Today we celebrate Ada Lovelace Day 2010 to honor Women in Technology! In the past year we have gone through quite the journey revamping the website, our look & feel, and our iPhone app. It was one of the biggest roller coaster rides we have ever been on and we couldn’t have done it without our two women furiously working day and night to make GeoGraffiti a better service.

Yannell at LACMA

Yannell, the brains behind all the creative design at GeoGraffiti, has been an immense asset to us. She helped out last year so much and did such a great job that we decided to fly her to Los Angeles to lead the entire design effort for the Voice Mark iPhone app this past summer.  She quickly started the design effort to make the Voice Mark app “sexier” as soon as she arrived to work her first day.  Her creative mind led to a really slick looking iPhone app that received positive feedback from several users.  Check out the comments section at the bottom of the Voice Mark App page.  While most of her effort went to the design of the iPhone app, she did spend plenty of time fixing up our identity package (logos, business cards, etc).  That’s just the way she works… if she sees something ugly, she wants to fix it and makes it, in my opinion, pretty damn sexy!  While she has returned to Texas to finish her undergraduate studies in 2010, she continues to consult on all the design work that is required for new features on the GeoGraffiti Voice Mark Map and the Voice Mark iPhone App.  You’d be amazed at what kind of crazy stuff a creative designer and an engineer can come up with together!  One of the best things we love about Yannell is how ruthless she is when it comes to design.  If we cut corners, she basically slaps us on the wrist with a ruler.  I can think of so many times when she stopped work and told us to sit down and told us why what we were doing is wrong and why it will produce and ugly looking graphic, logo, etc.  Thanks to her we now know that a font is actually a typeface and that we should NOT distort types!  We learned just as much from her about design as she did from us about building web apps and iPhone apps.  She continues to excel while still working on GeoGraffiti … she recently won 1st place at an art show at the University of Texas El Paso for her photography exhibits and had some of her work featured in an ad!  Yannell, we thank you for all your hard work and wish you luck as you finish your undergraduate studies in May!

Gisselli modeling

Gisselli, the goddess of data at GeoGraffiti has been helping us out for a few years.  Initially her responsibilities were mainly part-time as a PA, but have since grown to be the gatekeeper of our data.  With the release of the Voice Mark iPhone app, the amount of data we have, has grown to the point where we can’t handle it AND our other responsibilities… so we gave Gisselli the job.  We spent a few days with her this past summer dumping our knowledge of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and GeoSEO (Geographic Search Engine Optimization) to let her take control the data.  She scans all our Voice Marks making sure that they are legit and removes anything that might violate our terms of use.  This is the easy part.  One of our main objectives at GeoGraffiti is to let anyone gain a web presence by simply talking into their phone.  We take SEO very seriously.  It’s something we see as very valuable to our users and business users.  What Gisselli does is makes sure all the data for each Voice Mark is accurate.  She checks to make sure the transcriptions are as accurate as possible, and then make sure all geographic data is precise (think latitudes, longitudes, postal codes, phone numbers, area codes, etc).  Once that is all done, she goes through a set of heuristic processes where she applies the SEO knowledge she has gained in order to optimize EVERY Voice Mark so that our users have the benefits of an optimized Voice Mark.  This becomes incredibly powerful for all business users using Voice Marks to advertise their promotions and specials and Voice Marks that deal with information about venues.  Did you know that on her spare time, she blogs about fashion?  Yep… she’s pretty creative when it comes to fashion and she will soon release her very own fashion blog!  She taught us that wearing 2 different types of prints, like zebra and snake, is a fashion faux pas!  So not only has she made our data pretty, but made US pretty!   Gisselli, we thank you for all your hard work keeping all our data legit and valuable and wish you luck as you finish up your sophomore year at Cal State Northridge!

Again, thank you both for all your work!  We ask our readers that you make sure to share this blog post with your friends to make sure the GeoGraffiti Women are recognized for all their hard work in technology!

#ald10, Ada Lovelace, AdaLovelaceDay2010, Voice Mark, Women in Technology

Today, we are celebrating Ada Lovelace Day to honor the GeoGraffiti Women in Technology.  What is Ada Lovelace Day?  Taken directly from http://www.pledgebank.com/AdaLovelaceDay, “Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology. Women’s contributions often go unacknowledged, their innovations seldom mentioned, their faces rarely recognised. We want you to tell the world about these unsung heroines. Whatever she does, whether she is a sysadmin or a tech entrepreneur, a programmer or a designer, developing software or hardware, a tech journalist or a tech consultant, we want to celebrate her achievements.”

