San Francisco Women of the Web: A History

San Francisco Women of the Web chose 25 women in 1998, in 1999, in 2000 and in 2001, recognizing them with their Women of the Web award. In 2001, I was one of those women. The Top25 Women on the Web awards were unique at the time, recognizing the achievements of women who San Francisco WOW felt had most inspired people worldwide with their efforts to advance technology, contribute to the community, and set an example as successful business women in the Internet and new media industries. The awards recognize the achievements of women who have made a significant contribution to the advancement of technology and to the advancement of women in technology-related fields. The 2001 awards also honored those who have helped increase the number of women on the Internet/online to more than half the Internet population, and emphasized the community-based network of women who have helped each other in technology-related fields.

To help highlight some of the many women who played important roles in the 1990s Internet - which I consider the "early days" - as well as some truly pioneering tech projects that laid the groundwork for the success of so many initiatives today, I have put the list of Top25 Women on the Web for these four years women below, with their roles/positions/accomplishments at the time, as stated on the original web site. You can confirm these lists using the original top25.org URL on archive.org. Note that the URL of San Francisco WOW was sfwow.org - the organization dissolved in 2012 and the URL is now for a completely different entity. Each name linked to a brief profile about the person - sorry, I don't have time to capture and post them as well. Names are spelled exactly as they appear on the original lists.

2001

Monika Henzinger, Ph.D., Director of Research, Google Inc.
Karan Eriksson, Partner, CEO InterestAlert, CP Software Group
Tracy Wilen, Ph.D., Operations Management, Cisco Systems Inc
Katharine Mieszkowski, Senior Writer, Salon.com
Jayne Cravens, Virtual Volunteering
Sharron Rush, Executive Director, Knowbility, Inc.
Joan Korenman, Ph.D., Director, Center for Women and Information Technology, University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC)
Mari Matsunaga, NTT DoCoMo
Ardith Ibanez Rigby, Creative Director, akimbo design
Bonnie Bracey, bracey-pearl.org
Barbara Simons, Ph.D., Educator, Assn. of Computing Machinery (ACM)
Tiffany Shlain, Founder and Director, The Webby Awards
Ruann Ernst, Ph.D., Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Digital Island
Ann Navarro, President, WebGeek, Inc.
Louise Kirkbride, CEO, Broad Daylight
Carol Muller, Ph.D., Executive Director/Founder, MentorNet
Netochka Nezvanova, Art Director
Patricia Beckmann, Founder, Bunsella Films
Janette Bradley, Ph.D, Director and Executive Producer, AvidProNet
Mala Chandra, VP of Platform Engineering, Zaplet
Tracey Pettengill, CEO, 4charity
Roberta Furger, Oakland Tech advisor, Julia Morgan School for Girls, and author, educator, advocate
Evelyn Pine, Activist in electronic democracy
Mie-Yun Lee, Founder and VP, Content, BuyerZone.com
Doreen Galli, Ph.D., Global Practice Executive, International Business Machines (IBM)

2000 "Leaders of the Millennium"

Carol Bartz, CEO, Autodesk
Radha Basu, CEO, Support.com
Anita Brown, Founder of Blackgeeks.com
KC Claffy, Research scientist and programmer at Caida.org, the Cooperative Association of Internet Data Analysis
Joy Covey, Chief Strategy Officer, Amazon.com
Donna Dubinsky, Co-Founder and CEO of Handspring
Judith Estrin, SVP & CTO, Cisco Systems
Carly Fiorina, CEO and President, Hewlett Packard
Ellen Hancock, President & CEO of Exodus Communications
Dawn Lepore, CIO and Vice Chairman, Charles Schwab
Marci Lockwood, Executive Director, Institute for Global Communications (IGC)
Marney Morris, Founder, Animatrix
Catherine Muther, Founder, Three Guineas Fund and Women's Technology Cluster
Jayne Newell-Lanza, go2omedia.com, Shesgotittogether.com, also founder of Profit magazine where she is Publisher and Editor
Olivia Ongpin, Designer, co-founder of fabric8.com
Deb Richardson, Founder, LinuxChix, Developer/Manager of Open Source WritersGroup
Linda Sanford, General Manager Global Industries at IBM
Megan Smith, CEO, PlanetOut
Ellen Ullman, Author, programmer
Heidi Van Arnem, Founder, Heidi Van Arnem Foundation (HVAF) and CEO, ICANonline.net
Julie Wainwright, CEO, Pets.com
Gail Williams, Executive Director, The Well
Ann Winblad, Co-founding partner, Hummer Winblad Venture Partners

