Berkman@10 Conference at Harvard

Last Thursday and Friday I attended the Berkman@10 conference about the future of the Internet. The very short summary is there are a lot of really really smart people who are affiliated with the Berkman Center. :-)

Here's the longer version:

Day 1 was a series of presentations by both academics and business people, from Harvard to Oxford, from Wikipedia to MTV. The first to speak was Jonathan Zittrain, who I think collectively blew the audience's mind. His book, The Future of the Internet and How To Stop It (believe it or not, available in PDF), was the framework for the talk, where he talked about the fragility of the Internet's ability to stay afloat and presented a bottom-up approach to sustainability by having a core group of technical experts take on the "policing" of bad Internet behavior.

What was interesting was that it was followed up later in the day with a talk from the founder of Wikipedia, another great speaker. He really built on Zittrain's presentation, and talked about harnessing the power of community, which really isn't all that bad after all. Yes, there are bad apples, he exclaimed, but they get kicked out by the rest of the community, largely made up of people who are passionate about their area of interest and don't want to see it get messed up. He also presented the backbone of the site, which he believes has allowed it such success, the idea of a Neutral Point of View (as opposed to majority rule). He noted that if 70% think one thing is true and 30% think it's not, chances are there's something not quite right with th 70% either. They work it out online until reasonable language is presented. His example was that you can't say "Abortion is immoral", but you can say "the catholic church believes abortion is a sin", or something like that. You get the idea. :)

I think those two sessions did a nice job of convincing me, anyway, that there's hope for humankind when we can look at ways digital society as a community can act for good, not just surrender to spam and hacking.

Later in the day, some other heavy-hitters came in (Esther Dyson, a VP from MTV/Viacom and a former FCC chairman ) to talk more about the future of the Internet and the conversation varied widely. One of my favorite observations was the notion that the university will go the way of the newspaper. In essence, free education is the future. This isn't too surprising, since we're already seeing signs of this with MIT's open courseware and now Harvard's open access.

The tenor of this session, in fact really the whole conference, was Everything Should Be Open. Of course, that's not necessarily the best course of action, and every need is different, but it is interesting to see an institution that has been branded for hundreds of years as elitist, flinging its doors open (well, not completely,... yet. ;-)).

Day 2 was the "unconference" day, where I was moved to facilitate a session on Semantic Web. Because it was the end of the second day, I was assured that's why there weren't more people, but the group we did have was interesting. A managing editor for the NY Times was there, as well as a reporter from eWeek. The gist was everyone wanted to know more, but were skeptical of its full potential.

There was also another session on Digital Natives. One of the producers from the Frontline special Growing Up Online was there and articulated exactly what we're seeing... that the real digital divide is between teachers and students and these teachers aren't being given the tools to handle what is clearly a huge shift in learning. Overall people were mixed in their feelings on using technology in the classroom. Is it a distraction? Are there ways to use it as a learning tool to engage students in a new way? The latter, everyone felt, was possible, but still far from established. Berkman used a Question Tool throughout the conference, and displayed it behind each panel and session, so that the audience could ask questions, and other members of the audience could vote, so more popular ones would be addressed. I didn't have my laptop with me and found myself having trouble balancing reading comments and listening to the person speaking, but I'm no digital native!

Overall, I think the conference was really valuable. There's lots to chew on here and I'm still trying to sort it all out. This is some heady stuff.

Flavours of the Geeks

It's surprising what a roomful of geeks can do. At Bar and mini-camps they can reinvent the wheel. At any other numerous Web 2.0 conference there’s cries of a Web 3.0 uprising and more techno-inspired innovativeness and creativeness than can be held in one room, or after party bar.

What would happen if you put said geeks into a kitchen and told them to cook in teams of two a three course meal? Disaster? Utter confusion? Mayhem?

One of the above is true.

Tried and tasted Nicole and myself of Girl Geek fame were representing in the Food 2.0 nom nom nom Action Against Hunger cook-athon. The event sponsored by our always superb and energetic friends at TrustedPlaces and SpinVox made for a fast-paced and exhausting day! And someone should really hide the sugar from Walid, such high energy levels become more than contagious!

