Girl Geek Dinners Ottawa

Last Wednesday, Serena Ngai of Girl Develop It Ottawa presented her case about the revolution of women in technology. From Mattel’s Barbie career innovations to five-year old girls dreaming of being astronauts, Serena pointed out the large social gap between girls and boys in the field of computer science and everything related.

When you Google search “computer scientist”, what’s the first image that appears? Is it a guy with glasses and a plaid shirt? Trust us, we’re not being biased. In fact, research has shown the number of women with bachelor degrees in computer sciences has decreased rapidly over the past 20 years from 37 per cent to less than 20 per cent. Today, less than one per cent of women would be interested in studying computer science as an elective in university. But, there is hope!

In 2010, Mattel posted a public survey asking girls which career they would like Barbie to pursue. To everyone’s surprise, the number one career was computer engineer. Are women beginning to see technology as a fun, innovative, career savvy form of income?  Let’s hope so!

To help regain the number of women in computer sciences, Serena and Gail Carmichael founded Girl Develop It Ottawa to bring back the flare and fun of building websites in a supportive environment. Serena taught us how technical skills can be valuable for your career and any career, why this “women in technology” thing really matters, and how their upcoming workshops can help you become the next Marissa Mayer. Well, in part.

Girl Develop It is hosting their next workshop Intro to HTML and CSS on Nov. 29 and Dec. 6, from 6:30 – 9:30 p.m. They’re also looking for volunteers to help teach workshops and share technological skills with Ottawa women. If you or someone you know likes to teach and is tech savvy, contact Serena or Gail.

And lastly, congratulations to our Girl Geek prize winners who went home with fabulous gifts from our event sponsors – the National Arts Centre, Media Miser, UsedOttawa.com and Ingrid Aesthetics.

To read more about this month’s event, check out the following reviews from our Girl Geek attendees:

Amy Campsall (blog post)– @AmyCampsall

Alexandra Reid – @TechAlly

Mel Gallant – @MelGallant

Hana Abaza – @HanaAbaza

From mobile apps to social media technology and from open data to public policy, women are continually influencing the way information is being shared across the world.

On March 30, three women taught us that technology isn’t just an objective, it changes society and infrastructure as a whole.

Mary Beth Baker, Emily Daniels and Tracey Lauriault, were part of a technological revolution known as Open Data Ottawa. A few months back, they organized Hackfest, an opportunity for technology lovers to come together to create unique and innovative mobile apps with the purpose of helping Ottawa citizens to enjoy and easily access recreation and services the city has to offer.

Thanks to our wonderful speakers and guests, the event generated huge awareness on Twitter.  We highly encourage participation from everyone, male or female, and if you know someone that’s passionate about technology or has an idea for an event, please don’t hesitate to talk to us, we love questions and feedback!

What can we take away from this event? From creative ideas for new apps to learning resources you can take home with you,  Mary Beth, Tracey and Emily enlightened us with their passion for the pursuit of open data :

• If you’re not reading this, make sure to pick up The Real World of Technology by Ursula Franklin and also check out Datalibre.ca.
• Remember Erin Brockovich? Well, she’s back in the spotlight and working on passing an open data bill about disease clusters being mapped and made public. Does this mean a sequel?!
• Another great quote is from the lovely Jane Jacobs, “Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody.”
• If you loved the past Hackfest and want to take part again, Mary Beth is hoping to start a Mother’s Day Hackfest in May. Feel free to contact her for more information, maribethbaker <at> gmail.com. You can also check out photos from the last Hackfest on behalf of Edward  Ocampo-Gooding.
• And last, but not least, open data is not about sharing personal information with the public.  In order to share public information we have the right to know and to answer public policy issues that affect us and our communities.

Thanks again to our sponsors for their continued support.  We hope all the door prize winners enjoy their prizes!

