The topic for tonight’s Seattle Girl Geek Dinner has been announced, it will be Cloud Storage FUD (Failure, Uncertainty, and Durability). Our speaker will be Alyssa Henry, General Manager of Amazon Simple Storage (S3). Her overview:
Failure and uncertainty play a key role when engineering a general purpose online storage system to be durable, available, scalable, and cost effective. I’ll share some of the uncertainty we’ve encountered and the impact of that uncertainty on the design of the system. I’ll also cover some of the hardware and network failures we’ve encountered, others that we anticipate occurring, and how we’ve engineered Amazon S3 to be resilient to them.
Parking information:
There are two types of paid parking: short-term for up to 2 hours and longer-term for up to 10hours. Some of the 2-hour parking will also be signed for Residential Parking.
In the Cascade neighborhood where there are many older buildings, some streets will be signed for RPZ parking. Residents with RPZ permits may park for free on the designated streets and are not subject to the two-hour time limit.
Event Location
Van Vorst Conference Center (building has a yellow V in front, and is in the center of the courtyard).
PLEASE ENTER THROUGH THE RIGHT SIDE of the conference center.
Address: 426 Terry Avenue North, Seattle 98109
And don’t forget, our generous hosts, Amazon.com, will be giving away a Kindle, so please bring your business cards!
Bay Area Girl Geek Dinner #6 will be hosted by Polyvore on Thursday, June 17th, 2010 from 6pm to 9pm at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA. Event is FREE for all girl geeks.
Are you a guy geek who wants to attend this event? Have a girl geek register you as her guest.
There will be a panel discussion along with drinks, heavy appetizers, schwag, interactive games, and a photo booth with props. Girl geeks will also be treated to Polyvore kiosks and live demos.
About the girl geek panel discussion:
Meaningful product innovation is redefining the consumer experience for browsing, discovering and shopping on the Internet for the first time. In a panel discussion moderated by Polvore CEO Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, we will discuss the intersection of technology and style with a handful of women technologists and leaders driving Commerce 3.0 innovation:
» Jess Lee, VP of Product Management, Polyvore » Corinne Chan, CTO, Chictopia » Julia Kung, Director of Marketing, Moxsie » Sandra Lin, Director of Fashion Vertical, eBay
Schedule of events:
6pm – 7pm: Registration, heavy appetizers & drinks, networking, demos, and photo booth 7pm – 8pm: Moderated panel discussion on “Reinventing Fashion Online” 8pm – 9pm: Networking, demos, and photo booth
About our girl geek panelists:
Jess Lee is the VP of Product Management at Polyvore, the web’s leading fashion social shopping platform. Prior to Polyvore, Jess was a product manager at Google for 4 years, where she led front-end development for Google Maps and launched features such as draggable driving directions and My Maps. After falling in love with Polyvore, Jess decided to officially join the team and has done everything from writing code to ad sales to washing dishes. Jess holds a degree in Computer Science from Stanford University.
Corinne Chan is the CTO of Chictopia, a privately funded social networking site for fashionistas which she co-founded with Helen Zhu and Richard Ho in April of 2008. Corinne spent 12 years as a software developer and systems engineer for companies such as Wells Fargo and other various startups in the Silicon Valley. Corinne holds a degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from UC Berkeley.
Julia Kung is Director of Marketing for Moxsie. In her role at Moxsie, Julia utilizes the new media landscape to help grow the retailer’s traffic, brand presence, and sales, earning Moxsie top industry attention from trade media including Ad Age, California Apparel News, Women’s Wear Daily and more. Prior to her role at Moxsie, Julia has held marketing positions at Google as well as within the startup environment. Julia holds a B.A. from Stanford University.
Sandra Lin is the General Manager leading the re-launch of eBay’s fashion marketplace for an online and mobile experience. Before eBay, Sandra led strategy and operations for PayPal Mobile establishing partnerships with MTV, Fox, NBA, NBC, Sony BMG enabling them to reach consumers through the mobile medium. Her early career began at Procter & Gamble, before her product management and marketing roles in Silicon Valley. Sandra graduated summa cum laude with a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Case Western Reserve University and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
Sukhinder Singh Cassidy is CEO of Polyvore. She spent 5 years growing new businesses at Google as President of Asia Pacific and Latin America for Google and as the General Manager for Google Local & Maps. Sukhinder was also Co-Founder and SVP of Business Development at Yodlee, CEO-in-Residence at Accel Partners and previously worked for Amazon.com, News Corp and Merrill Lynch. Sukhinder has served on the board of J.Crew and is currently a board member at A Woman’s Nation and Jobtrain. For her work in the Internet industry, Sukhinder has been profiled in numerous publications globally, including Fortune, Business Week, Canada Post, India Today, and the book Innovation Nation which includes Canada’s most innovative business leaders.