1999

Dr. Anita Borg , President and Founding Director, Institute for Women and Technology
Barbara Boxer, United States Senator
Christine Comaford, Managing Director and a General Partner of Artemis Ventures, an incubator for software startups
Nikki Douglas, Editor / Publisher / Creator of RiotGrrl & GrrlGamer
Rebecca Eisenberg, Internet and technology business and culture writer
Melinda French-Gates & Patty Stonesifer, Gates Library Foundation
Lisa Friendly, Java Software, Sun Microsystems, Inc., Senior Manager, Technical Publications and Information Design and Editor, Sun's Addison-Wesley Java Series
Dr. Jose-Marie Griffiths, University of Michigan Chief Information Officer and Executive Director, Information Technology Division
Auriea Harvey, Creator and designer, www.Entropy8.com
Susan Lammers, CEO, Headbone Interactive
Lavonne Luquis, President and co-founder of LatinoLink
Mary Meeker, Managing Director -- Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, Internet/New Media & PC Software Equity Research Analyst
Carol Moore, Vice President, Corporate Internet Programs for IBM
Marie-Helene Mottin-Sylla, Activist encouraging women, particularly in Francophone Africa, to use information and communication technologies to share and disseminate information
Evi Nemeth, Professor at University of Colorado, Leader in Unix System Administration
Jan Peters, CEO of Media One
Aileen Lopez Pugh, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at TeleBank
Dr. Deborah Triant Rieman, CEO of Check Point Software
Gina Smith, ABC technology correspondent
Kara Swisher, Author of aol.com, and Wall Street Journal reporter
Lisa Voldeng, Entertainment and Technology Analyst, CEO and Founder of Uberbabe media
Lynda Weinman, Author, web design educator
Meg Whitman, CEO, eBay
Nancy Yeager, Engineer, Author, Researcher at National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA)
Roya Zamanzadeh, CEO of Pear Transmedia and Editor of ZAN, a directory / anthology on Iranian women

1998

Sarah Allen, Engineer, Macromedia Software
Donna Auguste, CEO of Freshwater Software
Janelle Brown, Culture writer for Wired News and co-founder of Maxi Magazine
Red Burns, Founder and chair, NYU Interactive Technology Program
Denise Caruso, Digital commerce columnist and executive producer for Spotlight
Denise Castellucci, Creator, Voices of Adoption Website
Linda McCutcheon Conneally, President of Pathfinder
Esther Dyson, Author of Release 2.0, chair of EFF, the Electronic Frontier Foundation
Mary Furlong, Founder and CEO of Third Age Media and founder of SeniorNet
Laura Gropp, Founder and CEO of Girl Games Inc.
Donna L. Hoffman, Internet researcher, writer and commentator and Vanderbilt University Professor
Molly E. Holzschlag, Author, instructor and new media designer
Stacy Horn, Creator, Echo NYC and author of "Cyberville"
Brenda Laurel, Co-founder and vice president of design, Purple Moon
Laura Lemay, Author of HTML design and publishing books
Pattie Maes, Researcher, Intelligent Software Agents
Teresa Martin, Co- founder, president and CEO, Project Cool
Marleen McDaniel, CEO of Women's Wire
Jane Metcalfe, President of Wired Ventures Limited and co-founder of Wired magazine
Kim Polese, President and CEO of Marimba, Inc.
Pamela Samuelson, EFF Fellow and legal commentator on Internet privacy
Aliza Sherman, Founder of Webgrrls International and Cybergrrl Internet Media
Janese Swanson, Founder and CEO of Girl Tech
Cynthia Waddell, Americans with Disabilities Act Coordinator, City of San Jose and author of Website Accessibility Design Standards
Robin Wolaner, Executive vice president of CNET, Inc.

