Our December event is a casual meetup at the Watershed in Bristol on the 17th December at 7pm – no speaker or food just a chance to catch up and have a few drinks!
Men are not excluded from our events but must be accompanied by a girl geek.
We’ve got some exciting stuff lined up for the new year and this event will also provde us with a chance to discuss any ideas you may have for the group.
Bath Girl Geeks joined the amazing team at Bath Hacked for their weekend Hack Event on 1st and 2nd November 2014.
The Hack used open data available from the local authority as a basis for the weird and wonderful creations of the weekend! Including Eat a Food for when you cannot decide what to eat in the beautiful city of Bath!
For many of us it was our first Hack, whilst others dove straight in with their developer and coding skills. It was an amazing opportunity for us Girl Geeks to learn more about hacking open data and the end-to-end process of building an application for easy consumption of data.
A few photos from the event
The wait is over! Our new season of events kicks off next month with a talk by Dr Kerstin Eder, Reader in Design Automation and Verification at the
University of Bristol
on Tuesday 18th November.
For more details see our ‘next dinner’ page.
You can sign up for this free event on our Eventbrite page.
When I saw the first 17min in the IMAX I was excited. Rocket (Bradley Cooper) gave a brilliantly misleading introduction to the segment. The images were brilliant, the 3D enhanced but didn’t impose, the plot at that point in the story was fantastic and there was a lot going on. In a nutshell, I really enjoyed the 17 minutes, wanted more characterisation of the female role but was happy to see a prominent female character who was smart and kicked ass. She was a little more Kendra than Buffy but still – brilliant.
That said, when I came to watch the movie in regular 3D instead of IMAX I have to admit, I felt the lack. The IMAX lent so much to the experience that I’m not sure if I can now ever enjoy a movie again unless I go see it in IMAX. Not only are the seats more comfortable in the IMAX (I have generous proportions), the whole experience is more immersive and this movie with its plot and action really draws you in. Being in an IMAX cinema not only gives you better picture quality, it immerses you in the film and that is why the 3D is an enhancement rather than an intrusion.
This though is not about the experience of watching it but rather the actual movie.
This review contains SPOILERS of a sort – stuff you might not have seen in commercials or trailers.
We start with Peter Quill at home as a young child. Peter is like pretty much any 80’s kid, or really any kid in North America from almost any time period, including his perhaps extreme connection to his Walkman. Things happen to his mum and his life that rather turn his future upside down. We get that in the first few minutes and continue on to a much more light-humoured scene involving karoke with an alien creature, dancing, advanced technologies and another shot of that Sony Walkman.
It was nice to see what happened leading up to the jail scene (widely used in promotional videos and commercials) which gave a lot more context to the characters and the predicament they were in. There was plenty of action and sadly the kind of 3D antics that are common to make it all *ooooo look at me in 3D coming out at you* but they were thankfully few. They were made more jarring by the non-IMAX experience probably which is why I’m now such a fan of IMAX.
The action progresses, as does the humour. You get the sense that it is a bit of a piss-take, including a great cameo by Stan Lee. This movie doesn’t take itself too seriously – how could you with a troll doll playing as important a role as it does at the end? Also – a talking tree. How serious can you be with a talking tree, a genetically engineered raccoon, an abducted human, an engineered daughter of Thanos and a literal strongman out for revenge. The chemistry between the actors comes through in this movie, making it seamlessly brilliant. Where in some areas of the Avengers it could feel jarring, this is so seamless it hurts when it ends.
I think Marvel has a winner on their hands with this one. Despite the age of the comics, they have managed to update the characterisation of the female characters and make them more modern (so to speak). They know their own minds, have their own agendas and kick wicked butt. The modernisation of the back story of Peter Quill a.k.a. Star Lord, the brilliant characterisation of Groot and Rocket, the great action, the introduction of Thanos to pull the various threads of Marvel movies together and especially Glenn Close as the leader of the Nova Corps all makes this a winner.
Is it worth it? YEAH! Should you see this? F YEAH! Is this movie brilliant? Beyond words BRILLIANT! Did I recommend it for my 5 year old nephew? You better believe I did (with a caveat about the swearing and violence). Will you regret it if you don’t see it? FOREVER – you’ll regret not getting the full movie theatre experience FOREVER and EVER. When is it out? July 31st but you can BOOK TICKETS NOW!
