To follow more of the things I find online, you can follow @amysampleward on Twitter (which is just a blog and resource feed), or find me on Delicious (for all kinds of bookmarks).

• Salesforce Acquires Buddy Media for $689 Million – “Salesforce has entered an agreement to acquire social media marketing platform Buddy Media for approximately $689 million, the company has announced. The price is lower than the recently reported $800 million figure, but still a formidable investment from the enterprise software giant, which is on a seemingly never-ending acquisition spree. Salesforce had acquired collaboration tool company Stypi in May 2012, as well as social media monitoring platform Radian6 in March 2011.”
• 4 Results from Crowdsource Experiment at #12NTC: Nerd, Geek and Gear Herding « Sage Words – “At the 2012 Nonprofit Technology Conference (#12NTC) in San Francisco, California, we led a session called Nerd, Geek, and Gear Herding 2.0. Building on last year’s session, we were pleased that this year we had the opportunity to introduce the “crowdsourcing” experiment to collectively solve our nonprofit technology problems.”
• Introducing the Knowledge Graph: things, not strings | Official Google Blog – “Search is a lot about discovery—the basic human need to learn and broaden your horizons. But searching still requires a lot of hard work by you, the user. So today I’m really excited to launch the Knowledge Graph, which will help you discover new information quickly and easily. Take a query like [taj mahal]. For more than four decades, search has essentially been about matching keywords to queries. To a search engine the words [taj mahal] have been just that—two words. But we all know that [taj mahal] has a much richer meaning. You might think of one of the world’s most beautiful monuments, or a Grammy Award-winning musician, or possibly even a casino in Atlantic City, NJ. Or, depending on when you last ate, the nearest Indian restaurant. It’s why we’ve been working on an intelligent model—in geek-speak, a “graph”—that understands real-world entities and their relationships to one another: things, not strings.”
• The Identity Spectrum – Identity Woman – I love this spectrum map of the various kinds of online identity! Such a great resource for understanding and planning for community engagement. “The Identity Spectrum gives a understanding of the different kinds of identity that are possible in digital systems. They are not exclusive – you can mix and match. I will define the terms below and discuss mixing and matching below.”
• Current.org | Evaluating social media efforts, May 2012 – “Now that most public media stations have become active on social networks — with some combination of Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, blogs and YouTube channels — staff members at many stations are struggling with the question: Are we getting the most bang for our social-media buck? After all, building and maintaining a meaningful social media presence requires a significant investment of time — and it’s not always easy to measure the return on that investment. What does social media success look like, anyway?”
• New Study: Donations Decline for Nonprofits – Online Fundraising, Advocacy, and Social Media – – “Of the different trend-spotting and benchmarking resources, few are as important and authoritative as the “donorCentrics Index of National Fundraising Performance” published quarterly by Target Analytics, a division of Blackbaud. Yesterday in Washington, DC, Target’s senior fundraising analyst Paige Grainger gave a terrific “state of the nonprofit industry” talk, which summarized key findings from Target’s latest, 2011 Index. The full report is here.  Paige spoke at a luncheon that Care2 sponsored of the Direct Marketing Association of Washington (DMAW). Target’s data this year was drawn from 80 different nonprofit organizations, 38 million donors, 79 million gifts and $2.5 billion worth of donations revenue (although it excluded any donations worth $10,000 or more). Channels covered included online, direct mail, telemarketing and canvassing.”

Related Links:

• WWT Information
• Session slides
• Session recordings

Location: Online – http://womenwhotech.org

Topic: Tools and Apps to Energize your Base

Description:  I’ll be presenting, along with Corvida Raven and Sarah Dijulio, about different tools and strategies to empower and inspire your community to take action.

