The Social Influence Summit at Fashion Week

If you’re planning to be in New York during Fashion Week, February 11-18, make sure you don’t miss the Chictopia10 Social Influence Summit.  The half-day conference will focus on social media trends that are radically changing the traditional landscape of fashion taste makers.  Chictopia10 will bring together fashion bloggers, social media influencers, media buyers, designers and brand executives to discuss the secrets to social media marketing and its affect on consumers’ interaction with fashion and brands.  What was mostly a one-way ‘we-make-it, they-buy-it’ relationship, is growing into a two-way conversation as fashion bloggers increase in popularity and influence, and social media sites like Chictopia give individuals a platform to celebrate and share their individual style.

Helen Zhu, CEO of Chictopia notes, “We are entering into a new decade where the traditionally exclusive fashion industry will be revolutionized by social media.  This gathering will discuss the changes that will shape the future of this industry.”

The Social Influence Summit will close with a fashion showcase from five independent designers from their upcoming lines, followed by a cocktail party giving everyone a chance to mingle and network.  Representatives from Teen Vogue, Nylon Magazine, The New Yorker, The Gilt Group, Polyvore, Style Bubble, and others will be in attendance.

Saturday, February 13 (2pm – 8pm)

Venue:
Allegra Laviola Gallery
179 East Broadway
New York, NY 10002

View the AGENDA, and REGISTER HERE.

The Art of Negotiation

This week, Girls in Tech had a phenomenal turnout at our first annual all-female Catalyst Conference.  When people asked me which panel I enjoyed the most, my answer was truthfully, “all of them.”   That said, as a business development gal, I found Katherine Barr’s workshop on “The Art of Negotiation” the most interesting.

A partner at MDV, Katherine started the workshop by asking the audience to pair up, and assume the arm wrestling position.  (Visualize a full room of 400+ women poised to arm wrestle.)  Next were the instructions: Without speaking to each other, know that each time you move your partner’s arm all the way down, you earn a million dollars.  At this point, it was clear as day to me that we would both see-saw each other’s arms down as quickly as possible to earn the most money.  But my partner didn’t see it that way.  She held her arm firm.  After struggling for a bit, I signaled to her with a smile, and a couple of nods, then loosened my hand, and we were on our way to earning millions.  Surprisingly, others in the audience around us sat at a standstill.

For the next exercise, we received handouts that included a Negotiation Preparation Template and a fictional negotiation scenario that audience pairs role-played.  The preparation template included the below framework to kick-start creative problem solving and brain-storming before entering a negotiation.

1.)    Interests — Identify Yours, Theirs, and Relevant third parties’ interests
– Do your research and know what is important to your counterpart

2.)    Options – What different options meet the various interests of all parties?
– Being CREATIVE is the key to successful negotiations
– Options allow people to move away from cold hard cash, and stubborn positions
– Creative brainstorming opens people up to the possibilities.

3.)    Legitimacy – What objective standards can be used during negotiations to assess fairness?

4.)    Alternatives – Identify the alternatives available if you don’t close this deal
– Knowing your alternatives give you the power to walk away from the table
– Without alternatives, you may feel trapped and be persuaded into a bad deal

Additional tips to keep in mind during negotiations:

1.) Commitment – Be clear on what you are committing to
2.) Relationship – Be mindful that everything you do before and after the negotiation affects the relationship
3.) Communication – Clearly communicate and test assumptions to understand each other’s interest

What resonated the most about the workshop was Katherine’s emphasis on focusing negotiations on interests rather than positions.  With positions, negotiations tend to be more territorial and ego-based, i.e. if you win, I lose.  When focusing on interests, everyone can walk away feeling like a winner.

VGS 09 Draws to a Spectacular End (with a show down!)

I should be getting my Mary Lou Retton Halloween costume on right now, but instead, all I can think is — “Wow, I’ve never seen a conference end like that before.” Today marked the 3rd annual Virtual Goods Summit put on by Charles Hudson and David Sachs.  The last panel of the day was on the topic of Payments Infrastructure for Virtual Goods, and Anu Shukla, founder and CEO of Offerpal Media, was an obvious choice for the panel of experts.