Polyvore is redefining how people around the world experience, create and share fashion on the Internet. To see more of what Polyvore does, please check out what Polyvore’s all about.
Polyvore’s easy-to-use virtual styling tool lets people mix and match products from any online store to create their own fashion collections called “sets.” With over 6 million unique visitors and 140 million pageviews per month, Polyvore is the largest fashion community site in the world. Polyvore is backed by leading venture capital firms Benchmark Capital and Matrix Partners and consists of technology industry veterans from Google and Yahoo.
(All reservations must be made by Sunday June 13th)
Janet Effron – Managing Principal, Four Rivers Group, will be speaking about the use of technology to improve learning within organizations. Topics will include innovations and challenges surrounding the use of Enterprise 2.0 tools to support informal learning, as well as practices and tools that can enhance productivity and knowledge.
Janet has a diverse background which includes such roles as project manager, marketing analyst, and business intelligence. She also has experience in educational policy and curriculum. She has a BS in Geophyisics from the University of Illinois as well as graduate work in Information Science at Indiana University and a certificate in Instructional Design. She is a Managing Principal of the Four Rivers Group where she works to support businesses and educational groups in the selection and implementation of processes & technologies to enable organizational learning and information management.
**If there is another sponsor for this event, the cost will be lowered or refunded. Please let us know if you know of a company that would like to sponsor this or a future event!
Grilled Strips of Chicken Breast with Basil Pesto
Asparagus, roasted red bell peppers, grilled zucchini, Portabello mushrooms, sliced tomatoes, roasted potatoes
Drizzled with a five herb Balsamic Vinaigrette
Bread
The Carolina Girl Geek Dinner community is full of amazingly brilliant geeks, technologists, developers, web designers, engineers, analysts, technology entrepreneurs and the very internet savvy.
Today we honor you: each of our presenters and each of our attendees. Happy Ada Lovelace Day!
For the first quarterly event of 2010, we have a great evening planned!
Social Networking has a new meaning these days… it’s online and virtual. It’s no longer limited to mingling at a party or meeting someone for a drink. How many of you have been connected with someone you never would have come across (or possibly not even remembered!) if it wasn’t for Facebook or MySpace?
The first topic of the evening will be “Social Networking: Social and Professional Uses” presented by Charlotte’s own social media gurus, Anita Blanchard and Angela Benton.
Speaking of social networking, are you a member of the Carolina Girl Geek Dinners groups on Facebook and LinkedIn? If not, get out there and join us!
Secondly, we’ll be hearing about Dell EqualLogic, presented by Dell’s own Chris Mojica. We’ll see and hear about how IT’s wish list has been exceeded with Dell’s EqualLogic storage solution.Â
When: February 25, 2010
6:00 – 6:30PM: Registration, Dinner buffet, and Networking
6:30 – 8:00PM: Presentations on Social Networking and EqualLogic
8:00 – 8:30PM: Door Prizes and Networking
Where:
Dilworth neighborhood Grille
911 E. Morehead
Charlotte, NC 28204
Note: We will be located in the Morehead Room
Guy geeks are invited if accompanied by a girl geek. This event is FREE for all, but RSVP is required as space is limited!
Thank you to Dell for your support and generously sponsoring our event!
OK Ladies. Geeks. If you want to be a part of Girl Geek Dinners, Tuesday is your chance. This is not the “official” First Evansville Girl Geek Dinners, dinner. This is where we are asking you to join us, for some light food, and drink, in a relaxed atmosphere to talk about what YOU want to see in the EGGD. By attending you are not committing to help in the future. You are going to simply get a taste of the good company you will find at upcoming events and have a VOICE in what we bring in as learning experiences for you. This event will be limited in numbers due to the location, but there is room! E-mail us today! evvgirlgeek@live.com
Join us for Girl Geek Dinner #5: How to Succeed in Mobile on Thursday, February 4th at Google (Tunis Tech Talk) in Mountain View, CA. The panel features heavy-hitting women developers, designers, and entrepreneurs discussing all things tech and mobile. Event is FREE for all girl geeks, and each girl geek can bring one guy geek. RSVP for dinner here.
