Get your geek on, Girl! How busy businesswomen can best maximize their time.

The author, Stefanie Coxe, with Devan Atanian at the Cape #geekgirltechcon

Recently, I spent a day surrounded by two types of women: those who knew code (and other techno-speak) and those who didn’t but kinda-sorta wanted to know a little bit more (but not a lot). I fell into the latter category.

As a small business owner, I am limited on what I choose to outsource to graphic artists, web designers, marketing specialists, programmers, etc. I’d love to have one of each in my back pocket, but this is the first year of business and my budget is on a shoe-string. But trying to figure out how to do each of these things on my own is a major time suck.

How many of us have spent 2 hours trying to get the printer to work, let alone design a website?

Leslie Fishlock of Geek Girl Camp to the rescue. Her mission is to make technology available and understandable to women of all skill levels and backgrounds, all while encouraging them to embrace their inner geek, replete with cardboard cutouts of Yoda and a message from Leslie to “Live long and prosper”. The one day bootcamp has a variety of tracks including Quickbooks, Email Marketing, and Business Efficiency.

Between snapping selfies with my friends, who are just as capable and smart, albeit less than tech savvy, I popped into a class on Google Analytics, which I had to Google beforehand. Having my computer handy, I followed along and set up the Analytics code on my website right then and there!

What I loved about the bootcamp is the idea that teaching a girl to fish is a lot better than giving her one. Just like in my business, Geek Girl trains the “heroes of tomorrow” to thrive by learning just enough – but not so much it becomes overwhelming. At Nexus Werx LLC, I train CEOs and Non-Profit leaders who don’t have the resources to farm out their lobbying to a pricey firm but don’t want to get stuck in the advocacy version of figuring out code. I teach them just enough to know how to think about accomplishing their goals in the public realm without inundating them with the minutia of the Rules of the Senate.

And the classes I took were actionable. I participated in two workshops offered by Bridget Ayers, the “Agent 99” of Get Smart Web Consulting. She urged blogging (voila) as a tool to bring visitors to your website, thus upping your search engine optimization. If you only understood part of that, don’t worry. Geek Girl is going strong and chances are a #geekgirltechcon is coming to a city near you.

For more information, visit:

http://geekgirlcamp.com/

https://nexuswerx.com/