Brussels Girl Geek Dinner

We’ve had a busy few months and it’s time to slow down a bit. But before we go: an overview of all the different ways you can keep track of upcoming Brussels Girl Geek Dinners, and get/keep in touch with each other:

• Facebook Group Brussels Girl Geek Dinners (276 members)
• Twitter List Brussels Girl Geek Dinners (following 128, followers 66)
• LinkedIn Group Brussels Girl Geek Dinners (110 members)
• Blog feed subscribe by e-mail (397 subscribers)
• Blog RSS feed (71 subscribers in Google Reader, not sure about the rest)

Wanting to lose the kilos from your mother’s Christmas turkey? Or just wanting to find a healthy way of life by better controlling your alimentation?
Weight Watchers is giving away 10 free entrances to the meeting of your choice! You will be amongst the first to discover its brand-new ProPoints Program!
How to participate?
Write a blog post, completing this story:

‘Your mother has prepared a delicious but sooooooooo calorific Christmas meal… She would really be hurt if you didn’t participate to this orgy! But you really don’t want to see it fixed on your ankles for months (or more!). You have no choice, you cannot escape it… unless you…’

How will you get out of that situation? Give us your solution on your blog! The entries will be judged on the following criteria: humor, originality and visuals.
Make sure to put a link to this blog post in yours, so we can see you participated in the trackback.

You can participate until the 31st of December.

Short personal note: it’s almost Christmas and New Year, and I haven’t got a thing to wear. As the girl geeks at Brussels Girl Geek Dinner #21 at Anne-Sophie will remember, the Anne-Sophie team has helped me to pick out three sets of party clothes. Here they are:

Time for a little contest!

• I win: the set of clothes that was chosen by you. Yes, you! Write a blog post linking to this one, in which you elaborate on why I should pick set 1, set 2 or set 3. I will comply to whatever the most convincing majority tells me to.
• Who else wins? The Smartshopping experts over at Anne-Sophie will have a look at all the incoming links below this post and pick one winner who has
  1) the most original arguments on what I should wear
  2) a link to Anne-Sophie
  3) if you were at BGGD #21, what you thought of the colour advice / hair make-over / …
  This winner (boy or girl, but has to live in Belgium) gets a voucher of 125 euros worth to spend in one of the Anne-Sophie shops. To give you an idea: it’s called Smartshopping because the dresses are hand picked because of their stylishness but just as well because they are reasonably priced. Your chances of finding a pretty dress for around 125 euros at Anne Sophie are pretty high!

Contest closes in 1 week: on Thursday 24 December Anne-Sophie will announce the winner on this blog so make sure to post before that date.

Kerstdineetje met Weight Watchers, jawel @ Witch: “We kregen een korte uitleg vanwege de Weight Watchers zelf, en werden daarna vergast op Mitch Coldenhoff, een voor mij nobele onbekende, maar niettemin best charmant :-p Hij mag misschien niet veel van geeks weten en geeft dat ook grif toe (I quote: “Ik heb vandaag twee nieuwe woorden geleerd, geek en blog”), koken kan hij gelukkig wel. “

Girl Geek Dinner @ Sara Van de Velde: “Het gezelschap was super, het eten lekker en de sfeer was über gezellig! (…)
En tuurlijk ook Weight Watchers. Dankzij het kookboek e.d. in de goodie bag zullen er velen van ons het nieuwe jaar goed inzetten, met de tips van Weight Watchers!”

A Weighty Decision @ bnox: “To make things even more complicated, I can’t make it to Brussels Girl Geek Dinner #22 tonight and ask the Weight Watchers people myself how to survive the upcoming holiday season without feeling guilty about eating all that food.”

BGGD22: Weight Watchers Christmas @ De avonturen van het endimi-konijn: ” Bij het hoofdgerecht merkte ik dat de Weight Watchers coaches echt wel gelijk hadden: de nieuwe gerechten gaan voor het gevoel van voldaan zijn op het einde van de maaltijd, en ik kreeg zelfs mijn portie niet op!
Als dessert was er de goodie bag, met daarin een starterspakket voor Weight Watchers, een boodschappengids, een 365 dagen kookboek met gezonde gerechten, het Weight Watchers magazine en een doosje Lemon Meringue bars als dessert.”