Here at GeoGraffiti, we want to thank and honor the 3 women who helped bring the latest GeoGraffiti Voice Map Mashup to life.  Here they are in alphabetical order :) …

Eva Cheung

Eva Cheung, my beautiful girlfriend, has helped with GeoGraffiti from the start.  What is her role?  One of the most important roles in any user-facing technology is that of user acceptance testing.  No I don’t mean she develops test plans and test functionality according to some test matrix.  I mean REAL honest no-hold-barred user acceptance.  Basically after I develop some feature, I want honest feedback so she’s happy to offer constructive criticism.  I’m not looking for “This is a good value-added feature…blah blah blah“  I’m looking for what a user thinks and she has said stuff about some of the GeoGraffiti features like, “That’s ugly…“, “Mmmm… yeah no… I can’t use that…“, “It sucks…“, and the ever popular, “It’s just not pretty!“  While this may sound funny, it’s feedback that we take very very seriously!  After all, GeoGraffiti is for the the community so to have someone give you this sort of feedback is priceless.  This is the stuff you want and basically the root of what caused us to completely redesign the GeoGraffiti Voice Map Mashup from scratch.  I’m not the only person who thinks this way.  In fact, Guy Kawasaki, mentions a woman’s common sense as a valuable tool in producing a technology, business plan, etc.  In one of his books he mentions that if you have an idea, run it by 3 women and if they tell you “It sucks”, “It doesn’t make sense”, “I wouldn’t use it”, etc. then you’d better get back to the drawing board.  We take this to heart and really value this sort of opinion and feedback.  For your feedback and contributions, Eva, GeoGraffiti thanks you and honors you on this Ada Lovelace Day!

Gisselli Rodriguez

Gisselli Rodriguez, my youngest sister, has helped with GeoGraffiti since this past August when she moved to LA to attend Cal State Northridge.  What is her role?  Gisselli oversees all the GeoGraffiti Voice Marks and makes sure that all the data is accurate, corrects and updates our geographic data in order for GeoGraffiti to provide you, our users, the most accurate data possible, and removes any Voice Marks that aren’t exactly legal or violate any terms of service (there aren’t that many of those, but you’d be surprised with the kind of stuff we get sometimes).  Aside from her main role, she also requests feedback from her friends and ocassionally leaves a Voice Mark.  While this is just personal, I would like to thank her for taking some work off my hands when I was busy developing the Voice Map some months ago… no joke… I had a SERIOUS case of identity theft and she was able to take care of it for me within a month!  This is huge!  I had been battling this for over a year and within a month she had my record cleaned.  For your feedback and contributions, Gisselli, GeoGraffiti thanks you and honors you on this Ada Lovelace Day!

Yannell Rodriguez

Yannell Rodriguez, my other sister, has helped with GeoGraffiti since Eva told me “It’s ugly…“  What is her role?  My creativity only goes so far when it comes to graphic design so I decided I should consult someone who has a passion for this kind of stuff.  Who better than your own sister?!  It’s been a long and grueling process to get the GeoGraffiti Voice Map Mashup to the state it’s in today (yes yes I know there are still bugs… don’t worry we’re working on them :) ).  Her talent is amazing.  I’ve sat down with her countless hours just spitting out thoughts in my head about what I want and what I want to experiment with and she’s able to take this and turn it into art.  She’s also been instrumental in keeping us from making graphic design mistakes.  Much like Eva, she too will gladly tell me, “You know… this stuff just looks like @!#$” or “What are you thinking?!  That’s not the way you should do that!“  Wow… I guess after picking on her as a kid, it’s her chance to get back at me!  Ok ok… just kidding.  Again, this feedback is priceless.  We love when people are candid and don’t try to rephrase their sentences into something more acceptable.  It just makes everyone’s life easier and gets right to the point.  It’s exactly what you need when you’re working at a startup company pace!  She’s currently helping design the next version of the iPhone and G1 apps so watch out for those in the next few months!  For your feedback and contributions, Yannell, GeoGraffiti thanks you and honors you on this Ada Lovelace Day!

Don’t forget to forward this around to make sure our GeoGraffiti women are recognized today!

2009, Ada Lovelace, AdaLovelaceDay09, Honors, Thank You, Voice Map, Voice Map Mashup, Women, Women in Technology