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Posts Tagged ‘Girls ‘n’ Gadgets’

Girl Geek Dinners turns 5 (Guest post by Judith Lewis)

Monday, July 12th, 2010

Have you ever heard of London Girl Geek Dinners?  What started as an organisation of a few passionate women has blossomed into a worldwide network of “dinners” from New Zealand through to Toronto and now the home of that movement is turning 5 years old!

London Girl Geek Dinners really does hope to change the world.  We’d like to inspire more girls to get into tech, more women to stay in tech and more not-currently-techie women to get involved.  We run events in high schools, in businesses and in pubs with inspirational women and men talking about technology in its varied forms.  Whether discussing using computerised techniques in creating manga or digital cows, London Girl Geek Dinners appeals to a wide range of people.

LGGD is free to join and we do welcome everyone.  Our main list is on Google but we are also on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.  Men are welcome to join our groups and events but we do ask that they are the guest of a girl geek.  Most of the time our events are free to attend as well but we do rely on sponsors like SciFi London, Norton Symantec, Regent St, Microsoft, Google, HMRC and others to help us put on events.  We’re working on getting Girl Geek Dinners charitable status as well!

So what’s happening as we turn 5?  Google is our main sponsor and they will be feeding us and giving us goodie bags.  The wine has been supplied by Dinastia Vivanco  and in the goodie bags we have lovely goodies from Green & Blacks, VitaminWater and Juniper Networks. We’ve also got raffle prizes including LGGD sweatshirts and all money from the raffle will go to helping us to gain charitable status.

Excited? Want to be a member? Just pop over to http://groups.google.com/group/london-girl-geek-dinners/ and sign up for free!

Want your company to be associated with this positive organisation? Please do get in touch with us on Londonggd –at- gmail dot com and we’d be happy to talk to you about the really inexpensive ways you can get involved in sponsoring a London Girl Geek Dinner event!

G ‘n’ G Women in Tech Week, Cate Sevilla – BitchBuzz.com

Friday, May 8th, 2009
Cate Sevilla www.bitchbuzz.com

Cate Sevilla

My name is Cate Sevilla, and I’m the founding editor of BitchBuzz.com, as well as being a freelance writer and professional blogger. I grew up in California and after meeting a rather handsome British Geek on Myspace, I moved over to London in the spring of 2006. After blogging a ridiculous amount about women’s issues on my personal blog, CupCate.com, I was asked to be an editor for the blog publishing company , Shiny Media.

Over the past few years I have written for a number of websites such as T3.com, Yahoo! Personals’s advice column, and have appeared in various newspapers, and TV and radio programs. After leaving Shiny Media in June 2008, I decided to launch BitchBuzz.com, as I was fed up with both reading and writing for websites that were “for women, by women”, yet seemed pretty out of touch with what a lot of women actually want.

 BitchBuzz is a network for web-savvy women where we discuss everything from sex and politics, to the latest in pop culture and technology. We’re the happy medium between hardcore feminism and the fluffy, Cosmo-esque magazines that dominate the Internet today. Plus, we only write about stuff that we actually like and care about! There are enough iVillages and Handbag.com rip-offs out there – I wanted to create something that recognized that women care just as much about the latest political news and most useful iPhone applications as they do about finding unique and kitschy dinnerware.

bbss1

Through my work on BitchBuzz, and experiences with feminism and the tech community in London, I’ve become incredibly passionate about getting more women involved in technology. Whether it’s through blogging, IT, social media or graphic design, we need more women in the tech! The female audience online is as massive as it is influential and I strongly believe our tech culture should reflect that. While I may not be a Ruby on Rails developer or understand exactly how the server that BitchBuzz runs on works – I still am a woman in technology.

So, my current mission is to help balance out our current tech culture, along with helping make younger women and girls aware of how many different cool jobs you can have if you work in the technology industry. I think most girls are unaware of how many tech jobs don’t just involve sitting in front of a computer screen staring at numbers and graphs all day! (Unless that’s what you want to be doing, and yes, there are plenty of those jobs, as well.)

My personal blog is CupCate.com and you can follow me over at Twitter: @cupcate. Please do check out BitchBuzz.com (and follow us at @bitchbuzz ) and if you’d be interested in working with us or contributing to the site, please do get in touch via our Contact form!

Check out BitchBuzz.com

Click image to check out BitchBuzz.com

G ‘n’ G Women in Tech Week – Diane Perlman, Branding Matters

Friday, May 8th, 2009
Diane Perlman www.brandingmatters.com

Diane Perlman www.brandingmatters.com

Closet geek and entrepreneur, Diane Perlman has spent time learning and practicing nearly every marketing discipline over her career, both agency and client-side, and the last 12 years focusing mostly on digital and working with tech and telecoms clients.  Diane, now director of ‘virtual agency’ Branding Matters for the past 4 years, provides strategic consulting to direct to clients and often via agencies who retain her as a strategist and planner to work with their clients on a particular challenge, whether that be naming and branding assistance, digital planning or strategic account management.

