Updated 4/10/2012

Adria solves business problems with technology solutions and is a Developer Evangelist at SendGrid.

An industry veteran, her passion for cutting-edge technologies has led Adria to partner with to partner with leaders in the charge for innovation including Dell, Motorola, Samsung and T-mobile. Adria has consults with companies to help them be more productive. Recognized as a trusted voice in her field, Adria has been interviewed by media outlets including The Rachel Maddow Show, NPR, Computerworld, The Associate Press, Inc.com, Black Enterprise and The Pioneer Press.

Adria’s mission — to make technology accessible —has kept her in demand as a speaker at technology conferences across the country including O’Reilly’s Web 2.0, SXSW, Blogher, Blogging While Brown, Black Enterprise Entrepreneurs Conference, Blogworld, Wordcamp and many private speaking engagements with organizations who want to leverage the power of the web.

Adria prides herself on helping others embrace their inner geek, and has helped thousands through public speaking, technical training workshops, blog posts, emails and her popular YouTube channel.  Adria continues to inspire others to not only embrace technology, but also use it to improve their lives.

Now living in San Francisco, the geek capital of the world, Adria continues to seek ways to make the world a more awesome place for everyone through technology.

Navigate Adria’s About Page

• Speaking Events
• Technology Training
• Women in Technology
• Life Goals
• More About Me
• Favorite Songs
• How I Embraced Technology
• How I Learned to Love Social Media
• How I Got Involved With Google Apps
• Amazon Wishlist

Speaking Events

Find out more about Adria’s speaking topics and how she can benefit your organization.

Previous speaking events have included SXSW, BlogHer, Black Enterprise Entrepreneur’s Conference, BlogWorld, Evoconf, Wordcamp and several private conferences.

You can also find her speaking at and attending conferences including Drupalcon, Wordcamp San Francisco, Wordcamp Chicago, Blogging While Brown, RailsConf, Grace Hopper Celebration (GHC) Of Women In Computing Conference, Blogalicious, Gnomedex, Web 2.0 Summit and TechCrunch50.

Speaking Samples

What: Speaker on panel “Women in Technology”
When: 2009
Where: Women Venture, St. Paul, Minnesota

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After discovering a data breach on a political campaign site, she was interviewed on the Rachel Maddow Show, the Associated Press, ComputerWorld, Cnet, MPR, Star Tribune and several other news outlets for her citizen journalism on computer security.

Women in Technology

Ok, this has morphed more into a personal blog. That’s ok though because by posting articles with technical content, I’m still accomplishing my goal to create awareness for women and technology.

Women often get the short end of the stick when it comes to technology.

• Where are the Women in Tech and Social Media? – Fastcompany.com, Allyson Kapin 8/10/2009
• Where are all the women? – Inc.com 4/19/2010

People’s perceptions of what she’s capable of and interested in affect her opportunities and earnings. I know I’m not the only female in technology who is sick of pink laptops and rhinestone cell phones.

• Women 2.0
• O’Reilly Women In Tech
• Girls in Tech
• Anita Borg Institute for Women in Technology
• LinuxChix

I’m going to blog about things I enjoy in the technology world and gripe about the frustrating things in a constructive way. Through this blog, I plan to reach out to people interested in IT.

Life Goals

• Write a book about technology – On Hold
• Get my Comptia Certified Technical Trainer – On Hold
• Continue to meet as many Twitter friends in real life as possible!
• Build a Ruby App for something I’m passionate about
• Launch a tech startup (4 great ideas in my notebook) – In Progress
• Find an amazing guy to be my Über super awesome boyfriend  (A guy who is worthy of my time because he’s funny, ambitious, spiritually confident, gentle, patient, attractive and reliable with above average intelligence. Never ending compassion for human kind a plus.  NO GEEK SKILLS REQUIRED!
• Speak to young women about careers in technology
• Establish a non-profit to empower Brown people and women in technology
• Still to meet: @s0l_uk (Scotland)
• Meet Gina Trapani
• Meet Valerie Aurora Henson
• Meet Dave McClure to pitch my startup idea
• Meet Tyler Perry
• Appear on TWIT (This Week In Tech) with Leo Laporte
• Create a nationwide directory of security and penetration testing professionals
• Visit vineyard in Sonoma
• Visit Jerusalem
• Visit London
• Visit Scotland and meet @s0l_uk
• Write a book about my life
• Attend a TED conference by 2012
• Speak at a TED conference by 2015
• Live to be 120 years old, oldest person on Twitter

