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But more girls are putting Barbie on hold and opting for a more wired entertainment experience, and companies like the "Girls Intelligence Agency" and "Girl Tech" are counting on it. In today's column I'm going to take a look at how the computer and tech toy industries are courting our daughters, and even giving them a role in shaping how and where they fit into the digital future.

SITES FROM TODAY'S SHOW

	FOR GIRLS
	www.girlsintelligenceagency.com
	www.girlstart.org
	www.girltech.com
	www.gamegirlz.com
	www.careerdiscovery.ca

	FOR WOMEN
	www.technologywithcurves.com
	www.wiredwoman.com/toronto
	digitalevetoronto.com
	www.women-in-motion.org
	www.mentorcanada.ca

Girls Intelligence Agency (formerly GirlGames.com)
www.girlsintelligenceagency.com

What do you do when you're a successful co-producer and assistant director in Hollywood? When you've made it at the Academy Awards, the Sundance and even the Cannes Film Festivals? You pack up and head home to Texas and start a marketing company aimed at helping businesses make intelligent decisions about the Generation-Y female consumer.

Laura Groppe's vision has grown from the original GirlsGames.com (having provided strategic solutions for clients such as Procter & Gamble, Mattel, Fox Family WorldWide, Activision, Petersen Publishing and Omincom) into a dynamic "Girls Intelligence Agency" website, where teenage girls are invited to participate in shaping everything from products to movies.

"According to Teenage Research Unlimited, a consumer marketing clearinghouse, girls 8 to 18 spend more than $67 billion annually on consumer items including entertainment, apparel and cosmetics. Teens bought 40% of the movie tickets sold last year and more than half were girls, according to the MPAA. And yet, it is the teenage boy that the movie industry most often courts". -- Los Angeles Times, May 25, 2002.

Fresh from the success of "Shrek", DreamWorks was ready to make another hit, but knew they needed a new angle if they were going to compete with "Spiderman" and "Star Wars". Knowing the competition would clinch Hollywood's prized young male audience, DreamWorks decided to go to the girls. They reached out to G.I.A.'s CEO, Laura Groppe, to do exactly that. DreamWorks executives told Laura, "go for it, make it a girl movie." In turn, Groppe reached out to G.I.A.'s thousands of teenage girls to ask them to help shape "Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron". As a result, the movie was released on Memorial Day in the U.S., grossing a whopping $23,213,736 in the first week, just shy of Spy Kids performance.

Groppe also assisted with "Planet 10", a NASA-supported program dedicated to promoting girls in science, and has a list of mentoring and philanthropy credits that go on and on.

Girlstart.org
www.girlstart.org

Rachel Muir is typical of many of the women executives heading up girl-based tech companies: her incredible business savvy is met with equal parts philanthropy and mentorship, encouraging girls to explore non-traditional careers in math, science and technology.

Founder and executive director of "GirlStart", a non-profit organization committed to mentoring and training girls in technology: www.girlstart.org

Rachel Muir founded Girlstart at age 26, with $500 and a credit card, in order to empower girls in math, science and technology. She's been described as “Best Role Model for Girls” by the Austin Chronicle and selected by former mayor of Austin Kirk Watson as one of Austin’s Top Ten Rising Tech Stars.

Surrounded by a staff of other powerful women in technology, many of them young, Ms. Muir has created a program with a great deal of innovation and vision.

GirlStart runs in Austin, Texas, encouraging and empowering girls in mathematics, science, technology, and engineering. Girlstart's programs include schools, online classes, and summer and Saturday camps for girls.

GirlTech.com
www.girltech.com

While the "Girls Intelligence Agency" is a marketing company that gathers ideas and opinions, "GirlTech" is a company that actually uses them (ideas and opinions, that is) to "make stuff".

Their products include girl-centric technologies, such as the "Password Journal", a sort of high tech diary that uses "voice recognition" to keep it's contents private to the owner, and a built-in night light to facilitate the obvious; and an electronic personal planner. GirlTech produces a number of other gadgets, many driven by the "voice recognition" technology, and aimed a protecting privacy. Some of the gadgets are games, such as the Personology unit, which is a small hand-held device designed to reveal it's owner's unique personality and match them with friends; and even a "tamagotchi-like throwback called "Password Puppies", allowing girls to adopt and train a virtual pet using a small handheld unit and voice commands.

Their latest and greatest girl-powered gadget? -- a "Password Control Center" allowing girls to control their room with the sound of their voice. Slated for release this fall, the centre will allow girls to control things such as lights, tv's and boomboxes by issuing voice commands. The twist? The control centre only responds to the owner's voice.

So just how do the people at GirlTech know what kinds of computer products girls want? They ask them! Just like the folks at G.I.A., the GirlTech team invites girls to participate in online forums, answer surveys, and chat online about the things that make them tick. Plugging into all this dialogue allows the company to have the inside track on their young, female consumers, ensuring a better chance of products being successful when launched. The secret ingredient remains "ownership". Companies recognize that allowing girls to shape the products in the first place means their more likely to buy them when they hit the shelves.

No surprise there!

GameGirlz.com
www.gamegirlz.com

So what are Canadian girls up to? Thanks to Vangie "Aurora" Beal, they've got their own special site called Game Girlz (www.gamegirlz.com) featuring game news, articles, reviews, a terrific women spotlights section featuring women in technology (read: role models for girls who may not otherwise have considered exploring technology), and even an editorial series contributed by parents of children who play computer & video games.

