Brisbane Girl Geek Dinner 4 a success!
February 25, 2009 Australia, Brisbane, Locations Comments Off
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!
February 24, 2009 Canada, Locations, Montreal Comments Off
Station C, Montreal's co-working spot is looking to diversify their space and are hoping to encourage more women to take advantage of their services.
From February 4th through to March 24th (Ada Lovelace Day), they are offering a $100 discount for women who sign up for a 6 month Lite or Resident membership.
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.
Please spread the word about this offer and show that you support Station C in their efforts to bring more ladies into their space.
Dagur Ödu Lovelace – 24. mars
February 23, 2009 News Comments OffÞann 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.
Frábært kvöld og flottir fyrirlesarar
February 23, 2009 News Comments OffSíðastliðinn 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
February 22, 2009 News Comments OffAloha 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!
February 21, 2009 News Comments Off
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
February 20, 2009 Australia, Canberra, Locations Comments Off 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
February 20, 2009 News Comments OffThere 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 26th 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 5th 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 12th 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 19th 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
February 18, 2009 Canada, Locations, Montreal Comments Off
We were so thrilled to have Jennifer Bell from Visible Government speak to our group this past January and deliver a very thorough presentation relating to how online tools can be used to encourage transparency within government.
Jennifer had taken us through the current state of information as it is available to citizens and discussed how difficult it is to find any data within the current systems that exist. The limitations for searching, sharing and collaborating with these materials do little to encourage citizen participation in our current system. With a view towards how Web 2.0 has empowered society, Jennifer presented the principles of Government 2.0, the reasons for its effectiveness and demonstrated examples of successes achieved by embracing this new model of participation.
Visible Government is an amazing initiative and is looking for folks who wish to help out in any way possible. Areas where you can lend a hand include promoting Visible Government in the community, engaging in fundraising activities, starting a campus chapter in the school environment, hosting coding weekends for open government projects and helping to organize a Change Camp in your town.
Feel free to check out Jennifer's slides via this link and if you'd like to review a paper that Jennifer had written on the subject, please visit this link to The Open Source Business Resource.
Many thanks to Caffe Della Posta for the smashing Italian food. The geeks were well-fed!
