Girl Geek Dinners

Announcing Carolina Girl Geek Dinners Premier Event- Sponsored by Microsoft Services!

Our first event is finally here and it will be a great time!!!!  Carolina Girl Geek Dinners are kicking off on Wednesday, March 25th at Microsoft in Charlotte, NC.  Join us for an evening to meet, socialize, and network with other women in IT.  The presentation will be Office 2007 Tips and Tricks, presented by Terrie Baldwin Depew. Guy geeks are invited if accompanied by a girl geek.  Dinner will be yummy tapas catered by Greek Isles.  Get your Guitar Hero grove on and see if “You Rock!”  Bring your ideas and suggestions for future events. This event is FREE for all girl geeks, but RSVP is required!   

When:
March 25, 2009
6:00 – 6:30PM: Registration, Tapas, and Networking
6:30 – 7:30PM: Welcome and Office 2007 Tips and Tricks presented by Terrie Baldwin Depew
7:30 – 8:30PM: Door Prizes and Networking

Where:
Microsoft Corporation
8055 Microsoft Way
Charlotte, NC 28273

About the speaker: Terrie Baldwin Depew joined Microsoft in 2001 and is currently a Business Productivity Solution Specialist.  She is responsible for working with large enterprise customers, understanding their needs in the productivity and collaboration space and putting together Microsoft solutions to address those needs.  Prior to working at Microsoft, Terrie worked at IBM for 7 years as a Client Representative for Charlotte, NC and Greenville, SC.  Terrie accomplished a BA Political Science degree at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  We look forward to hearing Terrie’s presentation and are excited for her to be the first Carolina Girl Geek presenter!

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Brisbane Girl Geek Dinner 4 a success!

Last night a bunch of new and returning faces turned up to the Lock ‘n’ Load Bistro at West End to watch Jessica Coates present at our 4th Brisbane Girl Geek Dinner.  Jessica suggested the venue for this month’s event and it certainly was a great pick! The venue had a private room with our own TV and sound system to hook up Jessica’s laptop to and watch a few Creative Commons videos. This allowed us to have a presenter when we wanted and not disturb any of the other customers in the restaurant.  The staff were absolutely fantastic so would highly recommend them for any future events.

Jessica did two mini talks, one on her view of Women in IT just before dinner and then some information on Creative Commons. It’s great to see familiar faces from previous dinners as well as new faces at each event.

I’ll be posting details soon for our April event. We’re going to try something a bit different to continue the variety in the Dinners and hopefully add a new crowd to our group.

Station C – Special discount for the ladies!

Station C is a space that fosters community, collaboration, innovation. People come here to work and connect. We are a hub for creators and innovators: entrepreneurs, geeks, artists, social activists.

We here at the Montreal Girl Geeks thank Station C for this initiative as well as for their support of the thriving community we have here in Montreal. Do check them out. It’s a great way to network and meet cool folks. 

Dagur Ödu Lovelace – 24. mars

Þann 24. mars næstkomandi er dagur Ödu Lovelace, fyrsta forritarans. Dagurinn er haldinn hátíðlegur til að minnast þeirra frábæru tæknitáta sem rutt hafa brautina og standa í stríðinu.

Við viljum endilega biðja ykkur um að taka þátt og blogga um ykkar uppáhaldstæknitátu þann 24. mars. Það er gríðarlega mikilvægt fyrir áframhaldandi þróun tæknigeirans að við fáum fleiri tátur til starfa. Of einsleitur geiri skilar ekki bestri mögulegri niðurstöðu.

Þessi grein sem tekur saman nýlegar niðurstöður af rannsóknum á hvernig jafnrétti er háttað í tæknigeiranum er þörf áminning fyrir að langt er í land.

Despite a positive outlook on their careers, the latest research has shown the glass ceiling for women in IT has not yet broken.

Frábært kvöld og flottir fyrirlesarar

Síðastliðinn föstudag héldu tæknitátur sinn fjórða fund og buðu til sín mjög flottum listakonum sem á einhvern hátt hafa nýtt tækni til að tjá listsköpun sína.

Kvöldið var sérstaklega vel heppnað. Gaman að heyra viðhorf þeirra sem ekki hafa tæknina að aðalfókus til tækninnar og hvað hún er í raun lítið mál. Bara aðferð til að ná marki. Það eru svo margir sem láta tæknina vaxa sér í augum, eru jafnvel hræddir við hana. Það var ekki á listakonunum okkar að heyra.

