Category: Location

GGD #67 Cryptography and Cluster Computing with Scott Logic

Susan Thomson: “Security is a game”, Susan Thomson

SusanThomson

Susan is a developer at Scott Logic. Previously she was a postdoctoral researcher in cryptography at the University of Bristol. Please don’t talk to her about your altcoin

Good cryptography is becoming increasingly important for everyone. But how do we know if an encryption scheme is any good? Susan will talk about what it means when cryptographers say that an encryption scheme is secure.

Paulin Shek: Apache Spark – what, and why”, Paulin Shek

Paulin Shek

Paulin is a developer at Scott Logic. When not doing client work, she’s levered some time to write internal training materials on Apache Spark, and she also runs a Data Engineering study group that meets on a weekly basis.

Cluster computing is something that has become more accessible, beyond academics and large companies, over the past few years. This is partly due to frameworks such as Apache Spark. However, with the advent of new technologies comes a whole new set of terms and buzzwords. Paulin will give an introduction to cluster computing, and explain the motivation behind Spark.

When

Thursday 17th May 2018 – 6.30/7  – 9pm

Doors open at 18:30 talks start around 7pm

Where

This meetup is kindly sponsored once again by Scott Logic who have been hosting us for a few years now with some great speakers.
They have a new website https://www.scottlogic.com which regularly posts new and interesting tech blogs and has a careers page, which illustrates new vacancies across their 4 office locations.

Sign Up

As always, we welcome men to our group, but to keep our audience predominantly female, we ask that all men are accompanied by a woman (just add a +1 on the meetup) here Bristol Girl Geek Dinners

GGD #66 Survival guide for being heard and encouraging diversity of thinking

Caroline Morris is a data geek turned Leadership coach, who founded Wide Eyed Group, a leadership and team coaching business.  Her passion of developing people was nurtured during her 20-year career working in data; leading teams of data scientists, developers and analysts.

Her background also means she understands the pressures faced within technical teams. Like the cultural barriers that can exist between logical, technically-minded data scientists and their extroverted, fast-paced colleagues in sales and marketing. Or the challenges of moving into a leadership position after excelling in a more practical ‘doer’ role.

Caroline’s coaching style is adaptable, slotting seamlessly into any organisation and providing actionable strategies that teams can use to transform their way of working.

She has turned her love of “helping people to be the best they can be” into her new career of transformational coaching:

A qualified coach, who uses Positive Psychology, Transactional Analysis, NLP techniques with Nancy Kline’s Thinking Environment in her coaching practice. Her passion for the power of attention and listening has led her to become a Time to Think Facilitator and she can help you and your team communicate more powerfully with each other.  She is also a Master Emotional Capital Report practitioner who can help you understand your level of EQ and areas to develop to help you develop yourself and your team.

Caroline previously ran a couple of great workshops for the Womens Tech Hub WTHub.org during the day and it went down so well that we thought she would be the perfect speaker for our women who are working. We feel that it would be great to learn some skills on how to survive in the workplace and have a voice as its a discussion that we hear often that our members struggle with.

caroline morris

Website:  https://www.wideeeyedgroup.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wideeyedgroup

Linked in: https://www.linkedin.com/in/caroline-morris-73/

When

Wednesday 21st March 2018 – 6.30/7  – 9pm

Doors open at 18:30 talks start around 7pm

Where

The food and hosting is kindly sponsored by Institute of Physics Publishing http://ioppublishing.org/

IOP Publishing, Temple Circus, Temple Way, Bristol, BS1 6HG

Sign Up

As always, we welcome men to our group, but to keep our audience predominantly female, we ask that all men are accompanied by a woman (just add a +1 on the meetup) here Bristol Girl Geek Dinners

Pies De Resistance: Bath Girl Geek Dinner 2018 #1

Hi All,

We are very excited to announce that we will be having our first social for the year straight after the IT Girls Collaborative meet up on 8 March. Very informal, we’ll be heading to the Raven in Bath for a tasty pie and hopefully some good chat about the direction of the Bath Girl Geek Dinners. For this event, we don’t have a speaker booked but hope we can a debate about what we think is needed in Bath to take the vision of Girl Geek Dinners forward here.

