Thoughts on the Catalyst Girls in Tech Conference

On Tuesday, Brooke and I attended the Catalyst Girls in Tech conference. It was a wonderfully organized and star-packed event aimed at supporting the career development of women in the tech industry. Heather Harde, CEO of TechCrunch, keynoted, backed up by an impressive list of speakers and workshop leaders.

Two first impressions:

1. You know you’re at a women’s conference when the refreshments are smoothies and cucumber water.
2. There are an incredible number of amazing, confident and brilliant women in San Francisco.

To summarize for those who may have missed out, here are a few observations and highlights:

• My favorite talk was “The Art of Negotiation”, by Katherine Barr, a partner at Mohr Davidow Ventures. She focused on key negotiation tools originally created by the Harvard Negotiation Project, now taught in MBA programs all over the world. I was riveted. In my experience, women dont always stand up for what they deserve or self promote in the same way men do (for more thoughts on this, check out Clay Shirky’s recent controversial blog post). Katherine’s enlightened approach was both sensitive to this and forceful. Interestingly, I noticed that in the negotiation exercises, women frequently converged on tit-for-tat strategies, perhaps more so than we would have seen in a male-dominated room. (Of course, this was not the strategy I employed when besting Brooke in 5/5 exercises — sorry Brooke, don’t mess with a game theorist!)
• Most women we spoke to who worked at startups were in the B2C space. One attendee hypothesized, and I agree, that this is because women are often the target audience of B2C products and services, and people founded or joined companies geared towards issues they feel strongly about and are engaged with in their daily lives. This is unfortunate though, as, “ninety per cent of the fastest-growing companies in the country sell to other businesses” (Malcom Gladwell, Jan 18, 2010, New Yorker) I hope B2C doesn’t manifest as the women-led startup ghetto.
• While the business playing field seems to be evening out for men and women, the conference was a thought provoking experience in determining how this is playing out in the tech sector. There seemed to be a pervasive attitude in the room that we should ignore potential differences, and assume that in business men and women are the same. To me, this is a shame. I embrace the fact that men and women have different work, negotiation, social and management styles. There are advantages to each, and we should honor and leverage that to best advantage.

I loved learning from and networking with women tech community, and witnessing their broadening scope as professionals and innovators. A huge “thanks” to the women at Girls In Tech who are working hard to propel careers and raise awareness of women, not only as key contributors to this industry, but as leaders.