Tag: women

If you can’t see it, just be it!

Too often women say they struggle to find relevant role models in tech.

Rather than moaning about there not being enough role models we need to pull our socks up and start becoming the role models for the next generation.

Ladies rather than looking for others to step up and become your role models, step up and take the mantle.

  • Be the role models
  • Share your stories
  • Support those coming into the industry
  • Mentor & advocate
  • Start shaping the industry
  • Make the rules
  • Share the triumphs and the failures
  • Be honest, open and inspirational
  • Be visible

If you are stuck on how you can do any of these. A quick Google search will tell you all about mentoring opportunities. There are loads of projects calling for inspirational stories of women working in tech. There are opportunities to network locally make yourself known to schools, other networks etc. Even within your own organisation… Share those stories you find and share your own!

Challenge the salary differences, stand up to being marginalized. Don’t take the past as a representation of how it will be in the future (that’s called conforming to stereotypes and stereotypes have a nasty way of self perpetuating unless they are challenged). Don’t accept poor excuses and bad manners. And this doesn’t just mean ladies have to do it all!

Men you too need to step up here. Male advocates for women in tech are in short supply. You too can support women in tech by doing all of the above and challenge those that stand in their way and yours! This is your industry too! Take some responsibility and ownership too, help shape it into an industry we can all be proud of! Here are a few tips on how you could do that.

This sector needs fundamental changes which means people need to believe this industry can and will change. Without these changes we limit the future of technology itself. No one wants that.

Let’s show the other industries that change can happen and fast. After all technology changes so rapidly why shouldn’t people…

We are Girl Geek Dinners but more importantly we are a voice for change.

JustEat speakers

GGD #75 Smart usability testing on a budget and upskilling with JustEat

Speaker announcement ..


Swetha sethu-jones
Swetha is a Senior UX Researcher at Just Eat with experience of over 10 years’ experience and wide range of projects spanning mobile, web and connected TV platforms. She enjoys employing a variety of methodologies to further understanding of how people use technology, and how it meets their needs.

Swetha’s also an avid board-gamer, Organiser of Things and a proud feminist! She loves traveling to cool places and eating tasty food (preferably at the same time). She also co-organises a series of research meetups called The Research Thing, which you should come to, as there is free wine, beer and nibbles…

Continue reading “GGD #75 Smart usability testing on a budget and upskilling with JustEat” →

GGD #70 Interested in voice-enabled technology?

Here’s a chance to find out more.

It’s midweek. The weekend feels a long way away. So come and get your geek on with XMOS.

We’ll take you (quickly) through the science of voice and explain how our technology is able to capture voice and strip out background noise – even from across the room and when you’re speaking softly. We’ll also demonstrate our voice-capture development kits and give you a sneak preview into the new areas we’re working on.

We don’t have a talking toaster – but we do have a lamp with attitude, an LED array you won’t forget and a look at what’s possible when you merge voice with radar technology. And if that doesn’t convince you, then we’ve got plenty of anecdotes about questions that are best left unasked of your voice assistant!

The talk will be led by our XMOS girl geeks

Continue reading “GGD #70 Interested in voice-enabled technology?” →

GGD WSM #01: Oh we do like to be becider seaside ….

Weston Super Mare GGD New Chapter

We are setting up a Girl Geek Dinners group in Weston Super Mare.  While we try it out for size we are going to use the Bristol GGD site to host as we are also aware that we have some members who work in Bristol but reside by the beach (lucky you!) and would like something closer to home to network.

We would like to announce that finally we believe we may have spotted enough women either in tech or interested in the subject to justify setting up a GirlGeekDinners WSM chapter!

The Stable will be hosting the first one on the 4th October.  If you don’t know the place then it’s certainly time you paid a visit – it’s a great coworking space. The Heritage cafe next door is run by businesswoman and powerhouse performer Sarah Evans (the UK’s number one Adele tribute act, no less). It’s also round the corner from the beach and from vegetarian cafe.  Loves, run by Anna Southwell, a woman with her finger in many artistic, musical and cultural pies. They also sell halloumi chips. What’s not to love about The Stable and surrounds!