Við þökkum þeim tátum sem mættu fyrir frábært kvöld og erum strax farnar að hlakka til þess næsta.  Nánari upplýsingar í byrjun mars.

Girl Geek Day Dublin

Aloha and welcome to Girl Geek Day Ireland. Firstly let me explain my reasoning behind having a Girl Geek Day.  It started from reading a post about Ada Lovelace Day.

Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace was born on 10th December 1815, the only child of Lord Byron and his wife, Annabella. Born Augusta Ada Byron, but now known simply as Ada Lovelace, she wrote the world’s first computer programmes for the Analytical Engine, a general-purpose machine that Charles Babbage had invented.

Ada lovelace day is an international day of blogging to draw attention to women who excel in technology.Which takes place on the 24th March.  In a lot of cases women’s contributions often go unacknowledged, their innovations seldom mentioned, a lot of time due to womens shyness or not wanting to draw attention to themselves. We want you to tell the world about these women. The Entrepreneurs, innovators, sysadmins, programmers, designers, games developers, hardware experts, tech journalists, tech consultants, the list is endless.

With this in mind, I decided to have  a Girl Geek Day here in Ireland on Saturday 28th March 2009 at DIT Kevin Street Dublin. A day for bloggers, developers, tech writers, designers, anyone who has even a slight interest in technology or anything geeky!

I would hope to run the event in a barcamp style, informal, interactive and lots of discussions taking place.  I will be updating the site shortly to allow people to sign up and leave suggests on what they want see at Girl Geek Day and how we can all get the most out of it.

7o GGD – Women on line!

Tα Girl Geek Dinners σας καλωσορίζουν στο 7o GGD, σε μία συνάντηση με αποκλειστικά γυναίκες ομιλήτριες, καταξιωμένες και επιτυχημένες στο χώρο του business και της τεχνολογίας.

Πού: Public Συντάγματος, Internet Area [τηλ. 210 3246210]

Πότε:
την Πέμπτη 26 Φεβρουαρίου, στις 18.00.

Ποιοί και τι:
18.00-18.15: Προσέλευση.

18.15-18.30: Καλωσόρισμα στο 7ο Girl Geek Dinner από τη Δέσποινα Μπακιρτζή.

18.30-18.45: Days4u.gr – ή αλλιώς Δώρα Εμπειρίας online: Η Κατερίνα Καραγιάννη, ιδρύτρια του Days4u.gr θα μας εξηγήσει, πώς η αγάπη της για το online marketing μετεξελίχθηκε σε success business.

18.45-19.00: Αrteshop.gr – ή αλλιώς οι έλληνες καλλιτέχνες στο internet: Η Φιόνα Μουζακίτη, ζωγράφος και υπεύθυνη της online gallery έργων τέχνης, θα μας μιλήσει γι’ αυτό το επιτυχημένο site, το οποίο προβάλει και προωθεί με τον καλύτερο τρόπο τα έργα των καλλιτεχνών, όχι μόνο στην Ελλάδα αλλά και στο εξωτερικό!

19.00-19.15: Γυναίκες Καριέρας!: Η Ξένια Κούρτογλου, Πρόεδρος και Διευθύνουσα Σύμβουλος της εταιρείας ερευνών Focus Bari, θα μοιραστεί μαζί μας την πολυετή, πολύτιμη και επιτυχημένη επαγγελματική της εμπειρία.

19.15-19.25: Ten Minutes Pitching: “Digital Photography – Best Advices and Ever Clever applications!”, η Βίκυ Κολοβού και η Μαριλού Τζεμπελίκου παρουσιάζουν απλές αλλά και έξυπνες εφαρμογές για την επεξεργασία και δημοσίευση των ψηφιακών μας φωτογραφιών στο internet.

19.25-19.35: Κλήρωση δώρων
19.35-20.30: Dinner, Drinks και… απεριόριστο networking!

Οι συμμετέχοντες:
Κατά βάση γυναίκες, αλλά και άνδρες (προτιμούμε να συνοδεύονται από γυναίκα), maximum μέχρι 80 συμμετέχοντες.

