I went to an entrepreneur talk put on by the Engineering College at George Washington University. It was way more fabulous than I expected. Awesome fancy hors d’oerves, excellent speakers.
There were three semi-white male panelists. One was American, the other two had some Middle Eastern background. They had interesting stories about how they started their companies. Well, I found the stories interesting, probably because they were relevant to me and I like to compare how people develop new companies. However the student next to me fell asleep.
The entrepreneur panelist I found most relevant was Elias Sham who founded telezoo.com, a B2B social networking site, in 1999. He was also on the board of Searchles, another social media company, and runs a blog http://www.awesomedc.com which is about the real people of DC, not the politicians. I relate to that mission. When I was on the board of the local Society of Women Engineers section, I used to write letters to various media outlets commending them whenever they wrote about engineers, making the point that engineers are a huge part of what makes DC tick.
Unfortunately, the panelist story that stuck out for me was when the white guy made a point about how hard it is to start a company when the wife is at home and pregnant. Hello? Who is your audience? Why is your wife sitting around at home? I felt like to him, my presence in the audience was nonexistent, that he was commiserating with the boys, and I was merely an interloper.
Of course to the men, I’m sure they didn’t think twice about it. Instead they probably thought it was more unusual that women were there.
January 19, 2010
White Male Engineer Panelist discusses pregnant wife at sitting around at home
January 17, 2010
December 29, 2009
It’s so fun to see what voice recognition does to my YouTube videos
I wanted to make a transcript for a video I made with my friend Tim, the youth minister from my church, with the intention of experimenting with an idea for a video series & corresponding book that we might create some day. So I’m playing around with voice recognition software. I tried it on this video of Tim in his office http://www.youtube.com/user/LisaSchaefer#p/a/u/0/m0xWZf90mCc He’s so genuine & goofy, I think we might come up with something good with a little prep and a little practice.
So here’s what I got when I put the mic to the speaker as I played the video: “The rear of a city on all traffic drives a car at the classes on one of the on the manager of stuff doesn’t sign she acted like I have no fall into a stack of a.”
Huh? That’s what the software said too. Actually, throughout most of the video, it said, “What was that?”
So I tried again, this time I spoke into the mic while the video played quietly in the background. “And still have three well we still have the ability to choose to accept god’s call tours things other female vocationary a what did the door to religious positioned for weather of the bike or whether not to go to levitate for weather not to put on a baseball cap Monday we never know what kind of a fax that has got what doesn’t want to be upset about marionettes the shrubs of existence fallacy of purpose of existence. guy would make marionettes and play was marionettes. he wouldn’t have created such a sophisticated thing. that god is the greatest been a measure ball and he went and makes waste time and even waste the money needed a waste of money was untouchable I feel a play in
20 to feel like maybe god waste of time on youth of the apostles for good people like Peter. Peter constantly impresses up here gives me hope. because I am off all. I’m constantly messing up. every time I think them back of the straight and narrow, I we bought your some of you guys drive so we don’t. but when you’re seeing the steering wheel, there’s nothing worse than that feeling when you’ve all the sudden gang will try our seat, and you start to go little to the left a new job at the. 20 said the office in on all types of drives. Now that’s the summer. of Mary drives. she is excited. she acted like she but she didn’t think I know what it felt like to drive the first time. as an alert feels like.”
A little better, but it still needs a whole lot of editing. I tried speaking into the mic a second time, but it’s just as bad. I think the voice recognition software is helpful for making the transcript. I was considering using it to create this blog, but I think typing it out myself is faster.
Blog Comment Spam
I recently read something from one of the self-proclaimed social media gurus that said bloggers should allow comments to post immediately, so that people feel more free to participate on the blog. This seemed like a good idea, because sometimes when I commented on blogs or news sites and my comment doesn’t appear immediately, I assume that the transmission didn’t make it through. So I post again, only to find my comment posted multiple times.
Thus I removed the annoying restriction that I must approve comments before they get posted. I didn’t like getting an email every time someone posted a comment anyway.
The result was much more annoying than deleting the occasional polite, but irrelevant spam comment from my blog. I was suddenly innundated with spam comments.
I just changed my comments option back to “moderated.” I just hope those settings work better than when I unlinked twitter from posting to facebook. Or at least I thought I unlinked them.