Girl Geek Dinners

June dinner is booked!

Just a note that June’s event is booked solid & we have no additional spaces available.

If you didn’t reserve a space on Eventbrite, we’re sorry and hope to see you at future events.

Thanks for your understanding….

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.

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!

TGGD#10: The Role and Importance of Innovation in a Tough Economy

This is a guest post by Connie Crosby.

Our speaker/facilitator for the evening was Candice Faktor, Managing Director, Corporate Development and Innovation, TorStar Digital. Most recently, Candice was promoted to Managing Director, Corporate Development and Innovation where she is charged with fuelling innovation in the company and exploring acquisitions and partnerships to drive Torstar Digital’s growth and leadership in the industry. Candice was instrumental in the 2005 creation of Torstar Digital. Prior to this, Candice held the role of GM, toronto.com, one of Torstar Digital’s most prominent and trafficked consumer websites. She also played a key role in the foundation of several start-up ventures and partnerships including Olive Canada Network, which has become one of Canada’s most successful premium online ad networks.

Candice led us through some discussion, and gave us some solid examples both from her own experience and from other industries while inviting us to share our own experience. This session very much picked up where TGGD #9 roundtable in December left off.

We started off with a quick review of what people consider innovation to be, and then Candice took us through a warm-up exercise. Each table was given a regular drinking straw, and everyone was invited to share an innovative idea of what they could do with that straw. Ideas ranged the gamut from blowing bubbles to making an earring to learning how to circle breathe (something I had never heard of!). This showed us that, even with constraints, one can be very creative, and sometimes those constraints can even drive innovation.

She then took us through some stories of innovation during times of constraint. Among the stories that emerged:

• how her Torstar Digital endeavour was originally a minor player at Toronto Star, there were just two of them in a small office with barely any budget or readership, and over time they have found ways to make it a major part of the organization;
• the use of Open Source is rising as organizations seek alternatives to expensive systems;
• the Cheap Eats series of books came about when Alexa Clark left her job and was trying to find a project to do for 3-4 months until she found something else. Today it is a growing series of publications.

The last recession was in 2001; what emerged in 2001?

• Google
• first iPod in Oct 2001 – we had CD players and small mp3 players that held about 100 songs. It was a huge leap for Apple – 1000 songs and beautiful design. There was no clear leader in music player industry. 19 product innovations since the launch. They kept investing in the product. 2008 the iPod was apple’s top product, not their computers.
• Napster – 99 cents for a song – closed down in 2001 but left a mark on how we buy music

In times of cut-backs, you still have to invest in innovation. For example, Toronto.com was created in 2000; in 2001 they cut everything e.g. the link with the prominent Citysearch website in the U.S., and put it under newspaper leadership who did not understand. They have been playing catch up ever since. Meanwhile, for Workopolis which was also created in 2000, they kept investing. It is now the top Canadian job search site; US competitors have left the market.

What does it mean to be in technology and digital media today? The group seemed to agree things are different today than in past recessions:

• people can take things online, build podcasts and blogs online, take part in the market conversation
• investment still needs to be made in the projects
• Apple – now iTunes and app store are innovative ways to bring in money, even if they do not sell new iPods and computers
• people may go to the web because they are desperate but don’t necessarily understand it; the ones who do it well will stand out
• a lot of things are challenging conventional wisdom; the difficulty is figuring out whether you will get it right

Is it a good time to be in tech/digital media?

• yes, as far as setting the groundwork, but money is not good at this time
• transform or die – things are not going back – digital and technology are helping businesses to transform. It is a good time to be helping businesses transform.

According to industry statistics, only digital and gaming are growing (digital = Internet media and digital formats of traditional media eg. Tv, mobile)

Challenges we are facing:

• people want more for less – how can you offer more without spending money?
• organizations are behind the times
• companies don’t understand that they have to innovate to get ahead
• the expectation that everything is free (how do you bring in an income without breaking the trust you have built with your clients or audience?)
• finding a viable business model
• access to capital; currently there is little or no venture capital (VC) available, especially in Canada where the market is small
• traditional communications on their own are no longer working; how do you use a mix between traditional and new communications; how do you bridge that gap and find the right balance?
• gaining access to the right people (people senior enough, for example) to show them innovative ideas and have them acted upon so your ideas will really make a difference
• FEAR: it can be paralyzing; how do you move beyond fear of uncertainty, cut-backs, and the unknown? Defensiveness starts to kick in as a result of fear.

We came away from the evening with a sense of optimism and potential for the future. From the enthusiasm in the room, I also sense a feeling that people want to really find ways to support each other beyond just talking once a month at meetings. We seem to be gelling into a real community.

Thank you to our generous sponsor for the evening, FITC Conferences, providing conferences for those who work in the new media development and design field. All in attendance are being offered free admission to FITC Toronto 2009 April 25-28.

A slice of pizza, a chic sweater and a lot of transparency

January TGGD – Innovation in Tough Times with Candice Faktor from TorStar Digital

Happy New Year to all you girls out there in geekland! We’re gearing up for our first dinner of 2009, and registration is now open on the TGGD wiki!

Our speaker for the evening will be Candice Faktor, Managing Director, Corporate Development and Innovation, TorStar Digital. Candice will speak to us about the role and importance of innovation in a tough economy.

