What’s happening in the way of technology conferences and events for 2012?

Coming back from SXSW and a few projects that had me traveling, I’m sharing my upcoming events for the month of April 2012, here’s where you can find me and connect!

April 13th – 15th, 2012, Mountain View, CA: Mega Startup Weekend is happening again!  This is one of the largest events held by Startup Weekend and brings together three tracks: Mobile, Gaming and Robots.  Attendees will come together on Friday night to form into groups and have 54 hours to build a minimally viable product (MVP) to present on Sunday.  Teams will consist of developers, designers, business and product development.  If you have an idea or can help build, you need to attend!  This will be my third Startup Weekend event and I’ve had an amazing time every time I’ve gone.  Elmer Thomas and I will be there from SendGrid since we’re global sponsors.  Register

April 14th, 2012, San Francisco, CA: Girl Develop IT SF More technology training goodness comes to the bay area!  You may recognize the name Girl Develop IT because they’ve received extensive coverage in NYC on their delivery of over 70 technical workshops to women who want to become developers.  Subjects are all related to web and app development like HTML/CSS, Javascript/JQuery, PHP/MySQL, Android Development with Java, Object-Oriented Programming and Ruby on Rails.  Founded by Sarah Chipps, Girl Develop It now has seven chapters.  The first San Francisco workshop focusing on HTML/CSS will being taught by Pamela Fox, developer and Ex-Googler.  SendGrid is sponsoring this event and I will be attending and participating.  Register

April 20th, 2012, Atlanta, GA: MongoDB Atlanta All applications are not built with the same technology.  Well, maybe at one time they were but the world of tech now has infinite opportunities to not only build something new but build that idea with something new.  Such is the case of MongoDB, a popular noSQL database alternative.  Companies like Foursquare, Craigslist, Disney and The New York Times prefer MongoDB for the flexibility and support for big data sets.  While SendGrid doesn’t utilize MongoDB, we are exploring Cassanda.  I’ll be attending this conference.  Register

April 20th – 22nd, 2012, Atlanta, GA: Startup Weekend Atlanta With hundreds of these intense and productive 54 hour events being held all over the world, it’s not a surprise that one of the up and coming technology hubs in the United States is back for another Startup Weekend.  With the last SW being held in 2010, locals in Atlanta are ready for another event.  Sendgrid is a global sponsor of Startup Weekend and I will be attending and participating.  Register

April 23rd – 25th, 2012 Monterey, CA: MLOVE Conference Have you ever wondered what the future of mobile holds when it comes to business, education, healthcare, media and even world peace?  Well, organizers, speakers and attendees of this conference put a lot of thought and action into that very question!  Held for the first three years in Berlin, Germany, the conference makes it’s onto US soil for the first time.  I will be attending this event.  Register

And as always, you can check out my profile to see what Meetup events around San Francisco I’m attending!

Coming Soon

May 4th, 2012, San Francisco, CA: MongoSF or Geeklist conference

May 14th, 2012, Mountain View, CA: I will be attending Microsoft Devcamp to get some more hands-on time with HTML/CSS for web apps and mobile.  Register

May 21 – 24, 2012, Las Vegas, NC: I will be at EMC World interviewing keynote speakers on behalf of CDW.  Register

May 23rd, 2012, Online Conference: I will be speaking on a panel at Women Who Tech with Shireen Mitchell and Liza Sabater about how to diversify your tech teams.  Register

June 1-2, 2012, Philadelphia, PA: I will be speaking at Blogging While Brown with Scott Hanelseman and Luvvie Ajayi on how to build your brand online.  Register

July, 2012, San Francisco: I will be participating in a writing workshop called, “Write To Change The World” by TheOptEd Project to get more women to write opt-ed journalism pieces.  They’re holding workshops all over the US.  Register

July 16-20,2012, Portland, OR: I’m thinking about attending OSCon this year which is the O’Reilly open source conference.  Register

July 26-29, 2012, Las Vegas, NV: I’m thinking about attending Defcon this year which is a security and hacker conference.  Registration is at the door, no online reg.

August 2-4, 2012, NYC, NY: I will be speaking at BlogHer on a panel moderated by Carley Knobloch on how to use technology to be more productive.  Register

September 27-29, 2012, Puert0 Vallarta, Mexico: I will be speaking at the Mom Blogger Conference on how to create and use video to increase engagement on your blog.  Register

I will have a new, full time role starting in April: Developer Evangelist at SendGrid 

How do I feel about it?  Amazing!

What will I be doing?

I will help developers adopt SendGrid as a platform to help them be more productive.  How?  By helping them focus more on their app and less on email.  This will take shape as I attend conferences, meetups, hackathons and network with startups in the Bay area.

I will be part of the Developer Relations teams at SendGrid which is currently four strong (five counting myself).  I will build awareness, customer relationships and cool apps with SendGrid to showcase the power of the platform.  I will help to improve and documentation, resources and social content around the product.

Am I leaving San Francisco?

While SendGrid is based in Boulder, Colorado and I will visit the offices frequently, I will stay right here in the Bay area.  What you will see is an increase in my attendance to even more local events that are developer focused.