Featured Speakers:
Sarah Allen, CTO, Mightyverse
Mary Ann Cotter, Founder and CEO, Smart Capsules
Corinne Chan, CTO, Chictopia
Christina A. Brodbeck, CEO, Pickv (formerly Design Lead, YouTube Mobile)
Angana Ghosh, Product Manager for Android developer tools, Google
Karyln Neel, Design Manager, eBay
Google, Tunis Tech Talk Building 43
1600 Amphitheatre Pwky,
Mountain View, CA
Speaker Bios:
Sarah Allen is CTO of Mightyverse, a mobile startup focused on helping people communicate across languages and cultures. The technology is still being incubated, but parts of it are emerging at Mightyverse.com. Currently, Mightyverse is primarily self-funded, so Sarah is paying the bills with independent consulting and training at Blazing Cloud. She is writing a book about cross-platformsmartphone development which highlights the Rhomobile and PhoneGap frameworks. She also has done some native mobile development development and is currently gaining real-world experience submitting to Apple’s App Store. In her spare time, she works to diversify the Ruby on Rails community with a focus on outreach to women. An industry veteran who has worked at Adobe, Macromedia, Aldus, Apple, Laszlo Systems and CoSA, Sarah was named one of the top 25 women of the web by San Francisco Women of the Web (SF WoW) in 1998.
Mary Ann Cotter is the Founder of Smart Capsules, Inc., the creators of the popular cooking app, Cooking Capsules. Cooking Capsules was awarded Top 20 status in the first Android Developer Challenge which won her international development team a collective $125,000 from Google. One of the first programs to grace the Android Market, Cooking Capsules was featured in articles by WIRED, TIME, The Wall Street Journal and others as a top pick for indie Android apps, praised for it’s innovative design and unique style.
Corinne Chan has over 12 years of experience in software development using Java related technologies. She has worked in various environments ranging from startups to Fortune 500 companies. Most recently, she served as Wells Fargo’s Mobile Banking Lead Applications Systems Engineer and prior to that served as one of the team’s Systems Architects. In her years with Mobile Banking, she has navigated through the challenges encountered when evaluating and developing mobile applications in the progressively changing mobile industry. Corinne’s current venture is a fashion social media website called Chictopia. Chictopia has entered the mobile space with an iPhone app where users can browse the latest top photos from Chictopia’s Editor’s Picks. Corinne has a Bachelors of Science Degree from UC Berkeley in Electrical Engineering Computer Science.
Christina A. Brodbeck is currently the co-founder and CEO of Pickv, a relationship and dating site that matches people based on their interests such as music, movies, books, and tv shows. Prior to Pickv, Christina most recently worked at YouTube where she joined as an early employee in 2005 and was the company’s first UI Designer. In her last two years at YouTube, she led UI Design for YouTube Mobile and was responsible for creating an interface that brought YouTube to cell phones. Christina enjoys helping young start-ups, is an angel investor in Heyzap, and sits on the advisory board for Achron. Before joining YouTube, she worked at MRL Ventures, NASA Ames Research Center, and Keynote systems. Christina holds a Master’s Degree in Instructional Technologies from San Francisco State University, and an undergraduate degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Angana Ghosh is the Product Manager for Android developer tools at Google. In addition, Angana manages the Android Open Source Project and Open Handset Alliance partnerships. Ever since she joined the mobile industry 10 years ago, she has been in love with the industry: helping handset manufactures create great devices and developers create content that’s changing how people interact with mobile devices. Prior to Google, Angana worked at Sun Microsystems and Ericsson as a Product Manager developing mobile platforms, apps and ecosystem around it.