Towards the end of the discussion, Charles Hudson, the panel’s moderator, opened up the floor for Q&A.  Michael Arrington of TechCrunch was the first person at the microphone.  He questioned the ethics of offer providers like Offerpal and game publishers like Zynga and accused them of 1.) Knowingly engaging kids who steal their parent’s credit cards to accept offers, 2.) Facilitating scammers who accept offers from Netflix and other advertisers with no real interest or intention to follow-through on the offer, and 3.) Taking advantage of an ecosystem where Facebook and everyone else is going along with the fraud since everyone benefits from it except for the advertiser.

Arrington’s question/accusation splashed water on the faces of the end-of-day crowd, and Anu Shukla jumped at the opportunity to address his points, which she referred to as “shit, double shit and triple shit”.  She stated that 1.) In her two years of managing customer service calls, she had received roughly five complaints from parents whose children accepted offers without their consent and were charged for an offer as a result. 2.) Netflix and other savvy advertisers have been using offer payment systems for years and continue to do so because it has shown to be an acquisition source with high retention rates.  She further stated that advertisers know their metrics better than a journalist would.  And, 3.) Anu defended Facebook and stated that Facebook is all about the user experience, and as recently as July, issued new advertising guidelines to clean up the companies who were clearly taking advantage of the system.

Anu received the biggest and most enthusiastic round of applause I saw in my two days at the event.  And that ladies and gentleman, was a very lively end to the VGS09 conference.   This will be a fun one to watch on YouTube when it’s up.

Virtual Goods Summit University Takes the Stage

Girls in Tech was on the scene yesterday as Virtual Goods Summit 2009 kicked off with VGS University.  Hundreds of people came out to the half day seminar to learn from case studies and presentations by Linden Lab, Mochi Media, IMVU, Gaia Online, Ning, Viximo, Shufflebrain and others.

The afternoon panel on the Payments Landscape featuring SuperRewards, TrialPay, BOKU, PlaySpan, and ORCAgarnered a packed ballroom.  Charles Hudson, host of VGS09, moderated the panel and asked whether it’s a good or bad thing that the payments space is so chockfull of players.  Not surprisingly, the panel thought it was a good thing – and that it speaks to the vast potential opportunity for virtual goods in games.  They also agreed that the need for payment solution providers is high since payments are complex, requiring relationships with often hundreds of banks and wireless carriers if you take into account the international landscape.  Then there’s the sticky issue of fraud and security.  Finally, there’s scale of economies, and the idea that a game producer should concentrate on making great games instead of getting caught up with building a payment solution.  Overall, more payment providers means more choice for game publishers, and more pressure for payment providers to deliver better products and customer service.

The panel shared the following statistics: For free to play games on social networks, virtual goods conversion for those who actually pay is 3-4%. This of course varies depending on the virality and engagement quality of the game.  Lex Bayer from PlaySpan suggested that for each daily active user associated with a game on a social network, there is ten dollars of annual revenue potential.  Therefore, if you have five million DAU’s your potential revenue is $50 million in annual revenue.  Not shabby.

Big revenue potential and a young market makes for great energy, an eagerness for learning, sharing, and collaborating, with a good measure of competition and creativity thrown in.  This is going to be one good summit.  Join us today for part two of the third annual Virtual Goods Summit taking place today at the Westin in downtown San Francisco.  And stick around for the after party that Girls in Tech is co-hosting with Offerpal at Harlot nightclub!

Using Technology to Disrupt Poverty

Original Post: May 20, 2009

Last week I spent the better part of three days in Palo Alto at the annual meeting for the National Center of Women in Technology (NCWIT). Over the three days, the speaker that inspired me most was Jessica Jackley, co-founder of Kiva, the world’s first micro-lending marketplace for the working poor.

Kiva works by connecting entrepreneurs in the developing world with lenders (people like you and me) who provide interest-free loans via the Kiva.org website. Millions of dollars in loans are provided each month to the working poor in over 50 developing countries.With a loan of only a few hundred dollars, the working poor are able to invest in a self-staining future. Examples of types of investments include the purchase of a cow to plow land, or purchase of materials to build a fruit stand.