Κόστος συμμετοχής: ΔΩΡΕΑΝ
Dress code: be yourself

Ο στόχος:
το networking γυναικών και η ενημέρωσή τους για τις νέες τεχνολογίες, τις καινοτομίες, το Internet και η διάδοση νέων, φρέσκων ιδεών και οραμάτων!

Εξασφαλίστε έγκαιρα τη συμμετοχή σας, μέσα από τη registration form ή μέσα από το facebook.

The Inaugural Canberra dinner is upon us

If you can’t see your name on the list, email me now! We’re nearly out of seats, so first in best dressed.

If your name is on the list, but you can’t make it, email me now!

My email address is loquacities(at)gmail(dot)com. You can also find me on Twitter with username Loquacities.

We’re at the Turkish Pide House in Jamison, at 7pm for a 7:30 start.

Stelle & Peter
Caronnect & Nigel
Rae & Craig
Donna & Donna’s daughter
Chisa
Ruth & PaulWay (thanks Ruth!)
Shinydragon
Claine
Nuri & Nuri’s boyfriend
Mel & Mel’s friend
Pia Waugh & Jeff
Cat
Tracey & Tracey’s Husband
Cerri & Cerri’s Colleague
Brenda
Mana

Can’t wait to meet you all there!

Technical Speaker Training – Free

There are a lot of tech events in Ireland and Northern Ireland right now getting organized (OSS Barcamp, DeveloperDeveloperDeveloper Belfast, etc.), and not surprisingly, we’re seeing a serious dearth of female speakers.  After talking with several women as to why this is, there was a very popular belief that it may have to do with training/experience.  Women who haven’t spoken before may be shy to try it for the first time, and technical people in general aren’t often trained to speak publicly.  In fact, for both men and women, public speaking rates quite high on many people’s list of fears!

So we put together some short, evening sessions to help those who have something to say.  By technical women, for technical women.

The schedule is as follows.  Each session is 1.5 hours and involves a very small group (max capacity ten), including hands-on practice and take-home exercises.  We have three sessions scheduled with a fourth in the diary for either a session repeat or special requests (slide-building, for example).  The sessions are for women only, and we’ll keep them very small (under ten) to allow adequate feedback for people.

Sessions will take place at the echolibre offices at 24 South William Street in Dublin city centre on Thursdays from 6pm – 7:30pm.

Speaker Night 1:               Thursday, February 26^th from 6pm-7:30pm

                Topic: What Am *I* Supposed to Talk About?

o   Finding your voice

o   Coming up with topics/content/titles

o   Building a story from your content

Speaker Night 2:               Thursday, March 5^th from 6pm-7:30pm

                Topic: The Nitty Gritty of Technical Talks

o   Demo-ing with code

o   Useful tools for technical demos/presentations

o   Things everyone hates

o   Failure recovery

o   Your failsafe list

Speaker Night 3:               Thursday, March 12^th from 6pm-7:30pm

                Topic: Grooving and Improving

o   Handling Q&A

o   Techniques for self-improvment

o   Critiquing your own performance

o   Finding your honest feedback crowd

Speaker Night 4:               Thursday, March 19^th from 6pm-7:30pm

                Topic: TBD – we’ll either repeat a session or do a special request like slide-building?

To register, just put your name in the comments section next to which session you’ll be attending (or say all if you want to attend all three).  Please only register if you’re sure you’ll be attending, as we have very limited space.  If they fill up, we will repeat sessions.

If you have comments or feedback about the training or there are additional topics you’d like covered, please e-mail me at martharo [at] microsoft.com.

Recap: January’s Dinner with Jennifer Bell from Visible Government

New TGGD Wiki Resource: T.O. Tech & Design Schools

This is a guest post by Rachel Young

I’ve added a list of technology and design schools in Toronto to our wiki. Check it out.

I looked for schools that offered more than just MS Office training and specifically looked for those with a wealth of courses in areas such as Web Development, e-Commerce, Networking, Information Technology, Recording Arts, and Graphic Design, as well as accredited certification programs in Cisco, Novell, MCSE, etc.

Here’s how this list breaks down:

Community Colleges and Universities
- These post-secondary schools are publically funded and offer fulltime, part-time, and continuing education or professional development programs. Many programs offer a rounded education that include more supplimentary courses (usually listed as electives) than the specific objective of a degree, diploma, or certificate.