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

The girl geeks that attended Weight Watchers’ cooking workshop yesterday had the pleasure of receiving a perfect starter kit to test the brand-new ProPoints Program:

• Shopping guide: Giving all the ProPointsTM value of the most common food, and for the most important brands
• 365 days cookbook: healthy cooking pleasure for the whole year.
• … and more!

Remember the 19th edition of Brussels Girl Geek Dinners , the one with @designarenas and @imaterialise as the speakers? We launched a Facebook contest shortly afterwards, with even more design prizes to win. And here are the winners:

• Ann Marcelis won the vases
• Lien de Leenheer won a market tote
• Elvire van Ooteghem, Gudrun Rombaut, and Inge Mestdagh each won a bravit candle

Oh, and one more thing: if you’re in trouble finding a holiday gifts, do yourself a favour and get them at http://arenascollection.com.

Already thinking about the delicious Christmas meal your mother will prepare but dreading to stuff yourself with calories? Don’t be afraid of the end-of-the-year festivities. Weight Watchers, the leader of all weight loss methods, will show you how to cook for Christmas in a healthy but delicious way! For the 22nd edition of the Brussels Girl Geek Dinner, Weight Watchers invites you to celebrate Christmas at a cooking workshop on Wednesday 16 December from 18:00 to 22:00.

20 girl geeks are invited to the Kookeiland cooking studio in Deurne. They will follow the advice of young chef, Mitch Coldenhoff, a regular on television for “De perfecte keuken” with Piet Huysentruyt.
During this workshop, the girl geeks will get a chance to discover in avant-première the new Weight Watchers ProPoints Program, the most flexible program ever developed by Weight Watchers! To participate, write your name on the wiki.

Address:
Kookeiland
Suzanne Spanhovenstraat 2
2100 Deurne

Course of the evening:

• 18h30    Welcome drinks
• 19h00    Nicky & Cindy : A new Weight Watchers for Christmas: long life to healthy pleasure!
• 19h15    Workshop with chef Mitch Coldenhoff & Christmas celebration
• 22h00    Goodie bags from Santa Claus!

Weight Watchers will be offering 10 free entries to Weight Watchers’ meetings to 3 lucky girl geeks. More details to follow during the event and on this blog! Weight and see….

On Tuesday 8 December at 18:00 CET in Kortrijk Xpo the International Trade Show Design at Work opens with a keynote by none less than Ji Lee, creative director at Google. This is the first time Ji Lee is in Belgium and a unique opportunity to get an insight in Google’s creative processes.

And guess what: up to 30 girl geeks get in for free – just put your names on the wiki page. And yes, you can bring male guests, as long as everybody’s real names are on the list.

About his master lecture Ji Lee says

Yes, my talk is focused on how personal and professional can complement each other and when it happens, it produces AWESOME. I also will talk about how Google as company encourages its employees to work 20% of their time to come up with their OWN ideas of innovation. And also how Google create free and useful tools for people to make their projects come alive.

After the masterlecture you are invited to discover Design at Work with its surprising architecture and a long list of productlaunches, such as for instance the Nissan Cube and the Dyson Air Multiplier…

Design at Work  aims for the establishment of a platform related to all aspects of product development and innovation, be it about products or services, in any possible field (such as market research, industrial design, prototyping, engineering, intellectual property, packaging, branding, etc.)

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

The 19th edition of Brussels Girl Geek Dinners (on Wed 18 November 2009 18:00-21:30, with @designarenas and @imaterialise as the speakers) totally wowed the girl geeks who were present. To give you an idea, this is what @gudrun (witch.be) wrote:

Ik ben erin geslaagd misschien wel de coolste prijs van allemaal weg te kapen (al was die lamp die Ploempje won ook niet mis): een gepersonaliseerde armband van iMaterialise. Ik mag een eigen ontwerp doorgeven, of eigen textuur of tekst of whatever, en zij zullen het naar een 3Dmodel omzetten en uitprinten, en daarna laten verzilveren. Hoe cool is dat zeg!

