Category: Location

London Girl Geek September Event :: Superstruct 'Play the Game, Invent the Future'

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London Girl Geek September Event :: Superstruct ‘Play the Game, Invent the Future’

We’re doing something different for September’s Girl Geek Event, we’re inventing the future! We’re going to complete Superstruct Missions to focus on ways to address the below-listed five Superthreats (from the Superstruct game site) that may face Earth’s inhabitants in the year 2019. So if you’d like to join us at the WCIT, please reserve your place here and we’ll provide the lowdown as all is announced on 22nd September when the game launches.

Girl Geeks of the World Unite – It would be fantastic to have our fellow Girl Geeks in other countries also join us for the 30th September in their own location if they’re interested – as this is more a game event and informal get-together then just holding the event at a local pub/cafe might be a nice option! If you’d like to arrange this just email nicole dot mathison at londongirlgeekdinners.co.uk who will send you links and materials to run your local workshop!

Superstruct is the world’s first massively multiplayer forecasting game. By playing the game, you’ll help us chronicle the world of 2019–and imagine how we might solve the problems we’ll face. Because this is about more than just envisioning the future. It’s about making the future, inventing new ways to organise the human race and augment our collective human potential. *The Superstruct story starts SEPT 22 and the game launches OCT 6.

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The five Superthreats are:

OUTLAW PLANET – In 2019, the mobile internet and sensor networks we rely on to hold our societies together are being hacked, griefed, and gamed.

GENERATION EXILE – In 2019, our neighbors are climate refugees and economic collapse victims who are swarming the planet, looking for a place to live.

QUARANTINE – In 2019, Respiratory Distress Syndrome is here, and it’s not going anywhere. Outbreaks are just something we live with.

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POWER STRUGGLE – In 2019, we’re all caught up in the “alternative fuel” wars as the world fights over what will take the place of oil.

RAVENOUS – In 2019, the food chain is broken. So we’re inventing new ways to feed ourselves.

For more info. visit Superstruct Fortress movie download

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 and the Superstruct Facebook Group to sign up for news and updates!

If you’d like to get involved before the 30th September events then participate in the Advance Missions, for example, read the dinner 2019 stories people have submitted, based on the question, “You’re you, but ten years in the future. What are you having for dinner, where are you living, and what are you thinking or talking about?” Visit http://www.iftf.org/node/2098 and submit your own.

Many thanks to Anne Stafford at iT4Communities and Barry Easton from the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists for helping arrange this event!

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London Girl Geek Dinner 3 Year Anniversary Round Up

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Wow what can I say… it’s been an amazing three years… I still can’t believe that they have gone so fast and how the events have grown over the years.  Looking back at that very first Girl Geek Dinner I don’t think I could ever have imagined that one little idea ending up as far reaching and as well recieved as it has been.   I’m looking forward to seeing what happens next.  Its all one very big adventure and I’m looking forward to seeing what unfolds in the next few years!

So now that I’ve got over being all sentimental about it… lets get down to the details of what happened at the 3 year anniversary which we were fortunate enough to hold at the Google offices.  First of all we had a great dinner courtesy of the Google’s hospitality and catering facilities.  They do wonderful food and were great hosts for this event.

We kicked off the evening with a presentation from Google’s very own Karen Groenink who spoke on UI design, the thoughs behind some of the design work that went into the YouTube mobile UI and some of the challenges of working with mobile devices.

After this we went and moved onto Technology and Schools with Drew Buddie who is a teacher at a London School.  He spoke about the technologies that schools use, the challenges that they face and some of the solutions that they have come up with to get children involved with technology.

And finally we had the discussion on Work Life balance hosted by Dr Al James who has been researching this subject in depth.  The session was well structured, focusing on key aspects of work life balance and bringing forward suggestions to problems when balancing work and home life.

The video from all the sessions will follow in due course, however in the meantime I’ve placed some of the slides onto slideshare for you to browse.  We will post the video up as soon as it’s been edited and uploaded!

If you would like to read what others have said about this event then feel free to take a look here:

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We have a winner

.!.

Now that Developer Day voting is open the competition to an MSDN subscription is closed. We ended up with three potential female speakers, one from an MVP, Bev Hatchard who spoke at DDD Scotland and is now bitten by the presenting bug, one from Chris Hart

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on virtual worlds and a submission from Helen Emerson

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Now the competition was going to end when voting ended; but as Bev is an MVP and already has an MSDN subscription and Chris has a subscription from Dave Sussman that leaves Helen. This isn’t a win by default; Helen has been ramping up her talks at usergroups as well, so last night when she spoke at my usergroup last week I presented her with her prize; please enjoy it Helen!