Deliberated,
Before the event there was some light deliberation and mocking on behalf of Nic and myself fed through various Tweats, wallposts and even SpinVox's (where what you say is turned into text. A very cool, and mighty fun use of voicemail I might add) which seemed apt as it was mostly Whatelydude of SpinVox fame we were challenging. Girl Geek pride was at stake and we were taking things seriously enough to continue our practice run-through into the wee hours of Saturday night (well Nic was cooking, I was there more for ‘decoration’, and to chop). At 1am there was still essential cookery stuff to be done. No wonder G. Ramsey is losing his hair. Phew; hard work! I think I dreamt of cooking that night. Well certainly chopping!

Cogitated,
But no time for proper rest! in true to form 'hard at work' chef style we arose early Sunday to cogitate about the event ahead and in anticipation of perhaps having the honour of not only Girl Geek status, but as flavour of the day in the kitchen too!

And Digested...
What we hadn’t factored in was the absolutely amazing menu’s from the rest of the Geek crowd. And these were no simple feats of cookery concoction. Everyone had taken the day and task at hand really seriously. My favourite themed menu was by far Richard Moross (Moo) and Russell Davies (self-acclaimed fame for ‘doing digital stuff’) who had created four different styled breakfasts that ranged from the hangover friendly poweraide and fruit pastal sweets to the posh totty’s slap dash fry up.

Points for inspiration and presentation! Not least as their actual cooking and in the kitchen time was about half of everyone else. Leaving R and R free to roam the two floors of the state of the art cookery school to take some superb images and soundbites of the day.

But megapixals aside. No-one could compete with Sara Maternini and Julia Parsons, both top foodies and food bloggers knew a thing or two about food. The menu an Italian / Britishbeing fusion left judges and participants alike crying: 'More please!' and 'Ooo and how ever did you make that pastry?!' Seriously people ran across the room to request the recipe!

So Julia and Sara we at Girl Geek salute your cooking superiority AND should you ever want to cook again, we know a little place you would be very welcome. Maybe we should host a Girl Geek cook-off?...

On another note, there was a serious side to the event: Whilst we gorged on our nice food, Amy from Action Against Hunger reminded us of those in more serious situations of real hunger and in danger of malnutrition. It’s a tall order, but with more events like Food 2.0 to raise awareness and engage the brightest networked stars and their friends things can only change for the positive!

But folks it doesn’t end here! With so many blogger, vloggers and cloggers (my new term for cooking blogging creativity) much was recorded and is now being shared across various digital networks. (the Food 2.0 webjam is a great starting place to find these). And so it seems only fair that we invite You, our strongest and most respected of critics to view, deliberate, cogitate and digest our cookery attempts. In the next few weeks you'll be able to vote for your favourite team cooking attempts!

FYI; the Girl Geeks were Team 9 'I.T. Girls' and I will of course let you all know once our vid is uploaded: For amusement note Nic’s attempts to get me to flirt for ingredients at Marylebone Farmers Market. No, I don’t know what to make of it either!

And so it just leaves me say a HUGE thank you to everyone the I.T. Girls cooked, tasted and met. And to some brilliant hosting from Food nom nom nom, TrustedPlaces and SpinVox. My gosh geeks we rocked the kitchen!

Find out more about Action Against Hunger

Inspire: Making a Difference in Business

This is a guest post by Simone Brummelhuis. She’s co-owner of Iens and European Museum Guide. Currently, she works and lives in London. This post a bonus post via our guest poster and is the last in this batch.

And finally I wanted to bring to your attention a May event called Making a Difference in Business. The details of the event can be found below and are part of the FreshIdeas Events. The lineup of speakers looks really interesting. Also students and Make Your Mark Ambassadors get a discount.

London - Interbrand, Wednesday 21st May - 6.30pm to 9.30pm This evening event is part of a series of networking seminars featuring inspiring business leaders. This is an excellent event to attend if you are an entrepreneur or corporate woman in business looking for practical advice and seeking to get ahead or grow a business. Get ahead in business At our previous event, the importance of building a brand for an organisation was discussed. This time, we look at personal branding and differentiating your own unique selling point. With growing competition in business, these are increasingly seen as key strategies for success and profitability. Guest speakers include Margot Katz, author and business consultant, who will explore the strategies for success as outlined in her current book: reflecting on values; keeping ahead of the game; expressing a personal brand and strategic networking. We also have two leading business women, Sonita Alleyne, CEO Somethin' Else and Christina Vaughan, CEO Image Source who will further develop these ideas and offer insights from their own experience into what it takes to grow a successful career or business. Why attend? During this series, business people like you will benefit from: excellent networking opportunities hearing the secrets of success from some of the UK's leading female entrepreneurs mixing with like-minded business people gaining access to practical information and exciting new ideas for your business Business Link in London will also be exhibiting at this event. Business Link in London is a free and impartial business advisory service available to anyone starting up or running a small or medium sized business and this is a good opportunity to speak to them. Want to Make a Difference? As always in this series, we showcase some exciting achievements and excellent speakers and discuss the challenges faced by businesses balancing profitability with their responsibilities to the wider community.