Career Colleges and Trade Schools
- These institutions are governed by the Private Career Colleges Act and differ from the more common colleges and universities because they prepare students for a specific job or gives them specific skills. Programs offered at a private college or career college may be condensed to deliver training over a shorter period of time, and can be taken as fulltime, part-time, or professional development studies.

Professional Development
- This section is meant for contracted study through off the shelf or custom instructional design. Corporate training companies and new media centres offer a range courses, often without the prerequisites in place at the first two sections, ideal for those who want intensive training on something very specific or for companies to train larger groups of employees at once.

Online Studies
- If location or scheduling are issues then perhaps self-paced and distance study would be more appropriate. Many colleges and universities offer full programs online, and since there are so many this is the short list of resources to find the schools and programs offered online.

Taking classes in these schools is a great way to meet new people in your field while you learn something new or keep your skills up to date.

Happy learning!

The Science Council Need Your Help

We are looking for volunteers to take part in the ‘Careers Hotel’ – an area where young people can find out about the range of careers and jobs available from a science, technology, engineering or maths background.. Here’s the kind of thing we’d like volunteers to do:

- Mingle with the young people in the careers zone area, striking up conversations about STEM careers and their own jobs. It might be useful to bring an object which represents their job, or photos of colleagues in the work environment. The ‘minglers’ will also be asked to gently shepherd handfuls of young people towards the activities they can do in the careers zone: laptops with careers websites on; TV screen showing media clips; conversations with trained careers advisors; questionnaire about likes and dislikes; graffiti board for young people to give their own views.

- Speed networking. This facilitated session will invite young people, in pairs or by themselves, to have 3-minute conversations with a variety of role models about their jobs and their STEM backgrounds. We’re looking for as broad a range of role models as possible so technicians, HE/FE students and managers are all welcome as well.

Volunteers can choose whether they’d like to act as minglers or speednetworkers or both!

We’d like volunteers to join us for one or more half day sessions during:

- Wednesday 4th Mar afternoon
- Thursday 5th Mar morning
- Thursday 5th Mar afternoon
- Friday 6th Mar morning

If you are interested in helping us or you know anyone who may be interested, please pass this to them. We’re happy to answer any questions – you can contact me by email (k.mathieson@sciencecouncil.org) or by phone (07775 908 750).

Astia – Girl Geeks wanting to Start a Company…

Some of you may have already heard of Astia, well they have asked us to forward some info about them to our members, after all they are focused on funding companies being founded by women.  They are set up as a charity and they are looking to find some great future technology innovators… Anyway if you are considering starting up you own company then the details below may be of  interest to you…

Doing it Right isn’t about looking for funding. It’s about finding funding. If you want to know what to say to investors and how to say it, who better to ask than VCs and angel investors? They’ll be there. But that’s just the beginning. At Doing it Right, you’ll cultivate invaluable relationships with key players and get straight talk from leading experts on developing strategies that support high growth, building effective presentations and more.

Key Dates
22 April: Application Deadline
11 – 14 May: London Doing it Right programme
15 May: London Company Screening Day
18 June: London Investor Forum

About Astia
Astia is a community of experts committee to building women leaders and accelerating the funding and growth of high-potential, high-growth, women-led startups. Astia is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation. For more information visit www.astia.org or contact evie@astia.org

Girl Geeks Scotland – The Launch Night

Girl Geek Launch Night
19th Feb 2009, 7pm – 10pm, Dundee, DCA meeting room

Our launch night will be on Feb 19th in the DCA meeting room on the Perth Road, from 7pm – 10pm for 40 people. We will be having a champagne reception followed by dinner. The ambience will be low-key, with plenty of time to socialise and chat, but there will be video presentation from Sarah Blow, the founder of the network, setting her vision for the future of Girl Geeks.

Tickets are li [...]

Girl Geeks Scotland start Twittering

Girl Geeks Scotland create a new Twitter account. To keep track of what we are up to and find out about all the latest information as soon as it happens, follow us at http://twitter.com/girlgeeks

CSS systems with Natalie Downe

Date: March 4th 2009 @ 7pm

Venue: Upstairs at The Eagle

Food: there will be a lovely buffet

Register: online registration with option to contribute. (1 guy invite per girl).

