November 3, 2009

Welcome to the WildWest: When Women Take on Tech Because They Want To

Filed under: fun, geeks, life, san francisco, side project, videos, women 2.0 — Lindsay @ 10:03 am

A day does not go by when I don’t hear about an event from the numerous “we support women in technology” groups:  Girls in Tech, Women 2.0, Bay Area Girl Geek Dinner and Shes Geeky.  All of these groups have merit, and all have a target audience, from software developers to marketing analysts.  I’ve certainly benefited from these organizations, participating in Women 2.0’s Business Plan Competition back in 2008, attending a plethora of Girls in Tech events about journalism, business development, and so forth, and going to the Shes Geeky conference at the beginning of this year down in the Peninsula.  I’ve been lucky to meet some amazing women which include intense athletes, creative and insightful product managers, and even friends that help me out with reservations to Chez Panisse!

A portion of the dialogue that is pervasive in these types of groups is dedicated to asking the question to ad nauseum “Why are there not enough women in technology?”  The women that are in tech are quick to point out that most conferences are dominated by men, mostly white, and that few of these conferences feature any women speakers at all.  Day in, and day out, the conversation and complaints flood my twitter stream and my RSS feed to so much annoyance that I’m almost tempted to start spending my free time speaking at conferences (which I’ve done), or organizing a survey to better understand why women in tech do not attend conferences or try to speak at them on their own volition.   Just to make the noise go away.  It’s not that I don’t believe there are valid concerns, it’s that I find the conversation is tired, and somewhat generational.

In the pop culture of the online world, it seems that women in technology fall into three roles which I can relate to Save by the Bell characters.  The Kelly Kapowskis use their sex appeal to attract the tech geek guy to pay attention to them without knowing a lick of what they’re talking about.  The Lisa Turtles are the peppy chicks that “overcompensate by pushing their ‘geekery’ on everyone” (quote), displaying a mastery of social media but not of the separation of the application and presentation layers (you dig?).  And, the Jesse Spanos are quite qualified women of tech, who also sound like feminists ranting everyday that women are somehow being purposefully left out of the tech equation.

I don’t buy into it.  And neither does my friend Amy Ziari.

Last August Amy approached me at a Girls in Tech event (we thank you for that GIT!), tired as well of the same old conversation, with an idea to create a video series featuring women in technology who talk about what they are interested in.  Not to prove to anyone that we’re competent, or that we’re “geeky just like you!”, but to let our audience draw their own conclusions.  We didn’t want to be Kelly, Lisa or Jesse, we wanted to be ourselves, comfortable with our role in the industry, with our peers (male, female, black, white, hispanic or asian), and what we find interesting.

In mid September we teamed up with Camille Ricketts of Venture Beat to put together the pilot episode of the WildWest show.  We hoped to put together more episodes, but time passed, and now I’m leaving soon to take off on an excellent adventure (I’ve alluded to this trip, but have yet to post details).  So enjoy this first episode, where we interview Joey Mucha from Sprout and talk about some of our biggest tech snafus!  Also, visit the website – www.wildwestshow.tv - to learn more.

Credits to Amy for doing all the video editing!

October 20, 2009

City of Dream’s SF1900: The Non-Tech Event of the Year

Filed under: fun, geeks, life, san francisco, volunteer — Lindsay @ 2:17 pm

Andrea and Christina at SF1900 2008

I imagine that most of the people that come across my blog are more likely to be part of the San Francisco tech scene than they are part of the, well, non-tech scene.  If you’re following the current debate over whether you should love San Francisco or leave San Francisco, than you may have come across Mat Honan’s blog post “Are You Going to San Francisco”.  In his article, he makes a point to tell everyone to Make Real Friends:

“This only applies to people working in the Internet and technology sectors, but you may be amazed to discover that most people in the city work in fields that have nothing to do with the Internet. It’s fantastic to have friends in the industry. You’ll have shared interests and they’ll always get your meme-of-the-day jokes. But if most of your friends work in the same field you do, that’s a little boring, right? Try to branch out. This is a city of people from all over the world, doing all sorts of interesting things. Get to know them. ”

So here’s your chance: City of Dream’s 5th Annual – SF1900 – A Night at the Barbary Coast.  I can expound the virtues of City of Dreams, but I have already done that previously.  It’s a great organization, and I admire everyone of the members and friends I’ve met through my roommate and the organization.  But for those of you not familiar with City of Dreams, this event is the best way to get an introduction!  Not only can you fraternize with people outside of the (tech) industry, you’re going to find better male-to-female ratios than your average tech event (quit complaining!), and you can gamble the night away for a good cause.  If you don’t believe me just yet, take a look at last year’s photo site. Now go buy your ticket!