About the author: Simone worked as a successful lawyer before becoming an entrepreneur by setting up her own B2B publishing company Brummsbooks. Thereafter as co-owner and managing director IENS she developed this start-up into the no. 1 user generated content database publisher of restaurant guides in The Netherlands (online and offline). With the Europeanmuseumguide.com, she intends to do the same. these posts are written as contributing editor for the nextweb.org and are re-produced to reach a wider audience.

Want to guest post here?
All you have to do is ask. We are always happy to hear from people with great ideas for guest posts, and if you are after doing this regularly we can even give you access to post them and lay them out yourselves. All you need to do is send us an e-mail!

(inspire.girlgeekdinners.com)

NYT: swimsuits or women in technology?

Woman Troubles in Technology - GigaOM: "The New York Times had an article today about the loss of women in the science and technology fields as they hit their 30s and beyond. It cites a report that blames a macho culture intrinsic to those fields. But it’s possible that readers in the tech field missed it as it only ran in the Style section of the paper’s web site rather than the Technology section. Because apparently the loss of female programming and engineering talent has nothing to do with technology and everything to do with the latest swimsuits."

AAAaargh!

Inspire: Searching for female web heroes

This is a guest post by Simone Brummelhuis. She’s co-owner of Iens and European Museum Guide. Currently, she works and lives in London. This post no four of four guest posts which will be posted one a day.

London Open Coffee Meet-up, the issue of female speakers at the Next Web Conference and the lack thereof came up, as discussed earlier by Boris and Patrick. To finally tackle the issue, I promised to come up with a list of 100 international female tech and web heroes. Indeed, I had some practice at restaurant review site Iens, where I once put together a top 20 of female chefs.

Sheryl Sandberg from Facebook

Let’s first state that I have been able to track down a number of amazing web women. My focus was on web entrepreneurs, investors and CEO’s in the Internet world. But I also came across highly regarded female cross media consultants, power bloggers and other independent professionals, as well a talented mid level managers.

My first place for research was LinkedIn. Yet ‘internet’, ‘ceo’ and ‘entrepreneur’ resulted in many men, but few women. Maybe they can add as search option ‘female’. When I googled a bit on the same terms, many initiatives focusing on women leadership sprung forward.

Websites like Women Enterprise empower women to start their own (internet) business, while other organizations stimulate women to be represented in the information technology and computing world.

To enhance visibility of women there are several awards, such as the new Harpers Bazaar’s Women of the Year or the Cartier Women’s Initiative, focusing on female entrepreneurs in general (where Dutch Annemarie van Gaal is member of the jury) and the Blackberry Women Technology Awards, which honors the achievements of women leaders in the technology sector.

Also, articles in business magazines make an effort to portrait female leaders, as do various journalism blogs. Further, women networking groups take a stand on the issue and connect career women. The trend is that women are entering the boardroom and are knocking on the doors of investors as not seen before. Most governments have committed themselves to stimulate gender equality, also in the technology area, and organizations as Catalyst assist in this task.

Among the Fortune 500 tech companies, 5 are led by female CEO’s, such as Patricia Russo of Alcatel-Lucent. Google is breeding female technical leaders, such as Sheryl Sandberg, which are then bought by others, in this case Facebook, in the industry. So we do have something to be cheerful about in national women’s history month! I will publish about the list in the coming weeks on this blog; feel free to put suggestions forward.

About the author: Simone worked as a successful lawyer before becoming an entrepreneur by setting up her own B2B publishing company Brummsbooks. Thereafter as co-owner and managing director IENS she developed this start-up into the no. 1 user generated content database publisher of restaurant guides in The Netherlands (online and offline). With the Europeanmuseumguide.com, she intends to do the same. these posts are written as contributing editor for the nextweb.org and are re-produced to reach a wider audience.

