Ada's Sisters Podcast

Black Friday was surprisingly (and happily) less black than usual and that might have been in part due to #CivilizedSaturday — we talk about the bookstore initiative. We also have great things to say about Sapient Nitro’s new pilot program for people ‘returning’ to work after an absence. Is anyone NOT singing Adele’s new single Hello? More importantly, has anyone NOT remixed the catchy depressing tune? We think not. Check out this one for the X-Files revival. Holly Brockwell has been trolled all over the internet for daring to declare that she doesn’t want to have children and Wayne MacPhail drops in with another awesome tooltip — this one for the iPad Pro.

She may be known only for one Jagged Little Pill of an album but Alanis is back social media style. Then we’ll tell you why dicks shouldn’t mess around with Debra Messing. The #BrusselsLockdown and the adorable cats that went viral on Twitter as an attempt to bury tweets about police anti-terror operations was an awesome hashtag this week. And we talk about Facebook’s new dedicated “fundraiser” pages for nonprofits. Finally, Eden speaks to Angie Kramer of JobBliss about her experience as a women founder.      

We recorded the podcast on Diwali which should mean that we could go to a local Starbucks and get our beautiful cups celebrating the Hindu Festival of Lights right? NO? Well that holiday is ruined I guess. #SorryNotSorry. Instagram star Essena O'Neill has flipped the photo-sharing social medium on its head but we talk about whether this was a clever hoax or a real change of heart on her part. The #Zola story is the latest example of what we think is a new genre of story-telling and we talk about why. And if you haven't seen the beautiful selection of stock photos now featuring women of color working in the Tech industries then you have been focusing on the wrong things - let us tell you all about it.  

This was a special episode we recorded using BLAB featuring a panel discussion with Connie Crosby (@conniecrosby) and Kim Vallee (@kimvalee)

Just when you think things really can’t get worse in the whole Gamergate story (see episode 1 for a longer chat with Natalie Zina Walschotts about this) SXSW enters the fray and essentially lays down arms without a shot fired. Their two scheduled panels —  “Level Up: Overcoming Harassment in Games,” and one that featured Brianna Wu — were down-voted by the types of people who believe gaming is under siege by an “army of sociopathic feminist programmers and campaigners” who are “lying, bullying and manipulating their way around the Internet for profit and attention.” That’s real by the way — written by Gamergate advocate Milo Yiannopoulos. SXSW has tried to walk back this terribly cowardly response by announcing a full-day summit on the issue — we’ll see if any of the people on the original panels who were un-invited will deign to attend. If that wasn’t enough for you to take a listen to the podcast, then tune in for our look a

This week seems to be all about double-standards and bad form - from Prime Minister designate Justin Trudeau to Jennifer Lawrence and Hollywood.  While it is rare to see a male politician held to the same aesthetic (and ridiculous standards) as his female counterparts (which come to think of it, are rare birds themselves) Justin Trudeau, the newly elected Prime Minister of Canada has suffered a week of catcalls via the internet. The always vocal Jennifer Lawrence outed Hollywood as just-as-bad an employer of women as the rest of the world and Bradley Cooper declared that transparency was the way he was going to confront that inequality. Our tooltip this week is last week's sensational tool - Blab. And we take a look at the Perv_Magnet Instagram account run by violinist Mia Matsumiya, who has screen capped 10 years worth of sicko troll messages and wants everyone to know who they are.

Recorded using Blab, this episode is our panel discussion with Renée Warren and Julie Cole talking about  Mompreneur vs Entrepreneur.

#RehtaehParsons is trending again in Canada and we'll tell you why and look at the [almost] laughable disparity between the crime of changing a few words on a website and the crime of raping a seventeen-year-old girl and posting your assault online. We have some tips on how NOT to interview a woman in tech and then finally take a look at the Peerby app - designed to help you share things with your neighbours.