Also see:

United Nations Technology Service (UNITeS), a global volunteer initiative, created by Kofi Annan in 2000, that both supported volunteers applying information and communications technologies for development (ICT4D) and promoted volunteerism as a fundamental element of successful ICT4D initiatives. It was administered by the UN Volunteers program, and during the tenure of UNITeS, the UNV program helped place and/or support more than 300 volunteers applying ICT4D in more than 50 developing countries, including 28 Least Developed Countries (LDC), making it one of the largest volunteering in ICT4D initiatives. The activities of UN Volunteers, as well as those by tech volunteers working through NetCorps, CompuMentor, the Association for Progressive Communications, Australian Volunteers International, NetCorps, Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) and Volunteers in Technical Assistance (VITA), were tracked and promoted by UNITeS as part of its overall mission. Part of the UNITeS mandate was to try to track all of the various tech volunteering initiatives and encourage them to share their best practices and challenges with each other. UNITeS was discontinued as an active program in 2005.
What Was NetAid?
First there was Band Aid, then Live Aid, and Farm Aid, and then came NetAid, an initiative that was also launched with celebrity-laden concerts and a great deal of media coverage. The NetAid initiative was meant to harness the Internet to raise money and awareness for the Jubilee 2000 campaign, to raise awareness for the challenges in developing countries, and to allow people to volunteer online, donating their skills to help people in the developing world. NetAid's goal was to make global philanthropy more efficient. This page reviews who was involved, how the initiative evolved, and its legacy regarding virtual volunteering.
Impact Online: A History
Impact Online was a nonprofit organization founded in the mid 1990s. It was one of the first web sites, and maybe the first web site, where nonprofits could post their volunteering opportunities and people that wanted to help could sign up to help. It later became VolunteerMatch. Unfortunately, someone requested that old versions of the Impact Online web site be removed from the Internet Wayback Machine, and so all archives of the original web site are gone. Luckily, I downloaded some of text and graphics from that original, pioneering web site. I'm sharing them here because the original Impact Online initiative deserves to be remembered and honored.
Lessons from onlinevolunteering.org
Some key learnings from directing the UN's Online Volunteering service from February 2001 to February 2005, including support materials for those using the service to host online volunteers.
Al Gore Campaign Pioneered Virtual Volunteering
Back in 2000, when Al Gore ran for president, his campaign championed virtual volunteering by recruiting online volunteers to help online with his election efforts. I've tried to present some of what his campaign did - this pioneering effort deserves to be remembered, as do some of the lessons from such.
A history of the Smart Valley initiative
In 1994, perhaps earlier, an initiative called Smart Valley was launched in California. Smart Valley was a 501(c)(6) nonprofit organization focused on creating an "information infrastructure" in Silicon Valley, California - Palo Alto, Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Cupertino, San José, Santa Clara and the surrounding area, creating projects to enhance the quality of life in Silicon Valley. Smart Valley's projected included SmartSchools NetDay and PC Day, Smart Voter, to help people learn about upcoming elections, Connect 96: The Global Summit on Building Electronic Communities, the Public Access Network (PAN), a Telecommuting Initiative, and the Smart Valley Webmasters Group. Smart Valley was also affiliated with the nonprofit organization Plugged In, one of the first digital divide efforts, working to bring "the tremendous technological resources available in the Silicon Valley to youth in low-income communities" in East Palo Alto and SV-PAL, the Silicon Valley Public Access Link.
Early History of Nonprofits & the Internet
The Internet has always been about people and organizations networking with each other, sharing ideas and comments, and collaborating online. It has always been interactive and dynamic. And there were many nonprofit organizations who "got" it early -- earlier than many for-profit companies. So I've attempted to set the record straight: I've prepared a web page that talks about the early history of nonprofits and the Internet. It focuses on 1995 and previous years. It talks a little about what nonprofits were using the cyberspace for as well at that time and lists the names of key people and organizations who helped get nonprofit organizations using the Internet in substantial numbers in 1995 and before. Edits and additions are welcomed.