Continue reading “GGD WSM #01: Oh we do like to be becider seaside ….” →

From Pies to Pizzas! Bath Girl Geek Dinner 2018 #2

Bath Girl Geek Dinners is back and we are enticing our members in for an informal pizza and meetup before BathCamp (which we’re sneaking into after 6.30)  on the 10th May.

We will introduce ourselves, explain the aim of the group and give you all an overview of the support networks in the region for women in Bath working in the Tech Field.

Marianne Wise and Franziska Zuch have brilliantly agreed to take on the task of getting the Bath GGD on its feet which is great.

As we are only booked for the first hour we will concentrate on who’s doing what in the Bath area around the women in Tech

mariannewise

Marianne Wise is one of the new Bath Girl Geek Dinner organisors, she will introduce herself, what she does and her interest in women in tech

 

fran

Fran Zuch is the other new Bath Girl Geek Dinners organisor and runs a meetup called Meet&Speak also for women who want to be more confident about speaking in public, in the workplace, at conferences, or at local meet ups.

 

rosie

Serrie-Headshots-BW-HIGH-RES1-300x200

annielegge

 

 

 

 

Serrie Chapman to give an overview of the Womens Tech Hub, IT Girls Collaborative (run by Rosie Bennett above left) and Tech for Good (run by Annie Legge above right), which are all actively supporting women in tech in the area.

paulleader

Paul Leader from BathCamp will hopefully pop his head around to introduce BathCamp to you, they have been very actively working to encourage female attendance to their meetups!

 

After that it will be a case of networking, pizza eating, wine drinking and finding out what our members would like us to find speakers for, subjects, suggestions, support (all the S’s it seems!)

When

Thursday 10th May 2018 5.30pm – 6.30pm

BathCamp starts at 6.30pm for those wishing to join BathCamp

Where

This meetup is kindly being hosted by the The Guild Hub co-working space in Bath

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 Bath Girl Geek Dinners

The London Girl Geek Dinners Drinks and Film ‘Best Friends Forever’

The London Girl Geek Dinners drinks and talks is being promoted along with a film called  Best Friends Forever .

The details for the event are below.

– 6.00pm arrivals and drinks
– 6.30pm talk starts (45mins max: 15-20 mins talk plus 5-10 mins Q&A each)
– 7.15pm Best Friends Forever (the lead, Vera is flying over for intro/q&a)
– 8.50pm finish

Venue:
Stratford Picturehouse – East London, Salway Rd, London E15 1BX

We’ve made the talk part of the ticket for the screening of Best Friends Forever, so if you buy a ticket to BFF then you also get to come to the talk so ring 0871 902 5740 & quote ‘geek girls’ to get £5.50 ticket

Join us in the bar from 6.30pm for a LONDON GEEK GIRLS DINNERS Networking event. We then have a talk from Holly Gramazio, games designer at Hide and Seek and Ste Curran from One Life Left. Then this fantastic movie and we are super-excited that Vera Miao producer, co-writer and co-star of BEST FRIENDS FOREVER will be joining us for the screening and Q&A!

In this indie, post-apocalyptic THELMA AND LOUISE, two LA hipsters take a road trip across America, unaware of the mass destruction around them.

Harriet, played by Brea Grant (Daphne from HEROES), is a comic book artist, with issues. Her best friend is Reba (Vera Miao), a reckless fun-loving girl who is the antithesis of Harriet. They set off in a beat-up old hatchback to start a new life in Austin, Texas (possibly the hippest city in the US). En route, many misadventures befall our heroines, most of which are perpetuated by the events they are ignorant of.

Being low-budget, most of the apocalyptic elements come from inference, allowing the film to concentrate on the relationship between the two friends as they discover the truth of what has happened.

The two leads co-wrote the screenplay, with Brea directing and Vera producing and women held key crew roles: editing, sound and cinematography (it was shot on Super 16 film, rather than digitally). This is a film that easily passes the Bechdel Test, which is something of a rarity for genre films. While this is not hard sci-fi, it fits nicely into the postapocalyptic sub genre, and will especially appeal to audiences tired of seeing ‘tough men with guns’.