When two women from Calgary come up with a new app that everyone is talking about we at Ada's Sisters feel compelled to talk about it - it's right in our wheelhouse after all. Problem is that the app in question is Peeple, and we don't think we can get behind that concept at all. Speaking of the negative ramifications of being able to rate your ex like a restaurant, we throw some light on Grandma Sandy, an amazing lady in the UK who is a one-woman anti-bullying squad.A project we can get behind is Dana Wendt's Jouzge movement to install girl power at every opportunity - we interviewed her about her kickstarter campaign.Angela finally has a wearable tech she can't resist - and it's Bellabeat's LEAF but Wayne MacPhail pops in with his Apple Watch and the 'just hit record' app as his tooltip for the week.

As predicted by Eden Spodek, this is going to be the year for #CanPoli to be overshadowed by some interesting hashtags. First we had #peegate, and now we have #OldStockCanadian (from Prime Minister Harper) and #GlibandMale from Green Party leader Elizabeth May.  Dooce had the holy grail of mommy-blogging - more sponsors than she could accommodate - so why is she signing off? We'll get into it.  Our tooltip for this week is all about the 100 Days of UI project that Paul Nechita started and we talk about two articles in The Atlantic - one by the great woman who put her career first and the other written by the great man behind her all the way.

It's awesome when you have a bad news story that is rescued by social media. 14-year old Ahmed Mohamed started his Wednesday in just the worst situation - his self-made clock had been identified as a potential bomb threat and he stood in handcuffs in the principals office. Forunatly for him, the rest of his day, and dare we say, the rest of his life, will be all uphill from there. We have kids, we saw the reaction on social media and we'll tell you all about it. Then we talk to Lexie Ernst, one of the co-founders of the Companion App, a free app that will connect you to a friend you pick in your contacts on your phone and virtually 'walk' you home. We wrap up with a fun chat about Sociality Barbie and her fantastic Instagram account and take a look at Mayim Bialik's Grok Nation - a new social network she has created.

The U.S. presidential election is more than 12 months away and already we get daily soundbites of insanity from a full roster of potential candidates. Perhaps this is why when #CanPoli finally got overtaken by #Peegate for a day I was so very excited. We deserve a tinkle of funny in our federal election (about which there is very little to laugh about). Let us tell you all about it. And just when you thought that you had figured out what to post on each social medium, we have some individuals who are getting Tinder and LinkedIn confused. That’s right. One is for hooking up. One is for networking and jobs. They are not interchangeable. Lots to listen to in this week’s podcast including an interview with Communitech’s Alayne Hynes.

More than a year after John Cain created the #FHRITP hashtag and movement (if you can call it that) we talk about the ramifications for women in the media and most recently for the CBC's Megan Batchelor. Eden fills us in on her trip to NYC and the topless protest in Times Square and we talk about the barely-news-Instagram landscape. Wayne MacPhail drops in with our Bookmark this week, on an application called Cardflow.

We start off with reading some mail from the Communitech folks about their Bootcamp that we talked about in Episode 1.Then we dive right into revenge porn and all that entails. Isis Anchalee's rallying hashtag #ILookLikeanEngineer gets our thumbs up approval as does a feature interview with veteran podcaster and author Donna Papacosta. We wrap the episode with some advice about turning off the auto-play feature in Facebook in light of the Virginia newsroom shooting.

This week we respond to some comments made in regards to the first episode around Gamergate, then get into the Women's Entrepeneur Bootcamp and its value for those lucky start-ups who participate. We dig into #selfie culture and contrast that with the trend of #brelfies as a protest and finally look at some neat wearable tech tailored towards young female coders.

The first episode of the Ada's Sisters podcast introduces co-hosts Angela Misri and Eden Spodek as they discuss the digital culture they are surrounded by and the technology they both love. Starting with the short-lived Instagram ban on #curvee and then delving into vocal fry, they have lots to say about both along with Natalie Zina Walschot's update on Gamergate one year later. The background music is 'Funky Element' from BenSound.com and is used with attribution.