Podcasts Geek Girls Guide

Podcast #30: MIMA Recap

In our 30th podcast, we discuss the process behind our presentations, focusing on our recent speaking gig at MIMA where we spoke on the subject of Cultivating a User-Centered Culture.   If you attended the event, you may have been asking yourself, “Why has the projector been displaying nothing but the color blue for the past 15 minutes?” or “Why are Meghan’s shoes filled with snow?” Well, look no further.  For the love of Bieber, we will answer those questions, plus many more right here and right now.

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Update: After recording this we discovered that it was Kristina Halvorson‘s dongle that saved the day. Thanks, Kristina! (And thanks to Andrew at ech03, too!)

Additional Resources

Podcast #29: Geek of the Week – Jodi Chromey

This week’s Geek of the Week, supergenius Jodi Chromey, stops by the studio for a choreographed ‘Pinky Tuscadero hand jive’ with Nancy and to chat about her career as a writer. Jodi initially claimed to be more “nerd” than “geek”, but after talking about her former life as a tech writer and then admitting to her love of Fonzie, her past blogs about Dawson’s Creek and cataloging her Sweet Valley High books as a child, it became obvious that we had chosen a true geek.

Jodi began writing her blog, I Will Dare, in 2000. Aside from her own blog, I Will Dare, Jodi is the editor for Minnesota Reads and is the mastermind behind paulwesterberg.net.

In this podcast, Jodi offers up advice on becoming a writer while giving us a brief glimpse into what inspires her (peanut butter and gin!), which begs the question, how did it take us this long to invite Jodi to be our Geek of the Week?

Additional Resources

Creepy Hand Model

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Podcast #28: Facebook Mail & Personal Branding

So, Facebook Messages. Everyone’s talking about it, but what is it?

  • What are the basic features? 
  • What does this mean for Facebook users?
  • Does this mean more social media overload, or better filters?

We also discuss personal branding and ways to create a central landing page that you can drive people to, so they are aware of all the places they can connect with you. There are some great new services out there to help you put together a homepage for yourself that centralizes your social accounts, or you can get all fancy and build a site yourself.

Additional Resources

Here are some other related blog posts we’ve written in the past about ways to DIY a web site:

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Have a topic you’d like us to talk about? Drop us a line at [email protected] or leave us a comment on our Facebook page!

Podcast #27: Keynote News With A Side Of Security

We’re excited to announce that we’re one of the keynote sessions for MinneWebCon 2011! Along with that good news, we’d also like to encourage other female speakers (and really anyone with solid, innovative content) to submit their proposals for this year’s event. If you’ve got something good to say, make sure you share it!

In Podcast 26, we mentioned a Firefox plugin called Firesheep. While we didn’t go into much detail, we did promise a deeper conversation about it in the next podcast. This is that podcast! Listen further to find out more about how the plugin works, and what it means for your information. While we’re on the subject of sharing information that you may or may not know you’re sharing, we also touched on the new Facebook Friendship pages. Do you know what Facebook is saying about you and your friends?

Additional Resources

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Have a topic you’d like us to talk about? Drop us a line at [email protected] or leave us a comment on our Facebook page!

Podcast #26: Social Engineering (or whatever)

In this podcast we touch on some recent reader questions around Facebook privacy and the importance of being smart with your profiles, pages, and other accounts online.

We discuss the difference between phishing and social engineering scams, and the ever-present annoyance of spammers and and weirdos.

Tune in next time when the ladies dive in for a closer look at Firesheep and some of the surrounding controversy.

Additional Links:

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Have a topic you’d like us to talk about? Drop us a line at [email protected] or leave us a comment on our Facebook page!

Podcast #25: Facebook’s New Button

In this week’s podcast, we discuss a new button. No, really. A button.

Facebook switched its Friend Request options from “Accept and Ignore” to “Accept and Not Now.” On Wednesday morning, the Marketplace Tech Report had an interesting take on it (which you can listen to here) that got us thinking: what does this mean? How does Facebook change our social behavior and how does it affect social norms? There’s a lot more going on than just buttons.

Here’s TechCrunch’s take on it.

What do you think?

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Have a topic you’d like us to talk about? Drop us a line at [email protected] or leave us a comment on our Facebook page!