Karyln Neel is a currently a design manager at eBay. She was the design lead on the eBay iPhone application, a top shopping app that to date has brought in over $500 million in sales. She has in-depth understanding of the mobile industry publishing her first white paper, The future of mobile, in 2000 while at Quidnunc, a UK based digital consultancy. Some of the clients filling her extensive retail and financial sector portfolio include: Charles Schwab, Wells Fargo, Washington Mutual, MBNA, Providian, Natural Wonders, Macy’s, Mervyn’s, Musicland, WebEx, HP and Sprint. Karlyn received her degree in Political Science at the University of California at Berkeley. Her certificate of Graphic Design, as well as additional MFA graphics courses, were obtained from the Academy of Art, San Francisco and UC Berkeley Extension respectively. As a member of the American Institute of Graphic Arts and the Graphic Artists Guild and former member of The San Francisco Design Museum Board of Directors and the Western Art Directors Club, Karlyn has had the opportunity to become a significant contributor to the evolution of her design community, thereby making her work particularly comprehensive.
Kris Corzine (Curator and Moderator of this Girl Geek Dinner on “How to Succeed in Mobile”) fell in love with mobile in 2000 when she picked up a disposable phone in London and started getting texts from friends. Kris has written mobile channels for 80108 Media and Go2 Network but it was her time at Japanese startup MobaMingle that really enabled her to push the limits of mobile design. While wearing several hats including content manager, interaction designer, social game designer and virtual good market manager, she pushed the limits of the WAP site and garnered kudos for “beautiful mobile UI” while creating a “bizarrely charming package“. Most importantly, users loved the site. Kris is currently honing her skills in ecommerce and user experience as a Content Strategist at eBay.
Join us on Thursday, June 11, 2009 at Roe in San Francisco (map) for a Girl Geek Dinner about women programmers! We have speakers on Python, Ruby on Rails, game development, and Javascript starting at 6:30pm. Doors open at 5:30pm for drinks, dinner, and networking. Event is FREE for girl geeks, and each girl geek can bring one guy geek. RSVP required on Eventbrite.
Featured Speakers:
Sarah Mei, Senior Software Engineer, LookSmart
Leah Culver, Software Engineer, Six Apart
Dori Smith, Author, Programmer
Amanda Wixted, Game Developer, Zynga
Opening Speaker from LOLapps:
Annie Chang, Co-Founder and Head of Product, LOLapps
Speaker Presentations & Bios:
Sarah Mei has spent ten years doing interesting things with code and data. For the last three years she’s been working in Ruby on Rails, which she loves for how it handles the tedious problems, freeing her to focus on the interesting ones. Sarah is a Senior Software Engineer at LookSmart. Sarah also heads the Open Workshop project at RailsBridge, runs introductory Ruby on Rails workshops for women, and supports people running their own by releasing workshop tools. She has, among other things, a CS degree from UC San Diego, a blog, a husband, a preschooler, a baby, a weakness for puzzle games and pirates, and an apartment with way too many computers in it.
Leah Culver was a co-founder and the lead developer of the social network and micro-blogging website Pownce, which was acquired by blog juggernaut Six Apart in November 2008. Now a software engineer at Six Apart, Leah uses her experience with Pownce to develop large scale social applications for future Six Apart projects. While creating the Pownce API she co-authored both the OAuth and OEmbed open API specifications and now maintains the popular Python OAuth library. Leah promotes open source, APIs, and the Django web framework on her blog at leahculver.com. In her free time she likes to play around with new technology and try new restaurants near her home in San Francisco.
Amanda Wixted has been developing games for mobile devices since 2005 and has worked on many platforms, mainly focusing on J2ME devices and the iPhone. She has worked for Octopi and Namco Networks, and was the first iPhone developer hired at Zynga, where she currently works. Some of her credited titles include Mafia Wars, Live Poker, Shuffleboard, Pac-Man, Ms Pac-Man, Pac-Man Arcade Golf, JellyPOP, and PoxNora. She lives in San Francisco where she sings in the band Delivery Is Possible and enjoys shopping and starting side project apps with friends.
Annie Chang welcomes the crowd at Bay Area Girl Geek Dinner #4. Annie is Co-Founder and Head of Product at LOLapps, one of the largest companies in the social application space, reaching over 44 MM monthly unique users. LOLapps offers tools that allow anyone to create, personalize and share customized applications on social networks. Prior to LOLapps, Annie was a product manager at BitTorrent and an engineer at Adobe. Annie holds a B.S. in EECS from UC Berkeley.
