Female Symbol by Piotr. Used under Public Domain

Women That Kick Ass In New Media

As you may or may not have noticed, today is International Women’s Day, a chance to celebrate the female portion of our world’s population, inside or out that have helped to make a difference and will continue to do so.

As an individual who believes in encouraging the world to become more gender equal or neutral in every way possible, as a blogger on topics in often male dominated industries here is a showcase of a number of people I’ve worked with or follow (and would love to maybe meet one day if the opportunity ever came!) that truly make a difference to the world and  just happen to be women.

And before anyone goes nuts, I had lots of people to choose from so in the nature of it being a blog focused on Tech and new media, the chosen ones had to represent Web, Audio, Visual or Educational industries.

What’s the Buzz?

If you have a hankering for the hands on reviews and the latest in news when it comes to gadgets, data, apps and everything in between the tireless work of these four journalists should help keep you satisfied.

Jen Copestake, Lara Lewington and LJ Rich are three of the regular female presenters of ‘Click’ on BBC News/World. Bringing us reviews, information and expertise from around the world, they strike a fine balance of explaining the latest innovations in plain enough English for most to understand without making the news feel ‘too light’ for those that may already be in the know. Jen, whom has been presenting on the show for the last 3 ½ years and working with the BBC alone for the last 10 years, also takes the role as a senior producer for the show as well as shoots and edits pieces too.

Kate Russell, who has been the longest serving presenter and contributor to the show as well as on ITV’s Daybreak amongst other media has been delivering knowledge and expertise on tech since the mid nineties with her own news website packed with great articles and how-to guides as well as her own book ‘Working the Cloud‘ helping small business get starting in working online.

With a full production skillset between them, these are the people you need in your life if you need to be in the know when it comes to the growing world of electronics around us.

How About Something To Look At?

If you’re looking for more artsy on-screen stuff, you’re certainly not short of people whom are skilled digital media!

Here are a few whom I’ve had the pleasure of working with over the years and the ridiculous talents they possess:

Kelly Cassidy is the latest member to join our Blended Learning Team at Lancashire Teaching Hospitals as a Medical Graphic Artist. Yes, you head that right. It’s a specialist area of artistry focusing on anatomical drawings and procedures concerned with medicine for illustration and education. All created digitally, but drawn and edited by hand. She’s planning to expand this work into 3D too (which if you’ve ever built in 3D, you know can take some time). The output of this is truly astonishing to see, but you don’t have to just be at our Trust to view her work. Her website showcases a selection of her medical and non-medical pieces in addition to her credentials and details should you wish to request freelance work.

If image capture is more your thing, then Cat Lamoon and Gemma Sweeney are two fantastic photographers I could recommend.

Gemma I met at university who has always had a skill for catching people in the moment and creating imagery to suit any occasion. One testimonial example is regularly displayed on my Soundcloud tracks as well as older websites and profile pictures for people that have followed me on social media for some time, when I played with Entity for our third and final gig for our Degrees.

Cat is a freelance videographer and medical photographer/videographer for Lancashire Teaching Hospitals. Not afraid to capture from the grim to the glorious, Cat knows how to make you feel comfortable weather you’re promoting your achievements or need an image of a body part capturing for study and diagnostics whilst producing the most professional images to help you get back on your way to health and/or happy (depending on what you went in for!). Check out her twitter feed  to see some of the examples of work she gets to do each day.

How About Some Music To Go With That?

When it comes to female artists…well I could probably write more articles filled with them than I ever have in my life on the web. But one notable person that has made a storm since we studied at University together is Roz Firth, a born music prodigy. Often making it look so easy and effortless, Roz has covered and reinterpreted many favourites as well as writing her own material, performed either solo or in collaboration with friends and coursemates. Whilst being totally biased of course, when it comes to music if you said “this girl can”, Roz probably already did and isn’t afraid to blow your mind with it. You can check out and buy some of her work through her website here, or on her YouTube channel, or her Soundcloud page.

Leaders of Industry

Moving into the industry side, it’s clear to see that whilst women are still under-represented, there is still opportunity to thrive in the growing sectors.

Limor Fried is living proof of this as “Lady Ada” of Adafruit Industries, which she founded in 2005 and has now grown into a large store and learning resource for hackers and coders alike. Making it onto WIRED’s magazine cover in 2011 as the first female engineer to do so, Limor has opened up a huge world to the maker generation at an affordable and competitive price as well as taught thousands of people indirectly the world over on the beginnings of hacking equipment and even in the meta sense, how to get by in the world of manufacturing!

Who Needs Joe Blog(ges)?

It’s not all purely multimedia I’m focusing on today. There’s also the long lost appreciators of the written word, albeit ironically journalling it digitally for the modern age. Blogs may not be the busiest medium, but they still have a pretty sizable following with a number of the authors I follow happening to be women.

One such person, whom was the very breaking straw that encouraged me to get back into the blogging game (properly) and start this site out is Jenny in Neverland a book and lifestyle blogger that lives here. Topping out so far at over 9,000 followers by email alone (and god knows how many more by WordPress and RSS followings), this lovely lady needs a few more to reach the golden number. So if you like to be inspired by book recommendations and honest reviews on some pretty useful life items, I’m confident that you won’t be disappointed from the scribblings of Miss Marston.

The Future

So, who is lady number 10? Well, if you happen to like the idea of the future of technology, then that is you! Whilst I sadly couldn’t find out the lead of this project, Made with Code is a Google initiative that wishes to create diversity in the male dominated programming world, particularly encouraging girls at a young age to try out and get into coding. In an age when technology is pretty hard to ignore and the scare of robots taking away jobs, may forget that humans still need to program these machines – and it can’t all be men! So if you have a passion for the future and fancy learning a language not spoken, but still understood, give this site a look. You’ll also find many many more examples of successful ladies who are already striking out in the industry and helping to develop our more modern world.

Mike

Share

Have your say

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.