Category: Bristol
re:BOOT and returnships
The great news is that not only have we @ wthub.org had our first returner successfully started @ Habu – more of which we will post later. But we have also been talking to a few companies interested in the re:BOOT scheme.GGD#56 Be the CEO of your own career by Rula Arbash
Our November Girl Geek Dinner is hosted by Blu Wireless
Wednesday November 16th
Bio
Rula Arbash, originally from Jordan, lived in the Middle East, Madrid and London.
MSc graduate in Mobile and Personal Communications from King’s College London, and BEng Hons degree in Communication Networks Engineering from Brunel University. I have a strong passion and commitment to Engineering and Technology. Currently I am a Junior Front-End Design Engineer, working on Blu Wireless, System on Chip (SoC) HYDRA multi-gigabit wireless baseband IP; 60GHz WiFi mm-Wave technology for consumer and telecom backhaul applications. My role involves coding at both RTL and System-C level from specification, building test-bench models and performing block level RTL synthesis.
In my free time, I love to go play football and tennis, along with Zumba and Salsa.

I will be speaking about
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Where I’ve been, my inspiration, education and personal accomplishments
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Be the CEO of your career, most of us begin our technology career through some combination of education, opportunity, and experience. When we are young, we just need a job. At some point though we want to take some control and direct our career
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Technology options
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Key questions to ask yourself, What Do I Enjoy / Not Enjoy – i.e. what do I find engaging? What are my VIPS, (values, interests, personality and skills) and how does these translate into my work
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Work and Lifestyle
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Compensation
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Employee and Employer relationship
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!
Do come along for pre-presentation mingling as we will be there from 6.30pm.
Where
The food and hosting is kindly sponsored by Blu Wireless who are based at desklodge in Bristol on the corner of old market
DESKLODGE
5TH FLOOR, 1 TEMPLE WAY
BRISTOL
BS2 0BY
Directions to desklodge
When
Wednesday 16th November 6.30/7 – 9pm
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/
Social Media Week Bristol
GGD#55 ‘ Catching the Hackathon bug’ by Charlotte Bella and UX with Rachel Eardley
Catching the hackathon bug
Having once been a high intensity event attended over 24-48 hours, by pizza and Red Bull fuelled coders, hackathons have now become an alternative and accessible way to approach workshop style sessions to collaboratively find solutions to problems across an organisation, industry or theme.
Hackathons are incredible events that can be held cheaply, or for free, and can be a great way to manage collaboration between service users, customers, designers, developers and key stakeholders to co-create solutions to a problem in the digital and physical worlds.
In this talk Charlotte will be discussing the benefits of holding your own hackathon and what she has learnt from past experiences in both attending and organising hacks.
UX with Rachel Eardley
Rachel Eardley is a user experience designer who has spent time on various research projects with Hewlett-Packard Research laboratories, Microsoft Research in Cambridge and Brunel University. She has also worked in industry for just over 10yrs, working for Skype, Friends Life and start-ups such as HouseTrip, Ticket.com and MovieGlu. She currently works within the technology agency Somo 4 days a week and spends 1 day a week on research for her PhD.

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).
Where
The food and hosting is kindly sponsored by Somo Global who are based at desklodge in Bristol on the corner of old market
DESKLODGE
5TH FLOOR, 1 TEMPLE WAY
BRISTOL
BS2 0BY
Directions to desklodge
When
Thursday 20th October 6.30/7 – 9pm
GGD#54 ‘ Virtual Machine vs. Container’ with Kate Mallichan
Our September Girl Geek Dinner is hosted by HP labs
Wednesday September 21st
Kate Mallichan graduated in 2007 from the University of Bristol with an MEng in Computer Science. She worked for 5 years in industrial software engineering across a broad spectrum of fields that included mobile apps, aerospace systems and roadside sensor equipment. She has experience in an equally wide range of software development languages and tools. A thirst for more creative freedom led her to join HP Labs in 2012 as a Research Engineer. Since that time her focus has been on rapid prototyping in the areas of cloud computing, cyber-security and more recently container technologies.