(inspire.girlgeekdinners.com)

Inspire: Female Internet Heroes in Holland

This is a guest post by Simone Brummelhuis. She’s co-owner of Iens and European Museum Guide. Currently, she works and lives in London. This post no three in a series of four guest posts which will be posted one a day.

The Netherlands may be known as a liberal country with equal opportunities for men and women, but somehow we managed that in terms of women in the board room, we are doing not so well. While in the United States almost one out of five corporate officers are women, in Europe the female to male ratio on company boards is not even one to twenty. And in Holland it is even less….. However, Norway has set the agenda by imposing a minimum female mandatory quota of 40% in company-boards. And guess what: it works! Heleen Mees of women-on-top and Marieke Bax

of Topbrainstorm have urged companies and our government to do the same over here. I support this. It makes sound economic sense. Moreover, studies show that companies with more women in senior management are more profitable than those with few women at the top.

With these developments taking place, let’s see which female internet heroes in The Netherlands can act as such role model and fulfill the quota. Indeed, these women can bring entrepreneurial internet knowledge into the board room.

Female internet heroes are strongly represented in media, such as Marianne Zwagerman, director of Dutch Telegraaf Media Group and Lara Ankersmit, director of telegraaf.nl., the second largest news site in the Netherlands with a strong user generated content component. Dutch Dragon Den’s Annemarie van Gaal, is founder of AM Media but more known as a keen investor in media companies like bright.nl.

In more technological driven companies, serial entrepreneur Christine Karman springs to mind, who is founder of Zaphod and member of the advisory board of Technika10, an organisation who provides science and technology classes to girls. Also, I point out CEO Petra van Schayik of Compumatica, founder and CEO Karen Loeffen of Libersy and Jacqueline Smit, country manager of MSN. Although how come that Microsoft is organizing an event, the Dev Days, with no single female speaker?

Some very popular sites were founded or led by women, such as weekendjeweg by CEO Marianne Baars, which was sold to Holidaybreak, kieskeurig.nl by founder Janet Sellis, which was sold to Sanoma and directwonen.nl by founder and CEO Yvonne Swaans who went to the Alternative Investment Market at the London Stock Exchange.

Good catch are also some international female internet heroes living and working in The Netherlands, such as CEO Nancy McKinstrey of Wolters Kluwer, ranked in the top ten of the most powerful women in Europe by The Financial Times and founder Marina Tognetti of Myngle, com, a startup global marketplace in language education.

So who said that we cannot fulfill the quota?

About the author: Simone worked as a successful lawyer before becoming an entrepreneur by setting up her own B2B publishing company Brummsbooks. Thereafter as co-owner and managing director IENS she developed this start-up into the no. 1 user generated content database publisher of restaurant guides in The Netherlands (online and offline). With the Europeanmuseumguide.com, she intends to do the same. these posts are written as contributing editor for the nextweb.org and are re-produced to reach a wider audience.

(inspire.girlgeekdinners.com)

Flashback

There's a neat Doonesbuy flashback cartoon where two friends are weighing up the dilemmas of social networked content.

'What's your favourite quote?' one asks.
''I wish i could help, but i don't want to'' Phoebe from 'Friends''.
'That is SO You!' comes the reply.

What this little interchange shows is the way in which being online and as a member of SNSs has significant consequences not only for how you see yourself but others view of you too.

The singificance of which is not lost on Liza Campbell's latest take on 'Internet Addiction' published in HapersBazaar (UK ed). Campbell claims how the 'knee-jerk response to your Crackberry allow cyberspace conversations to intrude upon those you are having with people in 'meatspace''.

Aside from the over-journalistic 'style' of the piece (too OTT for me, 'meet' instead of 'meat' puh-lease) I feel that Campbell has missed the point about this level of connectivity. Viewed as 'damaging' and 'harmful' we're harking back to the old days of 1990s cyberspace, where round every chatroom and MUD corner there lurked danger danger!

Campbell goes on to cite the American and psychologically led Internet Addiction Disorder (IAD) that is at epic proportions. Ok media sensationalism aside, the main point that people are connecting in more ways and with an assertive graceful proficiency than ever before has completely been overlooked. Campbell's later reference to South Korea where '80% of the population have broadband connection' (good for them i say!) and where '10 people have died from blood clots after sitting for extended periods at cybercafes' only makes Campbell's case fall into the category of the over-hyped ridiculousness.