We are honoured to have Natalie Downe talking at the next Brighton Girl Geek Dinner talking about “Practical, maintainable CSS”

Natalie Downe from Clearleft specialises in creating high quality client-side code on agency deadlines. In this talk she shares her development process, from planning through to delivery of a full CSS system optimised for maintenance by a client. The talk includes CSS rules of thumb developed over seven years in the field, as well as tips for taming the beast that is Internet Explorer.

You can also follow her on Twitter!

Listatátur – tæknin í listinni eða listin í tækninni

Nú er blásið til fjórða Arctic Girl Geek Dinnersins.

Að þessu sinni ætlum við að skoða hvar tækni og listir mætast og höfum fengið til liðs við okkur frábærar listakonur og tæknitátur.

Eirún Sigurðardóttir myndlistarkona sem hefur mikið stuðst við kvikun (animation) í sínum listaverkum bæði á einkasýningum og á sýningum með Gjörningaklúbbnum.
Katrín Björk Sævarsdóttir, kvikmyndatökumaður og ljósmyndari.

Dagskráin verður í grófum dráttum sem hér segir:
18:00 mæting
18:30 framsaga og umræður í ca. 1-1,5 tíma
20:00 kvöldmatur og tengslamyndun fram eftir kvöldi eftir því sem tátur hafa úthald til

Staður: Balthazar við Hafnarstræti (áður Café Victor)
Stund: Föstudagurinn 20. febrúar 2009 klukkan 18:00

Sama regla gildir og venjulega:  Strákar meira en velkomnir í fylgd tátu.  1000 kr aðgangseyrir sem tryggir einn drykk og hjálpar okkur við að byggja upp félagið.

Hlökkum til að sjá ykkur!

Guest List for GGD #1 Canberra

The RSVPs just keep on rolling in. We only have 13 seats left at this stage, so if you haven’t sent in your RSVP, please do so quickly! I’ve had a report of comments not coming through to me, though, so to make sure that I’ve got everyone on my list, here it is:

Stelle & Peter
Caronnect & Nigel
Rae
Donna & Donna’s daughter
Chisa
Ruth & Ruth’s husband
Shinydragon
Claine
Nuri & Nuri’s boyfriend
Mel & Mel’s friend
Pia & Jeff
Cat
Tracey & Tracey’s Husband
Cerri & Cerri’s Colleague
Brenda
Mana

If you’re not on the list, please let me know! You can find me on Twitter or you can email me on loquacities(at)gmail(dot)com. You can also leave a message on the Facebook group if that’s more your style.

One other thing from the comments:

Hi there!

I’m a long-time supporter of LinuxChix and would love to come to the dinner, but I need someone to sponsor me for that to happen. Are there any women who aren’t bringing a partner to the dinner that would mind sponsoring me?

Thanks in advance,

PaulWay

If anyone is interested in helping Paul out, please email me and I’ll get you in touch. There’s no requirement that you both turn up together, just that he have a girl geek ‘sponsor’.

And on that note, see you all on Saturday!

March TGGD with Michal Berman founder of EmbarkOnIt

Hello to all Toronto Girl Geeks! Registration for our second Toronto Girl Geek Dinner of 2009 is open at our new place at Meetup.com! Sign up now.

Our speaker is Michal (Mic) Berman, founder of EmbarkOnIt.

Mic will share her experiences and perspectives:

• strategies and tips for start-ups and entrepreneurs
• lessons learned from two web giants (Yahoo!, Mozilla)
• how companies can do more with less

Please take a couple of seconds and vote on our poll at Meetup.com to let Mic know which themes appeal to you the most.

About our Speaker

Michal Berman is dedicated to fostering successful entrepreneurship in Canada. She began her career with McKinsey & Company, after spending a super almost 4 years there, she started her first company, B‐Innovative, Inc., building software for clients like Bell Canada. B‐Innovative grew to launch several Enterprise Performance based software products and then was sold to itemus, an Incubator founded in 2000. She joined itemus as part of the deal as their Chief of Staff responsible for product synergy across our investments.