Jessica emphasized four principles that have been key to Kiva’s success.

Know Your Mission – Kiva’s mission is to connect people through lending for poverty alleviation.

Stay Open – Kiva adopted crowdsourcing, which opened up the opportunity for volunteers to log onto Kiva’s site and translate people’s stories from all over the world. Everyone can give in their own way.

Iterate – Kiva took a simple idea and launched in 2005 with a site that consisted of only three pages. Today Kiva offers individual stories and profiles in many languages and provides a myriad of ways for people to build community and contribute.

Focus on Individuals – Kiva empowers individuals on both sides of the equation.Borrowers gain hope for a better, self-sustaining life, while the site gives lenders tools to easily build lending teams and spread the word about Kiva organically.  Kiva’s intense focus on individuals also allows it to have a loan pay-back rate in the high 90s.

Kiva’s growth has been phenomenal and these principles can certainly be applied to for profit and non-profit businesses alike.

It is amazing how the areas of microfinance and social good have become so sexy while traditional businesses are struggling to stay alive. It’s a tough time for a lot of us, but overall, perhaps the massive disruption of wealth will help us appreciate the important things in life, and replace our emphasis on wealth with that of meaning.Technology has powerfully transformed the way we live, breathe and do business. Why not harness technology as Kiva does — to disrupt poverty and advance social good.  That’s what I call having your cake and eating it too.

Breeding Innovation and Inspiration in Silicon Valley

Original entry: April 27, 2009

Tina Seelig, executive director of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program, kicked off this weekend’s inspirational  “I don’t know to CEO” event by declaring that innovation is all aboutturning problems into opportunities, and that entrepreneurship is an extreme sport that’s all about getting out there and doing it.  Tina teaches the popular “Innovation and Creation” class at Stanford and she encouraged conference attendees to adopt the followingprinciples to drive innovation:

1. Use your gut instead of your head
2. Be willing to experiment
3. Leverage limited resources to fuel your creativity (i.e. necessity is the mother of invention)

Sue Gardner, executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, gave the keynote address and her message was about finding success by being true to who you are, i.e. “being the best possible version of yourself,  and making decisions everyday that will lead you to where you want to be.”

The Inspiration workshop following the keynote featured founders of four early stage start-ups, in addition to the CMO of Mint.com - Donna Wells, and the founder of Meebo - Elaine Wherry.  The panelists were in resounding agreement about the path to forging a start-up –Start something, do something, and go from there.  Specifically, they emphasized the importance of meeting with partners on a weekly basis to brainstorm and build upon innovative ideas from which a start-up could be created.  The panelists gave the followingadvice to aspiring entrepreneurs:

1. Observe pain and solve it
2. Have the resolve to follow what you know to be true
3. Build a strong business that will endure and adapt (challenges can be a blessing)
4. Brick walls are for other people (the resilient entrepreneur will blast through the walls)
5. Focus on simplicity — try not to be all things to all people

Next up, the Instruction workshop gave broad advice about how to build a successful and rewarding career.  Mara Brazer, founder of Brazer Communications, gained everyone’s attention when she announced “Everything I ever fantasized about in life came true.”  Inspiring words indeed.  The panelists gave the following guidance for achieving your dreams:

1. Do what you enjoy, do a great job, and the money will follow
2. Have a long-range perspective when it comes to your career
3. Be resourceful, have an open mind, and know that it takes a lot of hard work to get to your dream job/life

Finally, the power panel of the day, titled “View From the Top: Changing the Face of Technology” emphasized the importance of persistence and adaptability — key elements that require resolve and the ability to tune into the feedback loop of how users and the market react to a product.  Jawed Karim, co-founder of YouTube, encouraged entrepreneurs to watch trends to identify opportunities in the market, while Ellen Siminoff - part of the founding executive team at Yahoo and currently the CEO of Shmoop, noted that “New companies are formed from the mistakes of existing companies.”  Jessica Steel - VP of Business Development at Pandora confirmed Ellen’s point by stating that the opportunity for Pandora came out of the mistakes (too many radio commercials) of media giant Clear Channel.  As a singer-songwriter with one released album and another on the way, Jessica Steel (aka Jessica Stone) also seemed to embody the advice that I heard repeatedly at the event, “Do what you love and the money will follow.”