My Roommate and I Looking Snappy

My Roommate and I Looking Snappy

Details

WHEN: Thursday, November 12th, 2009 7pm – 12:30am.
WHERE: The Bently Reserve (The old Federal building, 301 Battery St.)
WHAT: Annual Fundraising Gala for City of Dreams
THEME: Think San Francisco’s Barbary Coast, circa 1900.

Preview the event’s AH-mazing silent auction here!

October 11, 2009

Signs of San Francisco

Filed under: fun, learnings, life, san francisco, side project, storytime, videos — Tags: , , , , — Lindsay @ 1:38 am

Signs of San Francisco from Lindsay Tabas on Vimeo.

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Katie came to visit me in August 2009. She helped herself to my city of 4 years so I helped myself to her images. Through her lens, the city refreshes in my eyes.

Like any person in your life, a city cannot be all things to you through thick and thin. As much as I love this city, after 4 years, I’m looking to shake things up. I set sail very soon, stay tuned.

Produced by: Lindsay Tabas
Photos by: Katie Delaney
Song: Signs by Bloc Party (buy on iTunes)

PS: Happy Birthday Katie!

September 21, 2009

How Much Food Can You Get in Chinatown for $12? #hchal

Filed under: learnings, life, san francisco, storytime — Tags: , , — Lindsay @ 8:51 pm

More than 35 million people in our country are on food stamps – up 3 million just since January.

Living in Russian Hill, I’m just a stones throw away from the grocers lining the streets of Chinatown. I’m almost 100% positive most of my peers in this neighborhood and the other adjacent neighborhoods have never ventured in to these stores. To them it seems off putting, signs are in a foreign language, and the foods are exotic, even unidentifiable sometimes. To me though, Chinatown is my little secret. I love to cook a lot, and I could go to Whole Foods, but the spirit would dissipate once I checked my credit card bill after.

At Whole Foods you can get cherries for $7.99/lb, and in Chinatown you can get cherries for $0.99/lb. Even at Safeway, conventional apples are $1.99/lb, and in Chinatown they are $0.59/lb! Scallions? $0.39/each! Cilantro? $0.49/each! Eggplant? I bought some for $0.39/lb today. For the exchange in price, you get a cultural adventure.  Some may argue that the quality is not as good, and I would agree.  But not all fruits and vegetables need to be organic.  And to be honest, I would rather eat some fruits and vegetables for cheap, rather than none at all because they are too expensive.

I have learned the laws of shopping in Chinatown over the past 3 years, and I will share some of them with you here:

  • Put your food on the scale as soon as the person in front of you is finished, else someone behind you will get there first.
  • Do not substitute an unidentified green leaf vegetable for spinach just because it looks like spinach; it won’t taste the same
  • Be prepared to see carcasses and single fishies lying dead in the freezer.  If you don’t like it, don’t buy seafood and meat (I don’t).
  • Find the less busy stores – prices are $0.10/lb higher, but the food hasn’t been picked over.
  • Feel out the prices for the day. 1 store may have red peppers for $1.99/lb, another may have them for $1.29/lb.

Here are the foods I purchased today.  I had a few recipes in mind while I was food shopping, and knew that I had some bulk foods to use at home which are not pictured here.  I’m hoping my assumption that multiple recipes using similar ingredients will make my life easier will prove true.

Tonight I’m going to finish cooking for tomorrow. I’ll post the recipes and what I eat in tomorrow’s post.

What do you think?

60% of the clients San Francisco Food Bank served last year come from working households.

September 18, 2009

Park(ing) Day in North Beach

Filed under: fun, life, san francisco — Lindsay @ 2:42 pm


Today was Park(ing) Day around the world. SF Weekly explains that the day “was dreamed up by Rebar, a San Francisco-based art and design collective, and invites participants to convert a parking space into a green space that becomes a spontaneous public park for a day.”   I went to North Beach on my lunch break to go to the bank, and to my pleasant surprise, I found a great spot outside of Lola’s on Grant Street.  After lunch, I walked the full stretch and found about 5 park(ing) spots.  I read a book, I hoola hooped, and I got some free lemonade!  Having to decline the “adult” lemonade in exchange for the regular lemonade because I had to return to work was the only sad moment.

