Brussels Girl Geek Dinner

Sarah Blow (Twitter, LinkedIn) is a software engineer with an active interest in mobile and wireless appications development. More recently in the tech industry she has been drawn to web related technologies such as using new media technologies as part of strategies both internally to organisations and externally to improve communications. At BGGD #11, she will speak about designing and developing for mobile devices.

Sarah founded the London Girl Geek Dinners in April 2005 which she further extended to Girl Geek Dinners later the same year. She was made a Women’s Enterprise Ambassador in 2007 and is also part of Make Your Mark as a connector and an ambassador.

Most of what she writes about these days can be found on GirlGeekdom and SarahBlow.com.

Picture by Benjamin Ellis (@benjaminellis)

Our first speaker for Brussels Girl Geek Dinner #11 is Lynn Langit. She will  talk about and demo Kodu, a programming language for kids.

Lynn Langit is a Developer Evangelist for Microsoft, based in Southern California.  She speaks live and online about the latest developer technologies, such as Windows Azure, Silverlight, and more.  Lynn hosts a weekly series on MSDN Channel 9 called geekSpeak.

Lynn leads the Southern California implementation of Microsoft’s DigiGirlz, which is a free program to give high-school aged girls information about careers in technology.  She is also a trained facilitator for WomenBuild SeriousPlay with Legos (check out the Facebook group).
In her spare time, Lynn personally volunteers coordinating a project called SmartCare in Zambia.

This is what the tenth edition of Brussels Girl Geek Dinner (on Wednesday 18 February) will look like :

• 18:30 40 girl geeks arrive at the B52 house in Brussels
• 19:00 presentation: “La beauté lève le voile sur sa technologie” about a day in the life of a beauty scientist by Anna Grassano and Sophie Trenteseaux
• 19:20 Make up party (with 4 make up artists and live demos)
• 21:45 One of the girl geeks wins her own Make Up Party at home.
• 22:00 40 pampered and beautified girls geeks grab the goodie bag and go home

Note: Food and drinks are available throughout the event. Just make sure keep your hands free when it’s your turn to try out the make-up :-)

Bert Schiettecatte was born in Ghent, Belgium and has a passion for electronic music, musical instruments, and engineering.
After studying in Brussels he completed a Master of Arts in Music, Science and Technology, at Stanford University’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) with the help of the Belgian-American Educational Foundation, and returned to Belgium to found Belgium-based company PERCUSSA.

PERCUSSA‘s mission is to design and market the electronic musical instruments of the future. At Brussels Girl Geek Dinner #9, Bert will demonstrate the Audiocubes.
The AudioCubes are unique in their simple user interface and offer a novel approach to sound synthesis: collaborative music creation. Think of each AudioCube as a single synthesizer module connected by light beams instead of patch cables, and moving the cubes similar to moving the controls on a synthesizer module and you’ll have a pretty good idea as to the possibilities AudioCubes offer.

• Wednesday 12 November 18:00-21:00 @ Creative Class, Hasselt
• Topic: Music and Technology featuring Audiocubes demo by Percussa.com’s Bert Schiettecatte. Food and drinks: check.
• Goodies: any suggestions?

Will put wiki up later this week, but need your advice first:

Do we need a second speaker besides Bert Schiettecatte? Or a short live set by singer/musician? Or rather a live dj set?

CREW is a Belgium-based performance group. Eric Joris being its key figure, this production team has brought together people from different domains depending on the projects that were being made. On the whole, CREW has insisted on making performances at the melting point of live art and technology.


Last 11 minutes of presentation #2 at Brussel Girl Geek Diner 7/Open Coffee Club combo from Johan Ronsse on Vimeo.

Together with Vlerick Management School, InSites Consulting has set up a study in
June 2008 to see how consumers use the internet to decide what and where to buy.
The results of this large-scale Belgian consumer research project and critical
website screening have been presented by Christophe Vergult, Director Customer
Experience research, at the Vlerick conference ‘Internet & changing shopping
behaviour’.
If the special Girl Geek Dinner version of this presentation by Evert-Jan De Kort
made you hungry for more insights on this matter, feel free to contact
evert-jan@insites.eu for the whole story, available for
free on simple request.

We’re pround to present our 3 speakers at the upcoming Brussels Girl Geek Dinner: Evert-Jan de Kort (Insites Consulting), Courtney Davis (Muse Communication) and Sabine Clappaert (Muse Communication). We’re currently looking for a way to let them interact a bit.

BGGD#7 theme is “Shopping“, with the main focus on What Women Want (and Buy).