So what’s it all about again? Let’s have a recap… (word credit to Bristol Girl Geeks)

The Girl Geek Dinners were founded on the 16th August 2005 as a result of one girl geek who got annoyed and frustrated about being one of the only females attending technical events. She was tired of being assumed to be marketing, tired of constantly having to prove herself and decided that she just wanted a change and to be treated just the same as any other geek out there, gender and age aside.

So what did this geeky girl do to change the world of geeks and girl geeks everywhere… well she got in touch with a few well known bloggers, posted online about her idea of getting geeks to educate one another over dinner and then arranged the first girl geek dinner event with a little help from her friends. The first event had 35 people at it all from London and the surrounding area, shortly after people started to hear about the events and companies started sponsoring them to cover the food and drinks cost.

Then they started popping up in other UK cities as she trained others up in how to run the events, spreading the formula for them… so they then started popping up in Europe… and shortly after that over in Canada… Now they are starting to pop up in New Zealand and Australia. Who knows where will be next

The Vision

The long term vision of these events is to bring Geek (or if necessary Girl Geek) Dinners into schools, colleges and universities around the world to encourage people to embrace their passion for something like technology and to explore what they can do with it. Even better will be doing this in countries where computers are scarce but valuable. Imagine groups of children around a laptop learning about the technology, getting all excited by it no matter what country they are in.

Why should you care?

The UK population of software engineers and technical expertise is diminishing; the amount of work in the UK for skilled technical staff is on the rise. The amount of women in the technical industry is less than 10% and the number of young women (and in fact men) applying to university for a technical degree course is dwindling. This pattern however is not just occurring in the UK but around the world. Why? This is partly due to social stereotypes (see work from Saatchi & Saatchi on Lady Geek), partly to do with university entry requirements (many which require A level maths as standard), and sometimes just in lack of self belief that people can do these roles successfully. Looking at a younger age group they see technology as dull and about sitting looking at a computer all day! We want to break down these myths about technology and the industry at large! Vive la Resistance!!

Technology has been one of thosPieminister-The Ravene black arts for so many years and we think that it’s about time that these myths were broken down and the truth about them brought to light. Social stereotypes damaging the industry will be broken down, and it’s all about educating the media, the people and attracting social change. Along with this is the opportunity to make changes that can affect everyone, even those in the third world. It is an opportunity and one that I think would we well worth anyone who is up for a challenge to consider.

So see you on the 8 March, for a drink and a pie from 8pm. Please sign up to the meet up and RSVP for the event. By the end of the night we hope we’ll have the bones of an action plan for what we want to do for the women Geeks of Bath and its surrounding areas.

Marianne and Serrie

GGD #65 Summoning the Genie: Drones, Robotics and Machine Learning

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GGD presents an evening of talks looking at the opportunities and challenges of robotics and machine learning featuring:-

  • Bot or not? Robotic technology in our lives today

  • Drop the drone – challenging the security of drone technology

  • Cyber Security Machine Learning

Our team of speakers :-

Gudrun Fedorowich

Gudrun is a Lead Domain Engineer with Lloyds Banking Group specialising in application security.  She holds an MSc in Information Technology from UWE and has wide ranging experience in Security and IT within the Financial Services sector.  Gudrun had a pre-IT life working in marketing, sales and management development.

Jaimi Anderson

Jaimi comes from Brisbane Australia where she has had a brilliantly technical study background. She gained a Batchelors degree in Animation as an early university entrant with Griffith University. After moving to Queensland University of technology she attained a Master’s degree in Information Technology specialising in security and Games design alongside valuable management training. She extended her studies by a year to cover Computer (Digital) Forensics and run a project on Mobile App permissions.

Currently she is studying for a further Masters at Macquarie University in policing, intelligence and counter terrorism, while using her extensive knowledge as a project manager in the NHS. She is currently waiting for her NCA (Security) Clearance so she can further her security and digital forensics knowledge to use in the UK. She describes herself as a magical unicorn!

MM_robot_3

Miranda Mowbray

Miranda is a lecturer at the University of Bristol, where her research interests include cyber security and big data ethics. She has two hexadecimal dollars, and an Erdos number of 3. She has just begun a project investigating ways to subvert a swarm of four hundred robots.

When

Thursday 22nd February 2018 – 6.30/7  – 9pm

Doors open at 18:30 talks start around 7pm

Where

The food and hosting is kindly sponsored by Bristol University

 Queens Building, University Walk, Bristol BS8 1TR

Sign Up

As always, we welcome men to our group, but to keep our audience predominantly female, we ask that all men are accompanied by a woman (just add a +1 on the meetup) here Girlgeekdinners Meetup https://www.meetup.com/Bristol-Girl-Geek-Dinners/.

