Girl Geeks - Website
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| Audience/Grade: | College Freshman-Graduate |
| Discipline(s): |
Computer Science Computing Diversity Engineering Diversity General Engineering, Engineering Science |
| Special Topic(s): | |
| Learning Resource Type: |
Community - General |
| Media Type: |
Unknown |
| Author(s): |
Girl Geeks |
| Description: | "GirlGeeks is an online community for women and girls interested in technology and computing. GirlGeeks is provided by the Bay Area Video Coalition, a non-profit 501(c)3 organization focused on new media education and training for underserved groups. Includes video clips of women in the field. GirlGeeks was founded in 1998 by Kristine Hanna and Peter Crosby as a documentary film project about women's past, present and future impact on computing. Starting with on-camera interviews and an informational website, the name originally included a question mark -- GirlGeeks? --because the filmmakers wanted to explore whether women considered "geekiness" to be an insult or a badge of honor. Geek was definitely chic, and so was streaming media, so GirlGeeks dropped the question mark and pioneered the use of rich content, mentored community, and career-enhancement commerce online to gather, train and promote women with technology skills of all kinds into better jobs. The website team, led by Executive Producer Jessica Donnelly, was comprised primarily of these talented and dedicated Producers and Designers: Merin Mathew, Omar Pahati and Erica Wentworth; along with Marketing Coordinator Solana Nolfo, Director of Marketing Natasha Zaslove, and CFO Deb Garber, who each had a significant impact on the website success. In addition, these other GirlGeeks employees and contractors made a huge contribution: Ann Wilmott Andersson, Elizabeth Armstrong, Erika Gentry, Kate Reegan, Sarah Pyle and Suzanne Preston. Funded by Angel Investors and tech-savvy Silicon Valley investors in 1999, GirlGeeks.com served as many as 50,000 unique visitors a month with a staff of 22. More than 500 video, audio and text chat interviews of leading women in technology were produced and displayed on site, as well as these other accomplishments along the way: Live webcast for Take Our Daughters To Work Day, April 2000 Live webcast for TechiesDay, October 2000, with reporting from San Francisco, New York & Washington D.C. Held live GirlGeeks events at Comdex in Las Vegas, November 2000 and Chicago April 2001 that were each attended by over 1500 people. Launched a job board and resume database populated by Fortune 1000 companies such as Intel, Microsoft, Dell, Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, Walgreens, TRW. Had an active online community including mentoring groups, weekly live chats, online discussion forums, and a weekly email newsletter. Video coverage of live events such as the Webby Awards, the Texas Conference for Women, Professional Business Women of California, Seybold and Esther Dysons??? PC Forum. GirlGeeks Inc. closed its doors in September 2001. The company was unable to find a buyer and sought court protection and dissolution in early 2002. All its unsalable media content (website, URL, video library) were donated to the 501(c)3 non-profit Bay Area Video Coalition . BAVC offers many training programs for young people in media technology and has a particular interest in promoting women into tech and media industries. The site was reborn as GirlGeeks.org in September 2002. Gender Equity |
| Rating: |
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| Related Resources | |
| Keywords: | gender equity CS Computer Science women girls gender female video women in information technology engagement video |
| Usage Tip | |
| Intervention(s): |
Goals Multimedia Use of Educational Technologies |
| Use of Resource: |
Website for Girls interested in Computing |
| Difficulty: |
Easy |
| Interactivity Level: |
Very high |
| Version Info | |
| Publication Date: | July 2003 |
| Platform/Format: |
WWW |
| Cost: |
Free |
| Download URL: | http://www.girlgeeks.org/ |
| Metadata: |
IEEE LOM Record |
| Collection: |
NEEDS
Broadening Participation in Computing (BPC)
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