Brussels Girl Geek Dinner

Below is a review by Tenderfeeling‘s Anne (pictured on the left hand side). It’s in Dutch, but sums up nicely.

‘s Avonds werden sommige geeks afgewisseld door anderen voor het het geek dinner in het GP Europe Business Center. We waren daar immers ook met 80, terwijl er wel nieuwe gezichten tussen zaten.
De fries on wheels werden gesponserd door Microsoft en de drank door de winnaars van bwards. We zaten comfortabel op zachte kubussen van Netlash, en Clo zelf zorgde voor ambient music. Om de tocht naar huis te verzachten gaf vedett ons nog een flesje mee en van Emakina kregen we een Computer Languages History poster. Nalu had z’n kat gestuurd.

Here’s another review, posted by Elise Huard:

It was not the usual formula, as everyone floated about sipping drinks or eating fries, played on the weeWii, talked around the standing tables, sat on the cube-like seats. A very relaxed and pleasant atmosphere, thanks to the soft (and colourful) lighting and the lounge music.

If you happen to have pictures on BGGD #4, please tag them with brusselsgirlgeekdinner4.

Cameraphone picture by Amedee Van Gasse (as posted on his Facebook profile)

A quick round-up of what is now sometimes called The Mother Of All (Belgian) Geek Dinners:

78 subscriptions:
Brussels Girl Geek Dinner #4: 32 female attendees
ITPro Geek Dinner #8: 46 male attendees
Put your name on either list to enter, eat, drink, get a goodie bag for free.
Lists will close as soon as we reach 80 geeks.

Time and location for both:

Saturday 29 March 18:00-21:00 CET

GP Europe Business Center
Ajuinlei 1
B-9000 Gent – Belgium
Route description pdf

Food: fries on wheels (thank you Microsoft)

Drinks: cans of Nalu
UPDATE: served drinks sponsored by the winners of this year’s Belgian blog awards, ZatteMadammen. So this obviously means there will be some alcohol available (probably wine).

Goodie bag: Computer Languages History poster (Emakina), cans of Nalu and a bottle of Vedett beer

What we’re still looking for:

• more drinks
• more edible stuff for the goodie bag – sorry, no chocolate :-(
• music (live or ambient) – will bring an iTunes machine and some smaller speakers
• something to sit on (like fatboys) thanks to Netlash, probably the best web agency this part of the hemisphere!

Dutch girl geeks Melanie Rieback and Donna Metzlar have just launched the first edition of the Amsterdam Girl Geek Dinner. In short:

Date: Thursday, 10 April, 2008
Time: 7-11 PM
Location: Flexbar (Pazzanistraat 1, Amsterdam)
Cost: 22.50 Euros (buffet dinner, excluding drinks)
Speaker: Fabienne Serriere “Hardware Hacking on the Cheap”

Found via Marketingfacts.nl.

So far there are, Brussels included, no less than 16 Girl Geek Dinners in in 10 countries all over the world: 5 of them in the UK (where it all started), 2 in Canada and 2 in New Zealand, and more in Italy, Germany, Australia, Malaysia, the US and of course The Netherlands and Belgium. Check http://girlgeekdinners.com/ for a full overview.

Good news: the BGGD 4 goodie bag will also contain a bottle of Belgium’s most fascinating blonde cult beer Vedett. For the beer lovers among us: Vedett is “a blond, light, well hopped premium beer with 5.2% alcohol content”, best known for its retro-look, capricious taste, Vedett-allure and the “golden touch” of the Moortgat brewery (best known for Duvel beer).

UPDATE: of course the boys also get a goodie bag. When we said we’d team up for the occasion with the pure-blooded geeks of the well-known ITPro Geek Dinner, we meant it :-) They will get free entry, free fries and free goodie bag just like the girls.

Big thank you for Netlash for pointing us to the venue sponsor for Brussels Girl Geek Dinner #4 on 29 March:
GP Europe Business Center
Ajuinlei 1
B-9000 Gent – Belgium
Route description pdf

Or, in plain English, a prestigious and convenient address in the heart of Gent. GP stands for Growth Phase and is aimed at businesses. All of GrowthPhase Europe’s services allow companies to focus on their core business, whilst benefiting from a cost-effective professional office environment. They offer flexible contracts and terms, enabling you to pay only for the workspaces companies require – scaleable and affordable. GP offers space by the hour, by the day, by the month, which allows for growth and will help young businesses to grow step by step.

Please give them lots of linklove (when announcing the event) and tag love (in your Flickr sets after the event). Without them (and Microsoft) we could not have kept this event free.

Brussels Girl Geek Dinner #4 is still on Saturday 29 March, 18:00-21:00 in Ghent. A quick round-up, 18 days before G-day:

• Subscriptions:
  • 26 girl geeks (put your name on the wiki if you want to eat for free)
  • 29 male geeks (put your name on the doodle if you’re male and would like to meet the girls)
• Microsoft has agreed to feed us all. How cool is that! Thank you Microsoft! Food will probably be Fries on Wheels but we have to fix the location first.
• Emakina is throwing in Computer Languages History posters for all the geeks. We will need more goodies.

The übercool location in the center of Ghent I had in mind is not available. And I don’t want to stretch the IBBT‘s hospitality too much – they are already hosting the Barcamp Ghent during the day.

Any suggestions?

Viviane Reding, EU Commissioner for Information Society and Media, thinks it is “unacceptable that Europe lacks qualified ICT staff. If this shortage of computer scientists and engineers is not addressed, it will eventually slow down the European economic growth and Europe runs the risks of falling behind its Asian competitors”.
That’s why two years ago, the European Commission began its pilot exercise with the Shadowing initiative to stimulate the interest of more young women, who are at the point of deciding on their future career. The idea has been to show them what a typical day would be like, by accompanying or “shadowing” a female role model for a day. The experiences during these shadowing days have been filmed and the video was presented in the International Conference Move out of the shadow! Seize the opportunity, which was held in Brussels on 6 March 2008 to celebrate the International Women’s Day.
Given the success of previous years, Commissioner Viviane Reding this year wants to go one step further. Together with industry she will initiate a “European Code of Best Practices for Women in ICT”. This aims to stop the leaky pipeline phenomenon and breakdown some of the stereotypes concerning work in the sector. The industry is expected to agree on the Code by Women’s Day 2009.
Via Pascal Van Hecke.

As new research shows girls are now at least as confident with computers as boys, two pupils and a teacher at Brentside High School in West London speak about female attitudes to computing.
BBC News dot.life: Girls get geekier: “The teacher herself, Varinder Randhawa, said much had changed since she left university a couple of years ago. “I remember I was one of five girls out of a class of 160,” she told me. “And in the programming classes I was the only one there”. Now, though, she is finding that her female pupils are just as keen on asking questions in class as the boys, and more and more of them are opting to study ICT.”