Adventures in Mobile Marketing

Attended the Girl Geek Dinner last night, put on by Women2.org. Very cool.

It was packed, sold out, and I arrived early so I got a very full schwag bag, but had to leave early because of… jet lag. 8 PM and it felt like 3 AM.

Apple employees were there in full flying colors, filling the room with a great creative optimism!

Sat next to a Google/YouTube employee and we had a bunch of energetic discussions about cloud computing, copyright issues, the future of broadcast TV, and various social networks.

Another woman at our table is forming a marketing group for a retail company, and besides setting up their CRM system, I was curious as to her plans with social marketing. “We’re going to try traditional avenues first.” I thought that was savvy, and yet we started discussing various retail strategies I’d heard of and/or participated in.

Lots of job shifting and refocusing, but not at all as depressing as NPR or the news media would have you believe. Another woman at our table was recently laid off, but she cheerfully described herself as “an MBA student,” as she was taking night classes at UC Davis and could now focus all her time on it.

On my other side was a young woman writing system control apps at Sun. We compared notes on freezing server rooms and being “the only woman in my group.” I helped her out with some cool Silicon Valley networking groups where she could meet like-minded folks. Sadly I had to leave during the pitches, but it was a classic Silicon Valley networking meeting- a kind of freed up energy of geekiness and social comraderie.