girl geek sydney

April 3rd – Meetup at Atlassian 6pm

The next date of the April meetup has been decided so put it in your diaries now for April 3rd.

Event details and signup here: http://www.girlgeeksydney.com/events/april-meetup-tuesday-3rd-april-details-to-come/

Website Updates

We have a new page which lists all upcoming events: http://www.girlgeeksydney.com/events/

Easiest way to sign up is to create a wordpress account with this site. That way you can login to book your spot on any upcoming events and all gain access to the new forums!

We are looking for some volunteers for 2012!

Below are some positions open:
Social Media Officers:
We currently have a need some girl geeks who are on Twitter A LOT, who love social media, who are always up with breaking news and trends in a broad range of tech topics and who would be happy maintaining our GGD Twitter account.

Event Helpers:
For both our meetups and for the bigger Dinner events we often need volunteers to help out on a number of things such as guest lists, helping setup a venue, greeting guests and answering questions.

Email me if you’d like to know more!

More info here!

Of course we are always on the lookout for speakers and sponsors too!

Get ready to get your geek on at the next Girl Geeks Monthly Meetup! February’s is a special one:

Everyone please start thinking of (or looking for) the most interesting tech blog, most crazy gadget, most useful iphone app or most awesome techhy thing you’ve seen in the last month. We’re going to play ‘hot potato’ and share these findings in a group. The one that gets the biggest reaction from the crowd will receive a very special prize!!

Dont worry! We’ll still have the usual talks, drinks, munchies, chatter. The details of the next meetup are below:

Date:
Tuesday 7th February 2012

Time:

6:00pm

Location:

Atlassian is located on the corner of Sussex and Market St (address: 173-185 Sussex St)

To register your attendance, please sign up here

Remember, spaces are limited so please sign up as soon as you know you can make it.

We look forward to a fun evening and seeing you there,

Atlassian and The Girl Geeks organisers

To welcome in the new year, its time for the next Girl Geeks Monthly Meetup! We hope you’ll join us for tech talks, drinks, munchies, and a good chat. The details of the next meetup are below:

Date:
Monday 16th January 2012

Time:

6:00pm

Location:

Atlassian is located at the beautiful heritage building located on the corner of Sussex and Market St (address: 173-185 Sussex St)

To register your attendance, please sign up here:“https://docs.google.com/a/atlassian.com/spreadsheet/embeddedform?formkey=dDQ0MExwUm1VeEZJQ0dWODBQMU9lLVE6MQ"

Remember, spaces are limited so please sign up as soon as you know you can make it!

We look forward to a fun evening and seeing you there!

Atlassian and The Girl Geeks organisers

Last social drinks of 2011 tonight from 6pm at Aurora hotel, opposite central station. Come along and join me for a swift half…

We needed a place for people to be able to post jobs,  ask for help, and discuss events so we have added a forum to the site.

You can RSS to it here:  http://www.girlgeeksydney.com/wp-content/plugins/forum-server/feed.php?topic=all

We are looking for moderators to help keep an eye on things, so if you are interested please email us.

There has been a lot of interesting discussion in the blog comments, twitter, and personally over the past week about the Beauty and the Geek invitation.  It has become clear that our attempt to let people decide for themselves has been interpreted as showing support for the program.  This was not our intention,  however after thinking about what all of you have said we agree this is true and that it was a mistake.  Also, we should not have allowed ourselves to be pressed into secrecy about the name of the show, and should have edited the email sent out to those that were interested.  Please accept our apologies for these mistakes.

In order to avoid this misunderstanding in the future while still allowing everyone the opportunity of making decisions for themselves, we have decided to add a forum to the website.  The forum will be open for all to post too without implying support from the girl geek sydney team.  We hope you see this as a reasonable outcome but if not, please let us know.

Again, please accept our apologies.  This has not been our first mistake and will not be our last.  We thank you for keeping us on the straight and narrow, whilst still providing encouragement.

PS:   Any recommendations for WordPress forum plugins much appreciated!

We here at girl geeks sydney have a relatively open policy for our blog and twitter feed.  Quite a few people have the ability to write a blog post or send out an email or twitter (though not many do) and we have only the “talking to each other” moderation process.  Our basic premise is that girl geeks are both intelligent and diverse and therefore we will put most (NOT ALL) things out there and let you decide.

Over the past couple of days there has been some controversy about Beauty and the Geek.  They approached us to find some girl geeks to show that girls can be geeks.  We are not familiar with the show so had a look at the web site.  Hmm, we said, looks a bit like objectifying women.  So we asked a few girl geeks what they thought.  Some said “sexist, don’t like”, some said “I like the idea of presenting another viewpoint”.

There are over 300 intelligent, opinionated, awesome girl geeks on our mailing list.  We think it is presumptuous to filter your information and opportunities based on our personal opinions.  So we put it out there to let you decide if you want to participate.

Anyhow, we are excited to have caused some conversation and would like to continue it.  We’re guessing there are as many girl geeks wondering what the objections are as there are girl geeks objecting.  So lets keep the conversation going on twitter, and start a conversation in the comments here, and talk amongst ourselves about it.  Or if you want, email girlgeeksydney@gmail.com with your feedback.

We are girls.  We are geeks.  We are diverse.  We are opinionated.

The Australian Computer Society (ACS) are holding a speed networking evening in the City Hotel on Tuesday 9th August.

It should be an interesting night as Fiona Floyd will be talking about how:  “networking has helped her to achieve career success in the IT industry”.   (- and yes, this is the same Fiona who arranged for Suncorp to sponsor the last GGD in conjunction with Google!!)

The official sign up page is here, and there is a cost of $15 or $10 for ACS members.

What is girl geeks? why do it? and what do we get from it?

Last year, Mun (@MKotadia)  gave me a well earned telling off because he wanted to make us a video, and I never gave him enough warning of our up and coming GGD’s.   Mainly because Mun is very scary when angry , and because I didn’t want to get told off again, the team managed to get him along to our last GGD (Google & Suncorp).

The end result turned into a promo/intro type of vid, and I reckon is a great vid to show around at work, and to friends and families to help explain why you are part of Girl Geeks.

Enjoy!

(…and a massive thanks to Mun.  ITS AWESOMESAUCE!!)

*update:  link to Mun’s blog entry as well: http://techtv.com.au/2011/07/20/girl-geek-dinners-in-sydney/