This past Thursday and Friday, the Citrix conference center at our headquarters in Silicon Valley hosted the second annual BlogHer Entrepreneurs Conference. This event is designed for innovative women who want to start something; if their goal is to hit on their own with a brilliant idea, or to bring an entrepreneurial approach to innovation within a company.
More than 170 women from across the United States, Canada and Mexico met to networking, expert panels, and mentoring sessions. I was delighted to have the opportunity to mentor and participate in a panel on hiring as part of the event.
This is the mentoring aspect of the program that makes a unique conference and adds considerable value. Based on the interests and objectives, experienced women in leadership roles are paired with women seeking feedback on their business plans, ideas and concepts. The experience made me think about my first mentor. I had just arrived in Silicon Valley costs of grad school and my manager introduced me with the opportunity to have a mentor. Believe it or not, I'm actually a little insulted. I thought, "I know everything! What do I need a mentor? I already have a manager, I do not need a second. "I quickly changed my look after my first conversation with Joe, my new mentor. I visited it was something very different. My mentor was someone I could have very open and frank conversations with my skills, ambitions, workplace politics, and all that was in my mind. no matter what I said, I knew I would not be judged and our conversations were always in the strictest confidentiality. my relationship with Joe, now being more than 12 years, was one of the most valuable both professionally and personally.
Living in Silicon Valley, we often take for granted the availability of mentors tech like Joe who many years of experience in the field. the BlogHer conference promotes the opportunity for people across North America. high-tech big business mentors such as Google, Electronic Arts, Ernst & Young and Citrix participated . Several mentees commented that they never have connections to engage in intimate conversations with these experts, if there were not the BlogHer event. The conference provided the framework so that each mentor and mentee had an hour for an intimate chat one-on-one. Mentees said they have received tremendous value in frank conversation and detailed comments. A woman I chatted with said that the advice she received was invaluable and the real world experience of time trumped classes of business and innovation it had taken.
On the other hand, mentors came away inspired by the wonderful and creative ideas that women entrepreneurs had put on the table. I was inspired by the woman I chatted with who had the courage to leave her job partner track at a large company of five tips to follow his dream and start a tech blog.
In addition to the mentoring sessions, eight panels experts were presented as part of the conference. A wide variety of attractive subjects for entrepreneurs were covered, including hiring, sales, creative bootstrapping and social commerce. I appreciated the level of interactivity and the discussion that took place under the panels -. Real stories were shared and posed pertinent questions, which has great value for the participants
If you can not join the event BlogHer this year, check out some pictures of Danielle Tsi .
this was my first introduction to the BlogHer community and I am impressed! I am already looking forward to participating in next year's event.
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