After itemus, she launched Avatar, a peer to peer knowledge discovery tool (think StumbleUpon+IM+Facebook). CGI was interested in the technology and so she took a deal to develop the product further within the Telecom space while working for CGI. Following that, Michal worked for Yahoo as Head of Products to re‐build their Canadian operations. Next, she worked with Mozilla to launch Firefox in many more languages and now as part of the founding team of Embarkonit.com enabling companies to achieve more with less.

photo: Michal Berman by Will Pate

Meetup.com, Our Wiki and Sponsors Needed

We’ve migrated registrations for this month’s event to Meetup.com. With over 300 Toronto Girl Geeks in our community (and more coming out to each event), I was finding managing registrations on our wiki a tad unwieldy. Meetup.com should help us manage better. As always, I’d love your thoughts and feedback.

Don’t get me wrong. I still love our wiki. In fact, Rachel Young just built out a job resource page for us. I’m confident we’ll continue to use our wiki for collaborative projects and sharing.

Your organizers are on the hunt for a sponsor for this event. Sponsorship of TGGD is very reasonable and keeps our events accessible to everyone. Details about sponsorship are available on the wiki. Please drop us a line if you’re interested.

London Girl Geek Dinner Sponsored by Symantec

We’re thrilled to announce our second 2009 London Girl Geek event which is sponsored by Symantec and will be held at I-Level Search right in the heart of the city.

The event will commence at 6.00pm with some simple networking so do remember to bring your business cards with you.  The networking will then follow with group discussions on how to lifehack your way successfully through the current economic downturn.  This is an event where you should all bring your best and brightest ways to shine with you…Be prepared to share ideas, tech tools, management techniques and so on…

This is expected to be a fun, practical way of sharing your ideas.

When you head off you’ll also receive a fun little goodie bag… I’m not going to tell you what’s in it… that’s a surprise… all part of the fun of goodie bags!

Many thanks to Kate from Symantec and her team for arranging the goodie bags and sponsorship, and also to Judith Lewis and the I-Level Search team for offering their fun informal office space!

Full Details:

• Date & Time: Friday, 20th February 2009, 6:30pm for a 7pm start
• End Time: The event will finish at 9.30pm, with those interested flowing on to a local pub afterwards
  
• Venue: I-Level Seach Office see Directions for more details!
• Hosted by: Girl Geek Dinners and Symantec – Venue space donated by I-Level Search
  
• Food & Drink: Snacks and refreshments provided courtesy of Symantec
  
• Subject for the evening: Life Hacking
  
• Format: Reception, Group Discussions, Conversation
  
• Capacity: 50 people
  
• Attendees: As ever, boy geeks are welcome to attend if invited by a girl geek although on this occasion we do stress that there are few and limited spaces so more boy geeks = less girl geeks.
  
• Directions: Here’s a really accurate map
  The closest tube station is Oxford Circus.  We are only a short 5 min walk away from Oxford Circus tube station, not far from the Getty Images Gallery.  The Number 7 bus has a stop for Gt Titchfield St going towards Russel Square  so you can even take the bus.  I am unsure of what the stop is called going in the opposite direction.From Oxford Circus station it can be very disorienting so look for Topshop or the Nike shop.  You want to be on this side of the street.  Now, walk along Oxford St from the Nike store, past Toipshop and Miss Selfridge. Cross and walk past Urbal Outfitters, Schuh, and lots of other shops until you come to a green booth in the middle of what was once probably a street but is now just an empty bit of pavement.  Turn here and walk towards Fratelli’s coffee shop or if you can see it more easily, Bagelmania.  This pagement gives way to a street which is Great Titchfield St.  Walk up Great Titchfield St – you’ll have to cross a street and then walk past the DMA and cross another street.  You’ll end up across the street from the DMA walking away from it.  A few buildings up, you’ll be faced with a metal bar gate, half open, half closed leading up a ramp.  You’ll see a door that says “we are fallon”.  Just before this door is another area with a security guard in it.  Go in to this area and let security know you are here for the Girl Geek Dinner at i-level search.  They will point you around the corner to the left (the windows you walked past when going up the ramp) and then you will have arrived!

  We will be in the back on the office in a large open space.

If you’d like to attend on 20th February, please sign up via the sign me up button below, and we’ll see you at the event!

Two Weeks to Go until Canberra GGD #1

In exactly two week’s time, we will be milling around in the dining room of the Turkish Pide House in Jamison, pouring a glass of wine, smelling the wonderful food cooking in the kitchen, and tapping the mic to make sure it’s working.