An innovator and strategist in the Canadian online media industry, Candice is passionate about where the web is headed.

Most recently, Candice was promoted to Managing Director, Corporate Development and Innovation where she is charged with fuelling innovation in the company and exploring acquisitions and partnerships to drive Torstar Digital’s growth and leadership in the industry. Prior to this, Candice held the role of GM, toronto.com, one of Torstar Digital’s most prominent and trafficked consumer websites.

Candice has also distinguished herself as founder of ourfaves.com, a site that harnesses the power of user-generated content, city search and social networking, allowing users to share and discover local favourites on a citywide scale. Since its launch in May 2007, traffic has grown tremendously and the site will launch in other cities across North America soon.

Candice was instrumental in the 2005 creation of Torstar Digital. She played a key role in the foundation of several start-up ventures and partnerships including Olive Canada Network, which has become one of Canada’s most successful premium online ad networks.

Before joining Torstar, Candice spent four years with the Monitor Group, a top tier strategy consulting firm, acting as consultant to a range of international organizations.

Candice has a genuine love for new technology and media and finds keeping up with where the web is heading fun. Candice is also passionate about enjoying the city, reading, movies, traveling to new countries, spending time with her family, friends and husband Corey, learning new things and giving back to the community.

As per last months’ dinner, we’d like the evening to be open and collaborative, with lots of time for group discussion – so bring your questions for Candice and each other, and please sign up on the wiki if you plan to attend!

We also have a very generous sponsorship provided by FITC conferences for those who work in the new media development and design field – free admission for all January TGGD attendees to FITC Toronto 2009 April 25-28, a $650 value!

November Montreal Girl Geek Dinner: Building a Gaming Rig with Janina Szkut

TGGD#9: Roundtable on Innovation was a Hit!

This is a guest post by Connie Crosby, who facilitated the round table discussion on Innovation at the last TGGD on November 20th.

There is no better time to create a community of friends who can come together and execute on your brilliant idea. – Passion is recession proof, 12Seconds blog (Oct. 9, 2008)

We had a fantastic turn-out for the first ever Girl Geek Dinner round table, with excellent participation by everyone. And the feedback has been very positive. I was invited to summarize the session for us–if I missed your idea, or if you have additional thoughts, please do add to the comments.

The Warm-Up

We started out the discussion after dinner with a warm-up exercise. I asked everyone to write words or phrases that describe “innovation” onto sticky notes. We then posted them to a wall, and we had three fine volunteers sort them by theme. This is what we came up with:

The energy just jumps off the page as you read through that list, doesn’t it? And I love that cartoon that someone added in! What struck us is that there were very few mentions of technology. It was more about ways of thinking.

Two Questions

Our second exercise was to answer these two questions:

1. How do you get new ideas?
2. How are you already innovating?

We went around the whole room on the first question, and it was amazing the number of ways that people use to either focus themselves down or broaden their thinking. There were some who tap into the subconscious by going for a walk, taking a shower, exercising or sleeping. Others changed something as a stimulus, such as learning something new or even moving some place new. Others had more practical suggestions, such as looking to areas outside their own for ideas, copying others, or walking backwards through a problem to find a solution. There were some who found playing with children opened them up to seeing things with fresh eyes. For the second question, people described their various projects and ways of working. It was good to be a little introspective.

Your Questions

We then opened the questions up to the room. Here is a summary:

1. Q: Are bad economic times an opportunity or a challenge?

   A:

   • it depends upon your organization
   • being on a smaller budget helps you stay focussed and come up with creative solutions; it is easier to watch what you are spending with $20 than it is with $100,000.
   • look for people already in your organization for hidden interests and skills and leverage those
   • it forces you to listen to your customer, become more customer-focussed.
2. Q: How do you get a conservative company to innovate?

   A:

   • persistence
   • patience
   • find someone who will listen
   • celebrate and build on small victories
   • you have to show the company that it will hurt the organization not to innovate
   • if the guy at the top cannot see the benefit, it may be too difficult in the end

My Suggestions (& Questions) for the Next Step

The number of deep thinkers in the room was impressive, and I was amazed as to how engaged in the topic everyone was. This is indeed building into a real community!

We didn’t have enough time to talk about it, but I believe the next step in making this group valuable is to find ways for us to further support each other in our projects and career aspirations. We already do that on a one-to-one basis as we meet each other and get to know what we all do. But how can we take that to a more organized level? How can we promote one another so that we all succeed?

Ideas for Another Round Table?

I believe our illustrious organizers Jenny Bullough, Leona Hobbs and Maggie Fox would like to try another round table discussion in the future. If you have a topic you would like to discuss, or if you would like to volunteer to lead a discussion, let them know.

Thank you to Leona for inviting me to facilitate this discussion. And a big thank you to PriceWaterhouseCoopers who sponsored the dinner!

Cheers,
Connie

Change of plans: December – Less Political, More Authentic

Montreal Girl Geek Dinner December: Patricia Tessier & Michelle Blanc: A Digital Plan for Quebec/ Un plan numérique pour le Québec

The Montreal Girl Geek Dinners is extremely proud to announce December’s Dinner with “blogeuses extraordinaires” Patricia Tessier and Michelle Blanc.