What is SendGrid anyway?  

It’s an email platform for developers to improve the number of emails that get delivered to the inboxes of their customers.  What type of emails?  Transactional ones — for example, one of SendGrid’s clients is Pinterest.  Every time someone repins an item of yours, you get an email notification about it (unless you’ve adjusted the settings).  Well, in the case of Pinterest developers, they don’t have to spend hours building out and then maintaining an email system to send out those notifications.  Instead Pinterest hands off the notification emails to SendGrid’s servers to do the heavy lifting of getting all those emails into customer inbox’s.

Added benefits for the developers include analytics on delivered, opened and bounced email plus clicks.  There are actually several API’s including the event API, the parse API, newsletter API and more!

What is a Developer Evangelist?

When I redesigned my site here at ButYourAGirl.com a few months ago, I wanted to think of a new tagline that represented my passion, skills and experience.  What did people remember about me?  Well from technology to hair to moving to San Francisco, it’s my contagious enthusiasm!  Combine that evangelical skill with a target audience of developers and you have the role of developer evangelist!

Now wait a minute Adria!  Aren’t you a consultant?  

Haven’t you been helping companies solve all sorts of problems for the last six years?

Yes, that is true.  I have been a problem-solver-for-hire since 2006 helping companies big and small with technology, the cloud, email management, social content strategy and more but — since last year, I have been seeking something more tangible.  Something I could point to and say, “I was a part of that.  I built that.  I created that.”  Last year I wasn’t really sure what that looked like.  I explored a lot of different options.

Over time, I took a look around my circle of friends, peers and mentors.  I examined what they did for work and how they spent their free time.  I know I looked up to Scott Hanselman, a friend and mentor of mine.  Scott works at Microsoft and while for many years I thought this was like working on the Star Wars Death Star, I finally took a look from a different angle and realized how much Scott enjoyed his work and how he was participating in things that mattered to him.  He’s been making his Hanselminutes podcast for several years, started up a new podcast called This Developer’s Life

I also took at look at Sasha Laundy (in the yellow), a friend of my roommate’s had been making some nice moves as well.  Not only had she been cutting it up at Twillio, her Women Who Code group was doing an amazing number of events with solid attendance.  She’s now moved to working at Codeacademy in NYC doing what she’s most passionate about: education.

Through these new lenses of people employed full time by their employer yet making things happen, I decided that working for someone else wasn’t the the problem after all but finding the right company to work for was.

You can maintain your identity, values and a balance between life and work.

Once I was able to process that, I began exploring what I loved most about consulting and looking for a job that would allow me to do those as often as possible.  I saw Eric Koger, CEO of ModCloth, speak a couple weeks back on how startups should go about building their dream teams.  On the panel with Eric was:

• Julie Hartz of EventBrite
• Rick Marini, Founder of BranchOut
• Christian Wiklund, CoFounder of Skout

and Liz Gannes of AllThingsD was the moderator.  My biggest takeaway was something that Eric said about halfway through and that was to let talented people focus on their, “genius-level skills” like they do for the founder of ModCloth Susan (who is also his wife).  Susan isn’t burdened with administrative tasks; she focuses on what she does best – finding amazing pieces and artists that match the style and essence of the ModCloth brand.

I held values close to my heart and it paid off.

One thing that has been important to me if I ever were going to work for another company full time is the culture.  After visiting Zappos in 2010 with Mig Pascual late one Saturday evening after Blogworld in Las Vegas, I realized people could still be happy at work.  As Mig named off the ten core values at Zappos, I saw his eyes saying, “I love my job and I’m supremely happy to be here”.  I asked myself how I could find a company that I could feel that happ about.  The Zappos Culture Book simply reinforced this reading story after story from employees who had been with the company two, three, eight, nine, ten years.  Could I find the same thing in the tech sector?  In a startup?  I knew from then on that how people felt at work still mattered.  I continued to consult for companies but never forgot the look in Mig’s eyes that night.

Was I asking too much?  How does one find a unicorn anyway?  Shouldn’t I just buckle down and do the work regardless of the culture?

It wasn’t until last November that I experienced something similar as I had with Mig but this time it was Emmanuel from SendGrid telling me about his experience.  I was impressed that he’d had such a positive experience in seeing the culture of the company transform in a short period of time.  Accountability throughout a company and putting development first is important in a company that well…develops!

I network with the intent to build good connections with people doing interesting things.  I am happy to announce here on my blog that for the first time in six years, I am accepting a full time position with a company!

What’s next?

With a narrow focus on building value through communication at SendGrid, I will be spending a lot more time programming in rails, php and other languages.

You’ll still see me around the Bay area and at conferences so make sure to stop me and say hello!

I’m at SXSW again this year and I feel grateful, excited and ready for it!  Today was the first day (Friday) and as always, I arrived early so I could get settled in.  Good thing I did since my macbook is on the fritz again with it’s yearly hiccup over the hdd cable.  I also made a run to Whole Foods and to pick up shampoo for my friend KamKam.  All my roommates arrived by Thursday night and we finally went to sleep by 3am after a ton of laughing, eating and catching up.