I suppose by typing this post what I am seeking to establish is that we have got beyond such standardised risks when the Web was viewed as a portal for 'menace'. Surely we have taken on board how our relationships with others are now an integral part of how we make connections, interact and live out our lives connected to one another.

Or should such journalist displeasures set us up to take more seriously the dangers that lie 'out there'?

Inspire: 10+ Female Internet Heroes in the UK

This is a guest post by Simone Brummelhuis. She’s co-owner of Iens and European Museum Guide. Currently, she works and lives in London. This is a series of Four Guest Posts which will be posted one a day.

As the second of the series ‘Where are the female web heroes?’ I describe the situation in the UK, where as of 2003, a rise in female-owned net ventures have been seen. The government’s newly formed Women’s Enterprise Task Force seeks to encourage female enterprise across the nation to help close the gap in female entrepreneurship between the US and UK. Because, although the number of women-owned businesses has recently topped one million, the rate of female start-ups in the US is much higher. Also, with girls outperforming boys at school some predict that by 2020 the majority of UK millionaires will be female.

The UK female entrepreneur is in her early 30s, tech savvy, well connected and thrives on risk, according to a survey by Aurora, the UK’s largest business women’s network. This network is owned by Glenda Stone, who herself won the Blackberry Best Women in Technology. One of the women who fits this profile is Martha-Lane Fox, co-founder of Lastminute.com. As the time she stepped down at 31 years, the share price had recovered from the dotcom crash valuing Lastminute at £667m. In 2005 she sold the company to travelocity.com, of which Michelle Peluso is the CEO. In those days also Julie Pankhurst of Friends Reunited sold her company, to ITV.

For most Internet female entrepreneurs in the UK, entrepreneurship appears to be a mid-life choice. Between the ages of 35 and 50, women leave successful careers to start their businesses. They are driven by innovation, a strong commitment to entrepreneurial ideals and autonomy in their work lives. Examples thereof are Sian Sutherland, founder of Mama Mio, skincare for super mamas, and Marcelle Speller founder of holidayrentals.co.uk, which has in the meantime been sold to Homeaway.Inc.

Female Internet entrepreneurs are mainly clustered in electronic retail and electronic community ventures. Examples of the latter are: Sarah McVittie CEO and co-founder of Texperts, an online Q&Q site, Karen Darby founder of Simplyswitch.com, an online comparison site and Ann-Marie Slavin, the Irish managing director of Opt2 Vote, an online voting system. Examples of online retail successes are: Glennys Bird, founder of lovethoseshoes.com, Bec Asthley Clarke founder of asthleyclarke.com, online expensive jewellery and Natalie Massanet of the highly successful net-a-porter.com.

Some women are serial entrepreneurs, like Karen Hanton the founder and CEO of toptable.co.uk, an online restaurant booking service expanding to Europe. I also include Xoici Birch, founder of Birthday alarm, an e-card business with 47 mio users, founder of Ringo.com and most known as the co-founder of UK’s Bebo, which was just sold to Time Warner/AOL for an amazing amount, but she is actually American.

Women in the UK make up just three percent of business angels for Internet start-ups. However, there are a growing number of high net worth women and female investors, such as the power woman Julie Meyer, co-founder of First Tuesday (sold to Yazam) and now founder and CEO of Ariadne Capital, which invested in an early stage in Skype, eBay and Zopa.

About the author: Simone worked as a successful lawyer before becoming an entrepreneur by setting up her own B2B publishing company Brummsbooks. Thereafter as co-owner and managing director IENS she developed this start-up into the no. 1 user generated content database publisher of restaurant guides in The Netherlands (online and offline). With the Europeanmuseumguide.com, she intends to do the same. these posts are written as contributing editor for the nextweb.org and are re-produced to reach a wider audience.

(inspire.girlgeekdinners.com)

Inspire: Women speakers at Web 2.0 expo SF?

This is a guest post by Simone Brummelhuis. She’s co-owner of Iens and European Museum Guide. Currently, she works and lives in London. This is a series of Four Guest Posts which will be posted one a day.

As the Web 2.0 conference in San Fransisco is approaching (this event has now taken place!), I thought to take on a look how many ‘female Steve jobs’ will appear on stage. By counting the list of 200+ speakers, 20 are women, so that’s 10%. Among them is somebody whose according to my definition a female hero, Tara Hunt, CEO of Citizen Agency.