Related Links: Women Who Tech, Blog post and notes

Location: ReadyTalk conferencing

Topic: Tools Galore

Description: From Google Earth to Wiki’s and Twitter this panel will give you the nuts and bolts of the latest tools organizations can utilize to ramp up their next online campaign. Panelists: Natalie Foster, DNC; Rebecca Moore, Google Earth Outreach; Laura Quinn, Idealware. Moderator: Amy Sample Ward, NetSquared

Related Links:

• WomenWhoTech
• Blog post with slides and notes
• Slides

• When: May 12, 2009. Panels run from 11AM EDT to 6PM EDT.
• Where: Everywhere via phone and web
• Fee: $10

Check out these awesome panels and sign up today. When you sign up for one panel, feel free to register for a couple more complementary – that’s right, it’s on us.

•    Social Media ROI
•    Women and Open Source
•    Tools Galore in Online Communications
•    Transparency and Government 2.0
•    Video Activism
•    Launching Your Own Startup
•    Breaking Through the Digital Ceiling
•    Tech Marketing in a Recession
•    Social Networks and Diversity Barriers
•    Innovation and Tech Career Reinvention
•    What Shirky Didn’t Tell Us
•    Feminine Mystique

Here are a few of the rockin’ women who will be joining us this year: Lisa Stone of BlogHer, Allison Fine of Personal Democracy Forum, Rashmi Sinha of SlideShare, Charelene Li, co-author of Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies, Shireen Mitchell of Digital Sistas, Holly Ross of NTEN, Rebecca Moore of Google Earth Outreach and so much more.

Don’t miss this year’s telesummitt. It’s a wonderful opportunity for our community to share our collective wisdom with inspiring stories and practical tools that help women professionally and personally and of course, change the world. Click here view the full panel descriptions and register now!

And, like last year we’re going to celebrate with a PARTY afterwards. Come out and hang out with Women Who Tech.  You’ll find us in Washington, DC, NYC, San Francisco, Atlanta, and London so save the date and come get your tech on with us. More details on the after parties soon.

Our sponsors help make this event possible.  A big thank you goes out to them.

FreePress, Democracy In Action, Rad Campaign, Convio, Care2, NTEN, Massey Media and Network Solutions.

Questions, comments? Email Allyson anytime at Allyson@womenwhotech.com. You can also reach out on twitter @womenwhotech or our Facebook group.

LONDON AFTER PARTY!

The WWT After Party in London is combined with the May Silicon Stilettos event – more ladies, more talk, and more fun!  To join us for the after party, you can RSVP here!  See you on Wednesday, May 13th at 7 pm!

Women Who Tech brings together talented and renowned women breaking new ground in technology who use their tech savvy skills to transform the world and inspire change. We provide a supportive network for the vibrant and thriving community of women in technology professions by giving women an open platform to share their talents, experiences, and insights.

On May 12, 2009 the second annual Women Who Tech TeleSummit (held via phone and web) will bring together hundreds of women from across the US and abroad in the non-profit, political and business world for an incredible lineup of thought provoking panels featuring technology change makers such as Joan Blades of MoveOn and Moms Rising, Allison Fine of techPresident, Lynne D Johnson of Fast Company, Charlene Li, Holly Ross of NTEN, Rashmi Sinha of Slide Share, Lisa Stone of BlogHer and more.

Details:

• Date: May 12, 2009
• Location: global (telephone and web)
• Panels:  See the list of panel sessions here.

Register:

Registration is not yet open.  To join the conversation and be the first to receive registration information on the Women Who Tech event please sign up for our mailing list.

You can also join us on Facebook, Twitter, Delicious, LinkedIn.

WWT in UK!

Are you in the UK? We are going to put together a WWT after party here in London for all those who take part in the telesummit and want to get together to keep talking, networking, and rejoicing.  It will be the evening of the 12th, directly following the telesummit.  If you are interested in helping organize, host, or participate, please let me know! (Send an email or leave a comment below)

Why Women Who Tech?

• Women are underrepresented: some of the most gifted folks in technology are women yet they are rarely quoted as experts by the mainstream media and blogs. Furthermore women are significantly underrepresented on panels at major technology conferences.
• To break down barriers: The teleSummit aims to break down the barriers and showcase the brilliant talents of women who tech out.
• To mobilize a network of women: One of our long term goals is to create a database of women technology experts to be used as a resource for the media and tech conference organizers. This database will not only provide a strong network of women in the technology sector but support the creative talents and energies of women who thrive in this arena.