Here are some of my “better” pictures (give my blackberry a break). You can see the entire set here.

May 26, 2009

Are the water, weather, food and lifestyle worth it?

Filed under: economist, life, san francisco, storytime — Tags: , — Lindsay @ 6:42 pm

Last week’s Economist spoke to the recent election held in California, describing the impact of the various propositions and how they would impact the state.  Of the propositions, only one passed, the one in which state legislators salaries freeze when there’s a deficit.  The article plainly said that if the other propositions didn’t pass, the deficit would balloon to $21 .3 billion over something like $15 billion if they did.

The state is now compromised (if it already wasn’t), and I didn’t vote.  A lot of people didn’t vote.  Most of my friends didn’t vote.  And now I’m reading the post-election Economist article, which points out:

  • California will cut funding to Medi-Cal and change eligibility rules which will leave about 225K children uncovered.
  • Programs dealing with birth-control, HIV prevention, counseling against drug abuse and domestic violence will be reduced or chucked.
  • Child-welfare programs will be cut by 10%, so that less accounts of child abuse will be investigated and there will be less supervision of foster care.
  • Education will be cut so that school will be shortened by one week.
  • The UC system will probably layoff almost 5K people, and could take in almost 50K less students.
  • The state will have to sell a lot of its assets, even the San Quentin prison.
  • We might have to review projects for off shore drilling.

My question then is:  Is the daily landscapes of water and hills, generally beautiful weather, delicious food and produce, and relaxed lifestyle worth all of this heartache?

Most of my friends here in the Bay Area are not originally from this city, nor from this state.  We’re often faced with  questions surrounding why we live so far from home, and why we love San Francisco so much.  We hear the argument that the city is so expensive, and we justify that its worth the price to be seconds away from the mountains and the clubs at the same time.  But, in reality, reading an article like this one only makes it harder to justify to friends and family our insistence to remain.

But as I think of all the problems this state will face, and ask myself if its worth it I realize one thing is true: For the most part, none of these cuts in programs and healthcare will directly impact my life, save a few less frequent bus routes I use to traverse the city.  I don’t use social programs, I’m no longer in college, I’m not employed by the government (my roommate is), I don’t have children, and I don’t have any domestic violence, HIV or unwanted pregnancy issues.  I fall in this comfortable bracket defined by the unfortunately abhorrent term “yuppie” – Young, Urban, Professional.

This is all very selfish of course, and hopefully I earn some credit for at least acknowledging this realization as such, but I cannot be blamed for the years upon years of bad decisions the state and its people made before I even arrived.  And, as a friend (who only partially grew up here) said, by voting no on all the propositions, we’ll force the state to hit rock bottom.  And once you hit rock bottom, there’s only one way to go, and that’s up.

November 4, 2008

Voting in California!

Filed under: life, san francisco — Lindsay @ 10:54 am

Today is the BIG DAY! And as always, I like to talk about the very unique experience of voting in California.  In no other state can any citizen put a proposition on the ballot, so today I, not only voted for the President of the United States, but I also voted on 12 State Propositions and 22 City Propositions.   The # of Propositions was very overwhelming, so my roommate and I hosted friends over on Sunday night to sift through all of them to figure out how to vote.  We accomplished the impossible; we educated ourselves on all of them. Some of the highlights:

