Girl Power

We had a two great speakers for last night™s Leeds Girl Geek Dinner at The Loft, which had been planned as part of the Leeds Web Festival LSx09. The weather wasn™t great for the barbecue we had ordered but that didn™t seem to matter too much. For this event fifty guests had bought tickets, again, we had a good cross-section of the Leeds digital and creative scene. It was good to welcome Melissa Sheriff from AQL, and Janine Jacques. We also had some new graduates who came along courtesy of tickets sponsored by Digital 2020 - thanks to Teresa Colley, Tara Hainsworth, Malhia Mahmood and Michelle Lee for coming along, hope you can come to the next one and we wish you the best of luck as you start your exciting adventure into the sector! Through an introduction from  Sarah Blow from London GGD,  Nick Halstead, founder of TweetMeme came along - he was in Leeds for the Carsonified event the next day.

Its hard to believe that the last train to London goes back at 8:40pm “ this meant we were on a tight schedule and unfortunately Reshma Sohoni wasn™t able to stay on after her talk to chat. Thanks by the way for the suggestions of having speakers before the food “ we should definitely do that next time. Reshma told us about her career to date “ this was pretty impressive material. She™s now CEO of Seedcamp, and it was clear from her presentation that she believes passionately in her work with startups across Europe. When asked about the role of mentor and mentee, and what makes that work, or not, it seems that an essential ingredient to as successful relationship is that the mentee really wants to be helped, that makes things really happen.

Our second speaker, Jennifer O™Grady from Democracy PR gave an entertaining insight into how to develop ˜brand YOU™ . She shared lots of tips and techniques and urged us to work on this to make sure we are developing our social capital. Jen™s work with brands is about helping them understand social networks and how to use these tools to really engage with their customers in a meaningful dialogue. Find out more about Jen through her blog

The evening finished around ten o™clock when I popped over to Radio Leeds, just a short walk away, to talk to Sally Fairfax on the late show about Girl Geeks and what its all about. Not sure how many people were listening but I did get an email from my neighbour Jan who was driving home from her friend™s house in Morley and so got to hear all about it. My family recorded it for me but they left the external mic on so my words of wisdom are interrupted by chattering about the Champions League final result and an argument about some gig tickets that the kids had ordered on my husband™s credit card! Can™t believe they weren™t avidly listening to me!

If you™d like to come to the next Girl Geek Dinner let me know. You can see a full bio of our speakers, and who came along as well as past speakers at www.leedsgirlgeekdinners.com

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