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Digital Savant Podcast #6: Michelle Greer
Podcast
This week on the Digital Savant podcast, we talk to Michelle Greer, who was the first winner of the Statesman Texas Social Media Awards in 2009 and who, sadly, is leaving the Austin area to work for a San Francisco tech company.
In the podcast, we discuss her new gig working for a cloud computing company, her thoughts on leaving the Austin tech scene (which sometimes can seem a little boosterish) and the role of women in tech.
On this subject in particular, Michelle Greer has written and spoken eloquently about the things she’s seen and heard and in the podcast, she says that companies like IBM are making the right moves by dealing with sexual harassment and removing barriers allowing women to advance in their fields.
“These stories are complicated… there’s a lot of things that come into this,” Greer said. She said she believes that a key way to get more women in tech, particularly in computer science, is to make STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) fields more attractive to middle school-aged girls and to stop living in denial about the way women are treated in some tech circles.
Even being one or only one or two women at a tech company where the corporate culture is skewed toward the interests of men can be uncomfortable. “I don’t think a lot of times men realize what it feels like to be kind of an outsider in this boys’ club even though you feel like you worked really hard to get here. I don’t know the answer. I really wish I knew the answer,” she said.
You can now subscribe to the Digital Savant podcast on iTunes, or click below for MP3 or AAC (podcast-formatted) versions of this week’s episode.
Listen to Digital Savant Podcast #6 (AAC/iTunes format)
Listen to Digital Savant Podcast #6 (MP3 format)
Show notes:
- Michelle’s Blog.
- Heroku.
- Transcript of a panel about women in tech that Michelle was on last year at TechCrunch Disrupt.
- Katrina Tolentino’s post about things you should never say or do to a woman at a tech networking event.
- Huffington Post’s Women in Tech section.
What’s in the podcast:
0:06 — Introduction.
0:25 — Introducing Michelle Greer.
1:30 — Leaving for San Francisco.
2:15 — What’s Heroku?
8:25 — Thoughts on the Austin tech scene.
18:15 — Women in tech discussion.
27:22 — Wrapping things up.
Michelle Greer photo by Rodolfo Gonzalez, American-Statesman.
Permalink | | Categories: Austin, Internet, Podcasts, SXSW, SXSW 2011