We’ve decided to take a break from hosting events over the summer and start up again in September so do let us know if you have an idea for a host, venue or speaker as we’re always looking for new ideas and inspiration.
We would like to take this opportunity to thank Maria Felice who has really held the group together over the last year or so whilst some us were off having babies or exiled in Germany. I don’t think the group would have survived without you! Maria has almost finished her PhD and is off to start a job in Coventry. Hopefully she will make it to our September event but if not we wish you lots of luck in the future and do come and join us whenever you are in Bristol.
Girl geeks might be taking a break but there are lots of other great geeky events going on in Bristol over the next couple of months – if you don’t want to go on your own get on our Facebook page and find a buddy to go with you – we’re a friendly approachable lot! You can also find details of other events and opportunities on the Facebook page.
Just Eat have just opened a new office and are having a Bristol Developer meetup This Friday (July 25th) with food and drinks.
Swiftly followed by a Hackathon on Saturday 26th July.
Brightpearl have two coding events going on:
Bristol Java meetup at Brightpearl – Tuesday August 5th 7pm
Testing and CI meetup with PHP SW at Brightpearl Wednesday August 20th 7pm
Codefirst girls are looking for instructors/assistants to help out with the program. These people will need to be able to teach HTML, CSS and Javascript. Knowing Ruby on Rails will be a plus! They will need to commit to 2 hours every week for 4 weeks – more info: www.codefirstgirls.org.uk
If you have any similar events running over July and August please share them on our FB page or tweet us and we’ll see you all again in September. Thanks for your continued support!
Bristol Girl Geek Dinners
WARNING: SPOILERS!
No – seriously SPOILERS!!!!
So I found myself in a preview of seventeen minutes of 3D footage from Guardians of the Galaxy. Why? Because as a girl and a geek I’m interested in these things. Thankfully there is a strong female character that is more Buffy than Kendra 😉 Although There is a Kendra-like character in Drax and it’s gonna be AWESOME!
Now here is a man who loves his technology but we’ll get on to that later. Our 17 minutes in introduced by a vague definition by the character of his history deliberately intended to lead those who don’t know the story astray which is brilliant.
We join our intrepid heroes (for a loose definition of “heroes”) on their way to jail. On their way to jail we learn that this “team” (again, a rather loose definition of the word “team”) are only just gathering and an incident prior to their arrest meant that the orb in question (you’ll learn more about it but suffice to say the reason these criminals become heroes is because of this orb) is not yet secure in location.
In addition to this, the amazingly kick-ass female among their group apparently fouled the raccoon’s attempt to obtain the bounty on the human’s head. The human is Star-Lord, the woman is Gamora and the Raccoon is Rocket – a raccoon abducted from Earth and experimented on, turning him into a sentient, bipedal criminal. Star-Lord and Rocket are sent to jail with Gamora and Groot – who only says “I am Groot” the entire time and is an accomplice of Rocket, later helping with the escape from jail (I did say SPOILERS).
Gamora is a female assassin whose father is guilty of some serious crimes. People hate her because of her father but not only can she defend herself, she takes out most of the guards before possibly ripping the arm off a guard for a piece of tech to assist the escape (I saw no evidence of the dismemberment). Finally the literal Drax joins the band. His taking of everything literally is sure to provide significant laughs through the movie. No, not just surely – it did while I was there (“nothing goes over my head as I leap up and catch it”) and the other characters attitudes means it’s gonna be an ace movie.
In the background, quietly enhancing the movie but not getting all gimmicky is the 3D. Usually there’s something reaching out beyond the frame or poking out or something distracting. Thankfully there was nothing so gimmicky in the 17 minutes we saw. In this movie, the 3D is a strong supporting feature, enhancing the experience and drawing you into everything from being sprayed with orange goo to floating in a pod when the gravity is turned off – which is where the 17 minutes ended. The group had pretty much almost escaped and then we all moaned as we cut to longer commercials for the movie including Rocket showing he understands Groot and Star-Lord admitting he really only has 12% of a plan (which, as Groot points out, is better than only 11% of a plan).