Have you RSVPd yet?

Remember, it’s an open mic night, so don’t forget to bring some tales from the server room, your best customer service lines, and your cadre of Douglas Adams quotes (c’mon, you know we all have those)!

If you’ve RSVP’d on Facebook, please remember to pop over to the blog and RSVP here as well.

See you in a fortnight!

Sharing the Knowledge

…Με αυτό το «σύνθημα» εγκαινιάστηκε το πρώτο Girl Geek Dinner του 2009, το 6ο κατά σειρά.

H φιλόξενη και πολύ προσεγμένη αίθουσα της Microsoft Hellas, γέμισε ασφυκτικά από κόσμο, εκείνη την Παρασκευή στις 23 Ιανουαρίου.

Την έναρξη των ομιλιών έκανε η Θάλεια Γελαδάκη μία νέα και ορεξάτη κοπέλλα η οποία ενώ σπούδασε Ιστορία Τέχνης, αγάπησε το χώρο της τεχνολογίας περισσότερο και τώρα έχει την ευθύνη για την ανάπτυξη και το marketing του lovecooking.gr.
Η Θάλεια μας παρουσίασε το lovecooking.gr, έναν πλούσιο σε περιεχόμενο on line σύμβουλο μαγειρικής, που απευθύνεται σε νέους ανθρώπους, οι οποίοι δεν έχουν χρόνο, με γρήγορες εύκολες και έξυπνες προτάσεις μαγειρικής. Για το σκοπό αυτό συνεργάζεται με έναν νέο (στην ηλικία) σεφ τον Κωνσταντίνο Σπυρόπουλο, o οποίος μέσα από καλογυρισμένα βίντεο, παρουσιάζει παραδοσιακές συνταγές αλλά και νέες, φρέσκιες ιδέες μαγειρικής.

Η αλήθεια είναι ότι το lovecooking.gr μας «άνοιξε την όρεξη» για φαγητό αλλά και για …γνώση.
Έτσι στη συνέχεια, η Κική Καρακατσάνη, επί σειρά ετών Windows client Product Manager, μας αποκάλυψε με έναν πολύ απλό και οικείο τρόπο τα μυστικά του Windows live, και του Internet Explorer 8. Εκτός του ότι όλοι αισθανθήκαμε ότι είμαστε μία παρέα και ακούμε τη φίλη Κική – σε ευχαριστούμε γι’ αυτό – μάθαμε τα πιο σημαντικά και έξυπνα tools για τις καθημερινές μας ανάγκες επικοινωνίας του Windows Live, και τα πολύ χρηστικά νέα functions του Internet explorer 8.

Μετά «ήρθε η ώρα του Robin Good», ενός από τους πιο σημαντικούς On line Publishers, σε παγκόσμιο επίπεδο. O δικός μας πλέον Robin Good, μας πήρε από το χέρι και μας ταξίδεψε σε ένα ταξίδι unique εμπειριών, γνώσης και οραμάτων. Ο πολύ εκδηλωτικός και αυθεντικός Robin, μοιράστηκε μαζί μας την πορεία ζωής του μέσα από την τεχνολογία, αποκαλύπτοντας τα προσωπικά του μυστικά καθώς και τη φιλοσοφία του σε σχέση με το on line success business. Απλός, προσιτός και καθόλου δήθεν, παρά τη φήμη του, μας συμβούλεψε το “Share the knowledge, if you want to succeed in online businesses”!

Τις ομιλίες έκλεισε η Δρ Βενετία Κουσσία, Managing Director της εταιρείας Manpower, όπου αφού μας ενημέρωσε με τα τελευταία στατιστικά στοιχεία που αφορούν τη γυναικεία επαγγελματική απασχόληση, μας έδωσε χρήσιμες συμβουλές στο πώς οι νέοι άνθρωποι μπορούν να αντιμετωπίσουν τις προκλήσεις της σημερινής εποχής, αλλά και καταστάσεις κρίσης, όπως την πρόσφατη οικονομική κρίση.

Λίγο πριν το καθιερωμένο coctail (food and drinks), έγινε η κλήρωση 6 δώρων, 3 Windows Vista και 3 Web cams, που ευγενικά μας παραχώρησε ο χορηγός μας Microsoft Hellas. Έτσι, για άλλη μία φορά 6 τυχεροί φίλοι των Girl Geek Dinners, είχαν έναν λόγο παραπάνω να είναι ιδιαίτερα χαρούμενοι!

