meant that it was a done deal and I could start celebrating. Of course the crash of things falling through threw me in an extreme downward spiral. It was either WAY up or WAY down for me.

Until I found Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Unlike many other forms of therapy, CBT is incredibly goal-oriented and focused. And there are simple exercises that the recipient performs over and over again to re-wire the way she reacts to events. Over a series of lessons and subsequent practice, I learnt to stop the spiral before it happened. Now I can get truly negative feedback and stop to assess whether I can learn from it and how to respond in a way that isn’t defensive or futile. A person approaching me after a talk can even say, “You sucked. I learnt nothing,” and I will either engage them in conversation (ie. “You learnt nothing because you already know the material or you learnt nothing because you disagree?”) or take the comment in stride with overall feedback (ie. Overall feedback was positive, but this one person didn’t like it – can’t please everyone). It’s been an amazing transformation for me and given me the ability to stop and think realistically and strategically about news, feedback and events.

As I’m hearing the news about thousands and thousands of layoffs in multiple industries everyday due to the economic crisis/downturn/recession/depression/etc we are in, I think: “Wow, this economy sure could use a little CBT. We appear to be in a spiral.” And we are. And the spiral that happens on one level affects the next and, like a really powerful hurricane, seems to pick up speed as it moves down the line. What is happening appears to be the best example of what Reagan called ‘Trickle Down Economics‘ I’ve ever seen…or a really far-reaching version of Systems Theory. Nothing operates in a silo.

I put a call out on Twitter that stated:

“If I were the President of the US, I would put a stop 2 layoffs and tell these companies 2 get more creative w/ their cost cutting.”

Many people replied that this was a socialist attitude, but I really don’t think so. We got into this mess because of poor short-term thinking and the lack of early government intervention. Nobody wanted to intervene because things were booming – what a buzzkill – unfortunately, they were all warned that this would happen. The truth is…because of corporate structures (nobody is truly accountable when the bill is passed to the shareholders), short-term thinking (really pushed by the corporate structures that hold CEO’s accountable on a short-term quarterly basis, so quick win solutions win over long term thinking) and a lack of understanding of systems theory (which is really the basis of community – what we do affects others and vice versa), we are destined to dig ourselves into a deeper hole. The level we are at now and the speed at which we are still spiraling suggests that the Great Depression levels of unemployment and economic crisis aren’t ridiculous predictions. I tell you. I’m scared. And something needs to be done to stop the spiral.

There are all sorts of ways to cut costs in organizations. Certainly, employees are expensive. But there are serious downsides to mass layoffs:

• Reduces ‘surviving’ employee morale and productivity
• Customer retention falls off more when their contacts leave, especially after a layoff (and the general feeling of the trustworthiness of a brand drops, so Word of Mouth is bad), losing more sales
• There are significant indirect costs to laying off people (especially large numbers), which end up wiping out the short term savings.

There is a great article on BNet that links to several studies to back this up.

So, yes, layoffs are a great way to cut costs in the short term, but the long term costs of layoffs are not worth it…not to mention the toll that mass layoffs take on the overall economy when they are all too common. The community around a major company that lays off, say, 5,000 employees suffers too. The local restaurants see a drop in patrons. Theatres, ballet companies, art galleries and other entertainment starts to struggle to make ends meet. Local business, car sales, real estate and just about everyone else who makes a living in the local economy suffers. I was talking to the bar manager from Nova the other day and she told me, “People are still drinking, but tips are way down.” Still, she told me, “I’d rather my customers can pay their rent and tip me 5% rather than 15% and get thrown out on the street.” I wish everyone had her “we’re in it together” attitude.

So, then, what is the alternative? What would the economy learn from CBT? How do we stop the spiral and get more realistic and strategic about our reactions?

Here are some suggestions:

• Ask your workforce to take a small paycut instead of having to layoff a percentage. FedEx did it. They had the CEO take a 20% paycut, senior staff take a 7.5-10% paycut and the rest of the staff take a 5% paycut. This probably saved them more in the long run and they get to continue to provide good customer service so that sales don’t suffer more.
• Give each department a challenge to cut costs drastically without cutting talent, quality or customer service. Make it a contest where the department who cuts the most creatively (without compromising the quality or service) gets an extra holiday week once things get sunnier. Alternatively, you could say, “C’mon…you decide how to cut costs so we can all get through this.” and you’d have employees getting creative.
• Work with your customers to increase sales while helping them balance their budgets. They are feeling the economic squeeze, too. Maybe you drop some prices to return customers as a thanks for their loyalty. Create a referral program and give discount codes for people to offer to their friends and neighbors. This may work better with the ballet company, but you could offer ‘Economic Downturn Wednesdays” where you’d sell really inexpensive tickets so ppl could still afford to go out. You’d probably introduce many new people to your business.

There are probably dozens of great management articles out there on multiple ways to cut costs during tough times. What I do know is that we can’t keep dumping unemployed people into the abyss like this. Not without some serious ripple effects. We have to stop spiraling and start thinking longterm. And we are all in it together. All of us. If there ever was time for community, it’s now. It’s time for each of us to stop thinking about ourselves and start thinking about how we can work together to get through this time. It’s time to stop the spiral.

