SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., June 26, 2008 - Facebook Developer Garage partnered with Bay Area Girl Geek Dinners to hold the first female-oriented Facebook application developer event, hosting over 200 girl geeks at the Etiquette Lounge in San Francisco last Thursday night. Zivity co-founder and editor-in-chief Cyan Banister, named Sexiest Geek Alive in 2000 and star of the viral video sensation “Nrrrd Grrrl”, kicked off the evening by speaking to the importance of women in engineering. Julie Tung of Facebook’s platform team gave a presentation about the Facebook platform, providing insight on key decisions in Facebook platform development.
The night’s panel consisted of Facebook engineers and Facebook application development. Holly Liu of Watercooler spoke to involving women in designing user experiences, as did Alina Libova who had wrote and sold her Easter Eggs application early this year. Alina attributes an application’s success in part to simplicity and simple user interaction. Julie Zhuo of Facebook, who also created the (fluff)Friends application, agreed. Also of Facebook, Ruchi Sanghvi spoke to the tenacity needed in the development world, having worked in Facebook’s engineer department since its early days. Annie Chang of LOLapps provided useful tips on business development, testifying to iterating quickly to satisfy your customers.
But the night’s most deeply touching comments came from the audience. One woman stood up to express her frustration at lack of mentorship. Another woman addressed the hardship of learning to work with fellow women in development after many years of working with teams of only men. The heavily-anticipated event was live-blogged by both Beth Blecherman and Valleywag, and tweeted by several folks.
The following pictures were taken at the Bay Area Girl Geek Dinner #2: Hosted by Facebook. All photos are available on our Facebook page here - please tag people you know! See you at a future Bay Area Girl Geek Dinner!
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
The event was organized by Angie Chang, who also co-founded Women 2.0, a networking group for young women interested in entrepreneurship, business, and technology. If you would like to sponsor a future event, suggest a speaker or topic for discussion, or help out in any way, please contact angiechang@gmail.com.
