Brussels Girl Geek Dinner

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

From Xpats.com Portraits – Clo Willaerts:

By establishing the Brussels Girl Geeks, I wanted to highlight other women who are using technology and I also hope to encourage girls to go for careers in IT. Our network goes far and wide beyond Brussels, including French-, Dutch- and English-speakers, and many of our meetings are not exclusively female because our members often bring their men along too.

We have a core of about 150 members, who are very active, and a larger group of about 500 who participate from time to time. They range from students in their twenties to career women in their fifties. Most are professionals working in creative jobs using technology, such as PR, marketing or programming. What we all have in common is our love of discovery and communication.

Perhaps the greatest strength of the group is that it’s never static. We constantly see new faces at our dinners as the word spreads. It’s very rewarding to stand at the entrance and welcome not only old friends, but also newcomers. That’s what keeps us dynamic and fresh.

Greenlight for Girls (@green4girls) is an NGO with a mission to encourage girls of all ages to pursue a future in math, science, engineering and technology.

For their upcoming event on November 20th in Brussels, Greenlight for Girls will be bringing together 300 young girls, including my 11 year old daughter Mayke, to learn from role models and mentors.

This free event, targeted at 11-15 year-old Dutch-, French- and English-speaking girls in Belgium, aims to encourage young women to take up careers in science (math, engineering, technology, etc.), by emphasizing the link between science and fun careers, especially those with a creative “bent.”

The event is designed to progress in workshop form, with each workshop leader conducting a workshop for three groups of ten girls.  There will also be a “fun-lab” with activities/entertainment for the girls, including a project display space for event sponsors; and lunch will be served.

You heard the word: sponsors.

Got any ideas or contacts to keep this event free for all participants? Contact fellow girl geek cheryl (at) zendigital (dot) be or @roningirl, as we know her in Twitter.

Thanks!

BetaGroup “Ladies on Stage” is looking for 1 or 2 female web/tech entrepreneurs

BetaGroup is a group of 2.100 Web Entrepreneurs in Belgium passionate about Internet, Software, Mobile Technologies and Online Media.

BetaGroup aims to connect Entrepreneurs, Creative Thinkers, Software Developers, Digital Marketers, Web Designers, Web Agencies, Advertisers, Publishers, VC’s and Business Angels to innovate together. It wants to provide a platform to meet each other, present your projects and foster new collaborations.

BetaGroup meetings are free and open to all the Web/Software/Mobile community .

For an upcoming edition themed “Ladies on Stage” Betagroup is still looking for 1 or 2 tech/web startups lead and presented by female entrepreneurs. Four have already applied, but it would be nice to have 5 or 6.

The meeting should attract 400 to 500 people from the Web/Tech sector.
So it is a good opportunity to gain visibility.

The day of the meeting should be March 30 (or April 2 – still to be confirmed) at the VUB in Brussels from 6PM to 11PM. Free entry, free parking and free drinks for everybody.

If you have never attended a BetaGroup before, I recommend to attend the meeting Tuesday next week (http://betagroup16.eventbrite.com/) so you know what to expect.

Interested? Use this form to present your startup.

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.

From the press release:

Kicking off a year-long, global brand initiative to inspire girls of all ages, Barbie unveiled her next career today at the 2010 American International Toy Fair. For the first time ever, Barbie called on consumers to help her select her next career. After more than a half million votes were cast, Computer Engineer Barbie topped the popular vote, while girls selected News Anchor as Barbie doll’s next career. Computer Engineer Barbie is set to debut this winter, featuring a binary code patterned T-shirt and all of the latest gadgets including a smart phone, Bluetooth headset and laptop travel bag. Both dolls are available for presale now at www.mattelshop.com.

Some people might suggest that it was an online voting round which was quite easy to … manipulate, especially by geeks, but the interesting part is: these dolls might actually inspire girls to choose for a career in ICT.

UPDATE from 5 Ideas to Make Computer Engineer Barbie More Realistic @ Wired.com:

5. The choice between Mac Computer Engineer Barbie, Windows Computer Engineer Barbie, and Linux Computer Engineer Barbie. Then they could publicize the sales figures daily to encourage geek parents to buy the version they want to win for their kids.

What happens if you send a bunch of car loving geek girls to an event like Top Gear Live?

They have get high on fumes, have lots of fun, and even fall in love. More details:

• Ik ben verliefd! by @eveliendb at eveliendb.com.
• We are all the Stig by @bnox at bnox.be.
• Flickr set TopGearLive in Amsterdam by CWillaerts
• The secret ingredients (to seduce a man) by @imkedielen at imkedielen.wordpress.com.
• Facebook foto’s van Imke Dielen.
• Imke Dielen’s video’s: Top Gear Live – football, Top Gear Live – motor, Top Gear Live – fire, and Top Gear Live – the start.

Below: Top Gear Live Flickr set by Gil Plaquet.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

Found at http://www.barbie.com/vote/:

“Computer engineers have lots of different specialties. They can do anything from building coputers to making video games!”

The next Barbie could be an environmentalist, a surgeon, an architect or a news anchor. But if you help with this vote, Barbie’s next career could be in IT!

Mattel decides on February 12 what Barbie will be next. I can hardly wait.

Voting has just started for the election of ICT Woman of the Year 2010. Have a look at this year’s candidates:

Criteria are:

• Being Belgian and/or working in Belgium
• Cio / Ceo
• Personality
• Leadership
• Visibility
• impact on the business/ict sector

Voting round ends on 29 January 2010. Cast your vote and spread the word!

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.”

Remember the Tamagotchis? The Lovegetys? The Furbies? They were the first generation of a breed of creatures that are half toy, half robot. And now they’re spreading! I’m sure you all have or want one of those Nabaztags, Pleos, Rollys, Roombas or Tux Droids.
They’re not robots: they’re smart companions. But are they really that smart? How do they interact when you put all of them together in one room? And most of all: do girls need them?

Studies show that technology has become the new “boys club” but the students in Mr. Colosi’s first grade class intend to reverse that trend—these girls share their love of technology as a part of their future endeavors.

The benefits of using technology in the classroom are endless, and in the future it will be important that our digital learners are represented by both genders. Sung to the tune of Gwen Stefani’s “Hollaback Girl,” these six-year-old students embrace the available equipment, enthusiastically share some ways they use technology in the classroom, and offer an empowering message of hope to female students. In conjunction with the internet, new technology would further allow Mr. Colosi’s class to spread this optimistic and collaborative message to students around the world.

Found via Eskimokaka – Ooh! Digital!, via Ondernemer in Gent – Girls go digital.

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:

1. if you are male and wish to attend the event then you will need to be invited by a female attending the event.
2. 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.