A big fat thanks to the Stanford Women in Business group for putting on such an inspirational and educational event!  And thanks to the AMAZING speakers and panelists for sharing your experiences with us!

If you attended the event or have more to add, I’d love to hear from you — please post a comment.

The Best of Web 2.0 SF: The Sessions

Original entry: April 11

Yesterday’s blog entry on “The Best of Web 2.0: The Cheap Seats Report” covered the keynotes, and today’s blog entry covers the Web 2.0 sessions that received the most buzz and praise from fellow attendees. You can tell it’s a good session when the audience is furiously taking notes instead of twittering or facebooking.

#1. The Lean Startup by Eric Ries
Eric Ries has led two startups — the first startup failed fabulously, and the second startup is profitable and making millions in revenue. The difference? Startup #1 spent $40 million and employed 200 people before there was a launched product. Startup #2 launched a beta product quickly, and continuously released newer and better versions while engaging with customers early and often.

Take Away: The #1 reason that startups fail is they are too busy marching to their own beat, with no idea of what customers really want.

#2. Optimize Your Organic Search Results by Leveraging Social Media by Heather Lutze
Internet marketing speaker Heather Lutze loves the start of this sentence because it is helping to drive up her search capital by employing a key learning from her session: Use a consistent phrase to position yourself or your company throughout social media outlets to remarkably and organically improve your search ranking.

Take Away: Your search ranking should not be an accident, think strategically about how to consistently position yourself across the internet to earn the top search spot for free.

Example: See how Heather uses consistent phrases on LinkedIn to drive up her search ranking as an Internet Marketing Speaker.

Thanks to Eric and Heather for sharing their valuable lessons with us!

The Best of Web 2.0 Expo: The Keynotes

Original entry: April 9, 2009

The Web 2.0 Expo came through San Francisco last week and Girls in Tech made our debut splash as an official Media and Community Partner.

The atmosphere at Web 2.0 this year was sober, and it appeared that a majority of the 8,300 people in attendance were on scholarship — that is, they had the free expo hall pass that limited admittance to the keynotes and a handful of sponsored sessions. Girls in Tech was on scholarship as well and I was bowled over by quality of the free content. If you missed the conference, below is my Best of Web 2.0 “The Cheap Seats” report. Today I’ll highlight the top keynotes, and tomorrow I’ll cover the best sessions.

Best Keynotes:

#1 Designing for Big Data by Jeff Veen of Small Batch Inc.
Jeff Veen’s presentation stood out as the best of the sixteen(!) keynotes because he is a natural story teller and a master at using pictures to convey ideas. He used simple and vivid illustrations to show us that the presentation of data is far more important than exposing the hard numbers that lie beneath.

Take Away: Data is most powerful when users can easily access, understand and ingest it.

#2 A conversation with the founders of Threadless
Jake Nickell and Jeff Kalmikoff are the ultimate accidental entrepreneurs and they were delightfully candid and unbusiness-y as they discussed how they came to start Threadless,a highly successful community-centered online T-shirt store that has spawned an HBS case study on the use of crowdsourcing. Crowdsourcing is a term that refers to leveraging a community of users to build key components of a company’s service or product offering. If this doesn’t resonate with you, think Yelp!

Take Away: If you are a business wanting to leverage crowdsourcing, start by asking, “How are people using our products differently than we expected?”

#3 A conversation with Ellen Miller from The Sunlight Foundation
The Sunlight Foundation is committed to increasing transparency in government through the use of the internet to catalyze openness and accountability. Ellen Miller talked about the powerful impact of creating websites that the public can use to easily access and digest thousand-page bills that are more likely to bury information than provide insights into what our government is doing.

Take Away: Let’s all think about how Web 2.0 applications can be applied to make government more transparent and accountable — and let’s make Gov 2.0 a priority and a reality.

Check back tomorrow for my take on the “Best Sessions at Web 2.0: The Cheap Seats Report”