Sarah Mei speaks on how she got into programming Ruby on Rails.
Leah Culver and her paper slides held by volunteer.
Dori Smith and Amanda Wixted get their presentations projector-ready.
Amanda Wixted talks about developing iPhone games.
We have set the date. Tuesday Jan 26th at 6pm. This will be a very informal meeting of 5-15 of you gals to help us with the planning of the EGGD for 2010. If you want to be a part of this group, and can make that date and time work in your schedule, please e-mail us at evvgirlgeek@live.com to let us know you’re interested. You will receive a questionnaire that will help us determine which gals will be at this meeting. It is not an application or a test. We want a broad range of geeky representation. (We want IT geeks, social media geeks, science/math geeks, graphic design geeks…)
Once all who are interested have made contact, we will send you an invitation with the location of this Girl Geek Planning meeting. ( We will have a lot of information to cover, but will also have a lot of fun and make some new and great friendships!) We look forward to meeting you ALL!
We are proud to announce our affiliation with Girl Geeks around the world! Thanks to Janet Effron and Dana Nelson, Evansville is now an official Girl Geek Dinners location.
Girl Geek dinners are for any gal who considers herself a geek. See definition of geek girl below. So you’re a geek guy, no problem! Find a geek gal to go with you, and you can attend our events. We are in the planning stages and are looking for a few super geek gals to help us with the details of getting our first official geek girl dinner off the ground. If you want to be one of these elite geeks, then send us your contact info and we will add you to the list. Follow us on Twitter and look for a facebook page soon!
Neurobotics is a new field that lies at the intersection of Robotics and Neuroscience. In Neurobotics, robotic models and environments are used to understand the neuromuscular control and biomechanics of human limbs.
In parallel, robotic systems are developed to augment, replace and rehabilitate damaged sensorimotor functions. In this talk, a girl geek will talk about using a robotic tool to understand human level dexterity.
Topic: handling humongous amounts of sensor-originating scientific data.
Our dinner will be held in located in the Paul G. Allen Center for Computer Science & Engineering. Directions to campus (and the building) may be found here: http://www.cs.washington.edu/news/maps.html
Date: December 3rd, 2009
Time: 6pm-8pm
Location: University of Washington, Paul G. Allen Center for Computer Science & Engineering. The dinner will be in the atrium.
You’ve probably been wondering why you haven’t heard from us lately… so I wanted to post a note to let you know that we have not disappeared and we are indeed still here! We are trying our best to keep all the Girl Geek Dinners free (yes, FREE!) for all attendees. In order to accomplish that, it takes a company to step up and volunteer to sponsor an event. We’ve been very lucky to have great sponsors for past events, but recently, are having a hard time to find a company who would like to sponsor one of our events. For that reason, and now that it is getting close to holiday time, we have decided to plan our next event for January and in the meantime, we’ll be working very hard to get a sponsor. We’ve also got some great speakers lined up for January that I am very excited about!
A little late, but we had NoVA Girl Geek #4, which was also our one year anniversary last month and had such a great time.
I want to thank everyone who came out, It was nice seeing familiar faces and meeting new people.
A special thanks to Melanie (@sisarina on twitter) who heads up the #DCTwirlies, #DCTweetup and #DCTwixr events; for hipping me to Nando’s Peri Peri. It is such a great location to hold events like our girl geek dinners AND their food is seriously yummy.
We are planning NoVA Girl Geek #5, the last girl geek dinner for 2009, so stay tuned for more details on that. If you’d like to speak/present at this dinner, please send us an email or a DM on Twitter.
Hope all is well and that everyone is enjoying their summers. Thank you to those who attended the May 28th event despite the horrible downpour. And thanks again to Dell and Kace for generously sponsoring us!
Work is in progress for our next event. Please stay posted and as always, if you have ideas on venues, speakers, sponsors, or any questions/feedback, please email info@carolinagirlgeekdinners.com.
In the meantime, check out the video below of our 2nd event!
We want to thank everyone for coming to NoVA Girl Geek Dinner #3. It was really great meeting and talking with so many new people.