Geek of the Week: Rachel Baker

This week’s Geek of the Week is Rachel Baker, a freelance IT consultant in Chicago. A few months ago, Rachel sent us an email about how much she enjoyed our site and podcasts. When we discovered that she’s quite a geek girl in her own right, we promptly crowned her Geek of the Week. It was a pleasure to talk to her, and we really only scratched the surface of her geekdom. We hope you enjoy our conversation with Rachel as much as we did!

Rachel credits her parents for putting her on the path to nerdery by buying her first computer in 1983, and insisting that she look things up in the Encyclopedia when she asked them a question. She’s worked professionally in technology for over 12 years, and now works on her own doing IT consulting and WordPress web development as Plugged In Consulting.

In February 2009, Rachel and a few friends founded the Chicago Nerd Social Club where they host and throw events for nerds. Yeah, we’re already trying to figure out how to get to Chicago for their next event.

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Have a topic you’d like us to talk about? Drop us a line at [email protected] or leave us a comment on our Facebook page!

Podcast #23: Entertainment Solutions

In our 23rd podcast we talk about the upcoming Minnesota Blogger Conference, as well as some DIY entertainment solutions for kicking cable to the curb and still getting to see your favorite shows.

Minnesota Blogger Conference

When: Saturday, September 11, 2010

Where: CoCo – coworking & collaborative

213 4th St E., 4th Floor

St Paul, MN 55101

(612) 735-7425

Schedule

Resources: Entertainment Solutions

Keep an eye out in the next couple weeks for the videos and descriptions of our systems as well as some more information on gaming.

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Have a topic you’d like us to talk about? Drop us a line at [email protected] or leave us a comment on our Facebook page!

Podcast #22: The Pain of Self Promotion

In podcast #22, we discuss walking the fine line between self promotion and being an annoying blowhard, and how to get over the resistance to self promote.

Podcast Summary

Originally, we sat down to discuss the ins and outs of Interactive Project Management. But, instead, we decided to talk about self promotion. Mainly because we are dealing with our own feelings of uneasiness about promoting a SXSW panel submission.

We discuss questions like:

  • Is this a “girl thing?”
  • How can you promote yourself without being annoying?
  • Do the people you’re connected with online mind if you talk about yourself?
  • Is there a difference between promoting your business and promoting yourself?
  • How do you get a sense of what your “personal brand” is online? Does it match with who you really are?

Things We Referenced

  • Meatspace:an idiom for the “real world”

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Have a topic you’d like us to talk about? Drop us a line at [email protected] or leave us a comment on our Facebook page!

Geek of the Week: Matt Wilson

This week’s Geek of the Week is Matt Wilson, who has the special honor of being our first male Geek of the Week.

Matt is the kind of geek that wears many hats (or capes, depending on the situation). Sometimes he’s an analytics geek (his profession), sometimes he’s a techie geek (taking things apart), and other times he’s a gamer geek (D&D, anyone?).

We think it will be obvious pretty quickly why we chose Matt: he’s smart, personable, funny and OMG: so geeky. He’s also been a longtime supporter of the Geek Girls Guide, encouraging us and cheering us on from day one. So we love him for that. Also? He’s the dad to two young girls, and he takes a lot of pride in encouraging them to take stuff apart and in making sure they embrace a little danger now and then. Fathers raising geeky girls? Gotta love that.

In this podcast, Matt explains his role as Manager of Digital Analytics at General Mills, talks about his early aspirations to be a doctor, and how he ended up doing web-related stuff for a living.

With so much to talk about, we found ourselves wrapping up after a whopping 45 minutes! He did leave us with a few final words of advice including, “Get yourself right, then focus on your skills, and then on your network. Don’t specialize too much. Being versatile is a great asset, and at the end of the day knowing business in general is better than knowing only how to optimize a web page for search.”

Thank you again to Matt for joining us and being our first manly Geek of the Week. We hope you enjoy this conversation as much as we did.

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Are you a geek? Do you know a geek? Is there someone you’d like to hear from? Drop us a line at [email protected] or leave us a comment on our Facebook page!

Since today is Matt’s birthday we had to include a little birthday surprise!