2010 May

Geek of the Week: Sarah Evans

The Geek Girls are excited to bring you the first Geek of the Week, which will be a new series in which we feature someone who’s well, a geek. These people can be self proclaimed geeks, people using technology to further their career, or seriously geeky geeks who make rockets and other geeky things.

It’s important to know that while the we can validate that the people we feature are in fact geeks (because they say so or someone else says so or their geekiness cannot be denied), it doesn’t mean we’re endorsing them over the other geeks out there. We love all geeks, but there are only so many weeks in a year.

Now, to start us off, for this week’s geek I interviewed Sarah Evans (@PRSarahEvans). Sarah is a PR Geek with cred to back her up like, over 40,000 followers on Twitter, a Vanity Fair article (America’s Tweethearts) and numerous of her own articles featured on the social media giant Mashable.

Sarah tells us about how she got to where she is today, including some work with myself back before the 40,000 followers, and where she thinks she’s going in the future. She also tells us about her personal motto, and gives some advice for other geeks out there that want to kick up their geek skills.

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Are you a geek? Do you know a geek? Is there someone you’d like to hear from? Drop us a line at [email protected] or leave us a comment on our Facebook page and we’ll see what we can do.

Flashbelt Announces 2010 Scholarship Winners

Last year, this blog hosted a heated debate over a presenter at Flashbelt 2009. While a stressful experience for everyone involved, many positive things came out of that very public discussion — one of which was getting to know Flashbelt founder and organizer Dave Schroeder.

For the past three years, Flashbelt has awarded scholarships to attend the four-day conference. This year, the Geek Girls Guide sponsored these scholarships and it’s our pleasure to announce the 2010 winners:

  • Kymberly Wyant, Student – Web & Digital Media Development, University of Wisconsin – Stevens Point
  • Arlene Birt, Artist & Teacher, Minneapolis
  • Priscilla Mok, Designer/Developer, Chicago

Each winner was awarded a full scholarship which includes a pre-conference workshop ($259) and registration for the conference ($399).

Dave Schroeder, Flashbelt founder, told us, “It was another tricky year to choose the scholarship recipients. All of the applicants were worthy, but these three people really made great cases for both why they wanted to attend and couldn’t, and what they intend to do with the things they learn at Flashbelt.”

All the applicants this year had very impressive applications. In fact, the applications were so impressive that Dave worked out a special deal for all the them: in addition to the 3 “full rides” he gave a 50% discount to all of the scholarship applicants. “That makes me feel great, because the speaker/session line up this year is the best it’s ever been and I don’t want anyone to miss it,” added Schroeder.

Thanks, Dave. We’re proud to be a part of Flashbelt 2010.

Podcast #13: Facebook Privacy

Lucky number 13! In our 13th podcast we take a look at a topic that never seems to go out of style: Facebook privacy. What do the changes mean to you? What are Facebook’s goals? Can you trust Facebook?

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Summary

Seriously, by the time we post this there will probably be a new set of Facebook designs and rules — at least that’s what it feels like. In this podcast, we take a look at some of the changes Facebook has made recently, what they mean to you, what they mean to Facebook, and ask the question, “Can Facebook be trusted?”

If we could stress one take-away from this podcast it would be — every time Facebook makes an update, you should revisit your privacy settings. Read them. Ask questions if you don’t understand. Don’t end up in an uncomfortable situation simply because you didn’t take the time to inform yourself.

Other Resources

Meghan referenced a Clay Shirky video, which you can watch here. It’s about 45 minutes, but worth it: Clay Shirky: It’s Not Information Overload. It’s Filter Failure.

A couple of interesting articles on this same topic were circulating on Twitter last week as well:

What do you think? Are we on the money, or full of crap? Was this podcast interesting? We felt like we were being boring, but we sure hope we weren’t!

Hit us up with questions in the comments, or over on our Facebook page (if you dare!).