Vangie tackled the issue of gender in the creation and marketing of games in an editorial entitled "Females and Computer Games: Do Companies See a Market?", and shares insights gained from a couple young men in the traditionally male-dominated gaming industry.

Rather than just straight up consumerism, this site takes a conscientious approach to some of the tougher issues surrounding kids and technology, such as violence in computer games, and the typecasting of women in media and movies. The site is designed to inspire critical thinking and provoke a thoughtful dialogue around a number of topics, and encourages members to participate at all levels.

Of course little girls grow up to be big girls, and who better to guide them into the wild and wooly world of technology than some of the original "Digital Divas" on the web?

One of my favourite examples is Jennifer Corriero, a young Canadian woman who co-founded TakingITGlobal (www.takingitglobal.com) as a means of reaching and motivating youth.

I was thrilled to be one of the ThinkTank mentors at the Canadian Undergraduate Technology Conference (CUTC - www.cutc.ca) last December, surrounded by hundreds of Canada's brightest and most eager university students. Jennifer Corriero was a fellow mentor, and I found her to be bright, young, and truly inspiring.

Jennifer has worked on various consulting projects for companies including Microsoft, Xerox, CIBC, J.Walter Thompson, and Bootlegger.

Jennifer helped found TakingITGlobal (TIG), an international organization, led by youth, and empowered by technology. TIG brings together young people in more than 190 countries within international networks to collaborate on concrete projects addressing global problems and creating positive change.

A powerful new force engaging youth in international development, TakingITGlobal provides young people with:

• inspiration to make a difference,


• information to realize their potential,


• involvement where their voice counts,


• action opportunities where they translate their ideas into reality, and;


• connection to a worldwide community -- to take it global.

Jennifer was also a panelist at the "Technology with Curves" Conference, based on a book co-written by another of my favourite "digital divas", Denise Shorrt. The book, "Technology with Curves: Women Reshaping the Digital Landscape" (www.technologywithcurves.com).

Denise is a writer and consultant specializing in the intersection of women and technology. She has a Master's degree in Technology in Education from Harvard University and also studied at MIT. Denise founded Wired Woman Toronto (www.wiredwoman.com/toronto) in 1998 and is a regular speaker at various educational and industry events.

Weather with an Attitude Weather Pixie is the creation of another young woman in technology, Tamsin Bowles. Tamsin decided that the weather could use "a little dressing up", and set out to create a web-based program that would not only give you a snapshot of your local weather, but display it with your choice of appropriately donned "weather pixie". The WeatherPixie is a little graphic that shows a representation of the weather using data reported (mostly) by airports and areodromes around the world. As the weather in a particular location changes, the graphic will also change. Daylight and current moon phase are also displayed. Visit the website to customize the WeatherPixie and include her on your own computer desktop or personal website.

Wired Woman Toronto is part of the Wired Woman Society (founded by her co-author, Emma Smith), and one of the two more active women in technology groups in Canada.

Wired Woman 's alter ego in Canada is Digital Eve (digitalevetoronto.com).

Another terrific Canadian women in technology organization is "Women in Motion" www.women-in-motion.org. Worth checking out:

• Their youth program: CareerDiscovery.ca


• which is a "Youth in Motion Program" MentorCanada.ca

Of course, I'd be remiss in not mentioning two of my very favourite "digital divas", serving as great examples to their own daughters and other young women looking to the technology industry: Jackie Raymond and Donna Bilodeau from FastSigns in Windsor, Ontario.

Jackie and Donna joined me in the studio on May 6th to share their thoughts on being women in a male-dominated technology industry, and how they continue to make their families a priority despite the heavy demands of running their own successful business.

If you missed my interview with this dynamic duo, you can still catch it here.

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If you'd like to share your own thoughts or ask questions about girls and computers and/or our bigger girls, I invite you to join me in the new Digital Divas section of the Edible Computer" forums. You can post questions or comments at your convenience.

If you missed this morning's show, you can still click here to listen to it in RealAudio



Wanna Join Me for Dinner and a Movie?

gentle listener :)

You know, sometimes there are just too many cool things to fit into the timeslot available for the computer column, or even the scope of the topic on any given week! That's why the Edible Computer Forums are such a handy place for you and I to stay in touch inbetween ...

Here are a couple of tidbits I've left for you since we last chatted:

• Snag some free Jelly Belly jelly beans


• Wearable Computers


• Give stocks instead of socks this Christmas


• Wanna join me for dinner and a movie?

As always, you're welcome to jump in and add your own thoughts at the forums! Just click on one of the links above to catch the snippets of conversation, and be sure to leave a note to let me know what you think about the issue.

Just a reminder that if you'd like to share your own thoughts or ask questions about girls and computers and/or our bigger girls, I invite you to join me in the new Digital Divas section of the Edible Computer" forums.

In addition to these topics, you'll find a few new places to interact at the Edible Computer Forums. I've added a section called Scuttlebutt to keep you up-to-date on computer industry rumours and rumblings. There's also a new section called Emerging and Converging Technologies where you can keep tabs on the latest gizmos and gadgets hitting the deck. And joining the Favourite Family Resources section is a new area called Favourite Canadian Websites. While it sometimes seems the web's most popular geography is U.S., there are indeed a virtual treasure trove of sites hailing from the Great White North. Drop in and leave a trail to your own favourite Canadian digital haunt, eh?

As always I invite you to sound off in Listener's Picks to suggest new topics you'd like to see covered in the Computer Column, and the Am I Looking for You? forum to see some of the features I'm working on, and the type of people I'm looking to cover. Maybe you're one of them ...

Have a terrific Monday morning, and let's keep talking!