I've spoken at conferences and events quite a few times before, and here's what I usually say:

Yes, I basically say a lot of random stuff about a random topic, justify it with more random stuff, answer my questions with more theoretical random responses, and make it fun and entertaining. :)

Thanks to David Weekly of PBWiki / Super Happy Dev House for the link!

OH! And if you want to see the fine academic research paper that this presentation is based on, click here.

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore at early college, Bard College at Simon's Rock.

She loves chatting with fellow students, readers, and entrepreneurs, so don't hesitate to email her or message her on AIM! Feel free to subscribe to her blog or stalk her twitter.

Well wasn't that quick! I found a new project that I've decided to work on. The team consists of me as the geek/logistics/biz dev person, and my two partners as the content artists. The project isn't very web 2.0 related, but it's going to be awesome fun and super creative.

I remember hearing about a huge and popular blog that did nothing other than post funny pictures of cats. Well, my next project will do something simple and stupid of a similar nature, but with music and videos and other 100% original content recorded in-house at the Berklee School of Music. You just wait and see! We'll be launching in the next few weeks...

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore at early college Bard College at Simon's Rock.

She loves chatting with fellow students, readers, and entrepreneurs, so don't hesitate to email her or message her on AIM! Feel free to subscribe to her blog or stalk her twitter.

It's great that geeks in the San Francisco Bay Area are proud to be geeks. In high school, many were bullied and sat at the loser tables in the school cafeteria, but now they're the ones running multi million/billion dollar companies. But I'm going to bring up something else -- because geeks felt suppressed in high school, many would even put down other geeks or prospective geeks in the process to make themselves feel better. In my freshman year of high school, I was part of the A/V club, where pretty much everybody in the group was an asshole. Why did I join? Because I was a loser and utter failure in the social world.

The geek culture I knew in high school was very different from the one I see now. There was a clear social hierarchy -- the seniors were the bosses, had first dibs on anything, and enjoyed making fun of us freshmen. There were no second chances: Every student had to do some A/V chores in order to stay in the club, and I missed an assignment because I was sick. The consequence? The geeks were total meanies to me. They were joking about how I'm not sure if they were just being mean or if they were being serious, but either way, they didn't make the members feel welcome.

In Silicon Valley, we believe in constructive criticism. In high school, the geeks believed in non-constructive insults. "Your business sucks. Your code looks like dog crap. Your computer hardware sucks like my grandma." It was just all around nasty and cruel. So here were the upperclassmen, who had extreme power to do and critique as they wished, but in the cafeteria and in the sports fields, they were bullied. They were the ones who sat on the sidelines, bullied by the hot athletic guys. I felt bad for the geeks, but I understood that the social hierarchy existed in order for them to compensate for the interactions they had outside of the A/V club.

Within a few months of joining the A/V club, I left. I was frustrated by the authoritative power the seniors took on, and soon after, most of the club members left too. It all came down to incompetent leadership and seniors who didn't know how to collaborate and keep the clubs most valued members. People join clubs and companies mostly to be with other great people. The problem of mean and grumpy leadership is a problem inherent in so many companies today -- I've spoken to at least a dozen people who said they work or worked at Oracle, but they hate the culture. They feel as if they're nobodies, so their stays at the company are always short lived. The moral of the story? Don't bully your employees. Keep them happy. Encourage them and give them constructive input. They're happy to have your company, club, or organization as a new home. Let's keep it that way.

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore at early collegeBard College at Simon's Rock.

She loves chatting with fellow students, readers, and entrepreneurs, so don't hesitate to email her or message her on AIM! Feel free to subscribe to her blog or stalk her twitter.

The following post was inspired by Jim Collins, author of best selling books Built to Last & From Good to Great

A big hairy audacious goal (BHAG) is something everybody and every organization should have because it creates a goal to aspire to. It creates meaning for yourself and your colleagues. It gives you a sense of purpose! Without a big hairy audacious goal, how does one motivate him or herself to do remarkable things in life?

When I was thirteen years old, my first BHAG was to setup a cool company. My last company thrived on the fact that it was run by 13/14/15 year olds. Once we had something going, we reset our BHAG to owning a rack full of servers. After that, we reset a BHAG to getting an entire cage at multiple datacenters, and that's about when we died. It was good that there was a mental gap between our confidence, wisdom, and capability for taking risk. In other words, young kids are ignorant. Setting a BHAG is fun and motivating, regardless of how stupid or farfetched the goal may be. In fact, that's the point! If we had gone through the conventional planning of business, we wouldn't have started a company until graduating from college. I probably wouldn't have gotten into early college. I probably wouldn't have decided to start a blog that's based on my few experiences. I probably wouldn't have had the pleasure of meeting all of you!