Holiday Break

ChristmasWe are taking a break for the Christmas period and will start back up in February with a talk at Bristol University – March we will hopefully have a slightly different speaker http://www.wthub.org/article/guest-caroline-morris/.    If you are missing the network then plenty of us will be active with the Womens Tech Hub so join up with us – we have a first non working time unsocial this Sunday the 3rd at Horts from 3-5 pm .. children, colleagues and partners all welcome as its gender neutral.  In January we will be having our mid-winter social which you will all be invited to – we’ll share details closer to the time.

We would like to thank you all as ever for being there for us – giving up your time  to speak, our sponsors for their support and our members for turning out to support us regardless of the weather.  Its our members and supporters that really make it worth our time so Big Thanks to you all and hope to see you all back next year.  Happy Holidays!!

GGD #64 Digital Forensics with Jaimi Anderson

Simpleweb are kindly hosting us this month with a talk from Jaimi Anderson, one of our Girlgeekdinners organisors talking on digital forensics.

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Jaimi Anderson comes from Brisbane Australia where she has had a brilliantly technical study background. With a batchelors degree in Animation as an early university entrant with Griffith University. She followed this on moving to Queensland University of technology for a Masters degree in Information Technology specialising in security and Games design as well as gaining management training. Adding a final year to study Computer (Digital) Forensics and running a project on Mobile App permissions.
Currently she is studying for a further Masters with Macquarie University in policing, intelligence and counter terrorism, whilst using her large level of knowledge as a project manager in the NHS. She is currently waiting for her

NCA (Security) Clearance so she can further her security and digital forensics knowledge to use in the UK. She describes herself as a magical unicorn !

Talk
Jaimi would like to introduce us to the world of digital forensics and what it entails and why it excites her. With her we will be doing some fun things (she assures us it is fun!!) with network sniffing and steganography so we can all get involved and hopefully bitten with the forensics bug!

When

Thursday 23rd  November 6.30/7  – 9pm

Doors open at 18:30 talks start around 7pm

Where

The food and hosting is kindly sponsored by Simpleweb

Unit G, Union Dockside Building map Near spike island, there is a carpark nearby

Sign Up

As always, we welcome men to our group, but to keep our audience predominantly female, we ask that all men are accompanied by a woman (just add a +1 on the meetup) here Girlgeekdinners Meetup https://www.meetup.com/Bristol-Girl-Geek-Dinners/.

 

GDD #63 Bristol Women in Robotics

 

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Introduction by Dr Catherine Hobbs – Head of the Department of Engineering, Design and Mathematics at UWE

Catherine is Head of Department for Engineering Design and Mathematics within the Faculty of Environment and Technology at UWE.  A mathematician by training she has spent over 20 years in the university environment at a range of different universities in the UK and overseas (Nottingham, Oxford Brookes, Auckland, Bristol and now UWE).  This has included teaching, research and consultancy and, more recently, management.

Dr Antonia Tzemanaki is a Lecturer in Mechatronics at the University of the West of England and the Bristol Robotics Laboratory, working on developing and testing novel instruments and intuitive human-robot interaction systems for wearable robot-assisted minimally invasive surgery. She holds a MEng degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, an MSc in Robotics from the University of the West of England, Bristol, UK and a PhD in Medical Robotics from the University of the West of England and the Bristol Robotics Laboratory. She is also organising the local Women In Robotics group (twitter: @WirBristol), a support network for women that are working or are interested in robotics. As part of the worldwide network of women in robotics, it is aimed at promoting networking as well as the visibility of women and their work in robotics.

Talk overview:

In her talk, Antonia will discuss some of her research, where she has collaborated with surgeons on developing the ‘μAngelo’ surgical system aiming at tele-operation and natural manipulation of tissues for improving dexterity and ergonomics in surgical procedures. She has extended this work in ‘SMARTsurg’ (SMart wearAble Robotic Teleoperated surgery), an H2020 funded EU project, which aims to develop an advanced system for robot-assisted minimally invasive surgery, in the areas of urology, cardiology and orthopaedic surgery, that reduces the surgeon’s cognitive load related to the system’s operation, shortens training time and delivers accuracy, reduced procedure time and safety.