Already went to two panels – the NewMe CNN Black In America panel with Hajj, Wayne, Hank, Jason and Solidad O’Brian.  Next up was my good friend Kim “Dr. Goddess” Ellis explaining the social phenomenon of Black Twitter.

Saturday morning I’m attending Cat’s panel on Technology Superwomen then seeing the Black Founders group talk about paying it forward with entrepreneurship.  That panel will include Chris, Nnena, Monique and Hadiyah.

My panel is on Monday – Race: Know When To Hold It and Know When To Fold It at Tech Conferences and I have a superstar lineup with Anjuan Simmons, Corvida Raven, Scott Hanelseman and Latoya Peterson.

More soon from SXSW!

Last week I had the the opportunity to work with a Venafi, a high tech security company at the RSA Conference.  I helped them promote and raise brand awareness with conference attendees and I had a fabulous time doing it!

I co-hosted a Jeopardy style game show booth with Venafi’s senior sales engineer, Chris Neely, from the UK.  We led an audience of 25-30 people through Jeopardy questions on the management of enterprise keys and certificates (EKCM), giving away Kindle Fires to the winners of each session.  We knocked about 40 sessions over four days, doing about two an hour.

The booth was awesome!  It shot up about sixty feet with two large monitors for the questions and each audience member received a wireless voting device.  Chris and myself added in jokes, stories and case studies to make the information engaging, memorable and fun.  Lots of laughs going on!  We received a ton of positive feedback from the marketing management folks, event attendees and winners!

Had some really interesting talks with customers from Home Depot and Microsoft as well as several of the sales engineers.  I completely felt in my zone and at the end of the day I felt energized.

I’m glad I was able to partner up with Venafi and Eventige to successfully deliver a great experience to RSA conf attendees (and not feel like a booth babe!).

I’ll be adding in more videos and details about the event after SXSW

Klout used to be cool.  Back then, it used to give you useful information about how people interacted with you on Twitter, how far your tweets traveled into other networks and which ones had the most powerful impact.  I joined Klout December 2009.  Today Klout is worthless and I’m going to tell you why.

Let’s put this into context — You take action in life.  If you value feeling good about your life, you’re probably setting goals and tracking what you need to do to reach them.  Goals give you a way to measure your progress.  The same sort of logic applies to having an online presence, a successful website or blog and building your brand: you need to be able to measure if your efforts are making a positive impact.

Initially, that’s what Klout promised…and delivered.

There was one tweet in particular that I sent out.  Chris Pirillo (@chrispirillo), a well know technology personality, retweeted it:

I wish people would understand the difference between support and training

2:43 PM – 5 Jul 09 via TweetDeck

https://twitter.com/#!/adriarichards/statuses/2487518975

Why?  Because it resonated with him.  It was shared over and over by people in the tech community via Twitter.

How did I know this?  Because I could see it right within Klout!  Yes!  I was stoked!  That’s right folks.  Klout used to actually provide useful analytics about the performance of your tweets.  I felt Klout was valuable and helped me gain insight into my participation and network on Twitter.

How can you get valuable analytics about your tweets?  Get a Twitter Analytics account.

Those were the good old days of Klout.  Before Justin Beiber joined (who incidentally has a Klout score of 100 yet Justin isn’t a registered Klout member).

Another positive experience I had with Klout was at their party at Blogworld in 2010.  A few weeks before the conference, I received an invite from Klout to attend their Blogworld “Kloutup”.  The invite said I would be getting a VIP invite and get some sort of “goodies”.  Now I wasn’t sure what this meant but it sounded like it would be fun.  At that time, Megan Berry (@meganberry) was the marketing manager at Klout.

When I got to the party, I could tell it was a good crowd.  The event was in a beautiful suite with huge windows that gave us all a view of the Las Vegas strip.  The floor was made of large, semi-see through tiles…I suppose one could get a bit sea sick if they looked down too long.  The suite was huge and had seating everywhere.  There was good music playing and I could tell people were having a good time.

In the center of the room was a large LCD screen showing everyone who had checked into the event and their Klout scores.  I saw several people in the room I recognized.  I spotted Calvin (@mayhemstudios) and said hello.  If you don’t know Calvin, you don’t know jack about social media.  The room was full of movers and shakers in the social media world and that’s when I knew this party was going somewhere good.  In fact, it was during the first 15 minutes of the party that I had a strong, positive brand association with Klout.

I’d brought along a friend to the party, Scott Hanselman (@shanselman).  While he wasn’t invited, he’s influential on Twitter and has maintained a very high Klout score of 70+ so it was nice serendipity for Klout to meet someone who wasn’t on their active radar but who was making waves in their product.

Klout had a gift bag for me with assorted things like stickers and a tank top.  It wasn’t the contents that made me feel special but rather, there was a bag with my name on it.  It’s the small things that make us feel special!

So off I go, thinking Klout is great and it’s here to help me manage my social media and brand growth, la, la, la!

Wrong!

Slowly Klout began to change the interface.  Things began disappearing.  I’m patient with social networks and startups so I don’t freak out when things look a little different.

