Women Who Code Who Do Tech Talks Too

Nervous about standing up in front of an audience to give that first lightning talk?

Or curious about how conferences evaluate proposals, and what happens when your proposal gets accepted?

Or wondering how the heck to prepare a talk that gets audiences excited?

Whatever your goal and level of experience, you'll get something new out of this evening of info, support, and brainstorming. We'll hear from Sarah Mei, Pamela Fox, and others who've done this stuff a time or two. Then we'll breakout into small groups to help each other take the next steps

5:30pm: pizza/socialize/networking
6:00pm-9:00pm: panel discussion, Q&A, breakout sessions Submit questions for panelists here: http://bit.ly/WWCTTT

As with all Women Who Code events, this event is open only to those who identify as a woman. Women Who Code is emphatically trans- and queer-friendly.

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Sarah Mei is a senior engineer at Pivotal Labs. In the past six years she has presented at more than 30 meetups and conferences. This month she became the first woman to give a keynote presentation at the world's biggest Ruby conference (http://rubyconf.org/). She's mentored novice speakers, and cheered them on from the sidelines. She's also previously served on the GoGaRuCo (http://gogaruco.com/) program committee which evaluates and selects speaking proposals.

Adria Richards is a Developer Evangelist at SendGrid. She has delivered training and technology services for Fortune 500 companies and startups including Apple, John Deere, Equinox and Zendesk. Adria’s passion for technology has led to a loyal following on her YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/user/adriarichards) with more than 1.5 million views. She has spoken at major conferences including SXSW, O'Reilly Web 2.0 and BlogHer, as well as interviews through media outlets including The Rachel Maddow show, NPR, Inc.com, ComputerWorld and Black Enterprise Magazine.

Pamela Fox is a frontend engineer at Coursera. In the past six years she's given more than 80 tech talks (http://www.pamelafox.org/talks) at meetups and conferences. Pamela is a "free-range engineer" who lately has been working primarily in Python & JavaScript. She is the founder of Girl Develop It SF (https://www.meetup.com/Girl-Develop-It-San-Francisco/), for which she teaches courses and recruits/supports new GDI teachers.

Ipsheeta Furtado gave her first tech talk (http://ftwgroup.com/html5devconf2012/) last month, debuting at HTML5DevConf. Ipsheeta is co-founder of the FTW Group, a technical consultancy for SMBs, NPOs, and start-ups focused on leveraging the cloud and practicing lean. She codes across the stack and is a founder of @PyLadiesSF. She practices yoga, teaches swimming, and is learning guitar in her spare time. Ipsheeta holds a B.S. in Engineering Physics from UC Berkeley. She promises to tweet more @ftwipsheeta!

Tracy Osborn is the founder of WeddingLovely.com and spends her time working on wedding-related web apps and communities. Prior to founding WeddingLovely, Tracy freelanced design and front-end development for startups. In 2011 she gave her first major tech talks (http://lanyrd.com/profile/limedaring/past/speaking/), at DjangoCon and PyCodeConf. Tracy tries to spend as much time outdoors as possible, hiking and biking around the Bay Area. Follow her on Twitter at @limedaring.

Suzanne Axtell plays on the O'Reilly Media marketing team, based in Sebastopol, California. She's on a mission to bring more diverse speakers and participants to O'Reilly's events, particularly women, people of color, and other groups traditionally underrepresented at tech events. She hosted the Women's Communities Meetup at FluentConf 2012 (http://fluentconf.com/fluent2012/public/schedule/detail/25069). Suzanne is determined to help you to propose a great talk for the Fluent (http://fluentconf.com/fluent2013) or Velocity (http://velocityconf.com/) conferences, among others. Suzanne is also an avid writer, crafter, knitter, reader, and pet lover. Connect with her on Twitter: @suzaxtell.