7 Stories About Women Heroes in Tech - Please Send Us More

The technology press is full of stories of heroic men. In the startup economy, they often take the form of brave men who quit steady day jobs to join crazy startups. That's an inspiring kind of story; I wrote about Louis Gray doing that earlier this week and really enjoyed sharing his news.

But what about women who make that kind of leap? There needs to be more stories told like that. I put out a call on Twitter and Claire Cain Miller of the New York Times said she too wants to tell more stories about brave women in technology. We live in an incredible time of cultural, economic and political change made possible by changing technology. That technology is being driven in many cases by women - so whose stories would you suggest write about here on this blog?
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Earlier this week, TechCrunch wrote about Christine Tsai leaving Google to join Dave McClure's investment firm 500 Startups. This Spring, Alexa Andrzejewski left design firm Adaptive Path to work full time on her startup FoodSpotting. Those are cool stories, but we want more.

One place we're excited to look is the upcoming Women Who Tech Telesummit on September 15th. One place we're excited to look is the upcoming Women Who Tech Telesummit on September 15th.

ReadWriteWeb's own Audrey Watters has written about the challenges and upsides of incubating women entrepreneurs.

Perhaps the whole hero-style narrative is a bad idea, unhelpful to community collaboration just like Kaliya Hamlin argues the "war" metaphor is in rhetoric like "the identity war." "I think what is seen as heroic is a narrative of the lone cowboy," Hamlin said to me today. "Teams and communities who foster innovation and achieve together are often not seen and therefor not honored in the same way."

We've written about a number of specific women doing heroic or particularly interesting work in tech here on ReadWriteWeb. Here are 7 of my favorites - please let us know in comments or by email (staff@readwriteweb.com) whose stories are especially compelling that we ought to be writing about. Send them today, tomorrow - and don't stop sending us interesting stories about women, please. Of course there are more ways to have an awesome story than just to quit your job - that's just what got me thinking about this. Please send whatever recommendations you can of women who have great stories that people ought to read.

7 Inspiring Stories

Flickr's Community Manager Says Goodbye

When people talk about managing communities in this new online world, one name is mentioned more often and with more respect than any other: Heather Champ of Flickr. Today Champ announced that after nearly 5 years and more than 4 billion photos uploaded, she is leaving Flickr to start a community management consultancy called Fertile Medium.

Gina Trapani Starts a New Blog

Lifehacker founder and former lead editor Gina Trapani announced this morning that she's started a new blog called Smarterware.org. She says the new site has "no ads, no digg badges, lots of sentences starting with 'I'." It won't have dozens of posts daily under a rigorous publishing schedule - it will be a place for "stuff that fired off a synapse or two in my head," Trapani says.

HGTV Scores Mega-Blogger Heather Armstrong, Dooce

Home and Garden TV just announced that it has signed Heather Armstrong, author of hyper-popular early blog Dooce.com, to collaborate on unspecified "convergence media" projects.

Is Armstrong a woman in tech? As a trailblazer in the effective use of new publishing technologies, I certainly think she is.

An Inside Look Into Boxee's Systematic UX Overhaul Process

The story of Whitney Hess's work on the very hot service Boxee.

Microsoft Makes Key Hire in Researcher Danah Boyd

Microsoft Research has hired social network researcher danah boyd, probably the most high profile academic in the world focused on the emerging web and its social consequences.

How One Teacher Uses Twitter in the Classroom

Teachers are always trying to combat student apathy and University of Texas at Dallas History Professor, Monica Rankin, has found an interesting way to do it using Twitter in the classroom.

What Does it Mean to Make 5 Million Maps? Platial's Legacy

It's not every day that a business shuts down but declares itself a success in helping kick off an unstoppable movement to change the world.

This story, about Di-Ann Eisnor's map publishing service Platial, is one of my favorite stories I've ever written.

Ready for more stories about women doing inspiring things in technology? We'll keep writing them, but we'd love your help discovering them, too.

Illustration titled "Blogging Au Plein Air, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot" by Flickr user Mike Licht
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