Happy hour starts early in New York, at least it does when you’re hanging out with scientists. At 5 pm on Friday an eager audience took their seats at the 92Y-Tribeca for a cabaret-style presentation of science, comedy and, the biggest surprise, a singing Nobel Prize physicist.
Happy hour starts early in New York, at least it does when you’re hanging out with scientists. At 5 pm on Friday an eager audience took their seats at the 92Y-Tribeca for a cabaret-style presentation of science, comedy and, the biggest surprise, a singing Nobel Prize physicist.
“I’m really low-tech,” laughs Kathleen Weldon nervously in front of the MIT audience at the EmTech meeting. She’s here to explain how she launched NewEnglandGrown.com, a website connecting customers interested in local, fresh produce with New England farmers. “And the farmers are even more low-tech than me!”
Kathleen used software provided by Platial – described by its founder Di-Ann Eisnor as ‘the people’s atlas’ – to map hundreds of farms. The site allows farmers to update their lists of fresh produce online and reach more customers then they would by sending out print newsletters. Kathleen also provides news, links and recipe ideas, and with the help of another Palatial user she just met – Pauric O’Callaghan – she is adding month-by-month views, so users can understand how farm produce changes with the seasons.
Platial is about 18 months old and piggybacks on Google Maps to provide ordinary users the tools to create whatever map-based content they want. Eisnor says they have some 5 million unique users and the software is now being used on some 60,000 sites and blogs. Most users are into travel stories, local history and community groups.
“I’m really low-tech,” laughs Kathleen Weldon nervously in front of the MIT audience at the EmTech meeting. She’s here to explain how she launched NewEnglandGrown.com, a website connecting customers interested in local, fresh produce with New England farmers. “And the farmers are even more low-tech than me!”
Kathleen used software provided by Platial – described by its founder Di-Ann Eisnor as ‘the people’s atlas’ – to map hundreds of farms. The site allows farmers to update their lists of fresh produce online and reach more customers then they would by sending out print newsletters. Kathleen also provides news, links and recipe ideas, and with the help of another Palatial user she just met – Pauric O’Callaghan – she is adding month-by-month views, so users can understand how farm produce changes with the seasons.
Platial is about 18 months old and piggybacks on Google Maps to provide ordinary users the tools to create whatever map-based content they want. Eisnor says they have some 5 million unique users and the software is now being used on some 60,000 sites and blogs. Most users are into travel stories, local history and community groups.
Have you ever used news aggregator sites like Digg, Slashdot or Reddit? This was the question posed to EmTech attendees this morning, during a panel discussion with three founders of popular social media sites — Kevin Rose of Digg, Tariq Krim of NetVibes, and Garrett Camp of StumbleUpon. Thanks to live audience voting using our interactive name tags, the MIT audience revealed that 61% have yet to try user-driven news services.
Is this supposedly tech-savvy audience behind the times? Or have these sites yet to reach beyond the niche audiences that post and comment on specialized content? Not so, say the panelists, preferring to see their users as early adopters. And the numbers back them up.
Kevin Rose claims that Digg has 20 million unique visitors a month. Compare this to 69 million unique visitors to Facebook during August, and a whopping 210 million visitors to Wikipedia, and its clear that social networking and user generated websites are unstoppable. Back in 2004 explains Rose people didn’t believe they could have control over the content on a news homepage. Now he says Digg has more page hits than the New York Times.
All the sites are evolving beyond ‘just text’ by adding photos, video, audio and flash. They are also getting into ‘microblogging’ services like twitter which allow users to post short status updates (where you are, and what you are doing right now) that are sent to your friends cell phones. Rose has recently helped to launch Pownce, which is a way for friends to share news stories they are reading with each other.
And what about those late adopters at MIT? Kevin Rose explains to me that there is still a lot of work to be done attracting non-techie users. “My mum and dad don’t have a Digg account,” he admits. “There’s a reason for that.”
Have you ever used news aggregator sites like Digg, Slashdot or Reddit? This was the question posed to EmTech attendees this morning, during a panel discussion with three founders of popular social media sites — Kevin Rose of Digg, Tariq Krim of NetVibes, and Garrett Camp of StumbleUpon. Thanks to live audience voting using our interactive name tags, the MIT audience revealed that 61% have yet to try user-driven news services.
Is this supposedly tech-savvy audience behind the times? Or have these sites yet to reach beyond the niche audiences that post and comment on specialized content? Not so, say the panelists, preferring to see their users as early adopters. And the numbers back them up.