 

Gloria Araiza is a Biomedical Engineer from Mexico, with a Masters in Robotics from the University of Bristol. She just started the fourth year of her PhD in the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Future Autonomous and Robotic Systems, FARSCOPE, in the Bristol Robotics Lab.

Talk overview:

Tactile sensations result from the activation of cutaneous mechanoreceptors, which transform the mechanical stimuli on the skin into electrical signals. Transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) is a method that has been used in neuroscience to study the production of tactile sensations in extremities.

Controlling nerve selectivity in mechanisms based on TENS could increase the amount of information that systems could supply for medical, teleoperation, industrial and gaming applications, i.e. providing haptic feedback.

This work involves the development of a TENS system and its comparison with a mechanical stimulation system, in a simulated environment and evaluating the performance of the hardware implementation. The main objective is to study the dependency on the TENS design, particularly on the electrode layout and excitation patterns (electrical input) related to selective nerve stimulation and different tactile sensations.

 

Katie Winkle is an interdisciplinary PhD student at the Bristol Robotics Lab investigating the use of social robots for improving engagement in rehabilitative therapies. She previously studied Mechanical Engineering and worked in automotive engineering at Jaguar Land Rover.

Talk overview:

Kate will talk about how she got into robotics, reflect on the switch from automotive engineering and explain the concept of socially assistive robotics.

 

Pavlina Theodosiou is a 3rd year PhD student working on an interdisciplinary European funded project called Evobliss.  Her background is on Biological Sciences and the focus of her PhD is the interaction between living systems such as Microbial Fuel Cells (MFCs) and robotics, for optimising the performance of the MFCs.

Talk overview:

In her talk, Pavlina will present the work achieved to this day as part of her PhD project towards the adaptability and stability of the MFC systems using the Evobliss developed robot called EvoBot. She will present the improvements observed through this interaction as well as an overview of the capabilities of such systems.

 

Marta Palau Franco

Marta Palau Franco is an electronics engineer, oceanographer and currently project manager of the ERL Emergency Robots competition. The European Robotics League (ERL) is funded by the European Commission Horizon 2020 and led by SPARC Robotics. She is based in the Bristol Robotics Laboratory and was previously project manager of the EU-FP7 project euRathlon , which was led by the University of the West of England, Bristol. ERL Emergency Robots and its predecessor euRathlon are an outdoor robotics competition in which teams of land, underwater and flying robots are invited to work collaboratively in realistic, demanding mock emergency-response scenarios, inspired by the Fukushima nuclear disaster.

 

Talk overview:

Marta will talk about her experience in robotics competitions, from her years as member of the robotics team of her University to her current work as project manager of ERL Emergency Robots competition.

Dr Sabine Hauert

Sabine Hauert is Assistant Professor in Robotics at the University of Bristol in the UK. Her research focusses in designing swarms that work in large numbers (>1000), and at small scales (<1 cm). Profoundly cross-disciplinary, Sabine works between Engineering Mathematics, the Bristol Robotics Laboratory, and Life Sciences. Before joining the University of Bristol, Sabine engineered swarms of nanoparticles for cancer treatment at MIT, and deployed swarms of flying robots at EPFL.

Sabine is also President and Co-founder of Robohub.org, a non-profit dedicated to connecting the robotics community to the world.

Abstract:

Swarm engineering allows us to design self-organised robotic systems that work in large numbers (>1000), and at small scales (<1 cm). Swarm strategies are either inspired from nature (ant colonies, fish shoals, and bird flocks) or are automatically discovered using machine learning and crowdsourcing. Demonstrated applications include the deployment of swarms of flying robots to create outdoor communication networks, or the design of nanosystems for biomedical applications. Current work focusses on the design of cooperative nanoparticles for cancer applications in simulation and under the microscope on tissue-on-a-chip devices, as well as the design of strategies for our 1000 coin-sized robots at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory.

When

Thursday 26th October 6.30/7  – 9pm

Doors open at 18:30, the reception of the Bristol Robotics Lab will be unmanned after 18:50, hence it will be difficult to access (we will leave a number you can call though). Start of talks around 18:50.

Where

The food and hosting is kindly sponsored by the Bristol Women in Robotics based at

Bristol Robotics Laboratory, BRL Seminar Room

Please enter the Frenchay Campus through the North Entrance and follow the red signs. The Frenchay Campus is easily accessible from Junction 1 of the M32. The M32 joins the M4 at Junction 19. For Satellite Navigation purposes use BS34 8QZ.