CIRA .CA

Thornley Fallis

Open Data Ottawa

The Lemon Kitchen

Media Miser

The National Arts Centre

Swing Dynamite

I’m still excited about Wednesday.  I’ve had a few bad days in a row and was hoping something awesome would happen soon.  I got it!  Thank you everyone for attending and making our Girl Geek Dinner panel the huge success it was.  Check out this Twitter stream of all you guys had to say about the event. 

I think we came up with the idea for this panel about a year ago.   We figured in order to make sure it was a success we needed to find different perspectives on the same subject, a good moderator, a good location, good sound system and good sponsors.  We hadn’t organized a GGD panel before, so the plan was to do a test run via a much more low-key event.

Maybe instead of a restaurant we could host the event at an office and get dinner catered?  Try and find a sound system that doesn’t cost a fortune.  What about a moderator?  What if people have their backs to the panelists? What if no one is interested in the topic?  What if we waste people’s time?

Lots of questions and not a lot of answers, time or resources to make it happen.  We were off to a slow start.  Finally we decided to do it.  Trust we have worked well together in the past;  trust that 3 smart, successful women had agreed to be our panelists and trust that the Girl Geek Dinner Ottawa community has always supported our events.

I’m so glad we didn’t wait any longer!  We took a risk and it paid off.  All three of our panelist rocked!

Sherry Noble, Jennifer MacKinnon and Janet Harris-Campbell

With over 25 years of experience at EDC, Sherry knew the business, knew the people and knew what was missing from the technology side.  She was offered a chance to lead the Business Solutions and Technology team and she took it.

Jennifer, CEO of Fenix Solutions, always loved a challenge and felt constrained by her employers.  She talked about being restless.  She took a chance and started her own business.

Janet, CIO for The Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions Canada, had experience in strategy and management but not in technology.  She worked for an employer that offered different opportunities and decided to take a chance and venture into the technology side.

All three women stepped out of their comfort zone and were open to trying something different.  They took risks and in the end have all paid off pretty well.

I wish I was one of those amazing writers that would be able to capture the emotion of a night.  I’m not.  Good thing is I don’t have to.  Your Twitter tag cloud says it all!

What I can do is tell you what I took away from last night:

• Take pride in my work
• Honour and respect the people I work with
• Be fascinated by my work
• Have a passion for my company
• Build credibility by bringing something to the table that no one else has
• Be honest
• Being in management is not a popularity contest
• Do a good job and people will in fact like you
• Be organized
• Try to find flexible work arrangements, whether this is part time, working some days from home or starting your day at 5:30am
• Don’t wait for the right time to start your business, start a family or make a career change.  Trust your gut and take a chance.

Lastly, be ambitious.  Be ambitious so that you are more inclined to take those risks.

Thanks again to our sponsors for their continued support.  We hope all the door prize winners enjoy their prizes!  And check out Sara’s Flickr account for the rest of the pictures from the event.

Beyond Events

Blend Creations

The National Arts Centre

Sara McConnell Photography

The Lemon Kitchen

ThornleyFallis

CIRA .CA Impact Awards

Code is like a paintbrush, and the Internet is the world’s biggest art gallery. Invented just 20 years ago, the Web has changed everything. Less than 24% of humanity has access to the Internet; there is more change to come. What can we expect technology to change in the future?

Join us on June 29th when Cate Huston shares with us some of the highlights from her “Art, Life and Programming” lecture.

Cate is working on completing her Masters degree in Computer Science at the University of Ottawa and is also an Intern at IBM.   You may know her as @kittenthebad on Twitter, and if you don’t, well what are you waiting for? She is also the  Instigator of Awesome for Awesome Ottawa.

When: Tuesday, June 29 at 6 p.m.

Where: Biagio’s Italian Kitchen on 1394 Richmond Road (Get directions)

Register now!

**UPDATE**

We have TWO student spots available (it is summer after all!) courtesy of Thornley Fallis Communication. Leave a comment and you’ll get free admission and $25 of your dinner covered! Same routine as always-leave a comment and let us know what and where you study and why you want to attend.