But then…Klout then began offering, “Perks”.  Little did I know this was the beginning of the end.  I’m not a big fan of reward programs in general or group deals because marketing the purchase decision can reduce the value of the actual product.  This is why I mainly buy from Amazon versus say… Overstock.com or Newegg instead of Buy.com.  So in the case of Klout, this sort of offering could cause people to tweet about things they didn’t really have much interest in, hoping that algorithms were picking up their keywords.

So far, I felt I had a good end user relationship with Klout and was willing to give the Perks a try.  The first perk I participated in was test driving an Audi.  I found this perk to not be a good fit for myself and the people there seemed to be a jumbled afterthought.  They had a taco truck there.  High end automobiles and tacos just don’t go together.

Today I saw an email in my inbox from Klout.  It had been a while since I’d even visited the site as over the last year of these “perks”, I’d become disgusted with how Klout has been treating users like cattle.  Dropping scores randomly, encouraging users to add more social profiles, hiding more of the useful data and in the end, not giving me value.

My roommate Alex wrote up a great post last year on Klout that I fully support: Why your Klout score is meaningless and it starts off with:

As a Ph D Statistician and search quality engineer, I know a lot about how to properly measure things. In the past few months I’ve become an active Twitter user and very interested in measuring the influence of individuals. Klout provides a way to measure influence on Twitter using a score also called Klout. The range is 0 to 100. Light users score below 20, regular users around 30, and celebrities start around 75. Naturally, I was intrigued by the Klout measurement, but a careful analysis led to some serious issues with the score.

Normally I would ignore emails from Klout telling me I got a “+K” from someone but today, I saw a perk that was completely relevant to me.  I saw it at around 5pm.  I’d just parked the car and saw the Klout perk was for the Ignition West Business Insider conference happening March 21st here in San Francisco.  I thought to myself, “Adria, you’ll be back by then”.  Last week a PR company reached out on behalf Samsung because the digital electronics company would like to fly me out to create a video review of a new monitor line.

I parked the car and told myself I’d register for the perk after my meeting.  The event had a great lineup of speakers spanning business, gaming, startups, investments, mobile and social media including:

• Dave McClure, Founding Partner, 500 Startups
• Kevin Rose, Co-Founder & CEO, Milk
• Sarah Lacy, Founder & Editor, Pando Daily (Formerly at Techcrunch)
• Kevin Systrom, Founder, Instagram
• David Ko, Chief Mobile Officer, Zynga Inc
• Brian Lee, Co-Founder & Chairman, ShoeDazzle; The Honest Company
• Peter Vesterbacka, CMO, Rovio
• Richard Kerris, VP, Global Head of Developer Relations, Nokia
• Holger Luedorf , VP, Head of Business Development, Foursquare
• Ben Horowitz, Co-Founder & General Partner, Andreessen Horowitz
•  Shishir Mehrotra, VP, Product Management, YouTube & Video, Google
• Matt Murphy, Partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers

And yes, I’ve sorted the list of speakers in order of importance to my career focus.

Why would the Ignition West conference be relevant and thus a value for me to attend?

I have been running my own business as a technology consultant for the last six years.  I’ve been a consultant, power user, evangelist and trainer on cloud apps and website platforms during that time.  People know that if they present me with a problem, I’ll do my research and come back with tools to become more productive.

I’m creative, curious, technical, logical and have a passion for helping people solve problems.

I am currently seeking a position as a developer evangelist and going to this conference would give me the opportunity to meet product managers, developers, sales engineers, marketing managers and decision makers.

I came out of my meeting, flipped open the laptop in the car, signed into Klout only to see that it said, “This perk is full”.  Really?

In less than an hour all the spots for this perk filled up?

What I suspect now happens behind the Klout curtain is no longer a curation around relationships but a turnkey algorithm matching keywords to dollars.

Klout is a reverse Groupon for businesses.

Let’s imagine that there were eight tickets to go to this conference as a Klout perk.  If Klout were truly trying to match influencers to brands, they would release the tickets to groups of influencers and give them a window of opportunity to redeem the perk.  Instead, I suspect it’s more like a cattle call where, let’s say for those eight tickets, they notify two hundred people at once…and move on to their next, ahem, perk.

The average no show rate for a free event on Eventbrite is about 30%.  I wonder what the attendance rate, let alone the “social sharing” rate is for the Klout perks since it seems so little effort is going into the experience anymore.

Yes, when startups first get going, they want to get the word out about their service and will throw parties.  The smile, hang out with you and then…the startups with the wrong advisors or pushy VC’s have to start doing things to make money…often at the expense of the user experience.

Because of the dwindling value with Klout, I unlinked my other accounts including Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, YouTube, Flickr and Tumblr.  I refuse to hand over my interactions, activities and network to be a part of your cattle drive.

Klout, I quit you.

Since technology is still primarily a male dominated field and that is the topic I focus on for most of my content, it’s not surprising to see this.  I like to take take it a step further and say that decision makers watch my videos.  How do I know this?  Because my online social content has attracted many of my clients.  They see my work, they feel they can relate to it and I understand their problems.