Diane has worked both in the US and the UK with both large multinational clients such as Microsoft, Unisys, Nokia and T-Mobile on a global basis, as well as with smaller, early stage companies and start-ups.  Check out one of her most recent projects: www.activinstinct.com – an end-to-end branding and ecommerce project for a large sporting goods retailer. Diane conducted the strategy, naming and branding, as well as overall project management for ActivInstinct and managed the other aspects of the project via a virtual project team of likeminded partners. She is also managing global email and search marketing campaigns on behalf of Microsoft. And, for a London branding agency, she recently participated in two naming and brand architecture projects for clients in the electronics industry. Other examples of recent projects can be found at www.brandingmatters.co.uk.

send someone a compliment today!

send someone a compliment today!

Diane is also the co-founder and marketing director of ililkeucoz  the world’s first appreciation engine. Diane helped establish ilikeucoz along with a small team of passionate entrepreneurs at Launch48 in London where attendees were challenged to create and launch four new web app in 48 hours. ilikeucoz was one of them. ilikeucoz encourages people to spontaneously send Twitter-esque compliments to the people they like in their life. It’s all about bringing the feel-good factor back in a time when, more than ever before, people need a bit of a boost. Follow ilikeucoz on Twitter @ilikeucoz and check out the ilikeucoz blog.

Diane’s initial introduction to technology and the world of all things geeky came when she joined a start-up called Cyveillance in 1998. Prior to coming to the UK, Diane was the marketing director at Cyveillance, where she named the company and developed its early-stage branding and marketing strategy in the US and later launched the brand in the UK and Europe. After the bubble burst, Diane left Cyveillance, but stayed in the UK and continued on the technology track and joined global ad agency Grey London where she looked after the Unisys and Nokia accounts and managed Nokia’s first ever global ad campaign for its N-Gage gaming product. Then, getting back to digital, Diane joined top digital agency Wheel (now LBIcon) as a Group Account Director where she was advising retail brands like Laura Ashley, Dixons and Disney, among others, on their online advertising and marketing campaigns, as well as website design and development.

Follow Diane on Twitter!

Follow Diane on Twitter!

 

G ‘n’ G Women in Tech Week – Cat Burton, Mind Candy

Thursday, May 7th, 2009

The Girl Geek and the Monsters

I’m sat pondering the life of a London girl geek, cup of tea in hand and admiring a lovely view of the Thames.  It’s hard to believe that just a few years ago I was living in rural Lincolnshire, with big dreams of working in the games industry. 

Cat Burton www.mindcandy.com

Cat Burton www.mindcandy.com

I can’t remember my first gaming experience as I grew up surrounded by games. From a young age, our household was full of glorious gaming gadgetry, from our old Spectrum, to a NES; from Gameboys to Segas. What I can remember, however, are some of the games that ultimately inspired me to break away from the traditional girly stereotypes and follow a path of geekery.  Whether it was Civilization II, Theme Hospital, Mario Bros or Monkey Island, one thing was for certain – I knew I wanted to work in the games industry.

When I left sixth form at 18, I moved away to attend Nottingham Trent University where I studied a BSc in Computer Science. In my first two years on the course, I got a good overview into many different subject areas, developing a real passion for games development and artificial intelligence.  The end of that second year brought with it my placement year and my first experience of life in London.  For just over a year, I worked as a developer at (what was) Lehman Brothers.  Whilst this didn’t give me the games dev experience I craved, it gave me a wonderful insight into global corporations and how business works.  All in all, a year well spent.

Upon returning to university for my final year, I was determined to do more work in the fields of AI and games dev. That year, I worked on many wonderful projects, from creating a 3D asteroids game for the PS2, to developing an artificial neural network capable of predicting foreign exchange rates. Here’s where I should say thank you to my tutor, Dr Jonathan Tepper, for sharing his valuable experience and helping make the project a success.

Mind Candy

And so, in summer 2007, I graduated and moved my life back to the big city, accepting a role back at Lehman Brothers.  After about a year, the games dev craving became too strong and I began looking around for a new role.  I didn’t just want a games dev job though; I wanted to work on a game of which I was a fan; one which I could see grow and feel proud to be a part of.  After a long search, it eventually became clear that there was one game I really wanted to be part of.  And so, in October 2008, I began working at Mind Candy.

At Mind Candy, I work as a developer (predominantly working with Actionscript) on the wonderful Moshi Monsters. Moshi Monsters is a world of adoptable pet monsters, an exciting cross between a virtual pet, social network and educational puzzle games site for kids.  The game allows users to adopt their own pet monster, and play games online with the 2.4 million of other players across the world.

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Click to adopt your monster now!
Click to adopt your monster now!

 

One of the most rewarding aspects of working on Moshi Monsters is the feedback from the players. There’s no better feeling than releasing a big new element of the game, and seeing the positive reactions from the users.  Their wonderful comments make the hard work worthwhile, and confirm that the games industry is definitely the right one for me.