Women Who Tech TeleSummit: April 2009

The second annual Women Who Tech TeleSummit (which will take place in April 2009) is looking for panel suggestions. Have an idea for a fabulous virtual workshop that every woman working in online communications or technology must participate in? Think you or one of your colleagues would be a great panelist or moderator? We want to hear about it. Submit your panel ideas at here.
Panel submissions are due Feb. 7th.

While the 2008 Women Who Tech TeleSummit was a smashing success with over 650 women including Arianna Huffington and Joan Blades defying the stereotype that the tech world belongs to pocket-protector toting guys hooked on sci-fi and video games, 2009 will be even better. Women Who Tech brings together talented and renowned women breaking new ground in technology who use their tech savvy skills to transform the world and inspire change. We provide a supportive network for the vibrant and thriving community of women in technology professions by giving women an open platform to share their talents, experiences, and insights.

For more info check out http://www.womenwhotech.com. You can also follow WWT on Twitter and join the Women Who Tech Facebook group.

Sign up on the website, or join the Facebook group to be sure you get details about the event in April.

Ada Lovelace Day: March 24, 2009

I signed the Ada Lovelace Day pledge on Pledgebank, will you?

Who’s Ada Lovelace and what’s this day all about?

Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology. Women’s contributions often go unacknowledged, their innovations seldom mentioned, their faces rarely recognised. We want you to tell the world about these unsung heroines. Whatever she does, whether she is a sysadmin or a tech entrepreneur, a programmer or a designer, developing software or hardware, a tech journalist or a tech consultant, we want to celebrate her achievements.

It doesn’t matter how new or old your blog is, what gender you are, what language you blog in, or what you normally blog about – everyone is invited to take part. All you need to do is sign up to this pledge and then publish your blog post any time on Tuesday 24th March 2009. If you’re going to be away that day, feel free to write your post in advance and set your blogging system to publish it that day.

We will gather as many of the posts together on the day as we can, and we’ll let you know exactly how we’re going to do that nearer the time. For ongoing updates about Ada Lovelace day, please follow us on Twitter, join our mailing list or see our blog.

http://findingada.com/
http://twitter.com/FindingAda
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/findingada

Who was Ada?
Ada Lovelace was one of the world’s first computer programmers, and one of the first people to see computers as more than just a machine for doing sums. She wrote programmes for Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine, a general-purpose computing machine, despite the fact that it was never built. She also wrote the very first description of a computer and of software.

You can learn about Ada Lovelace Day, how it got started, and sign on to the pledge here.

Allyson Kapin, co-founder of Rad Campaign, spurred this wonderful day of collaboration of women in the tech industry.  Instead of all meeting face-to-face, taking the day off of work, and flying hundreds of miles to a conference center, hundreds of women signed onto ReadyTalk screens and dialed in from their phones to participate right where they were – some in the office, some on the go, and some from their homes.

Panels were an hour long and participants registered ahead of time for their chosen sessions throughout the day.  These panels covered topics far and wide: from  open source technology adoption to email campaigns, from social capital to mobile activism.

I had the opportunity to help with a few others in the set-up and monitoring of the event’s Twitter account so it could be used as a back-channel of conversation and idea sharing throughout the day.  Some folks were terrific at sharing things they heard or resources mentioned in their session with the broader community via Twitter, including: Rose Vines, Andrea Mercado, Ruby Sinreich, Yesenia Sotelo, and many more!

If you missed the event, don’t fear!  Podcasts and other panel resources will be going up on the site soon.  You can sign up for their mailing list to be sure you hear news and updates on the March 31st recap and future activities.

Other resources from Women Who Tech can be found here. I’m excited to go back through all of my notes and the podcasts to share, learn, and think with all of you!

Did you participate in the Telesummit?  What were your favorite take-aways?