Truthfulness, consultative decision-making and constant learning.  Simple concepts to understand but so hard to implement! Who doesn’t want to work in an environment where opportunities and challenges are always out in the open, where challenges are overcome as a team and where lessons are  applied the next time around?

Guest speaker Ellen Grove shares information on Agile principles and practices.

These Agile principles and practices is what our speaker, Ellen Grove, came to talk to us about….in 30 minutes. So here are some of the highlights and links for you to get the full story:

• Agile is highly collaborative in nature
• Work can get started with just enough information, there is no need  to predict all the changes up front
• Work is prioritized by the customer and priorities can change from one iteration to the next
• Openeness with the customer is not only OK, it is expected
• Agile is a rich method for collecting data and feeding it back into your processes
• When an iteration is two weeks, what’s the risk of trying something out?
• Agile methods are great at exposing impediments

Additional links:

• http://www.openagile.com
• http://wiki.openagile.org
• Scrum in 5 minutes
• InfoQ’s Agile Stream

All this being said, you’ve read our event summary, reviewed the above links and see the value Agile implementations offer.  The issue is you’re not in a position to change your company’s project delivery methodology.  How can you become more Agile as a team member? Ellen recommends two things:

1. Use a task board – it’s a great way to visualize work and expose bottlenecks.
2. Nothing beats a team face-to-face sanity check. Not an hour long status meeting, just a quick (15-minute time boxed) way to update one another on work accomplished, work coming up and to expose any roadblocks standing in the way of completing the work.

More questions? You can find Ellen on Twitter and LinkedIn, you can send her an email or you can access her bookmarks for more information.

So there you have it.  Go out and be Agile!

p.s.: We’re already planning our next event so stay tuned.  We plan these events for the GGD Ottawa community so please send any topic or speaker suggestions or general feedback our way.

**March 27 – Update: Laura has uploaded the usability presentation she gave at our March 4th event. You can access the presentation from Laura’s blog. She’s also listed some great web resources on usability discussed during her presentation.**

March 4th marked the start of 2010 for GGD Ottawa. What better way to start than with another sold out event!  This time our topic was “Guerilla Usability for Girl Geeks”.

The majority of people in attendance were interested in Web Usability, so that’s what Laura Wesley (@resultsjunkie), our guest speaker, focused on. Quite a few attendees tweeted the event and you can find a capture of the tweet stream here.

Laura Wesley talks usability while an attendee looks on

Laura plans to make her presentation available via her blog, including a list of website resources related to usability, and we’ll update this post with a link to the presentation when it’s available.

In the meantime, here are some key points Laura shared:

• The sign of a really good product is a learnable product.  People don’t buy products they can’t (easily) figure out how to use.
• No door should need instructions.
• In the context of the government, there is a direct link between user centricity and user confidence and public trust.
• Usability helps you move the conversation towards evidence-based decision making.  e.g. “I know you like blue but he likes red.”  “This word might make sense, but the product or the service is not for you.”
• The way people process information is fairly similar.
• When conducting usability testing, five people is enough. You will start to see a trend if something works or not.
• Questions to ask during testing are: Did the users complete the task? How long did it take? Did they enjoy the experience?
• Brand loyalty is not the most important thing when it comes to usability.
• A/B testing and multi-variate testing – is a method of creating two versions of a page and presenting each to a different group of visitors. Which works best?
• whichtestwon.com – a site where you can see completed A/B tests and ‘guess’ which one works better.
• Track conversion rates – how many people did what you wanted them to do?
• Create ratios if you can.
• Usability isn’t a standalone process – you need to have search engine optimization, a proper business model, etc. You can have the most usable site in the world but if no one visits, it means nothing.
• Seven things that are most important for a web site to be: useful, desired, valuable, findable, credible, accessible (aside from Usability)

Thanks again to Laura for an interesting and engaging presentation, to our sponsors and to all who were able to attend.  As always we welcome your feedback.  Let us know if you have any suggestions on speakers or topics of interest.  We look forward to a great 2010 full of exciting people, topics, door prizes and of course dinners!