Big hairy audacious goals don't have to be limited to business. Apply this to your personal life. Do the non conventional because it'll foster your motivation and success. The idea of going to college early sounded outlandish to my parents and my friends, but that was precisely the point. If they had supported me on making the change, it wouldn’t be a big hairy audacious goal, now would it?

Of course, if the goal is achieved, there no longer is a BHAG. Once achieved, it's time to set a new goal -- perhaps this is the reason why entrepreneurs are "never satisfied," regardless of the success they previously achieved. So let's say I run a company called Powerset and my goal is to oust Google from the search market. Once I've succeeded in doing this, it's time to set a new goal -- perhaps, to oust the leader in online advetising -- and after that, to oust the leader in online entertainment… etc.

Of course, sometimes it's reckless to go for your big hairy audacious goal. A lot of the time, the critics are right in that the product you want to create will go nowhere, depending on the capabilities of your team. If I ever faced such an issue, I would turn to my "board of life." (click here if you don't know what the super important board of life is) I'd see what they thought about my BHAG, and I would ask what's needed in order to execute on my outlandish vision.

Once you've established what your BHAG is, YOU NEED TO COMMIT TO IT. Set milestones. Make sure your team meets those milestones. I set a BHAG to own my own datacenter within 3 years of starting the company. I invested 80% of the company's profits towards buying assets and renting DC space. Of course, we failed at achieving the BHAG, but at least we died trying. As I'll mention in another post, there are a few things a company can do: 1) grow, 2) fail, and 3) go nowhere. Going nowhere is by far the worst. Not growing is not an option for me. The opportunity cost in going nowhere exceeds any cost of failing. So we chose to sell out prematurely, thus failing. It was unfortunately the right choice to make based on the circumstances.

Committing to a BHAG is obviously 1000X harder than setting the BHAG. You're putting your money on the line. You're putting your business on the line. You're putting your personal well being on the line, and it's a tough commitment to make. Unfortunately, I don't know how to teach someone to feel content when committing to a BHAG. It just has to be done, and if it doesn't get done, you're going to find yourself paying a much heavier opportunity cost. True entrepreneurs are willing to make these commitments. If you’re not willing to make such a commitment, I suggest you join one of those multi-level-marketing schemes.

It's important that BHAGS take on a life of their own. They must be goals in themselves that your team members will always seek to achieve. The main question is, will the BHAG outlast the leader? This poses a problem for super charismatic leaders, or overly-demanding disciplinarians. At that point, the goal is to satisfy the leader -- not to reach the goal. Perhaps this is precisely why over-protective parents are ineffective in parenting. Children do what the parent says, but they don't understand the underlying goals and purposes for achieving those goals. Once the leader (or in this case the parent) is gone, there's no longer a sense of purpose.

If you don't currently have a BHAG in your life, set one now. Matter of fact, I won't let you leave this blog post until you've established at least a basic idea for what your BHAG for life may be. Think it through and remind yourself everyday how you might be a step closer towards achieving your goal.

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore at early collegeBard College at Simon's Rock.

She loves chatting with fellow students, readers, and entrepreneurs, so don't hesitate to email her or message her on AIM! Feel free to subscribe to her blog or stalk her twitter.

Virgin founder/chairman Richard Branson and Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page just posted videos on the first manned adventure to Mars -- except they wish to inhabit the planet with colonists for years to come!

Cool idea? Check. Suspicious? Definitely. Here's what I found off the FAQ page:

oh, all right. Fine. April Fool's. Ha, ha, ha. It isn't real. There. Are you happy? Does it please you to drag us out of our lovely little fantasy world, to crush all our hopes and dreams? Is that really what you need to hear? Fine, you've heard it. Virgle isn't real.

Yet.

Sure, they posted this on April 1st. But for some reason, this project sounds just crazy enough for Richard Branson to endorse it.

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore at early collegeBard College at Simon's Rock.

She loves chatting with fellow students, readers, and entrepreneurs, so don't hesitate to email her or message her on AIM! Feel free to subscribe to her blog or stalk her twitter.

