girl geek sydney

Last Tuesday we had yet another great turn out for the Girl Geek meet up held at Atlassian Below are the slides and contact details for the speakers.

Martha Winata: R we cool now?
Email: marthawinata [-at-] gmail.com
Slides: https://speakerdeck.com/ggdsyd/martha-winata-r-we-cool-now

Diane Cotterill: How to manage your career, not just keep looking for the next job
Twitter: @dmcotter
Slides: https://speakerdeck.com/ggdsyd/diane-cotterill-how-to-manage-your-career-not-just-keep-looking-for-the-next-job

Novia Myta: Who needs time management?
Twitter: @nvmyt
Slides: https://speakerdeck.com/ggdsyd/novia-myta-who-needs-time-management

Peggy Kuo: CSS animations – a quick primer
Twitter: @pyko
Slides: http://pyko.bitbucket.org/examples/css-animation/

Hope everyone enjoyed the night, and if you would like to be informed of future events, subscribe to our newsletter.

April has arrived, so join us for the second Girl Geek Meet Up for 2013!

Day: Tuesday April 9
Time: 6pm – for food/mingling, talks to start ~6:30pm
Location:
Level 6 – Atlassian
341 George St (Enter via Wynyard St – look for this interesting clock)
Registration: Register on Eventbrite

Just to mix things up, this time round we are having a mix of talks – 2 normal presentations and 2 lightning talks!

Martha Winata: R we cool now?
Why and how should we get stuck into the R programming language.

Diane Cotterill: How to manage your career, not just keep looking for the next job
Whether you’re just starting out in your career or you’re a seasoned professional, Diane will be giving tips to help you do what you love and maximise opportunities to find your dream job.

Novia Myta: Who needs time management? (lightning talk)
Time management skill is a must for all women who wants to achieve most and be successful in all areas of life. Novia will share her experience and lessons by covering who needs time management, why do we need a good time management and how to master time management?

Peggy Kuo: CSS animations – a quick primer (lightning talk)
CSS can do many amazing things, one of them is animation! Have some fun and learn what you can do with CSS animations.

Register your spot on Eventbrite – http://ggdsyd-apr-2013.eventbrite.com

Last night we had a great turnout to the first Girl Geek Dinner at Atlassian for 2013. Lots of pizza eaten, lots of drinks drunk and of course three amazing talks!

Mary-Anne Cosgrove: Aaron Swartz: Fighting for Freedom
Slides: http://www.slideshare.net/macosgrove/aaron-16465558
Email: mcosgro –at– thoughtworks {{dot}} com

Narelle Clark: The Internet’s Off Switch: Government Controls on the Internet and How They Work
Twitter: @nazzer

Isabel Reid: Sharing the Love
Twitter: @redambition

If you haven’t yet, sign up to our mailing list or follow @ggdsydney- this is the surefire way of getting news and updates about new and upcoming GGD events 

Can you believe it? Not only is it 2013 already, but January is already behind us! This means it is now February, which also means the first 2013 Girl Geek Dinner meetup at Atlassian is just around the corner

Day: Tuesday February 12
Time: 6pm – for food/mingling, talks to start ~6:30pm
Location:
Level 6 (Atlassian)
341 George St
(Enter via Wynyard St – look for this interesting clock)

Register your spot to come and join us for an interesting mix of talks lined up:

Mary-Anne Cosgrove: Aaron Swartz: Fighting for Freedom
A political talk about Aaron Swartz, his life and his death, and five things we all could be doing to carry on his work.

Narelle Clark: The Internet’s Off Switch: Government Controls on the Internet and How They Work
In recent times governments around the world have tried to give themselves powers to turn off the Internet, and indeed some of them have. Narelle Clark, President of the Internet Society in Australia will describe the methods used around the world and the affect in Australia.

Isabel Reid: Sharing the Love
Everyone’s heard it. People learn in different ways… So how do you get through to them with new concepts? A look at techniques and tools for effectively transferring ideas and skills.

You: The Notice Board
Do you have something totally awesome that you have to share? Maybe have a job opportunity available at your organisation? At the end of the talks, we’ll pass around the mic and give you thirty seconds to share.