I was recently asked by a company about my demographics.  When you’re talking with companies about opportunities and campaigns, they want to see social proof.  Are they people they need to reach paying attention to your content?  Social Proof as defined by Wikipedia is “informational social influence” upon a person’s actions or decisions.  While there are many “social media experts” and “digital strategists” running around saying they can turn the tides on buying decisions, in the end, real people want real solutions to their problems.

That’s what I provide via my video content.  I focus on business technology because for the last six years, I’ve been a consultant helping companies make decisions about technology.  I’ve also implemented a lot of that technology for the same companies.

While I have made videos about other topics that address other areas of my life including dating, curly hair and even menstrual cramps, I always come back to what I’m most passionate about: helping people feel good about technology.

Now am I saying that the women who watch my videos are only watching the non-technology ones?  No, not at all.  In fact, since moving to San Francisco, I’ve met more women in technology in one year than I met in my entire life living in Minneapolis.  And I mean seriously amazing, smart, creative, hard working, brilliant women doing big things.  I simply want to point out that I do create videos that are about my life, my interests and my problems I struggle with and some of those have to do with me being female.

In fact, this sort of combination of lifestyle and technology content has landed me gigs.  The lawyer in Maryland who invited me to speak about technology tools for faith based organizations saw one of my hair videos and then on the sidebar saw my technology videos.  She could relate and reached out so her conference audience could gain knowledge.

One video I really like is the one I did about the travel planning website, hipmunk:

When I create video content I do three things:

• Focus on topics people are interested in
• Speak from the heart
• Share my experience

This keeps my content authentic, genuine and to the point (well, most of the time, I do have a few rambling videos!).

So keep in mind it’s not always about how many Twitter followers you have, how many blog posts you’ve written or name dropping when you meet someone; it’s about delivering value.

That said, one thing I’m looking to do in 2012 is to improve the production quality of my videos.  For me this means lighting, transitions and tent poling around events like holidays, news stories and events.

Interested in working with me as an evangelist, consultant or influencer on your next project?  View my videos, read more about me and reach out via my contact page.

Now, an opportunity that I can’t pass up has come to my attention.

Why Google, Why Now?

Here I am in December 2002 sporting my Google tank top.  Back then I thought Google was an awesome resource to find the answers I needed to solve problems.  Yeah, I was a fan girl.  Not much more because let’s face it, who wanted to work for a search engine?

Over the years though, Google’s empire of applications has grown to include every sort of imaginable product for business, enterprise and consumers.  It also has helped me grow my consulting business.  Everything from Gmail email with massive storage and Postini packed spam filitering to Google maps and Google Apps domain email; a fully fledged merchant account with Google Checkout to the oh, so personal Google Wallet for your pocket; from sneezy Google flu trends to the most massive user generated video website known as YouTube to the social experiments of Google+ and ensuring the future of bright kids spending their summers building cool stuff with Google Summer of Code, Google has expanded to offer an amazing Smörgåsbord of services, ventures and solutions.  Let’s not forget Google Maps, the Android OS and the lighter side of Google with their snarky hoaxes (yeah, I linked up to Wikipedia!).

I want to join this team!

You can read about my love of technology, background and desire to make the world a better place.

You can watch a sampling of my YouTube videos that everyday help thousands of people make decisions about technology, life and their world.

Of course, the best way to find out more about me, my journey and what matters to me is to look through the ButYoureAGirl archives.

One of my roommates works at Google, the other worked there too until he left last year to work at a startup that he’s absolutely loving now!

Below is the job description that Google seems to have been crafted for me.  I would love to share the joy of the Google API.  I love talking with tech geeks like myself learn about what their needs are.  Developers and integrators close the loop on innovation between the main product and the customer.  Look at how successful the Google Apps Marketplace has been as well as many of the early companies who signed up.  Since I’m an excellent translator of requirements and needs, have endless enthusiasm for the “Ah ha!” moment and have cultivated a following online with readers, viewers and those thinking about doing something new.

I applied for this a few days ago and read Mashable’s article, “How To Land a Job At Google” so please wish me luck!

Job for Developer Advocate at Google

http://www.google.com/intl/en/jobs/uslocations/san-francisco/engops/devrel/developer-advocate-san-francisco/index.html

The area: Engineering

Simply put, Google engineers make computers do amazing things. Populated by extraordinarily creative, motivated and talented people, our Engineering team gets excited by developing new applications that really make a difference and are used by millions of people. We’re driven by Google’s mission to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. If you seek to tackle such challenges as building a highly scalable computing infrastructure, novel storage systems, innovative user experiences or the next big application that will change the world, then this might be a perfect fit for you.

The role: Developer Advocate

As a Developer Advocate, you will be a member of the Developer Relations organization. Developer Relations is focused on driving the success of Google’s developer products and the open web by creating a thriving ecosystem of 3rd party applications and businesses built on them. You will be an evangelist for our newest technologies in the outside world, as well as a vocal advocate for developers’ needs within Google. We expect you to be an engineer who thrives on the cutting edge of technology and loves seeing exciting, new applications and business that other developers are building. Your job is to drive momentum for exciting new technologies such as Chrome, Android, App Engine, Google Wave, Google Maps API, HTML5 and our core Google Apps and Ads APIs. You will work with some of our most strategic partners who push our technology to its limits — your job is to make them successful as they build apps that showcase the potential of our APIs and developer products. You will be the public face of Google representing these products, speaking at conferences, on panels, at user groups, actively blogging, tweeting and engaging with developer press and bloggers.