From speaking to a few others some potential speakers had considered it but were too nervous to attempt it; this is perfectly understandable – my first speaking engagement was a favour for a friend at work who forgot to tell me it was for a major conference and there could be up to 100 people in the room. Nerves are unfortunately part of it, they never go away and I’m not sure how to address that. If you’re one of the nervous folks would a mentor help? I’ve been thinking about this for a while and popping emails back and forth between a few of us; the community needs more speakers – how can the community help you overcome your nerves or objections and get you up to the front?

If you missed the change to submit for DDD you have another option. With REMIX around the corner on 18/19th September 2008, once again the community is gearing up to provide its own unique brand of  “entertainment while you learn” plus opportunities for all members of the UK Community to take part in events and promote their groups and themselves.

To that end, the REMIX team are organising another Speaking Competition along the lines seen at TechEd and the UK Launch.  The community team is offering a fantastic opportunity to do just this by offering the chance to speak at a major event to your user group members.  In the process they can get some help in improving their speaking skills plus have a chance to win an Xbox 360!  Yes “Ready Steady Speak” is back for REMIX.

The Secret of NIMH rip For those of you not familiar with it, the format is as follows;

Contestants will present a 5 minute session on a subject of their choice relating to Web Development or Web Design.  They will present in front of the REMIX audience and in front of a panel of judges.  If there are more than a  certain number of contestants (TBD), there will be ‘heats’ earlier in the day with the winners of the heats in a ‘speak-off’ in the evening session.  The ‘speak-off’ will take place as stated in the evening of the first day of MIX and the first prize is an XBox 360 and some goodies!

Mandatory Prerequisites:

  • Speakers must NOT have previously presented ‘full sessions’ at DDD, TechEd, DevWeek, SDN, SQLBITS, VBUG Conference, NxtGenUG FEST or any similar such conferences.
  • Speakers must create a new session of their own with new material which can be based on existing material but cannot be a simple copy of it.
  • Speakers must limit their session to as close to 5 minutes as possible (overrunning time will cause the speaker to be marked down.)
  • Speakers must not have previously won Speaker Idol or “Ready Steady Speak” UK Launch
  • Speakers must state their desire to enter the competition by no later than COP Monday 15th September 2008.

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  • Speakers should provide if at all possible their own laptop, but one can be provided if necessary.  The speaker should notify the organisers of any software prerequisites.
  • Speakers should have spoken previously at a User Group meeting even if only for a 10 min mini-session or ‘nugget’.  This is NOT mandatory.

This is a great starting point for your speaking “career”; all you need is a five minute topic and the feedback you receive will be constructive and helpful, unlike the real Pop Idol. If this is tempting then Dave McMahon is the person to email.

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Dundee University – YouTube Student Competition!

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Are you a Student between the ages of 15 and 21 based in the UK? Well if you are then you have just come to the right website! This is your opportunity to win £500. Imagine what you could do with that… So what do you need to do… well here’s all the details! If you aren’t a student please pass on the information and give someone you know the opportunity to shine!!! Alternatively put forward a few suggestions for the students here that might just get them started on their video!

Young people in schools and colleges all over the UK are being challenged to create the next `Youtube’ sensation in a major new competition being launched by the University of Dundee.

The Interactive Media Design programme at Dundee is asking 15 to 21-year-olds to make a three-minute video on the theme `Artificially Intelligent’ and post it on the Youtube website (www.youtube.com)

The competition is split into two age groups – 15 to 17-year-olds and 18 to 21-year-olds. The winners in each category will receive a prize of £500.

“Interactive media design is all about matching creativity with the technical know-how to do something like putting together a video and placing it on the web,” said Morna Simpson, lecturer on the IMD degree programme at Dundee.

“Our students do the most amazing work, and are winning some of the best jobs going in high-tech and creative industries. We want to give a big shout about that.”

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Young people with creative talent should know that the University of Dundee is the place to come, if you want to do some of the most innovative and ground-breaking work that is going on right now”

Gary Duncan and Andrew Cook, two Interactive Media Design graduates have set the ball rolling by writing, filming, editing and acting in the first “Artificially Intelligent” video.

“It is really good fun!” said Morna, “ A genius piece of work, though I say so myself!.

“Now we want to see what young people around the UK can produce – hopefully we are going to find some real stars through this competition because we are sure there is a lot of untapped talent out there.

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“The theme of the competition is fairly broad so the field is wide open to be as creative as possible. We have got some of our students to create an initial video which can be viewed now – the challenge to other young people around the UK is to show us you can do something which really stands out.”

Morna said a site like Youtube gave young people a hugely powerful tool to show off their creative talents.

“The great advantage of something like Youtube is that a project like making a small video can now reach a vast audience very quickly,” said Morna. “ If you look through some of the most popular videos on Youtube you will find that great ideas win over high-tech equipment every time!”

