Tag: Technology

Anthropology

BGGD Reloaded #10 – Anthropology + Technology AND Networking

Apologies for missing a blog … the website was unfortunately out of action for a while, but it’s finally back and so is Bath GGD!

Tuesday, November 26, 2019 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM

Sometimes we like to offer a mixed bag of useful things and that is what you will get tonight. I recently attended the Anthropology + Technology Conference in Bristol, the first of its kind in Bristol and full of exciting talks.

The subject itself is so important, I asked Dawn Walter (the event organiser) to speak to us tonight about it: The intersection of human and tech and why we need Anthropologists within this area of tech in the first place. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/dawn-walter-b36903a/)

When it comes to conferences, some of you may not like to attend due to the dreadful task of Networking. But worry no longer help is on the way:

How to network for people who hate people

Do you want to know how to talk to people in a business social context without panicking and/or wanting to curl up and die? It can suck to network as an introverted person, but bona fide introvert and professional networker Margaret Davidson from Mayden Academy has found some ways to make it work – and even, sometimes, be enjoyable. Find out some of her shortcuts to making networking less dreadful. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/margaret-davidson-994b5a30/)

And tonight the meeting will be hosted by Bath Spa Uni’s new Enterprise and Innovation Hub at Palace Yard Mews. It is freshly painted and looks good.

Hoping to see lots of you there! Sign up here on our meetup page.

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

Social and Economic Development Through Technology LGGD Event

On Wednesday June 27th we have another event happening at the fantastic Thoughtworks. This wheelchair-accessible venue is going to once again be hosting a London Girl Geek Dinners event. This time we have a fantastic topic for discussion of “social and economic development through technology”.

This is a free event – It’s going to be a great evening at Thoughtworks again and so do please join us for wine, juice, nibbles and a really interesting talk which I’m sure you’ll all enjoy. Of course, the evening is also about networking so remember to mix and mingle and hey – if you’re looking to perhaps change careers it never hurts to have a chat with the Thoughtworks folks who will be on hand.

So get ready for an excellent evening and chance the lack-of-summer blues away with great company at a great event!

To get the special URL for tickets, be sure to join the London Girl Geek Dinners Google group. We always release tickets there first!

There are still a few tickets left so pop over to the Google group, sign up and check the website for the URL for the tickets!

London Girl Geek Dinner October Sponsored by Microsoft

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Following the success of the London Girl Geek Dinner 3 year Anniversary we have been fortunate enough to gain access to Microsoft’s Auditorium for one of our biggest events yet.  We have an awesome speaker lineup including none other than the wonderful Julie Lerman of The Data Farm and the inspirational Dr Elizabeth Kelan bringing with them a wealth of expertise, knowledge and experience for us all to learn from.

The Talks

Julie Lerman: “Defining the –ette in Geekette”

Twenty years ago, Julie Lerman learned that she had to act and dress like the guys in order to fit into the IT Industry. Today she’s found that the cover-up is no longer necessary. Many of her “girly” qualities have become advantageous in a world of geeks where she now speaks at conferences all over the world and has just finished writing her first programming book for O’Reilly Press. Julie will share with the London Girl Geeks some of this historical perspective and lessons learned.

Bio

Julie Lerman is an independent consultant and .NET Mentor who has been designing and writing software applications for over 20 years. Julie is the author of “Programming Entity Framework” (O’Reilly) and is well known in the .NET community as a Microsoft MVP, ASPInsider and INETA Speaker. She is a prolific blogger, a frequent presenter at conferences around the world and author of articles in many technical publications. Julie lives in the tiny U.S. state of Vermont where she runs the Vermont.NET User Group and serves on the board of the Vermont Software Developers Alliance. You can read Julie’s blog at www.thedatafarm.com/blog

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Dr Elisabeth Kelan – Innovation, Technology and Gender Stereotypes

In this talk Dr Elisabeth Kelan will talk about two pieces of research she conducted at the Lehman Brothers Centre for Women in Business at London Business School (http://www.london.edu/womeninbusiness.html). The first research takes a look at the impact gender proportions have on innovation in teams. By studying knowledge intensive teams, the research shows that teams with equal proportions of men and women perform particularly well in regards to innovation indicators. In the second part of this talk, Elisabeth will address the importance of gender stereotypes at work. Drawing on examples from the Ladygeek research (www.ladygeek.org.uk) and cutting edge academic insights, Elisabeth will highlight why making gender stereotypes visible at work is crucial to work with them creatively.

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Dr Elisabeth Kelan is senior research fellow in the Lehman Brothers Centre for Women in Business at London Business School (http://www.london.edu/womeninbusiness.html). Elisabeth has researched best practices in relation to gender in organisations and gender, team composition and innovation. Elisabeth has also focused on gender relations in high-tech businesses, gender representations in popular management literature, and the so-called “glass-ceiling”. Her current research interests include identities in organisations, socialisation into organisational cultures, young professionals and technologies at work. Elisabeth has presented her research internationally, published widely, and has received various awards for her research. She has provided advice to supranational and business organisations and is co-authoring the Lady Geek blog (www.ladygeek.org.uk) with Belinda Parmar. She is also founder of Athena Associates (http://www.athena-associates.com), a consultancy that specialises in advising organisations in respect to gender and diversity. Prior to her appointment at London Business School, Elisabeth worked at the University of Zurich as well as at the London School of Economics and Political Science where she also received her PhD.

If you would like to attend this event there are spaces for 150 people.  The details of the event can be found on our sign up page.

There are three rounds of tickets being released.

Round 1 9pm 15th September

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Round 2 7pm 16th September

Round 3 9pm 30th September

This should give people the opportunity to plan their time and be able to get hold of tickets for the event.

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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 – 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!

London Girl Geek Dinner: “Getting into IT” – Sponsored by OpenNETCF Consulting

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Date & Time: 11th July 2008 from 6:15pm

Venue: Central Foundation Girls’ School

Subject for the evening: Getting into Technology

This is the first Girl Geek Dinner ever to be done in a school and we’re looking forward to making it interesting and fun for everyone involved! We’re going to mix the students (past and present) with the teachers and the people from the tech industry as well!

How is the evening going to work… well we’ll have some pizza and soft drinks (kindly funded by OpenNETCF Consulting who offer mobile & embedded software consulting) whilst mixing and mingling with one another. Then we’ll get started with a brief introduction about the Girl Geek Dinners and how they work. And finally move onto our panel discussion on Getting into IT.

Subject: Getting into IT – hosted by Sarah Blow, Founder, Girl Geek Dinners

The Panel!

  • Liz Sarginson Head of Web Operations –The Guardian
  • Nicola Avery eLearning / Learning Technologies – Surrey University
  • WeeWorld ?
  • Lotte Nickel – IT Associate Morgan Stanley
  • Alx Klive – CEO WorldTV
  • Steve Lamb – IT Pro Evangelist Microsoft

It’s looking like a very fun and exciting event!

If you have any questions you would like to ask the panel about getting into IT then please submit your question when you sign up to the event and we will do our best to get it into the discussion!

Capacity 120:

Event Sponsors: