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.

We usually include info about the door prizes and photos of the winners in our recap post for each event we hold, but since our May 25 event had so many amazing prizes we felt this month’s sponsors deserved their own acknowledgement.

National Arts Centre

The people of the National Arts Centre (NAC) have been great supporters of Girl Geek Dinners Ottawa. Not only do many of them come out to our events regularly, but they’ve donated NAC event tickets as a door prize to almost every single dinner we’ve held! This month the voucher for two tickets to Bronfman & Brahms performance went to Della Siemens. Congrats Della!

Essence Catering

A new supporter and one I am personally extremely excited about, Essence Catering, is a catering company based in the Hintonburg/Wellington West area of Ottawa. In October, the company I work for (MediaMiser) hosted an Open House event to celebrate our new office and it was catered by Essence Catering. The food was delicious, beautifully presented and received tons of compliments! I know winner Mar Warrender will not be disappointed, especially with an amazing $250 gift certificate!

Shanti Consulting

Dr. Hema Murty is a personal trainer and Yoga consultant who attended our December Open Mic event and has been a #GGDOttawa fan ever since! She runs Shanti Consulting–and donated a free personal training session valued at $90. Congratulations to prize winner Cameron Wilson!

Swing Dynamite

Yet another new supporter, Claudia from Swing Dynamite attended an event earlier this year and soon after offered to donate a prize.

Claudia was generous enough to donate two gift certificates for a six-week swing dance course! I like to think that along with this dance company’s awesome skill, their generosity and good will helped them out a little at the Canadian Swing Championship where they took home tons of awards. Congrats!

Hope to see some Girl Geeks (perhaps winners Brigitte Van Aert and Cassandra Wilson?) competing in future years!

Randy Little

Anyone in Ottawa on Twitter knows @littlerandy, a financial advisor who has quickly established himself as a pillar in the Ottawa  social media community.

In fact, he’s even offered (on television) to help his Twitter friends get unstuck in a snowy driveway if needed! We’re also grateful of his support, donating rosewood wine boxes (with accessories) as door prizes for several of our events. Tanya Snook is this month’s lucky recipient!

Thornley Fallis Communications

We also need to offer our appreciation and thanks to Joseph Thornley and Thornley Fallis Communications, now our longest running sponsor! Each event, Thornley Fallis provides financial support that enables us to offer 5-10 students the opportunity to attend our Girl Geek dinners at no cost. We appreciate this support and know our student attendees do too. Thanks so much!

Virtual Eye See

And finally, a huge thanks to Natasha D’Souza of  Virtual Eye See for providing domain and hosting support for Girl Geek Dinners Ottawa blog!

We are always appreciative of the support we receive from the Ottawa business community. If you’re interested in sponsoring or donating a prize for future Girl Geek Dinners, please contact us: info@girlgeekdinnersottawa.com

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.

Ellen will present OpenAgile, a non-software-focused approach to Agile work that emphasizes truthfulness, consultative decision-making and constant learning. OpenAgile enhances the ability of individuals, teams, and organizations to deliver value to their stakeholders by developing human capacity, improving processes, and, most importantly, encouraging rapid and deep learning.

Event Details

• When: Tuesday, May 25 at 6 p.m.
• Where: Johnny Farina – 216 Elgin Street, between Lisgar and Cooper

To join us, please register here.

Hey students!

Thanks again to generous sponsorship from Joe Thornley of Thornley Fallis, we can offer six student spots to this event. If you are a student wishing to attend, please leave a comment below indicating why or what you want to learn about Agile. The first six students to respond will receive complimentary registration and dinner (up to $25).

A little bit about Ellen

Ellen Grove helps teams make better software through coaching them to create the circumstances in which they can work most productively and effectively. Her Agile coaching practice is founded in over 10 years experience leading software testing, development and implementation teams in global enterprises, a passion for exploratory software testing and user-centered design, and a background in community organization.

She uses team-building and facilitation approaches to support the transition to collaborative Agile work practices at the team, managerial and corporate level, and has conquered the challenges of extending Scrum roll-outs to off-shore development partners and multi-site project teams.