The competition will be open until November. All details can be found on the dedicated website at …http://imd.dundee.ac.uk/competition

The information in this post was sent via Interactive Media Design who is a collaboration between Duncan of Jordanstone College and the School of Computing at the University of Dundee. This unique blend of disciplines gives students the wide range of tools to meet the design challenges of the 21st century.

www.dundee.ac.uk/design/bsc-interactive-design.php.

If you haven’t already seen our recent interview with Steve Bannerman, Marketing Director of Ugobe then do take a look… the Pleo’s a great example of HCI and early stage AI. Let see if we can get a few girl geeks into this competition! It’s a great opportunity!

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SEEDCAMP DEADLINE APPROACHING FAST!

Hi I thought you guys might be working on some cool projects and interested in the opportunity to take them to the next level.

From securing funding to developing the right network, young entrepreneurs in Europe face challenges in building globally competitive technology businesses. Through the provision of seed capital and a world class network of mentors, we want to provide a catalyst for Europe’s next generation of entrepreneurs. Applications are now open (http://application.seedcamp.com/) and being accepted till August 10th. More details are on our website and blog (www.seedcamp.com

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and blog.seedcamp.com).

Seedcamp is where Europe’s top young founders can come together in one place.

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London Girl Geek Dinner 3 Year Anniversary – Now Full

The three year anniversary event is now full.  I have requested that Google now open up the reserves list but will let you know as soon as this is available.  Please bear with us.  I have also requested they make known the drop out e-mail address for anyone who drops out at the last minute.  (hopefully those signed up should get an e-mail regarding this within the next 24 hours (keeping my fingers crossed!)

In the meantime whilst Google are sorting themselves out with the above I have created a temporary reserves list which I will add into the Google reserves list as soon as it is available.

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(London) Girl Geek Dinner: 3 Year Anniversary! – Sponsored by Google!

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Girl Geek Dinners have been going now for almost three years!  (Officially that would be 3 years on the 16th August 2008 but due to venue availability we are celebrating on the 28th instead!)  So we had a long think about the perfect place for a reasonably large girl geek birthday/ anniversary party and came to the conclusion that Google are great hosts with the perfect space, so we asked them if they would like to join us in our celebration! Lucky for us they said yes!!!

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We thought it was a good chance to get together, share some wine, food and conversation!

It should be a fun event and one that I hope you will all enjoy.  There is only one release of tickets for this event.  After which a reserves list will be created.  Tickets will be strictly on a first come first served basis.  Sign up early to avoid disappointment.  We will also do our best to live stream the event via UStream.tv to here and the girlgeekdinners.com site.

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Round Up: London Girl Geek Dinner with IT4C

We had a great time at our London Girl Geek Dinner on the 25th June with IT4C and the talks were fantastic.  This was a must attend event for anyone who has a bit of spare time and likes to create things and work with others.

UPDATE: here’s the video, with the slides below. Sarah Blow introduced the speakers:

The slides give most of the information that you would need to get involved with IT4Communities and AbilityNet:

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Round Up: London Girl Geek Dinner – Getting Into IT

A few weeks back the London Girl Geeks descended upon Central Foundation Girls School to meet the students, both past and present, to discuss how to get into IT.  The event was sponsored by OpenNETCF Consulting Black Christmas download Big Stan the movie Gang of Roses dvdrip

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Somewhere in Time full Oh, God! You Devil ipod , who do consultancy work on .net and specialize in Windows Mobile, Windows CE and embedded software development. Without them we wouldn’t have had the great array of pizza’s and soft drinks before the start of the talks!  They were very much appreciated.

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The session was good and the students seemed to get a lot out of it, as did a few of the teachers there.  If you are thinking about going into your local school and talking then it’s well worth doing!  I’m sure the teachers who follow our blog will tell you that!  And the schools are very good at co-ordinating and helping outsiders come into the schools.

Take a look at the video and feel free to add your own pieces of advice for youngsters looking to get into the IT industry in the comments below.  You can also annotate the video with your comments.  I haven’t added any so far but they are open to all for comments!

ONLINE SURVEY: Gendered Experiences of Flexible Working / Work-Life ‘Balance’

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Dr Al James, Queen Mary Unniversity of London  [email protected] has been doing a research project which explores the business benefits of IT firms (Dublin and Cambridge) providing flexible working arrangements to help workers juggle work, personal life and family.

Would you be able to spare a few minutes to complete a short, anonymised and confidential online survey about your everyday experiences of juggling home, work and family; your preferred flexible working arrangements; and the ways in which your employer gains from helping you achieve a better work-life balance.  I’d be very grateful – all participants will be sent final copies of the final research report.  You will also be entered for a prize draw hamper in the autumn!

The survey is linked Planet of the Apes movie Hard Candy the movie off Dr Al James webpage here:  http://www.aljames.org.uk

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Thank you very much for your time.

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