Austin’s female business community gathered together yesterday for the inaugural Sharp Skirt’s Offline Meeting at Bess Bistro. Originally founded by Carla Thompson and Stacey Higginbotham as ATX Tech Women, Sharp Skirts Offline will serve to enrich the Sharp Skirts community by connecting women in business, promoting collaboration, and increasing professional success. The evolution of Thompson and Higginbotham’s venture will also appeal to a much broader audience of women, as the focus has expanded to female business leaders, regardless of the industry.

ATX Tech Women are having their second meet-up tonight. Yes, it took a bit of a hiatus, but recovering from SXSW isn’t a small task.

The group will be meeting at Mangia’s Pizza on Guadalupe so everyone can grab a drink and food before entering into deep, tech-inspired talk. Make sure to RSVP quickly so we can save you a spot!

Last week an uncommon thing happened, 20 women working in technology got together to talk shop. Yes everyone, women do exist in tech. It’s not all greasy haired programmers and shiny suit wearing entreps. Looking around at any tech party in Austin, you usually think “There are too many damn men in this room”; and you’d be right.

A few weeks ago, I participated in a panel at Semantic Web Austin that discussed open data initiatives and how the City of Austin might benefit from incorporating such a philosophy around its data. (If you want to know more about this idea, check out Juan Sequeda’s recent post on this blog.) It was an excellent discussion and I was fortunate to connect with some of the Austin tech scene’s most innovative minds.

One of the more interesting facets of the evening for me, however, was the make-up of the room. The new Texas Coworking space was packed – and not a fellow female in the bunch. The immediate effect was so striking that my first words upon arrival were a Tourettes-like exclamation of, “Holy crap, I’m the only woman here.”