Muse Communication is a full-service communication agency specialized in smart marketing to women. Muse Communication believes in marketing that is visionary, shows intimate consumer insight and that leads to the creation of communication that is relevant, believable, honest and ethical. In short: communication that really connects with your female consumer.

Prior to founding Muse Communication, Sabine Clappaert was responsible for the development and implementation Pan-European PR campaigns as Account Director at Weber Shandwick Worldwide, a multi-national PR firm. Before joining WSW,Sabine held the position of Marketing Communication Manager at Barco ­ one of the world¹s largest visualization equipment manufacturers. Sabine holds diplomas in marketing and information technology obtained in Sydney, Australia.

Courtney Davis has extensive and varied work experience spanning the USA, UK and European markets. Her 7 years experience in communication and PR for the
food, health and travel sectors had her solidified her extensive media network. Public speaking, event planning and strategic planning were highlighted in her most recent position as Director of Communications for the food issues think tank Oldways. Degrees in English and gender studies.

InSites Consulting today is a full service research agency, covering all market research topics, using quantitative and qualitative methods. Based on these facts and figures, they offer custom-made research solutions and formulate marketing recommendations.
Management expanded the team and new business units were set up to complement InSites online research expertise: brand assets, innovation, technology and marketing communication. Apart from these business units, there are also knowledge centers with in-house experts specialising in the following fields: kids & youth, pharmacy, research methodology and e-government.

Evert-Jan de Kort is Kwantitatief Consultant for Insites Consulting, specializing in Interactive communications, new marketing and advertising technologies, and user experience. He delivers strategy development through research and advice. He’s known for his passion for anything digital communications and interactive media, and always eager to discover new insights on people and technology, and to detect hypes from trends.

Our official speaker for Brussels Girl Geek Dinner #5 is of course Koen Vervloesem on Artificial Intelligence, but we’ve also invited a special guest star. It’s DuvalGuillaume’s own Isabel Peeters: manager, mother, wife, woman & online entrepreneur. Isabel will do an amusing 15′ keynote and informal Q&A on “How to handle the chaos”.

Isabel Peeters has a background in advertising. She has been working at Duval Guillaume since Andre Duval and Guillaume Van der Stighelen started the company twelve years ago. Today she is a managing partner at Duval Guillaume Brussels. She is the mother figure in the agency and combines a balanced rationale with a strong female gut feeling.

At the same time Isabel is the mother of three teenagers, manages a household and has an active social life. Together with her husband Fox, she started an innovative cooking concept – www.foxinabox.be – with an online store, that was awarded silver by BE Commerce in 2008.

Isabel doesn’t have a masterplan to do all this. There is only chaos. And a good way to handle the chaos from day to day and on a long term.

Koen Vervloesem is a freelance journalist and a blogger with a broad technical and scientific background, writing in Dutch and English.
He is specialised in writing about IT, science and mathematics for magazines and websites like Bits&Chips, Linux Magazine, PC-Active and Data News. He graduated in computer science (focus on natural language processing and artificial intelligence) and in philosophy (focus on logic, philosophy of mathematics and philosophy of science).

His presentation will be on artificial intelligence, one of his favourite subjects. In short, he will be talking about the problems of artificial intelligence.

• What makes it so difficult to create a really intelligent computer, capable of doing all the things we humans do?
• What is intelligence anyway?
• Will computers surpass us in the near future?
• Will we live together with computers and even have relationships with them?

Well I guess there’s only one way to find out :-) I’ve just closed the girl geek dinner #3 attendee list by assigning the 40th goodie bag to tonight’s speaker: Melanie Chamaah and her Tux Droid, who both work for the Belgian smart companion factory Kysoh. Thanks Netlash for helping us out with the video projector!

I also had a quick look at tonight’s Robot attendee list and judging from that there will be 8 Nabaztag, 1 Pleo, 1 Aibo and 1 Tux Droid. The Furby unfortunately couldn’t make it.

I’ve also heard rumours about the way those robots will interact tonight. We will need:

• 1 doctor
• 1 priest

On YouTube I found funny little movie about a Nabaztag and an Aibo talking together – hope we’ll be able to make more like these tonight. If you shoot pictures, please use the tag brusselsgirlgeekdinner3 on Flickr, YouTube and Technorati.

Melanie has a background in commercial engineering specialized in New Information and telecommunication technology. She is in charge of the eBusiness strategy at the Belgian company that produces the hackable Linux robot Tux Droid: Kysoh.

She will start with an overview on all sorts of smart companions and then of course do a live demo of the adorable Tux bot.