Tara Hunt (photo: Randy Stewart / Stewtopia)

Interesting is that of those 20 women, at least 10 still need to submit their bio (10 days before the actual conference), while of the male speakers about 99% have their bio submitted. Come on women, write down your achievements, or if you are to shy, hire a personal branding agency.

Of the keynote speakers, I only counted 2 women. One of the underlying ideas of these series is to promote that more women put themselves, or are asked, on stage. Not only could these women act as role models for aspiring Internet entrepreneurs, another effect of making women visible in the Internet industry from the beginning, is that it may prevent devaluation of the industry at a later stage. Indeed, what has happened in some industries when women entered or became visible at a later stage is that the whole profession started to devaluate, in status as well as money wise. This happened, for example, when women entered the education workplace or became judges or doctors. But since the Internet industry is only 5000 days old…, an thus we are at the beginning of an era, it is in the interest for men and women not to let this happen in this industry.

So, as a tip to the organization of Web 2.0 expo San Fransisco, here are a few American female heroes from my database: Patricia Gallup , CEO of PCConnection. Jean Armour Polly, founder of netmom.com, and the first woman elected to the Internet Society board of Trustees, currently working on connecting rural libraries to the Internet. In this time of social networking by kids a valuable contributor to the discussion. And just to name a few other American female heroes: Nancy Cruickshank, CEO of Videojug, Michelle Pelluso, CEO of Travelocity, Dawn Lepore, CEO of drugstore.com, Rebecca Blood, author of a weblog handbook, Janet Hanson, founder of network 85broads.com, Lisa Sounia founder of Dopplr, Joyce Chung, early stage investor at Garage Ventures, Peggy Liu of Mustang Ventures and Joanna Rees, also an investor. Who else is ready for last minute booking?

About the author: Simone worked as a successful lawyer before becoming an entrepreneur by setting up her own B2B publishing company Brummsbooks. Thereafter as co-owner and managing director IENS she developed this start-up into the no. 1 user generated content database publisher of restaurant guides in The Netherlands (online and offline). With the Europeanmuseumguide.com, she intends to do the same. these posts are written as contributing editor for the nextweb.org and are re-produced to reach a wider audience.

(inspire.girlgeekdinners.com)

Free Mentoring via MentorSET

So recently it was brought to my attention that MentorSET have just recently launched their online mentoring system for women in the Science, Engineering and Technology industry. This is a great opportunity for anyone in the industry to link up with a mentor if they haven’t already. The program is currently open to anyone with a focus on females in Science, Engineering and Technology.

Please do take a look. “The MentorSET scheme is currently FREE to both Mentors and Mentees. Mentors’ expenses will be paid. For mentees, some expenses (travel etc) may be met by the scheme.” So there are no excuses not to join in.

Now I know that mentoring was one of the things that the Girl Geeks were interested in getting involved with so I’d be interested in hearing about any feedback on the MentorSet system to find out if it is something that works or doesn’t. I’m hoping it will be something that benefits everyone who uses it!

Dr Sophie Kain on Being a Geek (and on The Apprentice & Sir Alan Sugar..)

The combined London Geek Dinner and London Girl Geek Dinner on 26 April was fun. The venue was perfect, just the right size for the attendees, so you could mingle and sit down at various tables and even sofas without being too cramped.

Here's the video of the speech by Dr Sophie Kain on being a geek (with intro by Ian Forrester). The talk was very good, with some great Q&A and thoughtful discussion on geekdom and what it means to be a geek. As well as some comments on The Apprentice and Sir Alan, for you gossip / TV fans out there! Enjoy.

Tags: Dr Sophie Kain, The Apprentice, geekdom, Improbulus

IT Girls - shadowing conference

I thought it was worth publicising the European Commission's Shadowing Conference on 6 March 2008 in Brussels, though girl geeks may already know about it.

The Commission's "IT Girls" initiative aims to get more girls into information technology / ICT careers. (I notice their webpage includes a link to the excellent Women In Technology group run by Maggie Berry.)

The Commission organised "shadowing days" where girls shadowed women working in IT in various technology companies. There's even a WMV video available - I think they should have put the film on YouTube if they'd wanted to publicise it better, but there we go.

