Brussels Girl Geek Dinner

Yesterday I was interviewed by Kirsten Lemaire about the 11th and the 12th edition of Brussels Girl Geek Dinner. Audio (in Dutch):

I won’t be able to be there tonight because I’m sick at home. But the show must go on, and thankfully I’ve been able to find three Girl Geek friends to replace me tonight.

Karen Vander Plaetse (LinkedIn, Facebook, @karen18) will be there inside the B52 house with the Attendee List and some name tags. She will also hand out forms for the Nivea contest later that evening (bring a pen). By the way: if your name was one of the 40 on the Attendee List but you can’t make it tonight, please move your name to the Off List so the Reserves (Antje, Mercedes, Thais etc) still get a chance.

Imke Dielen (blog, Facebook, @imkedielen) takes care of the reporting part. If you take pictures of the event, please use these two Flickr/Vimeo/Youtube tags: BGGD10 and Nivea. For Twitter, use the hashtag #bggd10.
Please let us know in the comments or through backtrack if you’ve blogged about the event so we can include your opinion in a round-up post afterwards.

Caroline Maerten (blog, LinkedIn, Facebook, @rollingtalks) will be our Nivea liaison officer and talk you through the evening.
Most importantly: Caroline will be the one who organises the raffle at 21:45 where she picks one lucky winner of the Nivea Make-Up Party.

Brussels Girl Geek Dinner #6 takes place in my hometown Mechelen, a city that was once the capital of the Burgundian Netherlands (present-day Belgium and Holland). Mechelen has one of the highest concentrations of monuments North of the Alps, and is unique in Flanders in being listed not once but four times on the UNESCO list of World Cultural Heritage sites. Check out the city’s key sights.
A compact city spun in a medieval web around the gigantic Cathedral tower, the city centre offers an inviting range of squares, terraces and shops, all within walking distance of each other. Try a guided tour or discover the city at your own pace on one of the tourist routes.

Tempted to see more? Then stay overnight – Mechelen has accommodation to suit every budget. Take congress and heritage centre Lamot (pic by Koinksy) for example, where the Girl Geeks will meet to see the speaker, have a few drinks and enjoy a special evening tour of the exposition Anno Expo. I’m particularly looking forward to Timelevel, a virtual representation of the Expo back in 1958…

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?

Forum JUMP is an event focusing on women’s professional lives and career management. It is open to everyone, and will be held on 25 & 26 April 2008 in Husa President Park, Brussels. More specifically, it’s

• a meeting place for women, where the exchange of information, meetings and discussions are facilitated and tools to reinforce women’s professional and personal development provided.
• a space where heads of companies and Human Resources managers interested in women’s career management can exchange best practices.
• a combination of 8 conferences, 24 training workshops, several personal coaching sessions, 2 seminars for HR professionals, one on women leadership and the other on recruiting top level women.
• a professional women’s networks’ lunch

The organisers offer a 145 euro voucher for the two-day event, including the professional women’s network lunch. This lunch is Friday 25 April from 13:00 to 14:30. Participants will change seats for each course, thus meeting new people. Also:

• Each network will have a three-minute presentation pitch
• A renowned speaker will outline the importance of networks in career development
• The lunch attracted 130 ‘networkers’ in 2007, this year 150 seats will be available

Girl geeks special offer:
55 € (VAT excluded) for the Networks’ Lunch
150 € (VAT excluded) for the two-day ‘Corporate’ formula (instead of 250 € – VAT excluded)
→ Total price to participate to JUMP: 205 € VAT excluded (instead of 350 € VAT excluded)

Use the Order form to subscribe.

Tonight would not have been possible without the help and support of the kind people over at ONE Agency, who not only give us shelter and bandwidth, but also fill the goodie bags with lots of geeky sexy stuff.

Besides a limited edition Atoma notebook from Microsoft and a *very* pink Flair powerdrink, I honestly have no clue what else will be in the bags. But I had a look at ONE’s client list and this might give some ideas of what’s inside:
Neckermann.com – they do post order delivery. Maybe something just in time for Valentine’s day?
BMI: they fly from Brussels to London. Hmmm…
MySmoothie.com.
Jobat.be

Best wishes to all the Girl Geeks and the ones who love them! Here’s a dancing robot for you to toy with:
Exobotics fem/yeti/penguin bot. Dancing to Daft Punk’s Robot Rock. Move your mouse, and your robot moves too – just like that!