Responsibilities:

• Create momentum and drive the success of Google’s developer products and the open web through your interactions with 3rd party developers building applications and businesses on them.
• Advocate the adoption of Google developer products to strategic partners and the broader developer community.
• Participate in technical and design discussions with technical executives at strategic partners to speed adoption and ensure best practices during implementation.
• Evangelize our developer products in person and online by presenting at conferences, blogging, writing technical tutorials and other similar activities.
• Advocate for developers internally, and influence Google developer product strategy by working with Product Management, Engineering, PR, Marketing, Business Development and other cross-functional teams.

Minimum Qualifications:

• BA/BS degree (In lieu of degree, 4 years relevant work experience).
• 4 years of experience including public speaking and presenting to large technical audiences, blogging and writing technical articles.
• Programming abilities in one or more of the following languages: Java, PHP, Python, Ruby, .NET, JavaScript.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Degree in Computer Science or similar field.
• 6 years relevant work experience, including experience blogging and writing technical articles, ideally with an existing follower base, as well as experience working directly with press and bloggers.
• Excellent public speaking skills and charisma, with experience presenting to large technical audiences.
• Strong command of web application or mobile application development landscapes.
• Considerable success as a software developer, architect, technology evangelist, CTO, or consultant working with web or mobile technologies.
• Strong command of web application or mobile application development landscapes.

A winter vacation?  Heck yes!  I’ve always wanted to go somewhere warm during the winter.  Growing up in Minnesota is a whole other type of experience from November to March.  The ground is frozen and covered with layers of ice, you scrape ice from your car window, get dry skin and need a pair of gloves.

Update: More details about where I’m staying and my plans during the trip below!

I’m happy to share that I’m schedule to head to Mexico on Virgin America the first week of January to Puerto Vallarta Mexico!  I’ll be spending five days pretty much laying on the beach, sipping drinks and thinking about my goals for 2012.

I’m staying as a guest of Velas Vellarta, an all inclusive resort located in Puerto Vallarta.  The trip is sponsored by them and I will be capturing my experience via photos, video and a blog post.  Normally I blog about technology but after all the hard work us technology geeks put in, we all need a vacation, right?  My opinions of the resort will be my own but I want to include this disclaimer to make things clear.

Besides blogging, my personal goals during the trip are:

• Getting a tan
• Sleeping
• Sipping on tropical drinks
• Snacking
• Going out to do one local activity (horseback riding most likely)

Last year I wanted to go somewhere nice for my birthday which is in February but didn’t have my passport.  I reached out to Adventure Girl who I’d met at Blogworld.  She travels all over the world discovering amazing vacation spots, exploring the local scene and shares her discoveries via  social media and her blog.  She’s also fun in person!  She suggested I visit Puerto Rico since it’s part of the United States (sort of).  Anyway I chickened out but decided it was time to finally get my first passport.

The last time I stayed in an all inclusive was in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands when I was working on the TSA project (yes, I helped get all those screeners hired!)

Location

Puerto Vallarta is on the Western side of Mexico about halfway down.  The flight is about 3 hours from San Francisco and I’m flying on Virgin America.

Weather

I pulled a forecast this morning and it looks to be about 80 degrees and sunny the entire trip!  I’ll arrive Wednesday afternoon, get checked in and may do a bit of exploring that evening to get my bearings.  On Friday or Saturday, I’m going to go horseback riding at a local ranch but mainly plan to be pool side soaking in the rays.  While there are a lot of water activities available including snorkeling, scuba diving, whale watching and sailing, I will not be in the water unless it’s very warm when I dip in my toe!

The Resort

Velas Vallarta is an all inclusive resort.  This means you can enjoy meals, drinks, nightly entertainment and a list of daily activities to choose from all included as a part of your experience at no extra cost.  There are several restaurants on-site that I’m looking forward to trying including the Andrea Restaurant.  They have over 300 rooms and suites with up to three bedrooms.  While you can enjoy your time at the resort and all the stuff to do, many people take advantage of being in an exotic location and leave to explore an experience their destination.  The resort also offers additional services like spa treatments.

For entertainment, they have different themes each night including Mexican Fiesta night, Casino night, Veracruz Dance night and Saturday is the International show full of music from Mexico, Hawaii and South America.

This resort is focused on being family friendly and has a lot of activities during the day including beach volleyball, water aerobics, yoga and game tournaments including bingo, ping pong and blackjack.

Looking forward to checking out the pool and the hotel in general and will have a followup blog post with more details.

T-Mobile Cell Phone Service In Mexico

Unfortunately, T-mobile doesn’t have great data roaming in Mexico so I will be putting my phone into airplane mode so as not to incur outrageous charges.  International GPRS data roaming is $15 per megabyte so with a few checks of my email, some tweets and apps running in the background, I could easily rack up a few hundred dollars in data charges.

