WEC Tech Café

Women's Enterprise Center Tech Café notes and thoughts.

First of all before I started blogging this I had to find out/remember how to type a é on a Mac. And that got me thinking... This is a process I do perhaps a hundred times a day. I have a question, open Google.com, write key words or sometimes the literal question into the little box, hit enter and BAM! Answers.

I think as a generation Y person and having grown up on the internet or being 'plugged in' this is the most natural and easiest thing to do immediately.

Yet not all people think this way...

Why when we have this amazing, self sustaining and expanding wealth of knowledge and human experience people not take more take advantage of it? It doesn't come naturally to those people who grew up without it.

Women's Enterprise Center's first Tech Café at the Delta Inn, Winnipeg was this morning and it was a FANTASTIC event; mainly because of the key note speaker Nelly Yusupova.

Her talk was interactive, informative, energetic and inspiring. Using 'the accelerated learning technique' Nelly helped a room full of local business owners like myself, identify goals and issues in their own company by having them list and discuss it directly to another person. Having a list of goals/issues in pen and paper in front of you makes it so much more easier to become active in fining solutions to help reach those specific goals and solve those issues. Great way to really connect and make it personal talk by tying it into my own business needs. **NTS** I will have to remember this when I do workshops in the future.

Then came the part where the group needed to learn about technology. I felt the whole room tense. I'm sure everyone's brain just started going 'okay... I need this... everyone's on this twitter thing... I somewhat understand it... but not really.... I don't know enough about the internet as a whole to make a technology plan.' OK STOP! Deep breath!

New media and technology helping excel business is not a new concept. It's the whole reason for the industrial revolution when you really think about it. We are now in, and have been in for a few years a technological revolution.

Now more then ever technology is cost effective, easy to use, and accessible. Because it is so simple for people(and lazy me) to hop online and ask google a question, I'm going to do it! Time and time again. Bottom line, if you have a business, service, association, community of any kind you need to be on the internet providing those answers.

So you need a technology plan.

Now because my business Smash-Art.com is a new media company I have a technology plan. It was easy for me to follow along and absorb all the information Nelly had on how to prepare and take the next steps. I don't think it was as easy for everyone there. Which is great! Because I want to help business owners with that.

The rest of the day had a great concept, you could sign up for one on one sit down time with some larger tech companies in the city. They also had a short period of time to present to the crowd between these meetings. I stepped out after only a few presentations with reading material but it felt to me that their talks were very high level about their tech company in general. Informative yet dry IMHO.

The food was good, the company was pleasant and for myself having the opportunity to speak directly with Nelly for a few minutes just made the day SMASHING. I got to pick her brain and talk about Winnipeg Girl Geeks. Please check out her website: DigitalWoman.com and bio because she's an amazing tech guru and someone I definitely want to aspire to be like in this industry.