All in all, the mere 17 minutes made me more excited than ever to see the full film and I hope you will too not for any commercial reason but because I think that as a girl and a geek you’d enjoy it! It was action-packed, the 17min was building a fantastic story, the special effects were worked into the movie to make it seem more real, and the 3D made you a part of the movie. I really cannot recommend it highly enough – Marvel has got a hit on their hands!
Our next event is on Thursday 19th June with Professor Janice Kiely from the Institute of Bio-Sensing Technology.
The event will be held at UWE and the university is also kindly providing food and drink. The events starts at 6:30pm More info on our next dinner page.
We will also be taking this opportunity to celebrate ‘Women in Engineering Day’ – you can find out more about that here.
Register for this free event here
Every year for the past 5 years Sister PR who handle the public relations for the Crown Estates (extremely well I might add outside the whole RegentTweet thing) have run an event where London Girl Geeks among others have spent the day shopping Regent Street.
Over the last five years, more and more members of London Girl Geek Dinners have started shopping the shops on Regent Street, from Brooks Brothers to Hawes & Curtis, from Godiva to Molton Brown, LGGD members have increasingly embraced the shopping opportunities and fashion styling. I’ve started wearing the right colours (mostly), doing my makeup properly (part of the time), styling my hair (most days) and treating myself to better cocktails, soaps and handbags.
This year the day started at basecamp in Brasserie Zedel, a place I’ve been taking people to (as well as visiting on my own) since I discovered it thanks to Sister PR. After checking in and getting our wristbands, we went for the photo call. Having accomplished that, myself and a few LGGD helpers took the RegentTweet sign and got photos in almost every venue on the cards. Where did we visit?
Penhalligans was probably one of the places we had most fun in. Besides the scented kerchiefs, the new scent they have just released was amazing and the shop staff were absolutely wonderful. Seriously wonderful staff – seriously amazing new scent (let it settle for like an hour though).
Guess has amazing handbags (some of which I own) and fabulous clothes (which I can’t fit in to sadly) but this year they went even further with a gigantic bag of joy for each and every RegentTweet participant. Guess really won the amazing goodie bag competition. I love to learn more about a company but I had to satisfy myself with possibly another handbag 😉
The chocolate dipped strawberries to start the day at Godiva were amazing. They are always a great way to start the day. While GAP was giving away jeans, I was flagging and unwell so sadly started to fall behind. I did manage to visit Banana Republic before retiring to Brasserie Zedel for lunch. I was so tired from rushing to Rapha for their lovely messenger bag, Tumi to look at their amazing luggage and Molton Brown for their perfect clear travel bag I realised I was not yet over my illness.
I tried to catch the second talk at Apple but was still resting when I realised I was late. Illness had finally bested me and I missed the second talk I had been looking forward to and was gutted. I almost didn’t continue but hit Crabtree & Evelyn for some nail polish, Kiko for some eye shadow and Anthropologie for some hand cream thank goodness.
I did make it to Hackett and fell in love with a laptop bag and should have bought it but I was very tired from my lingering cold so staggered on. One of the LGGD helpers lived up to their name, helping me to Karen Millen and Brooks Brothers.
Finally, a big shout out to Laird hats who have taught me to wear a nice hat avail and that hats can be casual as well as formal.
Our next event is on Thursday 8th May 2014 at Brightpearl near Cabot Circus in the centre of Bristol.
The evening’s talk will be presented by Kat Zien and Angela Heenan from Brightpearl (pictured). The talk is inspired by the widely acclaimed book “Lean In” written by Facebook’s chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg. They’ll talk about the examples Sheryl shared in her book, and her TED talks, on how to ‘Lean In’ to your career and why it is important that we talk about this.
The event is from 6.30pm to 8.30pm. Food and drink will be kindly sponsored by Brightpearl.
Read more and sign up here: http://girlgeeksleaninatbrightpearl.eventbrite.co.uk
Our next event is on 10th April at 6.30pm. It is in conjunction with the ACCU conference at the Marriott Hotel near Castle Park.
We had an evening event at the ACCU conference last year and it was a great success.
Bloomberg are kindly sponsoring the event and providing food and drink.
The speaker will be Lilit Darbinyan from R&D Mobile, Bloomberg. Details of her talk will be posted on the Eventbrite page below.
Read more and sign up here: http://girlgeeksataccu2014.eventbrite.co.uk
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