Philanthropy

The meme of the lack of women in tech (or software, or entrepreneurship) appeared in several places today. Regular readers of this blog know that I’ve been the chairman of the National Center for Women & Information Technology for a number of years and deeply involved in this issue. It’s very satisfying for me to see a meme like this pick up speed and appear in a bunch of thoughtful articles and discussions. If you are interested in this issue, I have three articles from the last 24 hours that I encourage you to read. ...

I had an amazing day on Saturday in Charlotte, North Carolina. I attended the Bank of America Technology Stars of the Future awards ceremony for the NCWIT Award for Aspirations in Computing. If you’ve been following along on this blog, you know that I’m chairman of NCWIT (the National Center for Women & Information Technology ). I’m proud of a lot of things that NCWIT does, but after attending the Aspirations in Computing awards I think it has moved to the top of my list. ...

One of the great things about living in Eldorado Springs, Colorado is interacting with nature on a daily basis. Protecting the environment has been a priority of mine for many years. Every now and then I like to call out a non-profit organization that I support that I think does an excellent job of helping protect the environment. Colorado Conservation Voters is one of these groups. CCV works to turn conservation values into Colorado priorities by educating legislators and the public about important environmental issues, helping pro-conservation candidates win their elections, and then holding our elected officials accountable. Most importantly, they do it efficiently as they are a group that has influence and reach much larger than their budget would indicate. ...

I’m extremely impressed with Vivek Wadhwa’s posts on TechCrunch. He’s been blogging periodically for them since last fall and has shown that he’s willing to take on difficult, controversial, and complicated issues and discuss them in data driven and systematic ways. Recently, Vivek wrote a post titled Silicon Valley: You and Some of Your VC’s have a Gender Problem that resulted from a research project he did with the National Center for Women & Information Technology (I’m chairman). I thought the post was excellent. The comments, however, were really enlightening to me. The amount of anger and hostility, especially irrational attacks, surprised me. Well – I guess it only surprised me a little – it mostly disappointed me. ...

I think Boulder is one of the absolute best places to start a tech company. The depth of talent and overall strength of our tech community here is superb. It turns out that makes it a great place to start a community-based tech nonprofit startup, too. I’ve written before about SnapImpact’s great work in making doing good easy. Having already created the first volunteering app for the iPhone, they’re started taking on some additional challenges. ...

Vivek Wadhwa has a strong article in BusinessWeek today titled Addressing the Dearth of Female Entrepreneurs*.* He makes the argument that “There are too few women running high-tech companies; that’s too bad, considering evidence shows female-led businesses outperform those run by men” and concludes “[I] hope that when I revisit this topic in subsequent years the percentage of women launching IT companies rivals the percentage of women going into law, medicine, and higher education. The outcome would benefit us all.” ...

Regular readers of this blog know that I’m Chairman of the National Center for Women & Information Technology . In five years, NCWIT has become a prominent national organization helping encourage, inspire, advocate, and educate women (and girls) to get involved in computer science based on the following belief: “We believe that inspiring more women to choose careers in IT isn’t about parity; it’s a compelling issue of innovation, competitiveness, and workforce sustainability. In a global economy, gender diversity in IT means a larger and more competitive workforce; in a world dependent on innovation, it means the ability to design technology that is as broad and creative as the people it serves.” ...

I spent the morning at an NCWIT (National Center of Women & Information Technology) board meeting where I’ve been chairman for the last few years. NCWIT’s mission is to increase women’s participation in IT. We focus across the entire pipeline (K-12, higher ed, industry, academic, and entrepreneurial communities) and – in addition to having a number of our own programs – work hard to leverage the efforts of other organizations around the country. We’ve got a superb board of directors and executive advisory council and an incredible staff which I’m especially proud of. For a quick overview, take a look at the Fact Sheet and the FAQ. ...

As the co-founder of the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado , I’m a huge fan of what the Entrepreneurs Foundation is all about. Two weeks ago, when I was in San Francisco at Cloud Engines’ offices (makers of the Pogoplug and one of our investments) I noticed their Entrepreneurs Foundation plaque signifying their membership in the bay area chapter. I asked Dan Putterman – the CEO of Cloud Engines – if he’d write a guest post about why Cloud Engines joined the Entrepreneurs Foundation. It follows. ...

A month or so ago I got a voicemail from William Barrett at Forbes. His message was something like “call me back – I want to talk to you about your bathroom.” Now, I never view a phone call from one of the major business magazines as a good time. I don’t have a publicist so most of the calls are about something negative – which is fine – but rarely something I’m looking for. ...