• Start formal technology mentoring this year
  • I will offered a program for people to make technology their career, full-time or freelance
  • Everything from defining their interests and building skill sets to finding fulfilling gigs
  • Interested?  Email me via the contact page
• Attend workshop on how to start a nonprofit

Completed 2011 Goals

• Visit Google headquarters

Completed 2010 Goals

• Moved to San Francisco in 2010
• Apply for my first US Passport in January 2010
• Received my passport 2/16/2010
• Find technology sponsors to support my vision of empowerment through technology
• Meet Scott Hanselman
• Visit Seattle
• Attend Gnomedex
• Attend Techcrunch
• Go on a date by September 30th, 2010 (First one in nearly 5 years)

Completed 2009 Goals

• Met CJ Hayden
• Get my cat Turtle to stop sleeping on the couch
• Speak on a technology subject outside the state of Minnesota by November 2009
  • Wordcamp NYC November 14th, 2009!
• Find conference sponsor for Blogworld / Sponsored by Zendesk and Logmein!
• Attended BlogHer 2009 Conference
• Do public speaking here in Minnesota
  • Spoke at Women Venture
• Launch live, online training website Freshworkshops
• Attend at least 2 out of state gatherings related to Open Source, WordPress, Joomla, Web 2.0
  1. Signed up for WordCamp Chicago coming up in June 2009
  2. Blogging While Brown June 2009
• Did my first lifestream online
• Get more social with people
• Increasing Awareness of Women in Technology This happened DeFacto from the Norm Coleman database incident. I have had so many people and SO MANY WOMEN IN TECHNOLOGY contact me about this that I now don’t feel so alone in being female and a geek. One woman from LinkedIN is certified in Computer Forensics and has Homeland Security clearance!
• March 24th, 2009 Write blog topic celebrating a woman in technology for Finding Ada Day
• Achieved my 5 year goal I set just 6 months ago by doing public speaking to empower people through technology
  • 2/26/2009 – Submitted request to present a workshop “Connecting with Blog readers through Photography” at WordCamp Chicago
  • March 2009 – Interviewed by The Rachel Maddow Show, Associated Press, Pioneer Press, Star Tribune, Minnesota Public Radio and ComputerWorld regarding the Norm Coleman Database
  • March 2009 – Asked to speak at local Meetup.com Web standards group about website development and security

Goals on Hold

• Speak to youth about how to navigate the internet safely and securely

Cancelled 2010 Goals

• Change my Skype name to adria.richards (not possible)

Not important anymore
Incomplete 2009 Goals

• Participate in NaNoWriMo in November and write a novel! / Chickened out but there’s next year!
• Get a BlogHer09 sponsor / No go.  Started looking too late.

Completed 2008 Goals

• Make travel arrangements to Las Vegas for friend’s wedding and get back in one piece
• Upgrade WordPress Multi User (WPMU) to 2.6.3
• Upgrade WordPress Multi User (WPMU) install to 2.6

More About Me

Hello, I’m Adria Richards. I live in San Francisco, CA  Minneapolis, MN and make my living as an Organic Technology Consultant. When I’m not working, I put in time making the world a better place by volunteering, teaching and taking action on good ideas. I want to attend a TED conference to connect with other people who have big dreams.