Thanks to Ghina (I believe she’s who suggested Continental), who suggested Continental Modern Pool Lounge as a place to hold the event. Excellent choice. We had a blast.
We are already thinking about the next event. As always, we welcome your suggestions.
Until then, you can follow us on twitter:
@novagirlgeeks
Jessica is @JessicaMMoss
Naomi is @digitialfangirl
Our second event is coming soon and it will be a great time!!!! We’ll be meeting on a Thursday evening this time on May 28th and will be located at Charleys in the Cotswold Village Shops. Join us for an evening to meet, socialize, and network with other women in IT.  Guy geeks are invited to all events as well.  This event is FREE for all, but RSVP is required and space is limited!  For questions on the event, please contact info@carolinagirlgeekdinners.com
When: May 28, 2009
6:00 – 6:30PM: Registration, Dinner buffet, and Networking
6:30 – 7:30PM: Welcome and Presentation “IT Best Practices (and how the KBOX can help you implement them!)” presented by Brett Welborn of KaceÂ
7:30 – 8:30PM: Door Prizes and Networking
Where: Charleys (Located in the Cotswold Village Shops) 274 South Sharon Amity
Charlotte, NC 28211
Click Here
Â
 Thank you to Dell and Kace for your support and generously sponsoring our event! Â
Our new logo was created by Alex Lafreniere. It is based off of the original Girl Geek Dinner logo and adds a little Carolina style. Thank you Alex for creating this fabulous logo for the Carolina Girl Geek Dinners! Alex is reachable at alxandre.lafreniere@gmail.com .
To connect with other members, see pictures from past events, start/participate in discussions, etc., join the Facebook and Linked In groups. Search for Carolina Girl Geek Dinners or visit these URLs to join!
We had 39 attendees last week and a great presentation by Terrie Depew on being more productive throughout the work day by using Office 2007. Thanks again to Microsoft Services for hosting our first event!
Please stay tuned for details on the next event. In the meantime, if you have ideas on venues, speakers, sponsors, or any questions/feedback, please email info@carolinagirlgeekdinners.com
Thank you to those who attended and we look forward to seeing you again next time! If you were unable to make the premier event, I look forward to seeing you at the second event.
She’s Geeky is coming to Northern Virginia – the DC Area.
April 18th McLean Virginia (Tyson’s Corner). http://www.shesgeeky.org/ Early bird admission is $40 until April 1 – $45 regular until April 11 and $50 after that.
Student admission is $20
It’s spring time and we are ready to get out to have a little fun. We are so happy the first two events were such a success. We hope everyone comes out for this social event, so we can all let our hair down, mingle and have a great time.
She’s Geeky is coming to Northern Virginia – the DC Area.
April 18th McLean Virginia (Tyson’s Corner). http://www.shesgeeky.org/
Early bird admission is $40 until April 1 – $45 regular until April 11 and $50 after that.
Student admission is $20
We are inviting women from a divers range of industries together for a day of interactive learning and industry cross pollination.
To us Geekiness is self defined – from those with advanced degrees in mathematics, science and engineering. To skilled programmers who are in large enterprises, government or startups. To women who have taught themselves how to code the PHP on their side bars on their blog or just super enthusiastic users of technology.
Each city has a different mix of technologies – DC has a variety of fields
* the nonprofit and advocacy sectors,
* government, defense, aerospace, and intelligence
* Web portals – like AOL
* startups innovating
The sessions are put forward by the women who attend the event – and are diverse. They include expert topics about their particular expertise, hosting conversations about issues of interest both technical and personal (like how to balance work and family), exploring start-up ideas, introductions or deep dives to different programming languages or frameworks, sharing stories about what it was like to work in the early days of the industry, introduction to public speaking and many others.
Beginning at 9 AM each day, we start with a blank wall and, in less than an hour, through a highly participative process, create a full day, multi-track conference agenda that is relevant and inspiring to everyone there.
From there, we go to separate areas or rooms assigned to each topic. The session can be a presentation, inquiry about a question or discussion about an issue or technical field. or. One participant volunteers to record the proceedings.
The notes from each session are collected in the newsroom, then a book is compiled with all the notes from the conference and distributed to everyone who attended.
—————–
Sponsorship opportunities for both small and large companies are available too.
If you have questions you can e-mail us at info@shesgeeky.org