Register for the event on Eventbrite: http://ggdsyd-feb-2013.eventbrite.com/

The final Girl Geek meetup for 2012 was held yesterday (Tues December 11) and it was a blast! We had lots of new attendees and three awesome speakers – thank you all who came

If you are looking for the slides/more info on the presentations for the night, look no further, here they are:

Sera Prince – Top Tips for project agility without going fully Agile
Slides: https://speakerdeck.com/ggdsyd/sera-prince-top-tips-for-project-agility-without-going-fully-agile

Elle Meredith – Sass Primer
Slides: https://speakerdeck.com/aemeredith/sass-primer

Nicky Ringland – Build a Game in 10 minutes
Game tutorial: http://tinyurl.com/ggd-pygame

If you haven’t yet, remember to sign up to our mailing list - this is the surefire way of getting news and updates about new and upcoming GGD events

The November Girl Geek meetup was the first to be held at Atlassian’s new offices. There was a great turnout with attendees ranging from students to researchers and software engineers to product managers and marketing coordinators!

Not only did we have a great spread of audience members, we also had seven awesome presenters whose talks ranged from tips on giving great presentations to zombie slayers; wireframing and right test tools to artificial intelligence and making the workplace fun. We were even treated to a magic trick to demonstrate how our minds work!

If you missed out on the night, here are the slides and contact details of those who presented on the night. As Martha’s presentation pointed out, the slides don’t mean much without the speaker, but they’ve been uploaded for nostalgia

• I Am Prettier Than My Slides
       Martha Winata – marthawinata [-at-] gmail.com
• Tangible User Interfaces: The Future of Human-Computer Interaction
       Livia Lam – livia [-at-] progsoc.org
• Wireframing: How a Napkin Can Save You a Million Bucks
       Kristine Howard – @web_goddess
• Gamifying the Workplace
       Irene Lee – @irene247
• Conversational Artificial Intelligence – State of the Art, and the Future?
       Liesl Capper – l.capper [-at-] mycybertwin.com
• The Rise and Fall of Zombie Testers
       Alessandra Moreira – @testchick
• Choosing the Right Test Tool for the Right Purpose
       Leonor Salazar – @leonor_salazar

For the curious few, wondering how we managed to squeeze seven presentations into one night… it was because all the presentations followed the ‘Ignite’ format – inspired by Ignite Sydney. Thus, each presentation was only five minutes long, 20 slides, 15 seconds each with the slides auto-advancing!

Kudos to all the speakers who took up the challenge and spoke on the night. Thanks to all who came as well

A quick shout out to balsamiq who gave us a free license for Kristine’s wireframing talk, and YOW who also gave us some tickets to YOW! Conference to give away to people who came.

The next Girl Geek Dinner meetup will be held at Atlassian on Tue December 11 – hope you can make it!

On Tuesday November 13, we’ll be holding the first Girl Geek Dinner at Atlassian’s new office.

Register your spot and come join other girl geeks  in the Hall of Justice for some great talks, food and mingling.

Quick event details:
Tuesday November 13, 6pm
Level 6 (Atlassian)
341 George St
Note: Enter via Wynyard St (you should see this interesting looking clock)

This month, we have an awesome lineup of speakers with very exciting topics!

• Alessandra Moreira - The Rise and Fall of Zombie Testers
• Irene Lee - Gamifying the Workplace
• Kristine Howard - Wireframing: How a Napkin Can Save You a Million Bucks
• Leonor Salazar - Choosing the right test tool for the right purpose
• Liesl Capper - Conversational Artificial Intelligence – State of the Art, and the Future?
• Livia Lam - Tangible User Interfaces: The Future of Human-Computer Interaction
• Martha Winata - I Am Prettier Than My Slides

If you’re worried/wondering how we can fit all these presentations in one evening, don’t fret! The format for the talks for this meetup have been inspired by Ignite Sydney - so the presentations will be 20 slides, 15 seconds each (auto advancing) giving a total of 5 minutes per presentation.

