We are very proud of Bristol Girl Geek Dinners member Jo Reid of Calvium who has been announced as finalist in the National Everywoman in Technology Awards. The winners will be announced on 29th March so good luck Jo!

Calvium are based in Watershed’s Pervasive Media Studio, where we held our last dinner. The up-and-coming tech company has designed a mobile app development software platform called AppFurnace which makes it more affordable and easy for small businesses to make their own apps. Clients that have already used the service include the Royal Shakespeare Company, Historic Royal Palaces, Soho Theater and many others. The idea came after the company spotted a gap in the market for a method of making cost-effective smartphone apps, with the typical AppFurnace app costing a fraction of the usual commercial cost.

Jo Reid said:

“We created AppFurnace because of our passion for helping people in the creative industries. Its an innovative product that inspires innovation in others.”

Jo, 49, has been involved with the cutting edge of technology throughout her career, starting out on novel ways to design copier interfaces at Xerox, through expert systems for computer aided software engineering tools at Texas Instruments and penultimately working on applications of pervasive computing technologies at Hewlett-Packard Research Laboratories.

Jo is currently responsible for consultancy, sales and marketing. In this role she runs training courses and applies her expertise in mobile experience design and her knowledge of location and context aware applications to help customers create history inspired located games, community story telling walks, trails, hunts and quiz games  as mobile apps.

The AppFurnace platform allows designers and front-end developers to make beautiful custom mobile apps for clients, providing everything that you need to make your own apps.

A Bristol based Freelance Art Director & Designer who has used the service is Tyrone Probert. He said:

“Using AppFurnace has opened up a whole new world of design and business opportunities. I currently have at least two Apps in development which I’m hoping will lead to some bigger revenue streams in 2012.”

Jo has also written a blog piece celebrating female app makers: http://www.appfurnace.com/2012/02/the-female-technology-touch/

If any fellow Girl Geeks are  interested in Everywoman and perhaps getting involved in the awards next year you can find out more info here: http://www.everywoman.com/techawards/finalists