Leeds Girl Geeks at The Loft

A hectic few weeks came to fruition last night at the Leeds Girl Geek Dinner.  The Loft creative events space is a really stylish venue,  the food was tasty, the speakers thought-provoking and informative, and best of all, there was great company.  Seventy people came along for the second Girl Geek Dinner, from organisations covering the diversity of the sector in and around the city, such as Brahm, Numiko, Fuse8, Swamp, SimpleUsability and Zolv.

Monica Tailor’s talk gave us an insight in to the secrets of her success. I have known Monica for a while, she has a great knowledge of the new media sector and also co-owns Kilo75.  Monica encouraged us to manage our profile on line. She uses Linkedin, and Twitter for example. Twitter got quite a few mentions last night. Yes I use Twitter because its fun, and to me its a bit like skim-reading - quick bites of news from colleagues, friends and people that interest me.

Our second speaker was Katie Lips. I first met Katie at Open Coffee earlier this year at Old Broadcasting House. Katie came back here in August to take part in Barcamp Leeds, where she spoke about ‘The Ten Things NOT to do in a Startup’. Thanks to audience participation this soon rose to 15 and counting….. Katie is busy at the moment organising Barcamp Liverpool but last night she shared some news with us on her new project, the Amazing iPhone. There were also some interesting observations on the changing nature of geeks which generated a fair amount of discussion. Is being a geek actually dependent on the context? Does that mean that we might show off our technical knowledge and skills - or not - depending on the audience? In the relaxed atmosphere of the GGD we can just be ourselves. Maybe geing a geek is about being interested in technology and what it can do for us. And aren’t we all involved in marketing in some way or another? These and other questions will no doubt continute to be debated in the coming weeks and months. On the subject of debates, lots of people have asked me ‘what is the point of a Girl Geek dinner anyway?’ Every woman has her own reasons for finding this event appealing. For me its really very simple - women are significantly outnumbered in the sector by men, and I would like to do something to try and change that for the fuuture.  One way is to be part of building supportive networks.  There is definitely a different atmosphere at a GGD to other networking events. Is this because of  the gender balance? Maybe. Would this be reflected in the workplace if the gender balance was different? All very interesting, and a great opportunity to have a debate over a glass of wine, with great company. Looking forward to the next one! In the meantime there is  GeekUp at The Lounge on 17th December.

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