Register for the event now: http://ggdsyd-november.eventbrite.com/

Remember, Atlassian has moved offices!

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ps. For those who are wondering – the above list is in alphabetical order, not in speaker order.

Thursday the 18th October marked our very first all Gaming themed night for Girl Geek Sydney! The event was sponsored by the Academy of Interactive Entertainment at their campus in Ultimo. We had a great turn out and welcome a lot of new faces with the addition of the AIE women students on the night.

We had a jam packed line up of speakers who were all fantastic and offered a really diverse insight into the gaming industry and what role gender plays (or doesn’t) in games.

• Rebecca Fernandez – An introduction to game engines and other game dev tools
• Maude Garett – The constant challenges of being an out and proud female gamer, whether casual or professional
• Alexis Pepper – An artistic showcase
• Phuong Tran – The life of an artist in the games industry
• Sarah Pulis – Game a11y: pwned
• Stephanie Bendixsen – What is a ‘Game for Girls’? – The gender divide and how it’s changing

To break the night up we all played a networking game that consisted of creating a hero game character  complete with a set of special abilities that could overcome the Vermicious Knid, an army of shape shifting aliens who’ve taken the Oompa Loompa’s hostage on Willy Wonka World! It was amazing to see how much detail each of the group put into their characters. Great job by all, and special congrats to Team Donkey Kong who won some prizes from Valve Software!  Thanks Valve!

Thanks again to our wonderful sponsor AIE, we hope to see some of the AIE students at future GGD events.

GGD @ AIE was FTW!

More photos!

I’m pleased to announce our very first ALL gaming themed event sponsored by the Academy of Interactive Entertainment. AIE is Australia’s leading educator for the Computer Game Development and 3D Digital industries. The really know games and have helped put together an amazing list of speakers.

Sign up now: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/4519281292

Event Details:
Thursday 18th Oct 2012, 6pm
Academy of Interactive Entertainment
Level 1, Wentworth Park Grandstand,
Wattle Street, Ultimo NSW 2007

Speakers:

Alanna Mondon – Learning games development from the ground up
While Alanna was at school she loved being creative - always doodling on her books rather than doing any class work. With a love for games and being creative, there was no better option for Alanna than to get into game development. She found out about AIE and signed up the next year. Alanna has learned of the wonderful world of digital arts and met some great people along the way. Now that she’s finished her game development degree, she’s involved in the Incubator Program also run by AIE which has helped her team found “Pear and Melons” and kickstart their business and get out there into the wonderful world of game dev!

Stephanie Bendixsen – What is a ‘Game for Girls’? – The gender divide and how it’s changing
Stephanie Bendixsen – also known by her gamer tag ‘Hex’ on ABCTV’s Good Game and Good Game: Spawn Point – has been sharing her love of video games on the popular tv shows since 2009. Passionate about all things Sci-fi and Fantasy, her roots are firmly planted in nerd culture… and she endeavours to bring a little bit of that escapism into each day. Stephanie adores books, games, graphic novels… Even firing off a few arrows at her local Archery Club. She’s also the proud servant of her two feline overlords, Gandalf and Merlin.

Phuong Tran – The life of an artist in the games industry
Phuong Tran is a graduate of AIE Sydney Campus. Pretty much every aspect of her life revolves around games or something geeky. She’s played video games for as long as she can remember, she podcasts about RPG video games and reviews video games for a website called Gameolio; Phuong also regularly attend conventions (and cosplay). Currently Phuon works at Blowfish Studios as a 2D/3D generalist, specialising in texturing and UI graphics.

Rebecca Fernandez – An introduction to game engines and other game dev tools
Rebecca Fernandez is the CMO of Convict Interactive, an independent game development studio based in Wollongong, NSW. She has a Masters degree in Computer Science, currently teaches programming at the University of Wollongong and is heavily involved with IGDA Sydney. Though her background is mostly in programming, as an indie Rebecca has had to wear many hats and has taken on the role of marketing and PR for Convict Interactive. They are currently working on their first PC release, Triangle Man.

We hope to have one or two more speakers for the night plus the AIE students will be showcasing their games for you to play!