Outside the office, Ellen applies her coaching talents and creativity to keeping her household menagerie of husband, children, dogs, cats, goats, snakes, spiders and birds happy and healthy. Ellen blogs at Mastering the Obvious.

ICAfrica supports women in Africa pursuing the dream of owning their own small business by offering micro-loans to help them get started. After two years in existence, ICAfrica has a 100 per cent rate of repayment, and most loans are repaid after only six months. Collected funds are then recycled to other entrepreneurs. The PR students organized eight events throughout the Ottawa area with the goal of raising both awareness and financial support for ICAfrica’s various grassroots programs.

Guest speakers, Katie and Regine, co-owners of Victoire Boutique

While raising funds for a great cause, the GGDOttawa event also provided attendees with insight into the entrepreneurial journey of two local small-business owners.

Co-owners of Victoire Boutique, Katie Frappier and Regine Paquette, shared the ups and downs of opening their first boutique on Dalhousie Street and how fours years of business partnership has led to the creation of a jewellery line, an online store and now a second boutique located in Westboro.

Some key points that Katie and Regine shared:

• The risk of owning a small business made them dedicated – they lived, breathed, dreamed their business to make it a success
• To build a successful clothing boutique – where others have failed – they identified their ideal customer and pursued mostly Canadian designers who would appeal to this audience (mostly young women who liked shopping at boutiques but without boutique prices)
• They credit their mentors for providing guidance and sharing real-world experiences that has helped them make smart decisions for their business
• Also built relationships with other small business owners – sharing best practices, lessons learned and collaborating at times
• They used social media as a way to connect with customers, designers and other boutiques
• They use media relations tactics e.g. monthly press releases to garner publicity and worked diligently to make these activities newsworthy i.e. what makes their store different
• Because of their age, Katie and Regine had a difficult time being taken seriously by banks even with a solid business plan; they persevered and built a banking relationship with Ottawa Women’s Credit Union, an institution they highly reccommend to other women looking to pursue an entrepreneurial goal

As two young women pursuing a dream to open their own small business, Katie and Regine’s entrepreneurial journey tied perfectly with the fundraising theme of this event.

The PR students who organized the April GGD Ottawa event, from l. to r.: Lacey, Meg and Kristine

On Wednesday, April 14, the PR students wrapped up their month-long campaign, raising more than $10,000 for the ICAfrica. Says Meg Murray, one of the PR students who helped organize the event,

“The money raised will help to create at least 250 jobs for women in Africa. However, since each women generally cares for a family of four, the money will impact the lives of at least a thousand people.”

How awesome is that?

For more information on this initiative, visit the campaign website at:  Micro-credit, Macro-change. Thanks to our sponsors and to everyone who came out and made this event such a success!

Door Prize Winners

Natasha (on right) accepts her NAC tickets door prize from co-organizer and PR student, Meg

Derek, winner of the wine box door prize courtesy of Indyadvisor.ca

Daniela (on left) accepts her door prize courtesy of Custom Family Photography from event co-organizer and PR student, Kristine

Michele accepts her door prize of Ottawa 67s tickets and autographed hockey stick from Kristine

Mary Lou accepts her Ottawa 67s tickets from Kristine

Nadine accepts her Ottawa 67s tickets from Kristine

** April 6 Update – we are having issues with the PayPal account so if you have been trying to register, we apologize! We are working on getting the issue resolved as soon as possible and will notify everyone that it is ready to go via this blog and Twitter. **

Algonquin College’s Public Relations students present this month’s Girl Geek Dinner (GGD) Ottawa event!

Women entrepreneurs and students across Ottawa are invited to a night of food, networking, and awareness. Co-owners of Victoire Boutique, Katie Frappier and Regine Paquette, will share their successes and struggles as female entrepreneurs. We’ll also learn about women entrepreneurs in Africa and the challenges they face in establishing economic independence through business ownership.

All proceeds for this event will help support ICAfrica (International Charity for Africa), a non-profit organization that helps fight poverty in Africa through enterprise development.

When: April 12, 2010 at 7 p.m.

