Brussels Girl Geek Dinner

Do you make things? The Ubuntu Women team is running a competition to find outstanding projects made by women and connected in some way to Ubuntu. Write about what you have done (with pictures) and email your entry to competition@ubuntu-women.org and they will publish it on the Ubuntu Women team blog. They will take a fairly broad interpretation of “making things” they could be physical things or more abstract, and they’ll accept fairly tenuous links to Ubuntu. The deadline for submissions is Ada Lovelace day, 7th October. Some examples of what you might make would include

• Neat new applications running on Ubuntu
• Cookies, Cakes or Cocktails with an Ubuntu theme
• Robots programmed or designed on Ubuntu
• Arduino powered circuits designed and programmed on Ubuntu
• Something musical or artistic with Ubuntu tools
• Something utterly different to surprise and delight us

I’ve lost count how many girl geeks have posed with the mag and posted it on their Facebook or Twitter account. Some examples – click on the image for more.

To support breast cancer awareness (and the 5th edition of Pink Ribbon Magazine) a few dozen of my Sanoma Media colleagues have volunteered to pose nude with the magazine. Among them virtually every magazine editor and a couple of men, too.

I’ve used mine as a profile picture on Facebook and Twitter to spread the message.

During #BGGD46, girl geeks can line up for the same photo shoot (if they want too, of course). It’s an all-female professional photo crew and they’re very pleasant to work with. By the way, do you recognise the girl geek in this gallery?

On December 7 and 8, 2010, TEDWomen will gather five hundred global thought leaders, innovators and storytellers in Washington, DC, to watch enlightening speakers and connect with a global community of women and men. The cross-disciplinary, cross-generational program will focus on how women think and work, communicate and collaborate, learn and lead. The program will explore what this means and why it matters to all of us.

TEDxFlanders will host the simulcast for this exciting event! Join us at De Kleine Hedonist, in Antwerp for the livestream.

Tuesday 7 December at 20:30 & Wednesday 8 december at 14:30
De Kleine Hedonist
Sint Jacobsmarkt 34
Antwerp, Belgium

JUMP (“Empowering Women, Advancing in the Economy”) offers women practical tools to help them realise their professional aspirations and supports companies and organisations that wish to promote better gender diversity within their management. More at www.blogjump.eu, www.forumjump.eu, www.womansacademy.be, and www.jobdays.eu.

For Women’s day, JUMP is organizing an event on the 4th March, at 18.00 at Mirano, Brussels. It’s an occasion to meet another
audience and other women. Presentations of several women’s networks will be followed by a cocktail and by a styling session.

Entrance fee is 8 euros, but let me know if you’d like me to arrange free entrance for you.

European e-Skills Week highlights the growing demand for skilled ICT users and professionals to drive a competitive and innovative Europe. This exciting campaign seeks to inform students, young professionals and SMEs about the vast range of opportunities that ICT-related jobs present.

Throughout the coming months, public authorities, ICT companies, education institutions and students will engage in hundreds of activities, training events, competitions and much more.  The awareness campaign will culminate in a dedicated European e-Skills Week from 1 to 5 March 2010.

This ground breaking initiative of the European Commission’s DG Enterprise and Industry is coordinated by DIGITALEUROPE and European Schoolnet in conjunction with twenty national partners.

Want to know more?

• http://eskills-week.ec.europa.eu/
• Skills Week – Belgium (.pdf)

The Brussels Twestival is a party to raise money for Belgian charities. The Twestival team shortlisted a total of 15 Belgian charity projects for you to choose from. The 5 charity projects that receive the most votes will then go forward to the vote that takes place on 12 September at the Twestival.

Please encourage your friends to vote for their favourite cause and if you can come on 12 September buy your tickets today.  The line-up is looking great, btw:

Doors open at 8.00pm with music from @LaidBackRadio and Charity Pitches & Final Vote until 9.00pm

Live Bands

• Altamontt (Rock)
• K.O.S. (beatbox) @thomastesla
• Lydia Da Rocha (live housy)

DJs

• Patrick Balzat (selecta-beat, Noce Royale)
• DJ Psar (NRJ Mashup, MP Family) @djpsar
• Mr Amaury (Fun Radio) @amaury
• DJ Satanas (MP3Bar) @djsatanas

If you’re not able to make it on the night of the 12th you’ll miss one hell of a party. But you can still help with a donation.

On January 6th I signed the Ada Lovelace Day pledge:

I will publish a blog post on Tuesday 24th March about a woman in technology whom I admire but only if 1,000 other people will do the same.

The goal has been reached: so far 1.508 people signed the pledge.
I found the woman in technology I admire through Elise Huard: When I grow up, I want to be like Pattie Maes.
Belgian scientist Pattie Maes, currently an associate professor in MIT‘s Program in Media Arts and Sciences, was one of the speakers at this year’s TED conference and an expert in human-computer interaction, intelligent interfaces and ubiquitous computing.
One of her projects is Siftables, which “aims to enable people to interact with information and media in a physical, natural manner that approaches interactions with physical objects in our everyday lives.” But at TED, she demoed sixthsense, “a wearable gestural interface that augments the physical world around us with digital information and lets us use natural hand gestures to interact with that information.”
This quote from Pattie Maes explains what really drives her:

“We like to invent new disciplines or look at new problems, and invent bandwagons rather than jump on them.”

I’ve just signed the Ada Lovelace Day pledge and I invite you to do the same.

I will publish a blog post on Tuesday 24th March about a woman in technology whom I admire but only if 1,000 other people will do the same.

Ada Lovelace (1815-1852) was one of the world’s first computer programmers, and one of the first people to see computers as more than just a machine for doing sums.

She wrote programmes for Charles Babbage‘s Analytical Engine, a general-purpose computing machine, despite the fact that it was never built. She also wrote the very first description of a computer and of software.

So it’s safe to say she was the first Girl Geek.