No female, no entry
With an event name like Girl Geek Dinner of course it looks like it’s designed to be a female-only event. That would be a bit silly of course, although there are a few rules:
- if you are male and wish to attend the event then you will need to be invited by a female attending the event.
- and girls are not supposed to bring a whole harem of male followers, either. One date only per girl.
Best way around it is to have a look at the girls already subscribed in the wiki and somehow convince or bribe them to take you with them.
Why these rules? Not because of some feminist agenda, but to encourage women to come. If it would have been just “Geek Dinner” I think only only a handful of girl geeks would show up, feeling the odd ones out.
If any of you know any students or teachers involved in ICT or internet programmes, please invite them over. There’s a serious gender imbalance in the IT sector, and hopefully this kind of events will make people see technology as a really fun and interesting career option.
So, what is a girl geek anyway?
A girl geek is, you guessed it, someone who is female and has an interest in technology, particularly computing and new media. Not necessarily technically minded. There’s even a Girl Geek Manifesto:
- Share your knowledge, ideas and experience with others.
- Encourage others to use and find their interest areas with technology.
- Make learning technology fun!
- Encourage both the older and younger generations into technology.
- Be proud of being geeky!
- Be ethical about your geekiness.
This manifesto is, of course, not written in stone. It is written in a wiki, so anyone can come in and edit or discuss what is on.
But have you ever wondered what a girl geek usually looks like? What she likes and dislikes? And how she feels about general geekiness?