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Amy Goodloe

Amy Goodloe moved to the bay area with the intention of continuing her career as a college-level English teacher. She anticipated that the combined needs of the many colleges and universities in the area would create an ongoing demand for professors. Contrary to her expectations, such vacancies are scarce in these parts. Resourceful and savvy, Goodloe explored new avenues of revenue. While in graduate school, she had used Macintosh computers and the Internet intensively as writing and research tools. She had what she felt was a knack for learning new technology, and she confidence that she could pass her self-taught skills on to others. In a short matter of time, she began to earn her living as a computer consultant. In addition to her roles as English professor and now computer trainer, Amy has been an active advocate of women's and lesbian issues. As she established her computer consulting, an idea occurred to her which reflected both her technology skills and her personal philosophy: a referral service of women consultants for women seeking help and training with Macintosh computers and the Internet. The idea was to offer an alternative to women who wanted consultants to come help set up their computer systems and teach basic computer skills in their own homes.
Until Amy began her company, Women Online, computer consultants in the bay area were mainly men. Women Online offered a remedy to the strained scenario that seemed to take place with male consultants, one in which women often felt that they were being talked down to, or that they were treated as stupid or unskilled because of their unfamiliarity with the computer -- hardly an effective educational environment. And many women were simply not comfortable having a strange man come into their home, regardless of any condescending training style. In the original version of Women Online, Amy's ambition was to provide affordable training on a sliding scale.
Once she began her referral service, however, Amy was faced with a host of unanticipated challenges. To her surprise, she had difficulty finding enough qualified women trainers. The economic reality of offering affordable, sliding scale rates was not conducive to making a profit, or even simply to breaking even. In order to continue to provide accessible training, Amy has redesigned the business model of Women Online. In addition to the previous range of service, Women Online now offers training at the corporate level to business and administrative staffs, many of whom are often women. Through this more financially viable focus of Women Online, Amy aims to fund the affordable training and career development for girls and women that is at the heart of her venture. Amy remains connected with women around the country through the Internet.
In addition to Women Online, she takes an active role in national and local communities of women on the Internet as moderator of numerous Internet mailing lists. A directory of these lists, and directions for subscribing to them are available via the web at http://www.best.com/~agoodloe/lists/, or send email to agoodloe@best.com with the words "net lists faq" in the subject head. In addition to giving her the opportunity to take an active role in encouraging and offering advice to women on the Internet, moderating the lists lends credibility to Amy's role as a consultant. The Internet is an integral component of Amy's philosophy. She stresses the importance of access to and familiarity with the Internet as an invaluable source of information, and an increasingly necessary skill for jobs: "I can hardly think of a job that doesn't use the Internet." In her efforts to encourage and assist women in getting online, she teaches free seminars for women in collaboration with WiM member Wendy Noah of Match.Com. A pragmatic evangelist of all that the Internet has to offer, Marketing to women, she feels, may actually help dispel the myths about "what women want online" and by the same token, "any visibility is good visibility."
The most difficult part of accessing the Internet, according to Amy, is configuring your computer correctly -- a crisis that is solved by the consulting services of Women Online. For Amy, the Internet provides a unique leveling field rarely available in this age of disparate means and resources between corporations and individuals. She fondly remembers the time, barely a year ago, when she could launch a web site equal in scope and function to that of a corporate giant like General Electric. Although new World Wide Web technologies like Java, VRML, CGI Scripts and Shockwave are once again creating an attainable edge for companies with healthy production budgets, the opportunities for individuals and small businesses to compete in the new media arena rival those of more conventional industries.
The experiences of other women at the WiM meeting echoed Amy's sentiments. While attending a recent conference focused on Marketing for the Internet, Susan Frye of PC World noted that of 33 total panelists, 22 were women. Not only were the majority of "recognized authorities" at this technology event women -- a virtually unprecedented statistic -- but their titles revealed that they held management level and executive positions within their representative companies. Unlike more traditional fields, where the stomping grounds of success have been established as the undisputed domain of men, the new media industry, at least in its current stage of development, seems to offer greater opportunities for women.
While Amy is aware of the commercial viability of Women Online, she eschews corporate sponsorship of her web site. Although she is not opposed to the current trend among commercial online services and corporate interests to explore the marketing potential of women on the Internet, she has chosen not to participate in the process.
Amy has a different agenda for the development of new media. Together with her new partner Roberta Kane, Amy hopes to expand Women Online to offer a computer lab and more classes. As for dream projects in the future, her interests lie in exploring a new mode of teaching English and writing by integrating internet technologies into the teaching process. Her vision for the future also includes continuing her development of lesbian.org, her venue for promoting lesbian visibility on the Internet. She looks forward to expanding Sapphic Ink on lesbian.org, a web-based lesbian literary journal. Given the clarity of her vision with Women Online, Amy Goodloe will no doubt continue to pioneer the possibilities for women on the Internet, whether under the guise of an advocate of equal access and training for women, or as an English professor. Visit Amy's Web site at http://www.best.com/~agoodloe/home.html.

Amy Goodloe

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