I’ve received a lot of positive feedback from women around the world since I presented a the following at South Africa’s first Women’s Day Developer Workshop hosted by Vodacom in Cape Town, South Africa.  See Video here:  http://youtu.be/XWz31UzOYJE

This initiative was aimed to encourage women to develop apps that are relevant to the local South African market.  According to Prins Mhlanga, Managing Executive of Digital Media at Vodacom, “our key objective is to empower more women developers so they can bring about change in their lives and communities by designing locally relevant apps. We hope the workshop will inspire more women into app development.”  I was just honored to be asked to speak about something so close to my heart: encouraging women in technology.

Like most speakership opportunities, I kind of expected the event to just quietly come and go with most of the discussions lost as quickly as the badges.  But this particular event somehow seems to keep resurfacing as women both locally in San Diego and as far away as South Africa have commented, supported, engaged, and keep bringing up the event even though it came and gone over 6 months ago!  I can’t say that for any other speakership I have even done, including those at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona which is the biggest event in the mobile industry.

I think this is  a testament to the emotions that run deep in females today in tech around the world.  We are all trying to “lean in” in anyway we can.  And any support and reinforcement  seems to really resonate.  Lets keep it up, ladies…and lets not only build apps, but built lasting technologies.