In celebrating San Francisco designer Victoria Smith (Ms. SFGirlByBay) and her endeavor to encourage dialogue about personal inspiration, I’m taking today mention the organizations, projects, and ideas by women I admire and am motivated by, SF or otherwise.

The Blog It Forward project, which includes 300 design aficionados discussing their inspiration, is a kind of chain letter in the best way. No middle school students have their feelings hurt, and bloggers partaking in the project link to one another’s work. Ohioan Pretty Shiny Things shared her visual inspiration before me, and today I’ll be followed by the vintage-minded The Sunday Times Market, which I’ve become quickly enamored with while I should have been typing and linking away on this.

In having spent the better part of this week in the Texas state capital for South by Southwest Interactive, interactive whiz kids (and migas) are especially front of mind. I feel fortunate to be learning from especially visionary women designers, communicators and founders, and following Heather Gold’s recent live taping of her podcast episode about acknowledging the effort in making things, I tip my bicycle cap to these inspiring individuals, including:

Alison Covarrubias and Claire Fontana, whose educational Hatch Network design is admirable /// Jen Bekman for demonstrating the potential for art community growth with 20×200 /// Han Pham for her Youth Women Social Entrepreneurs collaboration /// Jamie Panzarella, for giving y’all Ladywood in the next few days /// Miki Johnson, for her visual and thought-provoking liveBooks photo blog contributions /// Tiffany Shlain for sharing her early “Connected” documentary work /// Rebecca Bortman, who I’d love to have perform at a future Ignite Bay Area event with her SF-born band My First Earthquake, for art directing another successful Disposable Film Fest /// Janetti Chon and Stacey Foreman for announcing a great speaker lineup for this summer’s Conversational Marketing Summit /// Lindsay Ronga for bringing the Cork’d wine community to vino drinkers everywhere /// Cara Jones for introducing journalist consortium Storytellers for Good locally this week //// Maria Ly, for bringing activity tracking platform Skimble to SXSW to lots of acclaim when she wasn’t allowing us to tape her climbing at Mission Cliffs time and again /// Kristy Graves and Amy Benziger for helping open the HUB community space in SF in the upcoming weeks /// Sharon Vosmek’s leadership in the Astia network’s expansion to India /// Kennedy School alum Elana Berkowitz’s contribution to the FCC’s broadband plan, which goes before Congress shortly /// High school pal-turned-producer extraordinaire Leah D’Emilio for helping Rocketboom’s programming expand /// Femgineer Poornima Vijayashanker and Liz Wilsie for rigorous prep of their new software for sole proprietors /// Caitlin Bristol, for expanding Ecofabulous’ style and sustainability video offerings while kicking leukemia butt on her bike /// Shauna Causey for leading by @Voluntweetup example /// Gayla Trail, for whom positive “Grow Great Grub” book reviews are well-deserved /// Danae Ringelmann, whose good acquisition news about the IndieGoGo funding platform is well worth celebrating this week /// Project H founder Emily Pilloton for getting the Design Revolution Road Show to kids and adults nationwide /// Rebecca Orlov for exapnding Blog Out Loud live events to Northern and Southern California /// and, of course, Victoria Smith for starting this undertaking and launching her vintage Etsy shop last week.

This is just a sample of the women who inspire your work, and I’d like to open this up to mentions of yours. Have at it!