Category Archives: opinions

The difference between loving the design and loving the service

Posted on by Sarah Cooley
2

On my last day in Austin, TX I was wearing a Gowalla shirt. I walked into the Aol Studio and someone asked me how I got the shirt. Gowalla was doing a special SXSW promotion, you could get your Gowalla passport, fill it up with stickers and get Gowalla swag.

So when the guy asked me how I got the Gowalla shirt, I was honest with him. I said “I paid for this shirt”. He looked really confused, he said “wait, you paid money for that shirt?”. My response: “Yes, I paid cash money for this shirt”.

I love the design of Gowalla, so I am willing to pay to wear their brand. However, I was not really using Gowalla at SXSW. I was not willing to check in everywhere just to get a shirt, but I was willing to pay for one. That’s the difference between loving the design and loving the service!

I love Foursquare, and the new update makes me love it even more! Foursquare bringing back the leaderboard was smart! It feels like a game again. Every check-in counts and I’m loving it.

Foursquare is also showing me more about my check-in history. Gives me extra points for hanging out with the same people, and really is helping me to explore my city.

This is going to make foursquare tips more useful. Just the other day I got a thank you on twitter for a foursquare tip I left over a year ago.

My Gowalla shirt from SXSW 2010

It’s things like this that will make me add more tips because I know they are really useful to my friends. I also think this will turn into certain friends becoming experts in the categories of places that they check-in most. Of course my friends are going to look for my tips when they are looking for a good vegetarian place to eat. Hopefully foursquare will start to reflect the expertise that your friends have. They had the data, why not use it!

Gowalla hasn’t lost me as a user yet, I just use foursquare more at this point. That is why you will see me wearing a Gowalla shirt, while checking in on Foursquare.

SXSWi – What you probably already know

Posted on by Sarah Cooley
1

Every year around this time, approximately  14,000 geeks venture down to Austin, TX for South by Southwest Interactive. And every year, a good handful of those people write snarky blog posts about ‘what you need to know before you get to SXSW’. In fact, I myself wrote one just last year.

So at the risk of being redundant, here are some tips that you may or may not have heard already.

  1. I usually to say forget about the schedule. What I mean by that is don’t worry about making it to all the panels or all the parties. Just go with the flow, you’ll have more fun that way.
  2. But a certain amount of scheduling can be good. For example: If you really want to spend some quality time with people, put a meal on the books. Schedule time to meet up, sit down, and eat something.  This way you will actually get to spend time with the people you want to see. I will be holding Ohours at SXSW for this very reason!
  3. If this is your first time going to SXSW If you are going to SXSW, you should fully expect to be worn out when it’s over. Make sure to drink lots of water and take extra vitamin C, to prevent getting really sick when you return home.
  4. You will walk….a lot! Everything is usually close to the convention center, but that’s going to mean a lot of walking for you. Be sure you are comfortable with what you are wearing.
  5. Enjoy the serendipity. South by can be a very serendipitous place. Crazy things happen, you end up in awesome conversations with amazing people, and when this happens just enjoy it and stay in the moment. You don’t need to take pictures and tweet while this is happening (let’s be serious, you can tweet about it later)
  6. Don’t forget to eat! It sounds silly, but with everything going on it can be very easy to forget to eat. My advice, schedule meetings around meals. This insures that you give yourself a brake, and get a chance to eat.

A little tip on what to eat at SXSW from your friendly vegan friend, Sarah Cooley (hey, that’s me!).

Remember to eat your veggies! At SXSW, there will be tons of free BBQ to partake of (in fact MapQuest will have a bus trip to Salt Lick BBQ) So I understand that it might be more difficult to fit veggies into your meals. But do your best to try and eat some greens at least once during the day. Trust me, you will feel better because of it!

I’m thinking of putting together a small casual vegan meetup at SXSW (vegans and non vegans welcome). If you would be interested, leave me a comment below. If there is enough interest we can figure out a time and day in Austin that works for everyone.

If you want to meet up in Austin, feel free to sign up for one of my Ohours slots. Or you can try more traditional methods of tracking people down at SXSW, but that usually doesn’t work.

On “Women in Tech”

Posted on by Sarah Cooley
1

Recently there have been a lot of posts floating around the blogosphere about “Women in Tech”. Michael Arrington wrote a post titled “Too Few Women In Tech? Stop Blaming The Men” This really hit a nerve for some people and the web was littered to responses to his opinion.

I knew about the article the day it came out but I had decided not to read it. The entire topic of “women in tech” just tends to upset me. Not because I think there are too few women, but because as a women I want to be good in the field I work in, not just good among to women in that field. I don’t like to make generalized statements about a gender in a certain field.

That being said, after reading Jolie O’Dell’s post today entitled “Why We Don’t Need More Women In Tech… Yet” I agree with her point.

This dubiously accurate nomenclature of “women in tech” places the entry-level PR girl at a startup in the same monolithic group as 50-year-old engineer at IBM. This is unfair to the women who do real technology work; it’s doubly unfair to women as a gender, as it smashes the “tech” label onto anything related to the Internet. Does having 50 male engineers and 50 PR women at tech companies mean we’ve achieved gender equality? Hardly, but it does make it more difficult to correct the true imbalance: There are not enough women doing real technology work.

The whole article is a great read.

I have often been referred to by others as a “women in tech” and frankly the title makes me uncomfortable because in my opinion, I’m not! It would be MUCH more accurate to refer to myself as someone in media or communications, not technology. I studied Media Studies, not Computer Science. While I have worked for tech companies in the past, it was always in a media, marketing, or community capacity.

I enjoy technology, but I’m not out there creating it. Not one day goes by where I don’t wish that my coding skills were better (or that I had any to begin with) but presently it’s not my goal. I applaud those that are doing real technology work and those like Jolie who have been inspired to go back to school for computer science. I can’t wait to see the amazing technology that they produce.

At the end of the day I hope that these discussions and opinions encourage everyone (regardless of gender) to go out there and be innovative! While there may be more room for women in technology, there is always more room for innovation.