Here's a random email I got from Spark, a silly Facebook application.

------------------------

Spark: People think these friends of yours should hook up:

1. Justine Ezarik and Robert Scoble

------------------------ If you're a geek, you'd know what the above meant :)

To the rest of you, I'll write something of value tomorrow.

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore at early collegeBard College at Simon's Rock.

She loves chatting with fellow students, readers, and entrepreneurs, so don't hesitate to email her or message her on AIM! Feel free to subscribe to her blog or stalk her twitter.

Finally! I got my HS diploma. To make a very very long story short, I decided to cut through high school when I was 15 years old and since then, I've been attending Bard College at Simon's Rock. I get my associates degree in two months, but I've been attending college without an official high school diploma - that is, until now!

But to be brutally honest, I don't think anybody cares about high school diplomas these days as long as you have a college degree. Would anybody turn me down for a job because I didn't have a high school diploma, yet I had an associates degree? That'd be plain old silly!

I think it'll make sense to write a blog post on the implications of hiring someone who either finished high school early or decided to drop out of college. Both circumstances provide for some pretty unique individuals I know - some brilliant, some not so brilliant.

As always, there's more to come!

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com, and Jessicamah.com.

OK, seriously. Stop spamming me with your startup pitches. Just read my blog, does it look like I'm Michael Arrington, writing about all of your new startups? No! If I want to write about you, it's probably about something you do that's super unique. That or you bribed me with your incredible friendliness. Here are a few tips on how to get me to write about you:

1) Firstly, I don't often write about startups. When I do, I fully endorse the startup or fully despise the startup. It's never something in between. Getting a blogger to write about you involves building a relationship. Most startup marketing people don't understand this concept and send generic emails to bloggers. It doesn't work! So, the best way is to send me a pointless email that tells me how awesome my blog is, even if you don't think it's that great. I've probably fallen for this dozens of times, but hey, it works!

2) Real bribes. Startup founders seem to enjoy taking me out to lunch or dinner. While I was at South by Southwest, I managed to get away without paying for a single meal. How? Well, my blog readers! Half were friends who I wanted to build a lasting connection with, the other other half were random startup founders who wanted nothing more from me but my connections and minimal influence. (no, not that many people read my blog or know who I am.)

3) Do something special and tell me about it. No, I don't mean that you should do something stupid just for attention. For those people, go to Valleywag. For startup founders who did something funny that had a real purpose and intent, let me know about it! Take for example Xobni's recruiting video, which I heard about from my friend Bryan Kennedy.

For the rest of you, I'd suggest following one of my prescribed tips above. Whether it's me or Michael Arrington who you're trying to get a hold of, you can't just send generic emails. Those end up in the spam folder. One blog reader of mine suggested that I "write them up and completely misrepresent their purpose, their name, everything!" While that idea sounds incredibly appealing, I enjoy having people not hate me. :)

More to come!

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com, and Jessicamah.com. She's totally overrated and you all know it.

I'm sitting in a panel moderated by Guy Kawasaki and he wanted the panel to be women only, which got me to think about the different type of women entrepreneurs there are.

Firstly, many women entrepreneurs I meet seem to run a business geared towards other women. Most of the women on this panel had businesses that target women. This isn't a problem at all. If anything, it can be a smart thing. My mom, for example, makes clothing for women not just because she knows that business best, but because it makes more money than men's clothing does.

Whenever I'm introduced to a female entrepreneur, it's almost as if I'm expected to make friends with them. I don't make friends with many women in business and tech for some reason, but there shouldn't be anything wrong with this. To the guys: just because you're a guy doesn't mean you'll automatically click with other guy entrepreneurs! Same thing applies to girls. When I meet a new girl, I see if they fit into the following categories. If they do, fine. If not, better. Personally, I dislike the idea of girls who fit into cookie cutter categories, but there are so few of us who can truly be considered unique. Here are the stereotypical categories that I commonly see:

1) The geeks: I meet many girls who are incredibly friendly, but they're geeks. They spend the majority of their time working, working, and working. I find it hard to click with the hardcore female geeks because they don't believe in fashion or partying. You may not see many of these girls because they're so incredibly sheltered.

2) The blogger chicks: These girls may or may not have a functional business, but they sure know how to write! They often attract overly obsessed and sketchy guys. I can safely say that these are the girls you're probably most exposed to. Such blogger chicks include the likes of ijustine.