  • Proposition 8 on the State ballot is a vote to ban gay-marriage; Vote No
  • Proposition 12 on the State ballot is a vote in favor of funding for veterans; it’s a tough economic time for this, but Vote Yes, if not for my roommate’s brother, for anyone you know that has been on the front line for our country (who says SF voters aren’t patriotic???).
  • Proposition A on the City ballot is a vote to fund a seismic refit of the only trauma hospital in the city; Vote Yes
  • Proposition H on the City ballot is a vote to allow the board of supervisors to purchase clean energy in direct competition with PGE; sure PGE isn’t going to meet any of the clean energy goals set by the state, but that doesn’t mean the city can do any better:  Vote No
  • Proposition K on the City ballot legalizes prostitution; it’s a toss up.  There’s no social services paired with this proposition, which makes me feel like the Prop doesn’t do enough.  But, our police force is stretched so thin already, do we really want them spending time going after the world’s oldest profession?
  • Proposition L on the City ballot creates more funding for the Community Justice Court, a court created by the Mayor and funded for 1year by the Supervisors. The CJC is a court, in simplest terms, for homeless people, to prosecute them for homeless offenses like petty crime and public urination.  The court offers these people social services instead of jail time; the person chooses.  I Voted Yes, and I think its a good idea.
  • Proposition R on the City ballot votes to rename the water waste treatment plant the George W. Bush Sewage Plant.  Kind of hilarious, but come on SF, wasn’t it just a fun summer joke?  I was approached this summer to sign the petition by a drag queen waiving an American flag.  Again, I think it’s a toss up:  It’s a funny joke, not a serious prop, but on the other hand, the city wastes enough money on other crap, why not at least make us all laugh while doing it?

I’m sure I’m missing some other important ones, but this was just meant to be a review! My notes were written down on one of many pieces of garbage (political mailings):

Onto the voting experience itself:  I walked out this morning to find that the Tango Vida was open to offer free Dunkin Donuts (my fave) coffee to all passerbys.

I noticed that the line for the first voting station on my way to my own voting station was pretty busy at 8 in the morning.  Lets note that most voting stations in San Francisco are in people’s garages!

Now onto my own voting station. I didn’t want to take a picture of the girl I’m about to talk about because of privacy, but let me just say this: San Francisco Public Schools are Failing our Children! I recognized these two girls from the primary election; they’re job is to locate each voter’s name on the list of voters and give us our ballots. Of course, the name are listed alphabetically by last name, and of course she has a problem finding T-A both times that I have voted. I literally have to lean over the table and point out my name to her. And of course, my neighbor walks in and gives her last name, and the girl has a problem again: M-C-G…come on, really?

Once you get your ballot, you have to wait in line until there is a “secret-voting-desk” to actually cast your vote.

But, so many people were excited to vote that, to speed up the process, people began using the washer and dryer in the garage as tables on which to vote. I voted on top of a washing machine! Literally!:

Voting in California is not like voting in Pennsylvania. Voting in Pennsylvania requires pulling a bunch of levers on a 1970’s-esque robotic-arm machine behind a curtain. Voting in California entails coloring in a bunch of arrows next to the politicians’ names you want to vote for, or in the case of Propositions, next to Yes or No for each one.

After you fill out your multiple sheets of propositions and politicians, you have to feed each sheet into a machine. It’s like feeding $1 or $5 bills into a change machine. When I first arrived, I already saw a man having a problem feeding his ballot in, and a co-worker just told me that his polling place had serious enough problems to require emergency assistance.

The best part of voting, of course, is getting your “I Voted” sticker, which for California comes in multiple languages! With this sticker you can go get yourself a free cup of coffee from Starbucks, a free ice cream cone at Ben and Jerry’s and a free donut at Krispy Kreme. Nothing like the most patriotic duty of it all (voting) to encourage more patriotism (consumerism)!

Happy Voting to All, and to all a great day!

August 12, 2008

San Francisco Summer Project

Filed under: learnings, life, san francisco — Tags: — Lindsay @ 8:19 am

While the rest of the country is burning up this summer, San Francisco is sitting in a big marshmallow.  Literally.  You all get to go to the beach, while I have to wear winter clothes to work.

Every morning I wake up and go to my kitchen for breakfast.  My roommate and I have a beautiful view of the city, spanning from Coit Tower to the Transamerica Building, with the center piece being Treasure Island and the Bay Bridge.  But for the past couple weeks, we’ve dropped into the typical “Fog In Fog Out” pattern that overcomes the city each summer.  And, it’s depressing, to say the least.

I couldn’t (well sort of) believe how foggy its been the past couple weeks, so I started taking pictures out my kitchen window so other people could see what our summers are like in “Beautiful Sunny California!”  Check out the set on Flickr here.  As you can see, when its sunny, the view is amazing, and when its cloudy, the view is just outright sad.

For example, lets take the rapid changes in weather.  Yesterday, in the morning I woke up to this:

Amazing Sun

And last evening, the sun set like this:

The Big Marshmallow‘

So think twice when you pack to come visit SF, because that is how fast the weather can change here.  And, visit in the Fall or Spring.  Clearly Summer has its drawbacks (unless you want to cool down).