Equally exciting to me is this second announcement. Yep. We are expanding Citizen Space thanks to an awesome series of fortunate events:

1. Elisabeth Norris – I hired Elisabeth back in November, I think it was, to be my personal assistant. She has demonstrated that she is so amazing and capable that I decided to hire her full-time to become the General Manager of Citizen Space. Say hi. She rocks.
2. EqualityCamp – On January 3, we had EqualityCamp, which got bigger than we expected, so we had to move to a bigger space. I placed a phonecall to my landlord and he donated a space on the 1st floor to us that I totally fell in love with.
3. David Hall – Awesomest landlord ever. Hands down.
4. The overall success of Citizen Space – We’ve been full since month 3, I believe, and have been turning people away for years. We are adding 12 desks (for a total of 20), so we should be able to accommodate everyone now!

The details of the space:

- we are moving downstairs in the same building. We’ll still be at 425 – 2nd Street, but in suite 100 instead of 300 (in the loading dock – used to be a gym).
- the new space is 3500 ft2 (plus a sizeable loft) – 2000+ additional square feet to what we currently have.
- we’re building in a fully loaded kitchen to the space.
- there are two bathrooms in the space.
- there is one large boardroom that we will eventually turn into 2 (convertible to one large one)
- there is more common space
- instead of having a 40 person limit to events, we will have a 100 person limit
- rents stay the same as advertised

We’ll be doing the grande unveiling March 1st, but people that want to see the new space who are interested in a desk when we open can ping either Elisabeth or myself and arrange a tour for closer to the end of February. We’ll be posting photos along the way, tweeting and blogging the transformation, too!

This is super exciting to me and I hope to have my new team working out of the space from time to time!

(Intuit Values Etchings)

I’ve been hinting for the last couple of weeks that I have a couple of big announcements to make. This is the first of them.

Starting next week, I begin my job with Intuit as the marketing lead on their Partner Platform. I’m pretty freakin excited about this move for multiple reasons. Here they are:

1. I’m a data geek and when I first sat down with Alex Chriss, the Business Leader of the Intuit Partner Platform, about this opportunity, he gave me a scrumptious look into just how much amazing data Intuit has that can really help small and mid-size businesses rawk it.
2. Intuit, itself, needs people from ‘my world’ (i.e. grassroots, startups, etc.) to help lead it into the next phase. I like feeling needed, but I also saw that I can make a difference in this big, successful, solid company. As soon as the opportunity was presented to me, I started thinking about all of the awesome things I could do by connecting Intuit, the web community, small businesses and even other big, successful, solid companies together to really empower those small to mid-size businesses. My first order of business is to resist using acronyms as much as possible.
3. I, personally, could use a little schoolin’ on corporate America. Though I’ve worked for larger organizations before, I haven’t worked for a company quite the size of Intuit. I’m used to the fly by the seat of my pants, embrace the chaos kind of process that makes things happen quickly and is subject to much risk. This, of course, needs to be balanced with more structure when you scale up to a larger organization and one is accountable to a large workforce and client base. I’m about to find out how to balance that. I’m pretty excited to see where I can push boundaries and where boundaries can push me.
4. I need to sink my teeth into a really kickass project. And THIS is a kickass project. Intuit has long been the trusted name in business accounting software and has made some tentative moves to the online space. However, the Partner Platform is a huge leap in the direction that the business world is going. When you add up the trusted name of Intuit with the excitement and innovative possibilities of the Partner Platform, you get a big, fat WOWSA of an opportunity to make a real difference.
5. 2009 is going to be the year when small businesses will bloom. These layoffs really stink, but the more people I talk to who are getting laid off, the more people I’m hearing are making a go of starting their own ventures. They’ll need some good support. Enter the Intuit Partner Platform. I want to provide the tools everyone needs to succeed with their new ventures.
6. The team on this project is killer! I get to work with one of my favorite people in the world, Alex Barnett, who is – I think – one of the sharpest nails in the toolbox when it comes to developer network stuff. I’m really excited about working with him. We riff really well off one another and he’s a very down-to-earth person himself…which I heart. I’ve also grown quite fond of Alex Chriss despite the fact he talks in acronyms. Alex C and I have much in common: Canadian, startup background, brilliant, amazing ideas and willing to fight for what we believe in. A good guy to have in my corner. I also got to briefly meet the delightful Bill Lucchini, who is the Vice President & General Manager, Platform-as-a-Service Group, who knows his sushi, is also super smart and is the right kind of person to lead this effort. I have yet to meet the rest of the team, but if they are anything akin to those I’ve already met, I’m pumped!

So, there you go. The stubborn indie who revels in her odd work hours (12pm-12am), movement making abilities (it’s a full time job in itself!) and addiction to Twitter (another full time job) is going corporate. And, dammit, I’m excited about it.

Here is the announcement from Intuit.

(stay tuned for announcement #2!)