In 2006, I made a decision that changed my life. I realized I probably wasn’t going to find a job that continued to be interesting after the first year. I’d seen what companies like 37signals could accomplish by discarding old ways of thinking. I admired the GTD methods of David Allen and Lifehacker so I took a deep breath and jumped in and began consulting full time for myself.

Hugging Trees

I am a newly declared treehugger.  I joined my first food coop a few years ago after being consistently impressed by the food quality, staff knowledge and ease of preparing delicious food in my own kitchen.  I began to change cleaning products in my home and look for opportunities to reduce my impact on the Earth.  In 2009, I used less than 1 ream of paper (500 sheets) for my consulting business!

Pet Lover

I own Bluey the Chihuahua and Turtle the Tortishell cat.  I’m proud to say they’re both well behaved, housebroken and non destructive.  They bring me joy and serenity in my daily life which makes me a big advocate of animal ownership.  During my relocation to San Francisco, Bluey is staying with my technology client in Minneapolis and Turtle is in Burlingame with a coworker until I find a permenant place.

I enjoy helping people online and am a “Contributer to the YouTube Learning Community”

I have my MCSA, MCDST, A+ certifications and am pursuing Comptia Certified Technical Trainer (CTT).
My technology background includes 12+ years of technical experience with networks, hardware, deployments, websites, DNS and working with people to help them understand technology.

Favorite Songs

• NYOIL – “You’re A Queen”

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• Weird Al Yankovic – “White and Nerdy”

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• Weird Al Yankovic – “It’s All About the Pentiums”

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• Looper – “Modem Song”

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• Common Featuring Will.i.am – “I Have a Dream”

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How I Embraced Technology

Comptia’s A+ hardware certification was the first one I earned back in 2000 while working at the Guidant helpdesk. I continued my self study, earning my MCDST in 2004. I actively looked for opportunities that would immerse me in technology. I learned about Active Directory, Microsoft Exchange, Altiris, drive imaging, VMWare, VPN access, routers and general network administration. I kept up to date with my certification path and earned my MCSA in 2006. Yipee!  I actively encourage others to pursue careers in technology and have produced several video shows at AskAdria.com including “How To Get A Job In Technology With No Previous Techie Experience”

How I Embraced Website development and Open Source software

In 2003, I started working with open source. I’d installed my first Content Management System that fall; PHP-nuke. Soon I was hosting several websites for customers. I kept trying, testing, tweaking various web applications, looking for something that was easier, better, faster, better supported. I learned about Apache, PHP, MySQL databases and various Linux distros including Gentoo (Thanks Jonathan!), Knoppix, Mandriva and CentOS.

How I Learned To Love Social Media

2006, I started in social networking. Being a geek, it’s not the easiest thing to maintain connections with people you don’t talk to everyday. It’ often feels akward and uncomfortable in real life and online. I kept working it out to fit into my life even though I felt uncomfortable. Weird Al’s song, “White and Nerdy” talked about him having a MySpace page and Wikipedia account so I signed up for both since I think he rocks. I found out about “Wikipedia Nazi’s” and tried to make my MySpace page look nice and reflect things important to me. I will continue this in a blog post…

How I Got Involved With Google Apps

I became aware that Google had launched a suite of services known as “Google Apps”. This included domain branded email, document storage, calendaring, chat, a company intranet and more. I migrated my first client December 2006 and moved my own domain email to Google Apps July 2008. I’m working with Google to become a certified support partner. I think it’s hands down the best solution for companies with less than 50 staff.

I enjoy helping others.

If you enjoyed my blog and would like to help expand my knowledge about technology, the environment, empowering people, data privacy, coffee, chocolate and the world, feel free to pick up something for me from my wishlist.

Amazon Wishlist

I enjoy helping others.

If you enjoyed my blog and would like to help expand my knowledge about technology, the environment, empowering people, data privacy, coffee, chocolate and the world, feel free to pick up something for me from my wishlist.

I’ll thank you on my blog!

View items from Adria’s Amazon Wishlist