Door Prize Winners

Caitlin Kealey accepts wine kit prize courtesy of Randy Little of indyadvisor.ca

Cate Huston accepts her Corel Photo and Video Bundle door prize

Della Siemens wins two tickets to the performance "Elementos" at the NAC

Mary Mary Beth Baker with her eco-friendly lunch kit courtesy of Eco-Tav Creations

This is pretty short notice, so I hope most of you caught this news on Twitter.  Just in case, we’d like to bring your attention to a different kind of networking event taking place in Ottawa on November 12th and 13th.

Connect the Dots is THE women’s networking event of the year! It is designed to connect all leading women’s networking groups in the Ottawa Region and provide an opportunity to NETWORK, COLLABORATE, BE INSPIRED and GET MOTIVATED.

This fantastic event is brought to you by Ignite Potentials Training Inc. and the leading Women’s networking groups.

It’s taking place on at the Crowne Plaza Hotel (map) on November 12th and 13th

Girl Geek Natasha D’Souza is one of the speakers and if you hop on over to her blog you might get to attend the event for free!!

I don’t think Mel, Kelly or myself could have asked for a better kickoff to our Ottawa Girl Geek Dinner chapter.  A packed room, great food and an exciting, passionate entrepreneur and author as our speaker.  We hope you guys had as much fun as we did and that you got a chance to meet at least one other amazing woman.

So the night started around 6pm at the Black Tomato as old friends and new started to arrive.  First thing was first…we put in our food orders!  Once we got that covered we gave the mic to our speaker, Tara Hunt.  As anyone within a mile of her can tell, she is an entrepreneur at heart and she wishes that for everyone.

Tara speaks to Ottawa's geeky girl community about her career experiences in high tech and interactive marketing

Tara told us she started her first company while a single mom to a preschooler.  She began to attract clients through speaking gigs, attending events and just good old fashioned networking.

She had big goals and during her first attempt to take over the world, or at least Toronto, she took some big risks that didn’t work out and ended up having to put her entrepreneurial dreams on hold.

Tara is a firm believer that taking big risks isn’t a bad thing.  When she set out she wanted to “change marketing.”  Why marketing? Like most of us, she spends a great deal of her time being a consumer and wants to be informed. Making informed decisions doesn’t only apply to buying great products and services, but also applies to buying from companies that (and while Tara put it a different way) lets just say “don’t suck.”  We all work hard for our money and we want it going to a good place.

Inspired by The Cluetrain Manifesto Tara set-out to start her second company in San Francisco.  With a smart blog, a great partner, and a mentor she could relate to, Tara stuck to her beliefs and continued to take risks making it all come together for the launch of Citizen Agency in June 2006.

Tara’s message to us:

Going into business is risky, you will fall on your face, you will be broke, you will wait for clients to pay…BUT…it is the most rewarding thing you can do.”

Her hope is that more women entrepreneurs will answer the call that has been put out by VCs and Angel Investors.

“There is money available and we need more women entrepreneurs, especially in the technology sector.

So there’s the secret.  Find your passion, work hard, network, take risks, stick to your beliefs and find a way to turn your passion into your business.

I can’t end the post without thanking the people that made our first Girl Geek Dinner in Ottawa happen:

1. Social Media Breakfast – who brought Tara to Ottawa and introduced her to us.
2. Thornley Fallis – who sponsored 10 hard working students so they could attend our dinner.
3. CanvasPop – who have offered all our attendees a discount and a $100 gift certificate for one lucky lady.
4. Scott Lake – who donated a hot looking AND talking ipod shuffle.
5. Natasha D’Souza - for sponsoring our blog and helping us move our content over here.

Of course we also owe thanks to the Ottawa Girl Geek community for making the event such a success! We’d love to hear  your feedback. Leave a comment below and let us know your thoughts on the event, Tara’s experiences and what advice / message she had that struck a chord with you.

OK, I just have one more thing for you guys.  Don’t forget to follow Tara’s dog Ridley on Twitter who is not only very cute, but also wears a hat.