Regarding parking:

If you enter via the North Entrance you might encounter a 1st barrier, where (if it is closed) you can buzz and say that you are going to BRL for the event. Driving straight through the roundabout, you will encounter a 2nd barrier which, I was promised, will be up to let you through. In a few meters you will see BRL on your right, in front of which you can park for free.

We are aware that some women will be looking for lifts so please post in the messages any offers of lifts.  I (Serrie) can give up to 4 people lifts from Bristol Templemeads or en route so please let me know if you need one.  Else make your way up there and we can give lifts back – if you don’t get a response mail me on [email protected] for a more direct response, i’ll be heading up at about 6pm.

Sign Up

As always, we welcome men to our group, but to keep our audience predominantly female, we ask that all men are accompanied by a woman (just add a +1 on the meetup) here Girlgeekdinners Meetup https://www.meetup.com/Bristol-Girl-Geek-Dinners/.

GGD ~ #62 Ultrahaptics

Ultrahaptics invite you to spend the evening geeking out about haptics, our sense of touch. Ultrahaptics has created an amazing technology which enables you to feel virtual objects and controls in thin-air. No gloves or wearables, the sensation is projected onto your hand using modulated ultrasound.

During the talk, you will learn why the sense of touch is important to our everyday experience of our environment and why, when we try VR, we notice how very lacking this crucial sense is. The talk will explain how Ultrahaptics control ultrasound within an acoustic field so that you can feel and interact with it. Finally, you’ll have the chance to try Ultrahaptics unique technology for yourself!

The talk will be led by Ultrahaptics employees Heather Macdonald Tait

and Vicky Messer.

Heather has worked in technology for over 15 years, originally from the world of semiconductors, she now spends her time talking about haptics and how simulated haptics play a crucial part in human machine interfaces. With a first-class electronics degree from York University, Vicky has over two decades of experience in the tech industry, from Nokia to Nvidia, she now manages Technical Marketing for Ultrahaptics.

When

Thursday 21st September 6.30/7  – 9pm

Where

The food and hosting is kindly sponsored by Ultrahaptics based at

The West Wing, Glass Wharf, Bristol BS2 0EL, Temple Meads

Sign Up

As always, we welcome men to our group, but to keep our audience predominantly female, we ask that all men are accompanied by a woman (just add a +1 on the meetup) here Girlgeekdinners Meetup https://www.meetup.com/Bristol-Girl-Geek-Dinners/.

 

GGD #61 “Cycling fast and loose”

We are pleased to announce a talk from Kate Ross-Smith this month from OVO.  On the green topic its all about cycling and sounds like it will be truly engaging.

We also have  Monika Radycliffe from setsquared along to tell you a bit about OSCA the startup accelerator, which they are encouraging women to also apply and get involved with http://www.setsquared.co.uk/news/201701/setsquared-supporting-oracle-startup-cloud-accelerator-launching-bristol

Pasted image at 2017_06_08 02_26 PM (002)

Kate is an engineer who is most proud of her ability to be geeky about absolutely anything (even cool things). She’s given talks on subjects such as how she hand-built her own surf board from components sourced within 50 miles, to how to program machine learning algorithms to help you choose a chocolate bar. Being passionate about Bristol and the city’s love of cycling, for this talk she’s going to share some tips and tricks from her knowledge and experience as a qualified bike mechanic. Taking a brief but deep dive into bike design and fit, she hopes to give you some tips to make any ride that little bit easier, faster, and more comfortable!

After the presentation and any questions we will open the floor up for a discussion,  if anyone feels like they would like to bring along any ppt’s or links that they want to share for discussion then please bring it along on a USB or mail the team with info and we can share this during the discussion period. Don’t forget – you don’t have to work in the industry or be a geek, this is a group for anyone with an interest in the subject!

Please sign up on our meetup page here MEETUP

Do come along for pre-presentation mingling as we will be there from 6.30pm. As always, we welcome men to our group, but to keep our audience predominantly female, we ask that all men are accompanied by a woman (just add a +1 on the meetup).

When

Wednesday 14th  June 6.30/7  – 9pm

Where

The food and hosting is kindly sponsored by OVO Energy based at

10 Temple Back (2nd floor)

Bristol

BS1 6FL

Directions to OVO Energy
10teme