This is a great example of what can be done with relatively little money and plenty of imagination.

Some of the cast and crew are going to be attending so it is REALLY important that we fill that auditorium with LGGD members who are watching the film so the talk is part of the discounted ticket! Anyone who quotes ‘geek girls’ will get tickets for the screening of BEST FRIENDS FOREVER at the members rate of £5.50 rather than £8.50

Details about the film are here:  http://www.sci-fi-london.com/festival/2013/programme/feature/best-friends-forever

So please do buy a ticket, support SciFi London who have supported us so much and support this film which is important to support. Even if you don’t stay for the whole film, you’ll be helping out 🙂 ring 0871 902 5740 & quote ‘geek girls’ to get £5.50 ticket for the May 2nd LGGD event

Plus it means us LGGDers own the whole cinema – WOOOOOO!

See you at the SciFi London event May 2nd at the Stratford Picturehouse – East London, Salway Rd, London E15 1BX

Remember – ring 0871 902 5740 & quote ‘geek girls’ to get the £5.50 ticket

Sci-Fi London & London Girl Geek Dinners Presents… 2012

We’re going back to Sci-Fi London and once again you can buy your Sci-Fi London tickets at a discount as well since you’re a LGGD member! “GEEK GIRLS” is the code for your discount – THANK YOU SCI-FI LONDON!!  http://www.sci-fi-london.com/

The London Gir Geek Dinner event will be on the evening of Thursday 3rd May.  The drinks will be from 19:30 with the talk starting at 9pm.  We have to do it this way because of the films in the screens.
Thanks so people not showing for the EA Games event we do have leftover wine so a big THANK YOU to EA Games for the wine 🙂 Have you contacted them yet about job opportunities?  You should! Amanda Cowie was the lovely person at the last event and you can contact her with your CV on acowie@ea.com
If anyone wants to go to screening of the shorts at 6:30 that evening it will be over in time for the LDDG talk – like previous years everyone will get a code for getting a discount on films at the festival.
We’re just confirming speakers. We hope to get a couple of women to talk about the ZX Spectrum and how it changed programming (especially for women) and possibly Raspberry Pi but this is proving difficult so we may have people speaking on Gaming but hey – that’s half the fun of going to a LGGD talk – no matter what the topic you know it is going to rock – and have the world’s largest power point slides!
So if you’d like a ticket for networking with other women and amazing talks, grab a ticket NOW!
Eventbrite - Sci-Fi London & London Girl Geek Dinners Presents... 2012
Remember – we opperate a 3 strikes policy so if you can’t make it please don’t grab a ticket and let someone else come – THANKS!

EA Interactive & LGGD Forensics Event

On the lower level of the O2 Workshop, the London Girl Geek Dinners had a fantastic event sponsored by the lovely folk at EA Interactive.  The lovely people at the O2 Workshop offered us a great deal if we wanted to renew or sign up on the night – so much so I wish I had been able to take advantage!

The theme of the event was “Computer Forensics” and after a fantastic introductory session, we were introduced to some great tools being developed to find people doing bad things or things that had gone before on their hard drive.

Probably the most shocking talk was the first one. It really opened everyone’s eyes to how computers work, how erasing a disk works, how disk recovery works, and how it is almost impossible to erase all information from a hard drive.  As a rather ancient computer sits in my hall waiting to be taken to the dump, I’m trying to figure out just how to wipe all the information from the disk drives or whether a sledge hammer really is enough!

Apparently our identities are bought and sold rather cheaply and one of the reasons criminals like our mobile phones is for our personal data – eek! But the things we learned that night are going to last for all the women who were there. I know I learned a lot and I think everyone really learned a lot that night.

Our next event will be at Sci-fi London and as always, we will also have a special deal for tickets.  Sign up to the Google Group for London Girl Geek Dinners to get information on the event, special discount tickets for the event or information about any of our events.

If you’d like a chance to work at EA Interactive, pop over to their careers page or contact Amanda Cowie and see what is available. See you in May!