Kevin Rose claims that Digg has 20 million unique visitors a month. Compare this to 69 million unique visitors to Facebook during August, and a whopping 210 million visitors to Wikipedia, and its clear that social networking and user generated websites are unstoppable. Back in 2004 explains Rose people didn’t believe they could have control over the content on a news homepage. Now he says Digg has more page hits than the New York Times.
All the sites are evolving beyond ‘just text’ by adding photos, video, audio and flash. They are also getting into ‘microblogging’ services like twitter which allow users to post short status updates (where you are, and what you are doing right now) that are sent to your friends cell phones. Rose has recently helped to launch Pownce, which is a way for friends to share news stories they are reading with each other.
And what about those late adopters at MIT? Kevin Rose explains to me that there is still a lot of work to be done attracting non-techie users. “My mum and dad don’t have a Digg account,” he admits. “There’s a reason for that.”
My second night in Boston I attended the Nature Network Boston pub night. Hosted by Corie Lok at a bar on Mass ave, there was a good turn out from young Cambridge area scientists. The discussions ranged from yeast genetics, to neuropathology, Finnish baseball (yes, really, we didn’t believe it either) and beer brewing (coming back full circle to the yeast genetics :). If you’re in the Boston area check out the pub night next month.
Back at MIT, the Technology Review team have tracked down other bloggers at the EmTech meeting. Follow the links here for more conference stories.
My second night in Boston I attended the Nature Network Boston pub night. Hosted by Corie Lok at a bar on Mass ave, there was a good turn out from young Cambridge area scientists. The discussions ranged from yeast genetics, to neuropathology, Finnish baseball (yes, really, we didn’t believe it either) and beer brewing (coming back full circle to the yeast genetics :). If you’re in the Boston area check out the pub night next month.
Back at MIT, the Technology Review team have tracked down other bloggers at the EmTech meeting. Follow the links here for more conference stories.
So what did I learn about women in technology from today’s workshop? I learned that despite many smart and impressive women in technology – including CIOs, CTOs and research managers – there is still a long way to go.
I also learned more about the early history of computer science: yes, women PhDs dropped sharply from around 38% in 1985 to about 28% today. One explanation offered was that once personal computers were available in the home and schools, and the timing for this applies to China as much as to the USA, then boys began playing computer games and women’s interest declined.
But there were some great women computer scientists in those early years. Grace Hopper, a US naval officer and computer programmer, created the first compiler, and developed the philosophy behind COBOL. Next month there is a meeting celebrating Amazing Grace, as she was sometimes known, and women in computing today. Fran Allen, a computer scientist at IBM, was the first woman to be awarded the Turing Award (the Nobel Prize of computing). Other early female computer pioneers are listed here.
Bob Birgeneau, the chancellor of UC Berkeley, also updated workshop attendees with the latest follow-up data to the 2006 National Academies report: Beyond Bias and Barriers.
In fields with few women, Birgeneau reports, such as physics, electrical engineering and computer science, women now apply for faculty positions in similar numbers to women pursuing PhDs. But the pipeline is much leakier in fields with far greater numbers of women PhDs, such as biology and chemistry. Here there is still a two-fold drop between women achieving PhDs and later career paths. How many Grace Hopper’s or Fran Allen’s are leaking away..?
So what did I learn about women in technology from today’s workshop? I learned that despite many smart and impressive women in technology – including CIOs, CTOs and research managers – there is still a long way to go.
I also learned more about the early history of computer science: yes, women PhDs dropped sharply from around 38% in 1985 to about 28% today. One explanation offered was that once personal computers were available in the home and schools, and the timing for this applies to China as much as to the USA, then boys began playing computer games and women’s interest declined.
But there were some great women computer scientists in those early years. Grace Hopper, a US naval officer and computer programmer, created the first compiler, and developed the philosophy behind COBOL. Next month there is a meeting celebrating Amazing Grace, as she was sometimes known, and women in computing today. Fran Allen, a computer scientist at IBM, was the first woman to be awarded the Turing Award (the Nobel Prize of computing). Other early female computer pioneers are listed here.
Bob Birgeneau, the chancellor of UC Berkeley, also updated workshop attendees with the latest follow-up data to the 2006 National Academies report: Beyond Bias and Barriers.
In fields with few women, Birgeneau reports, such as physics, electrical engineering and computer science, women now apply for faculty positions in similar numbers to women pursuing PhDs. But the pipeline is much leakier in fields with far greater numbers of women PhDs, such as biology and chemistry. Here there is still a two-fold drop between women achieving PhDs and later career paths. How many Grace Hopper’s or Fran Allen’s are leaking away..?