The presentations from the shadowing conference are now available - mostly slides, but a couple of full papers (single PDF with all slides & papers) - with not only talks on diversity but also workshops on best practices on women in ICT careers, education and overcoming the barriers, and increasing awareness of the issues.

Personally, given the shortage of people with IT skills in the European workforce, I think the powers that be should concentrate as much if not more on also encouraging returners to work, plus people looking for second or third careers whether female or male - but that's a subject for a separate post!

Tags: EU, European Commission, shadowing, Improbulus

New York Girls: NYC Geekettes

So when Sarah invited me to become a Girly Geekdom Blogger, various contrasting emotions raced through my mind, including those dualistic favs of fear and excitement. Truth be told I'm not entirely sure what duties are required, my first thoughts were "does this now mean I am some kind of sacrificial slave for all geeky girls?" - I mean Girl Geeks do carry considerable clout these days, equally if not more fearsome than Guy Geeks. But no, on hindsight I don't think my Girly Geekdom membership (of which I am actually really bloody chuffed with) is anywhere near as maniacal as pledging my heart and soul to the masonic lodge might be, for example.

I'm guessing Sarah invited me along to the party as I radiate geekery and I'm filthily neck-deep in random thoughts and highly improbable truths and hold the position of "The Don" (self proclaimed of course) in the Social Media Mafia (SMM). Well that's the areas I'm self-publicising here initially, in any case hopefully you'll enjoy my conversations on this Girly Geekdom Blog and we'll get to know each other.

I'm writing this Blog post first thing on a Monday morning having returned from a client business trip to New York City where the people don't sleep (certainly explains my tiredness). I met many great people there having hosted a SMM "sit-down" dinner for about 15 geeks and geekettes in the Trattoria Dopo Teatro, where they serve a mean Osso Bucco (veal shank). Twas at dinner where I brought up the Girl Geek Dinners concept amongst the girlies present whom would all make a rocking branch themselves, (singularly or collectively) namely, Julia Roy, Stephanie, Annie Boccio, Christine Cavalier, Jody Gnant and Hilary Mason.

Yes, I do categorise the above people as geeks, yet they all have radically differing personalities, very different qualities. So this does make me ponder on this morn, (not only through lack of sleep and 2nd day of hang-over) but regardless of sleep deprivation, I'd ponder anyway, what does in fact make a geek, how is a geek defined or rather, why would you call yourself a geek?

I'd love to know why you'd be happy to raise your hand (or not) and wear the geek badge with pride.

*POP*

To start the week

It’s Monday, and as every diligent worker knows when there is a lack in creativity its time to turn to a procrastinatory, yet quality distraction diversion. Well here's one: From Japan an electronic toy that recreates the joy of popping bubble wrap!

Eternal Poppity-Pop from putiputi (how aptly named!) replenishes seamlessly its pop-plastic bubbles. Ok so you can’t roll about on the floor covered in bubble wrap, but you can claim as a great antidote to stress when at your desk the simple pleasure of popping little plastic bubbles…

What could be more satisfying; chocolate bubble-wrap?...

Oh if like me you can't wait to recreate the thrill of bubble poppin GeekStuff are selling these as 'virtual bubblewrap toys' for about $60. Of course bubblewrap would be cheaper, but where's the fun in that!

Image: http://zedomax.com/

BBC1 Who Dares Wins - Dare 2 Try?

So as usual I was trawling through my e-mails and this time came across an interesting one from a BBC1production company... and here's how it goes...

"I'm not sure if you are aware of the show or have seen any programmes. The basic premise of the show is completing lists. You may be given topics such as 'Shakespeare plays', 'countries of Africa' or 'US presidents'. You have to name as many as you can to beat your opponents, with the possibility of winning £50,000 on each show.

We are currently looking for contestants and I thought maybe yourself, or members of your group may be interested in applying as we are doing auditions in London over the next few weeks. If you are interested, please send an email to applications@12yard.com and it will send you an auto-response application form which you'll need to send back pretty quick as the auditons start soon. If you can mention to your friends or send info in your mailing list, that would be great."

Well rather than mail spamming everyone I thought I'd let everyone know this way instead. It's not the first time that the Girl Geeks have been offered TV appearances for different chat shows and this one is no different. It's part of the National Lottery show. Anyway in true girl geek style I thought I'd share the info to give anyone in the UK a chance to give it a go!

Now where's that invite to get those apprentices doing a Girl Geek Dinner or Geek Dinner event ;)