Cat’s personal blog can be found at www.catburton.co.uk. You can also follow her on Twitter!

G ‘n’ G Women in Tech Week – Meaghan Fitzgerald, Spoonfed

Wednesday, May 6th, 2009

A Silicon Valley Girl Getting Spoonfed in London

*Meaghan Fitzgerald: A Silicon Valley Girl Getting Spoonfed in London*

Meaghan Fitzgerald www.spoonfed.co.uk

I sit staring at source code in an empty computer lab, trying to embed a flash animation of a fish into a website for my sixth grade science project. If I could go back and speak to my eleven-year old self now, the message would be clear: don’t fight it, Meg, you’re destined to be a geek.

Growing up in Palo Alto, California, now famously home to Google and Facebook, I had not encountered “women in technology” as a debate topic – it was an expectation, especially at the all-girl’s school I attended where speakers like Carly Fiorina and Melinda Gates were common. As far
as I could tell, the industry was so full of women, they’d be my main competition on my future career path – an optimistic world view brought
about by my unique upbringing.

Although I studied biology and English at university in New England, my interest in tech led me to internships back in the Valley, with PageOne PR, a tech-focused PR firm; then with IMVU , a 3D chat service. I even briefly directed my own company, DormWise, while I was at school, something which caused no end of bemusement amongst my friends as I coded, designed, wrote for and promoted my website myself.spoonfed

It wasn’t until moving to London after graduating last May, however, that I really felt I could begin to call myself a woman of technology. Shortly after arriving, I joined the team at Spoonfed , the definitive guide to things to do in London, and haven’t looked back. Spoonfed is a web startup that uses innovative technology to help Londoners find events throughout the city with localised search functions, online planning features, and an upcoming range of mobile support for finding what’s on in London.

While I’m officially doing marketing for Spoonfed, one of the benefits of working with a startup is the opportunity to affect a virtually limitless range of projects and aspects of the company. My current projects with Spoonfed focus most heavily on SEO, promoting our iPhone application and building the Spoonfed online community but I am also involved in creating editorial content for the site, bug testing, reaching out to bloggers, assessing site analytics and many more day to day tasks to keep Spoonfed growing.

the definitive guide of things to do in London

the definitive guide of things to do in London

With the Spoonfed team, I work at the forefront of technology in a startup that has the power to shape the industry. This was driven home when the recent release of our iPhone application, the Spoonfed Radar, made waves in online publications including TechCrunch and Stuff.TV . The Radar literally scans your location for nearby events and searches a database of over 30,000 events a month for more complete listings than any other service.

I am consistently impressed with the social and friendly nature of the tech community in London and now, armed with a guide to the best events in the city through Spoonfed and a drive to meet and share knowledge with other London women in tech, I look forward to recreating my youthful vision of a tech world full of intelligent, empowered women working on the forefront of a tech  evolution.

Meaghan Fitzgerald is a 22 year old woman from Palo Alto, California working for www.spoonfed.co.uk, in London. Her personal blog can be found at http://www.thetopfloorflat.com/ .

Welcome to Girls ‘n’ Gadgets…

Wednesday, March 4th, 2009

We girls love gadgets. Web and technology is an amazing world, filling our lives full of fun, fanaticism and functionality. Where would we be today without our laptops, mobile phones and of course the Internet? Lost most would say! These days, it’s hard to imagine not tweeting, tumbling, DMing or IMing your way through life. These gadgets are essential in almost every aspect of our lives whether it’s work or play. I for one couldn’t live without my laptop, mobile phones and especially the Internet!

Technology over the years has always been strongly male dominated, but recently this has started to change and the number of influential women in tech has greatly increased. With many groups and events being set up, such as  Girl Geek Dinners and Women Who Tech , the female voice is finally being heard loud and clear.

This brings me on nicely to Girls ‘n’ Gadgets; As a Tech and Internet lover, I wanted to share my passion with the world and I knew I wasn’t the only girl out there wanting to do this. After going to many conferences and meeting like-minded people, I decided to set up  Girls ‘n’ Gadgets to give women a place to go to get a female ‘take on tech’. The site will feature up-to-date  news and reviews, as well as featured internet personalities and companies. To keep things interesting, we even have our own resident boy to review our weekly musings.

I hope that over the next month, whilst we are still in beta mode, you will enjoy what you see and read. As a new and growing site, all feedback is greatly appreciated and all comments will be taken into consideration.  As time progresses, we will be adding more features and perfecting the site to the best of our abilities.

We are currently looking for more female bloggers to contribute to the site on a casual basis. If you are interested and have any questions, please email me -  Leila@girlsngadgets.com

Don’t forget to  follow us on Twitter

Leila

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Winner - Computer Weekly Blog Awards 2009 - Best SME

Highly Commended - Cosmopolitan Blog Awards - Best Gadget Blog 2010