I’m not planning to talk on the phone much while on vacation but it looks like for $15 I can add on T-mobile’s International talk and text to my existing plan and since I have unlimited minutes, those would apply in Mexico as well.  If you don’t opt-in for this plan while traveling, you’re looking at $1.79 per minute for phone calls.

Bon Voyage!

Wow!  I’m really, really looking forward to this trip!

Will I do things like snorkeling while I’m in Mexico?  Maybe.

I more than likely will unplug from technology and social media, aside from my camera and just enjoy the peace and quiet.

More soon and happy holidays!

Last year I helped Patrice who runs Afrobella.com recover from a seriously nasty malware hack to her blog after Google told her she had been blacklisted.  It was frustrating for Patrice, her fans and advertisers but I got the site cleaned up and hack free.  Back in June I saw there was a call for WordPress security topics so I jumped in and said I’d share my experience as a case study for the group.

I covered:

• How to tell if your WordPress site was hacked
• Why people hack WordPress sites (popularity, infect other computers, steal data)
• First steps to start investigating the problem
• How to backup your WordPress files and database
• How to scan your WordPress files for infection using Avira
• How to scan your WordPress site using Sucuri
• Tools and plugins to use to monitor your site for changes
• How I recovered the site of a popular blogger using this system
• and much more!

Here’s the presentation from the meetup:

People asked several questions during the presentation and I’m listing the resources I mentioned here as well as the recorded WordPress training at Udemy I’m teaching and the San Francisco WordPress workshop in February at Parisoma:

What hosting company do you recommend and why?

Rochenhost (affiliate link) – They do backups twice a day, respond to support tickets in 8 – 14 minutes, have Red Hat certified technicians and proactively monitor their shared hosting servers.  Fast, responsive and solid.

What WordPress theme provider do you recommend and why?

Woothemes (affiliate link) - They keep all their themes up to date on a regular basis, they have great support and and active community of users, their framework supports patching security issues in their themes and they have a wide variety of flexible themes to fit nearly any WordPress site

What are the security / protection plugins you named?

• InspectorWordpress
• Simple History
• Exploit Scanner
• Akismet htaccess writer
• Audit Trail
• WordPress Hashcash
• WP-Sentinel
• Login LockDown

What was the link to the blog post you did last year on hacked WordPress sites?

http://freshworkshops.com/2010/12/20-ways-to-find-your-wordpress-hacking-problem/

Where can I read more about the TimThumb vulnerability?

http://markmaunder.com/2011/08/01/zero-day-vulnerability-in-many-wordpress-themes/

Where can I get WordPress training online?

You can head over to Udemy which is now hosting my Build Your Own WordPress Website training for just $29.  You get 8 hours of solid, step-by-step training on how to set up your very own WordPress website.  Remember, the best part about using WordPress is that it is SEO optimized out of the box!

I just received a really nice quote from a previous client I setup on WordPress in 2008 because I asked him to share his story with a new prospective client who is still riding the fence on WordPress:

“I know that WordPress has been the best thing.  Many changes I do myself which keeps the site fresh. It also keeps me interested in routinely updating since I instantly see the changes.”

Joseph L. Rapacki, Rapacki & Co Accounting (yes, that’s a WordPress site)

Where can I get WordPress training in person?

Glad you asked!  I’m teaching a four week WordPress workshop in San Francisco this February at Parisoma called, Becoming A WordPress Master, and it’s going to cover all the essentials of WordPress.  Great for people just getting started with WordPress as well as people who want to better understand how to leverage SEO, themes and plugins.  We’ll cover new features in WordPress 3.3 like the HTML 5 drag and drop image upload option.

The cost is $120 for all four sessions and you can register here.

• WordPress Setup 101: Wed, Feb 1
• WordPress Tour: Wed, Feb 8
• WordPress Themes and Plugins: Wed, Feb 15
• WordPress Content Strategy and SEO: Wed, Feb 22

Thank you to Sallie Goetsch for asking me to speak at the meetup event and thank you to Anca of Techliminal for hosting the meetup!  It was great to meet everyone and hear people’s questions about WordPress security!

Registered attendees will gather tonight to meet, listen to speakers, pitch their ideas and form teams.  For the next two days they will work furiously to get their ideas into working prototypes getting insight and guidance from Startup Weekend staff and mentors with the opportunity to pitch and present on Sunday for recognition, prizes and bragging rights!

Event details

URL: http://www.women2.org/women2-startup-weekend-2011-san-francisco-announcement/

Twitter hashtag: #w2sw

Date: November 18th through 20th, 2011

Where: The Hatchery, 625 2nd Street, San Francisco, CA

Registration page: http://w2.startupweekend.org/tickets/

Who can attend: Everyone!  Women, men, programmers, non-programmers, business minded people, graphic designers, front end designers, business development, project managers and anyone interested in learning what it takes to team up and build a successful app!

Event Description:

Women 2.0 and Startup Weekend are partnering on November 18 – 20, 2011 at The Hatchery in San Francisco, CA for Women 2.0 Startup Weekend! We provide the co-working space and brain fuel, and you bring the energy and innovation to build something big over the weekend. Both men and women are invited to get your ticket for Women 2.0 Startup Weekend now!