Virtual Machine vs. Container
Virtual machines are essentially a software emulation of a complete computer system, including hardware and OS. They have existed in some form since the 1960s, though they were not widely adopted until technologies matured in the 2000s and they became a primary enabler of the cloud computing paradigm.
Containers can be thought of as a light-weight form of virtualisation. Like virtual machines, they have existed for some time, but their widespread adoption is more recent and still rapidly growing and evolving. Containers bring exciting benefits in terms of performance, portability and more agile computing paradigms, but also certain trade-offs, the most commonly acknowledged being their security.
In this talk Kate will summarise the key differences between virtual machines and containers and identify their main pros and cons over a cross-section of applications. I will then look to the future and explore the potential I see to address new and increasingly complex technological challenges with container technology as it continue to mature.
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).
Where
The food and hosting is kindly sponsored by regular GGD supporters HP, there is free parking and feel free to mail or comment on the meetup if you need a lift.
Directions to HP Lab: http://www.hpl.hp.com/downloads/HP_Labs_Bristol.pdf
When
Wednesday 21st September 6.30/7 – 9pm
Womens Tech Hub ~ Working with BathCamp to increase diversity
Oracle and Bristol GGD talk #52
As promised I am going to try and get a bit more active with the blogs for the GGD’s so heres the first of hopefully many!
We had a great talk last night – kindly hosted by Oracle in their new swish offices, Thom Legget was kindly given the pleasure of managing us as Jude and Phil who set it up had run off to Glastonbury, looking at the mud pics earlier in the day I think I was happier with free wine and pizza and talking Data! So Thanks Thom!
We had talks from Jen Williams from Networked Planets, Martha King from Knowle West media Centre and Katherine Rooney Bristol City council and managing the Cuncils Open Data work.
The Dinners are only a success thanks to members attending and we had a great turnout last night – we had a lot of interest in the data management, Helen Woodcock was there discussing their free training offer KETL training
Oracle also have a free training offer – we’ll follow up on whats involved there as they are just putting it together.
Katherine Rooney from Bristol City Council’s ‘City Innovation team’ manages the Council’s Open Data work, offered up our members a special free open data institute membership ODI membership
“When asked if you are affiliated with a Node, please select Bristol! – It may look just like the normal ODI membership page, but it’s a unique link for the Bristol complimentary membership so you should be able to complete your membership without making any payment.” (i’ve just joined and she’s right it is free!!)
Lastly we introduced Dana who regularly attends our affiliate support group Womens Tech Hubs F3F see the events page WTH events page. Dana is helping set up the TEDx Bristol event next year and they are looking for speakers and helpers so please take a look TEDx Bristol WTH post
We have next months talk planned – but currently nothing planned for post the summer break, HP are looking to host one but if anyone has any offers for speakers or hosting then please get in touch with us.
Hopefully see you all at the next event


GGD#53 ‘Body as Interface’ and ‘Interpreting the body’
Our July Girl Geek Dinner is hosted by Scott Logic
Wednesday July 20th
In July Tamara Chehayeb Makarem will be presenting on, ‘Body as Interface’, exploring that notion in user interactions. Jennifer Gaudion will be presenting on ‘Interpreting the Body’ examining the ways we can interpret data from the body.”
Tamara
Tamara Chehayeb Makarem is a User Experience Designer at Scott Logic. Before moving to London, she worked in New York where she designed cross-platform mobile applications for clients such as Microsoft, MDLIVE, and Songza.
At the Bristol Girl Geek Dinner, Tamara will be presenting her talk ‘Body as Interface’, exploring that notion in user interactions.
Tamara came up with the notion of using the Body as an interface while analyzing the work of artists in the field of Design and Technology and creating her interactive art installations. While people usually associate interfaces with devices or applications, Tamara suggests that the body itself is an interface.
In her talk, Tamara will expand on her idea of “Body as Interface” and link it to the body senses to show how it can allow us to create alternative experiences for users. She will explore the plausibility of the use of the body as an Interface and how it might have practical effect using examples in art installations, wearable technology and day-to-day interactions.
Tamara believes that there are two categories in which the body is used as an interface: the first one is within a controlled environment. The second one is when the device becomes part of the body. She believes that by viewing the body as an interface, we can stop designing interfaces and start designing experiences. She has recently published a blog post articulating her view http://blog.scottlogic.com/2016/05/25/Body-as-Interface.html
Jenny
Jenny Gaudion will be presenting her talk “Interpreting the Body” examining the ways we can interpret data from the body. Jenny is a Software Developer for Scott Logic and helps find solutions to real-life problems using software. Having got into computing from a degree in Maths and a love of puzzles she thinks that interpreting the body presents an exciting challenge and is looking forward to innovations in this area making it feel like we are living in the future.
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).
Where
Scott Logic, 25 King Street, Bristol, BS1 4PB map
When
Wednesday 20th July 6.30/7 – 9pm
GGD#52 The World of Linked Open Data
Our June GIrl Geek Dinner is hosted by Oracle
Weds June 22nd
The “Web of Data” is growing – we’re here to explain what it is, how it works, and shows the Girl Geeks how to be a part of it. This session will be 3 short presentations about 15 minutes long each, followed by a Q&A.

Jen Williams is Senior Software Developer at Networked Planet and builds Semantic Web tech to help organisations take control of their data. Jen will be introducing the evening and doing a short #101 talk about linked and open data on the web.
Martha King from Knowle West Media Centre will be telling us about Bristol’s “Citizen Sensing” project, which has seen artists and communities across Bristol exploring city issues that could be addressed using sensor technologies. The issue that has gained most momentum is tackling damp in homes.
Katherine Rooney from Bristol City Council’s ‘City Innovation team’ manages the Council’s Open Data work. With a background in community engagement, behaviour change, business development and innovation within the UK environmental charity sector, Katherine believes that Smart Cities are really all about people and not technology, and comes to the open data scene from quite a non-techy angle.
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).
Where
Oracle Corporation UK Ltd
Tower Wharf
Cheese Lane
Bristol
BS2 0JJ




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