Στον πλούσιο μπουφέ που ακολούθησε και τιμήσαμε όλοι δεόντως, δημιουργήθηκε ένα μεγάλο «πηγαδάκι», όπως ήταν φυσικό γύρω από τον Robin Good, όλοι ήθελαν να τον γνωρίσουν και να ανταλλάξουν γνώσεις και απόψεις μαζί του και εκείνος δεν έκανε τίποτε άλλο παρά να …”Share the knowledge”.

Ευχαριστούμε όλους τους ομιλητές του 6ου Girl Geek Dinner, γιατί μας έκαναν περισσότερο «πλούσιους» σε γνώση και ιδιαίτερα τους ανθρώπους της Microsoft, την Ελένη, τον Patrick, την Κική, τη Μαρία και τον Στέφανο, οι οποίοι υποστήριξαν και αγκάλιασαν το 6ο Girl Geek Dinner.

Περισσότερες φωτογραφίες του 6ου Girl Geek Dinner μπορείτε να βρείτε εδώ.
Όλες οι ομιλίες βρίσκονται στη σελίδα μας στο Slideshare.

Girl Geek Dinners Brisbane – Dinner 4

Girl Geek Dinners Brisbane Dinner 4 is set! This month we’re fortunate  to have Jessica Coates as our guest speaker.

Being a Copyright Geek
Jessica will talk about being a geek who doesn’t know anything about programming, and the importance of support industries, like copyright, to the geek world.

Jessica Coates is the Project Manager of Creative Commons Australia and the Creative Commons Clinic, a program of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Innovation at Queensland University of Technology. The Clinic aims to further the implementation of the international open content licensing movement, Creative Commons, through the promotion of Creative Commons research and usage in Australia.

Where + When

Date: Tuesday 24th February, 2009

Time: 7:00 pm

Where: Lock ‘n’ Load Bistro, 142 Boundary Street, West End

Menu: http://www.locknloadbistro.com.au/menus.php

Colorado Girl Geek Dinners Launched

Why do girl geeks thrive in the Colorado Front Range? Besides being a beautiful place to live, in the high desert at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, it’s a high tech mecca for both large companies (Sun, Quantum, HP, IBM, Level 3…) and startups (see http://boulder.me/).  And where can you find us?  Well here of course!

TGGD Job Resource Board

This is a guest post by Rachel Young

After a TGGD a few months ago some of us were chatting about projects to implement for the community. One of them was a job board for girl geeks, and given the economic climate we’re facing, this is a good time to launch a list.

I’ve added the Toronto Girl Geek Job Resource Board to the wiki. It is a list of job search sites and other resources to help you find the perfect job. While there are some well known job sites listed, these are typically not just classified listings. As well, this list is not meant to advertise for recruiters. As a starting point I wanted to keep this strictly to where you can find a job now to guide your career in the appropriate direction.

Here’s how it breaks down:

Tech/New Media jobs
- we meet once a month because we all have one thing in common: we’re geeks

Other industries
- your dream job could be found in any industry

General job listings
- a short list of the more common general job search sites

Twitter feeds for tech jobs
- find a job in your field in under 140characters

Job search resources
- tips and guidance for job hunting, as well as a link to an extensive list of upcoming career fairs

This list is always evolving as great new services become available. Maybe you have some you’d like to add?

All the best in your job search!

Mommies, babies, coffee and blogs – Oh my!

If you didn’t already know it, mommy-based businesses and blogs are becoming a louder voice of influence online and it’s this very rise in ‘mommy-power’ which brought to life our lastest Girl Geek Dinner.

We are happy to announce our next dinner will take place on February 17 with proud mother of three and super entrepreneur Naomi Goldapple.

Naomi is the Founder and President of Maman Bébé et Café Inc.; a sophisticated center where parents can relax, get in shape, shop or be pampered in the mini-spa while their young children happily play on site. The bustling café offers healthy choices for parents and kids.

Naomi’s hard work earned her first place in the Concours entrepreniat québecois et au défi de l’entrepreneuriat au feminin in 2007 and she was also a finalist at the Prix Femmes d’Affaires du Québec this past October.