3) The suits: For some reason, men in suits have an intimidating vibe behind them. They don't know jack about technology, but they sure know how to talk. Women in suits can be no different. Meg Whitman, for example, was CEO of eBay.com and is probably incapable of installing a simple PHP script. She's 100% the business type and she does a great job at this, but you don't see a sense of fun or girliness in this type of girl.

So you ask, where do I fit in? Where do my favorite women entrepreneurs fit in? From what people tell me, I can fit into one of these or all of these. Back in computer camp days (yes I used to be a total dork) I would definitely place myself as a geek. Last year when I had no company in the works, I was a blogger chick. Now, I'm seeing myself more and more as all of the above. The girls I generally click with fit into multiple categories. The hardcore geeks have no social life. The absolute hardcore blogger chicks have no aspiration to have a career. The suits come off as being too elitist.

Let's look at a real life example: Patricia Handschiegel. I have so much respect for her as a female entrepreneur because she's a hard worker, yet she's fun and enthusiastic about managing a good work/life balance. Cheers to her recent sale of StyleDiary.net! If only there were more entrepreneurs like her out in the world...

The absolute biggest problem for female entrepreneurs is perception. The above categories can apply to guys to some extent. The popular stereotypes are guy geeks, surfer dudes, and elitist men. In the media, you mainly see the stereotypes. For girls, you mainly hear only about blogger chicks. For guys, you see all of the above categories. If the fun and brilliant female entrepreneurs got some more exposure, we would definitely see more women entrepreneurs out there.

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com, and Jessicamah.com. In her free time, she enjoys the prospect of being an underage angel investor while partying like a rock star. (and traveling to random cities and checking into hotels while being underage)

Has it ever occurred to anyone that the rich and famous sometimes enjoy being treated like normal people? They're constantly in the spotlight, fighting to maintain their reputation for being whoever they are. It's a mental drain on them. They can't tell who's a true friend because they're such hot sh*t. If you want to be a genuine friend of someone notable, don't set an expectation of that person and don't treat them differently from how you would treat any other *normal* person.

Firstly, it's ignorant and sometimes rude to create an expectation of someone based on minimal information. For example, I first moved to Scarsdale, New York in the beginning of 7th grade. I was on my first school field trip visiting this historical mansion. Before even starting the tour, our two tour guides began poking fun at the fact that we were from "Scarsdale." [Wikipedia] We were walking into the big mansion when they said something among the lines of, "oh.. .you Scarsdale kids should have your chauffeurs driving you to the entrance!" At that point, I was quite confused, but I quickly understood that these tour guides were stereotyping Scarsdale kids for uptight snobby rich kids. What the tour guides didn't know was that most of us were relatively average on the socio-economic scale. They continued poking fun at us throughout the entire tour. My peers were good kids, no matter how wealthy some of them may have been. If anything, creating such an inaccurate expectation would cause us to be snobby kids.

After speaking to many many people, I'm starting to think that the rich and famous may be just as nice if not even nicer than those who poke fun at the rich and famous. There are two types of people: those who are made fun of and those who make fun of others. The former group is starving for attention and wants more as soon as the media starts feeding it to them. Without the spotlight attention, however; they are relatively normal people! The latter group may be insecure. When you make fun of a celeb, you do it for one of several reasons. Either a) you feel bad for the celebrity, b) you need a dinner table conversation, or c) you're insecure with yourself.

Another example! My hair dresser used to work at Barney's New York (a very high-end clothing store) and helped many celebrities build their wardrobes. One of his clients, for example, was the mom of Paris Hilton. At first thought, you'd think that she's an irresponsible mother and snobby rich woman who spends her day complaining about her broken fingernails. However, she's a nice woman. She's a smart woman. She's the type of person who completely removes all expectations you have of the rich and famous. My parents told me how they met Mrs. Hilton during fashion week. My parents and a few of the Hiltons were sitting next to each other and they made friendly without having to mention the crap we read about in the tabloids. Like my last example, I'll hold the belief that creating a (negative) expectation for the rich and famous is a self fulfilling prophesy.

If you want to be a real friend of a rich celebrity, talk about topics non related to what they're famous for. You're obviously free to mention what made them famous, but true friends of celebs have way better things to talk about. Lose the premature expectations you have of people and you'll find yourself making many more friends than you ever have before. :)

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com, and Jessicamah.com. In her free time, she enjoys the prospect of being an underage angel investor while partying like a rock star.