Where: Vittoria Trattoria, 35 William St. (in the Market)

Registration: $15 for professionals and $10 for students. To purchase your ticket, click here.

More info about this event

Each year, the Algonquin College first year public relations (PR) class gets together and organizes a community relations project. This year, the class has paired up with ICAfrica, an international charity for entrepreneurs in Africa.

Last month, the PR students approached GGD Ottawa and asked to coordinate a networking event in April to help raise funds for ICAfrica. Kelly, Veronica and myself enthusiastically agreed, and we hope to see the GGD Ottawa community come out and show support for a great cause! More information about the PR students’ fundraising campaign is available at www.icafrica.com/algonquin.

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

Laura will discuss:

1. What is usability
2. Why it’s important and why we should all be aware of it
3. Usability methods
4. Resources & takeaways

The event details!

Join us Thursday, March 4 at 6 p.m. at the Heart and Crown on Preston Street! Register now.

Heart & Crown
353 B Preston Street (at Aberdeen Street)

Tell us what you want to know about usability

To help Laura frame her discussion on usability, use the comments section to tell us what you’re most interested in learning more about.  Usability in the context of:

a) web design & online service delivery
b) the real world
c) continuous improvement
d) performance measurement
e) other?

A bit about Laura

Laura is part of a growing movement of professionals using Results-based Management and User-Centred Design principles to foster a results-focused culture in the Federal Public Service. Cynical idealist and overachieving public servant, this Girl Geek spends her free time Inter-webbing, snowshoeing, learning & knitting.

Laura is @resultsjunkie on Twitter and blogs at http://usability4government.wordpress.com

See you March 4th!

*UPDATE* Student spots available!

Once again, thanks to a gracious sponsorship by Thornley Fallis Communications, we’re offering five student spots for this event.

What this means, is if you’re a full-time student, and one of the first five students to comment on this post, you’ll get free admission to the event *and* your meal paid for (up to $25).

So if you’re a student and want to take advantage, leave a comment and let us know what you are taking in school and why you want to attend.

If there are already five comments, please go ahead and leave one anyway in case someone can’t make it or more spots become available.

In the spirit of building community around the Girl Geek Dinner Ottawa (GGD Ottawa) brand, last night also featured a networking game that Veronica, Kelly and I created as a way to ensure all attendees had a chance to mingle and get to know one another.

While my explanation of how the game works lacked some clarity (I’m a new mom so I blame it on sleep deprivation), attendees seemed to get the hang of it and really got into the spirit of seeking one another out. And that’s exactly what we hoped would happen!

The "girl geektini" cocktail

I can’t forget to acknowledge the special treat of the night – the “girl geektini” cocktail – which was delicious, sweet and just a little bit sassy.

Finally, we want to take this opportunity to once again thank our sponsors Well.ca, 3rdLife and the National Arts Centre for providing some great door prizes. As you can see from photos below, the prizes are greatly appreciated!

A full album of photos highlighting the event is available on Flickr and is tagged ggdottawa.

The next GGD Ottawa event will be held in the New Year with details posted to this blog as soon as they’re available. Until then, happy holidays!

Door Prize Winners

Christina Stefanski accepts her Well.ca door prize from Kelly Rusk, featuring Burt's Bees lip balm, Ballbuster hand cream, Cold-FX 1st Day and Gylsomed foot balm

Terri Oda accepts her handmade makeup bag and pin made from vintage and recycled garments, courtesy of 3rdLife.

Caitlin Lafleche accepts her NAC door prize of two tickets to the "Guys and Dolls" performance.

While we’ll have no formal speaker, this will be an Open Mic night–everyone will have the chance to jump up on the mic and engage the crowd with a 30-second pitch. Tell us all about yourself, your business, a cause you believe in, whatever you like really, but you’ve only got 30 seconds to do so.

As always you can win some fabulous door prizes *and* don’t forget to order yourself a ‘girl geektini‘– our featured cocktail for the night!

Register now…

This month’s Door prize donors:

• National Arts Centre
• 3rd Life – handmade eco-friendly designs
• Well.ca – Canada’s online health, beauty and skin care store