Maybe you have an idea, maybe you don’t?
Maybe you started a startup before, maybe you haven’t?
Maybe you are a developer, a designer, a do-er?

Bring an idea, or just yourself! Come to join a team and start a project (or company) over the weekend. We will be hacking and building for 54 hours! Startup Weekend is a place to test ideas, contribute to ideas, and meet potential founders. We are bringing together the most innovative, talented, and out-of-the-box entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley.

How to Participate

Note: I am looking for an extra ticket for my friend for this event so if you have one, please contact me or send me a tweet on the hashtag.

Registration for this event  sold out within days (sorry!) but you can still participate by following the Twitter hashtag all weekend and checking out the various apps that will be launched.  If you’re attending, you can share your experience by tweeting, blogging, tumbling, Google+’ing, Facebooking, snapping photos and sharing to Instagram/Flickr/Facebook and talking about the event with people.  I attended the Startup Weekend in May an amazing time and it caused me to pivot my career focus in a new direction.

I’ve been asked to be a mentor (Business technology consultant and social brand building) and will be at the even Saturday afternoon starting at 1pm.  There are several other amazing mentors as well including:

• Cathy Edwards (Chomp CTO)
• Shelly Roche (Foodspotting engineer & Vayable CTO)
• Dave Kochbeck (AtomPass CTO)
• Anna Billstrom (Facebook app developer)
• Jen-Mei Wu (Ruby on Rails developer)
• Jean Hsu (Android developer)
• Kirsten Jones (LinkedIn developer advocate)
• Sasha Laundy (Twilio support engineer & Women Who Code founder)
• Cindy Alvarez (KISSmetrics product head)
• Christine Lemke (business & strategy maven)
• Renee DiResta (venture capitalist, web dev & two-time Startup Weekend hacker!)

I’m looking forward to meeting Cathy Edwards in person as my roommate Alex Braunstein works at Chomp as a software engineer.  I’ve met Sasha before and think she’s pretty awesome!

I’ll be stopping in Friday evening to hear Sarah Allen and Alexa Andrzejewski speak.  Sarah is amazing.  She has been one of the pillars in San Francisco when it comes to women and programming.  Sarah has created, initiated, supported and driven several events and programs around encouraging women to learn coding including the Ruby on Rails Outreach Workshop For Women which I took last year.

Startup Weekend Schedule

Here’s the schedule from the Women 2.0 Startup Weekend page:

Schedule for Friday, November 18

6:00pm – Registration starts

7:00pm – Dinner & Networking

7:20pm – Welcome & Speakers

7:30pm – Pitches Start

9:00pm – Attendees vote for the top ideas

9:15pm – Teams start forming and discussing ideas

10:00pm – Start to formalize teams and take an inventory of skills. Be honest, and direct about what resources and skills are needed for the weekend. You may stay and work as late as the venue will allow.

Friday night Speakers will include Sarah Allen (Co-Founder & CTO, Mightyverse) and Alexa Andrzejewski (Co-Founder & CEO, Foodspotting) who attended the 2009 Women 2.0 Startup Weekend looking to build a great product, finding instead her first angel investor! Today, Foodspotting has been downloaded over one million times globally and has secured Series A funding from Blue Run Ventures. Alexa will speak about her Women 2.0 Startup Weekend experience and more.

Schedule for Saturday, November 19

9:00am – Arrive, simple breakfast & coffee

9:30am – Teams formed and setting up workspace for the weekend

12:00pm – Lunch

1:00pm – Call for needs & skills

2:00pm – Mentors help teams one-on-one. They are here to help!

3:00pm – Zico break

6:30pm – Dinner

7:30pm – Mid weekend check-in, status reports, call for help

10:00pm – Finished for the day. You may stay and work as late as the venue will allow.

Startup Weekend Mentors will drop in to advise and assist teams on Saturday and/or Sunday afternoon. These mentors include Cathy Edwards (Chomp CTO), Shelly Roche (Foodspotting engineer & Vayable CTO), Dave Kochbeck (AtomPass CTO), Anna Billstrom (Facebook app developer), Jen-Mei Wu (Ruby on Rails developer), Jean Hsu (Android developer), Kirsten Jones (LinkedIn developer advocate), Sasha Laundy (Twilio support engineer & Women Who Code founder), Cindy Alvarez (KISSmetrics product head), Christine Lemke (business & strategy maven), Renee DiResta (venture capitalist, web dev & two-time Startup Weekend hacker!), Adria Richards (WordPress guru) and more to be announced!

Schedule for Sunday, November 20

9:00am – Arrive, simple breakfast & coffee

10:00am – Call for help (this is self motivated, so don’t be shy)

12:00pm – Lunch

12:30pm – Mentors arrive… ASK QUESTIONS

3:00pm – Gut check. Start prepping for presentations

4:00pm – Dinner

5:00pm – FINAL PRESENTATIONS

7:30pm – Judging & awards

8:30pm – Wrapup

9:00pm – Go home!

• Have been to a previous Startup Weekend?
• Have you formed a company through startup weekend and if so, how are you doing now?
• What are your thoughts on what can be created in a weekend?
• Do you think you’re not “techie enough” to participate?