But  @gudrun @ploempje @sassysurfergirl and the others were not the only ones who won. You (yes, you) can win five more super exclusive design objects for your home.

Click away to the  the i.materialise Facebook page to enter the contest. Some examples of the prizes to be won below.
  

The 21st edition of Brussels Girl Geek Dinner takes place in Bièrges (Wavre) on Wed 2 December 2009 18:30-21:30. To get in for free, write your name on the wiki. Ladies only, please!

Address:

Anne Sophie Smartshopping
Rue de la Wastinne 21
1301 Bierges

View Larger Map

Course of the evening:

• 18:30 Welcome with drinks and catering
• 18:45: Anne-Sophie and Charles: What is Smartshopping?
• 19:00 Workshops with the Anne-Sophie experts:
  • colour analysis (for 12 ladies)
  • make-up (for 6 ladies)
  • hairstyle (for 6 ladies)
  • hair diagnostics (for 8  ladies)
• 21:30 Time to grab the goodie bag and go home.

All dressed up and nowhere to go? No worries: all the girl geeks who put their name on the wiki guest list for Brussels Girl Geek Dinner #21 (the Fashion edition) get in for free at the first edition of Shut Up And Dance, Friday 11 December 2009 at the Tijuana in Ghent.

Shut Up And Dance is a new party concept, based in Ghent, and aims to bring back the feeling of the late eighties and early nineties: house and new beat were kinda undergroundpopular, and techno was breaking through. It was a Beatles revolution with only beats. Punk minus the slogans, and far better looking. A new form of instrumental protest. M’as-tu vu without the empty talking. Shut up. And dance.

Hungry after a full day of shopping? Just-Eat has put a 5 euros discount code in each of the 50 goodie bags. These codes are transferable and valid until 31 December 2009.

Just-Eat’s mission is to make consumers’ and restaurants lives easier by enabling hungry surfers to “Order Takeaway. The Smart Way.” At the end of 2009 Just-Eat Group operates in 8 countries, has 8,000+ restaurants online and, every month, over 1.5m takeaway meals are bought through their sites.

• For Belgium, use http://www.just-eat.be/ to order.
• Follow http://twitter.com/JustEatBE on Twitter
• Subscribe to the Just-Eat blog (in Dutch)
• Become a fan of Just-Eat on Facebook and win free meals

During the BGGD#21 at Anne-Sophie Smartshopping, Logitech will be present to give you a demo of their latest Logitech Harmony. These universal remotes allow you to control all of your gadgets with one remote. And let’s face it, as a girl geek, we know you have a lot of them ;-)

You can try out the Harmony now on www.mycrib.be which was just launched! That’s where you’ll also find a clip of Alex Agnew showing you around his house, but a couple of things go wrong…
The kind people of Logitech will be giving away a few Harmony’s to 3 lucky winners. What you’ll have to do in order to be able to win them, will be revealed tomorrow. See you there!

It’s almost a tradition to give away girly and/or techy stuff during Brussels Girl Geek Dinner. And it’s no different for our Fashion edition on Wednesday 2 December at Anne Sophie Smartshopping. Thanks to producer of electronic accessories Memorex we are able to hand out two iPod accessories: one SingStand Karaoke microphone/speaker system and one miniMove Boombox for iPod.

The SingStand is a uniquely designed accessory that filters out the artist’s voice and lets you sing along with music stored on your iPod, with an area to place the iPod directly underneath the microphone mount, and speakers built into the stand’s base. Other features include a 3.5 mm input jack for the iPod, voice control, an echo effect, dual microphone inputs and input jacks for other musical instruments.

miniMove Boombox for iPod is a purse-shaped system with an iPod dock below the handle and a digital FM radio. The boombox is available in turquoise, black or pink.

Availability
Both the Memorex SingStand and miniMove are available at Media Markt, Saturn, Cora, Makro, Carrefour and Krefel and cost respectively €99,95 and €79,95.