I love the imaginative branding that the firm Landor helped develop pro bono with my now-Stanford colleague Joy Wong Daniels. Que colorful.

At $199, joining is a steal and will earn you large percentages off everywhere from Equinox gyms to Apple and international hotels (Barcelona’s Hotel Arts, anyone?). To redeem, visit FoundersCard.com and click on Membership Inquiries. Complete form and enter “FCWMN11″ as the referral code.

Women 2.0 is excited to partner with FoundersCard as the company makes it less expensive for startups to seek out personal and professional services. I recently saved $300 when booking a Virgin Atlantic work flight to Nairobi, meaning my card has already more than paid for itself. While stateside, members can save on networking events like wine tastings and SFBeta and celebrate FoundersCard’s first year in New York on June 8.

Thanks to a friend who’s new to the Bay Area, I got back on the high fashion train this week to find that the presentation of Cristóbal Balenciaga’s styles isn’t better–it’s just different. More items–from tunics to gowns and bolero jackets–are presented this time around, and you’ll want to give yourself a while to study the folds and fabrics. The show’s themes were curated by Vogue’s European editor at large Hamish Bowles and include Spanish Art, Regional Dress, the Spanish Court, Religious Life and Ceremony, the Bullfight, and Dance. It was the first time since seeing Ms. V’s work that I went into a museum wishing I could walk out with a bag of goods off the mannequins–Balenciaga’s geometry and craftsmanship are that good.

It’s important to focus on citizens’ responsibilities not just as voters, but as information advocates. The conference at UCSF started with a comparison of different cities’ offerings (with SF celebrating census data mashups, NY offering a way to filter the city’s checkbook, and Chicago bringing transparency to government contracts). The core theme? Much of this information wasn’t consolidated with public consumption in mind, and it’s up to citizens to start optimizing it for public usage. “Mediation by talented by community members in important for these apps,” the City of San Francisco’s Director of CRM told open data fans. “Government isn’t always the delivery mechanism, and it’s important that we become more involved as individuals in making and keeping this public information usable.”

Between the day’s other conversations about the API economy and “enlightened IT” (which takes a more collaborative approach to making data usable by businesspeople), the lack of diversity in the room was startling. Anthony Goldbloom, whose data prediction platform Kaggle just unveiled a predictive algorithm contest for patient data, said he’s gotten used to seeing few women working in the space. Of the tens of thousands of people who enter his company’s data science competitions annually, he says he remembers only one woman registrant among the professionals who work in statistics, computer science, engineering, and physics. Citing degree disparity, Goldbloom said he’s so concerned with the low level of female engagement that he wonders if men are just more competitive.

Following conference keynote speaker Vivek Wadhwa’s piece “Women of Color in Tech: How Can We Encourage Them?“ this week, it was disappointing to see a room of approximately 10 percent women, several of them press. But I don’t blame the conference—if anything, the audience represented the work that still needs to be done to get more women working in opening data.

Forty years of footage of the work of historians, creators and curators were compiled for this feature-length look at Feminist Art premiering this week at Sundance. It was fun to learn about activism I didn’t know about (including that practiced by the Guerilla Girls, creators of flyers like the one at right that called for changes in the composition of major exhibitions); intriguing to consider the future of work like Iranian artist Shirin Neshat (whose film Women Without Men was one of the most intriguing of last year’s festival); and devastating to hear about the violence that many of these women faced. I’m glad that the film will be coming to the San Francisco Film Festival this year and have a slew of friends–women and men–I’ll be taking to it.

• Grace Bonney, Design Sponge
• Maggie Mason, Mighty Girl
• Liz Gumbinner, Cool Mom Picks
• Allison Bloom, Remodelista
• Heather Armstrong, Dooce
• Allison Czarnecki, Petit Elefant
• Cambria Bold, Re-nest
• Laura Mayes, Kirtsy
• Laurie Smithwick, Kirtsy
• Megan Reardon, NotMartha
• Neil Chase and I from FM

Follow the dialogue at #AltSummit.

Photo by Ecofabulous’ Caitlin Bristol.

The host organization explains how the book for gamers, developers, and those looking to learn “reveals how we can use the lessons of game design to fix what is wrong with the real world” and suggests how “gamers will be able to leverage the collaborative and motivational power of games in their own lives, communities, and businesses.” It will be my read of choice on the way back from a trip to Utah this week.