Czajkowski

Who knew it’d be next to impossible to find a free evening to meet some friends, finally we found a Sunday to meet up and have some brunch.

Most folks know I’m not from Dublin, and while it’s great here, I have a job and live in a nice place  and a lot of the Ubuntu folks are here I miss hanging out with mates and just going for a chin wag over a cup of tea.  When I first moved up I was invited to a Girl Geek Dinner.  Not sure what it was or where it would lead to, but I’m damn glad I went as I’ve met some great friends there and I look forward to the discussions we have.

I have to first say there are not that many Ubuntu women over here, but that’s fine I don’t mind. It’s nice just to meet other women in technology and we discuss random bits of stuff happening in Ireland. Events, conferences, new technologies, showing off the new phone we’ve brought to lunch and just general hanging out.

I finally got to catch up with Martha, Ana and Andrea for brunch two weeks ago after not getting a chance to meet up since November before Jaime went back down under to Oz and left Ireland.  I thought I’d introduce you to folks over here that I interact with in the women in technology area who like me embrace technology, go to conferences and get our Geek fixes by talking about gadgets and new technologies.

Martha Rotter – Is a technology evangelist, and  has been her whole life.  There’s very little she find boring.  She’s  that kinda geek who can’t wait to try out everything new and shiny.  And when  she  find things she loves, she can’t help but share her enthusiasm with others who might benefit from new technology.  Lucky enough that this is now her full time job, she spends time with developers in Ireland and Northern Ireland working on brand new tech in areas like web applications, video games, robotics, 3D, touch interfaces and more.  When  not in front of a computer or a crowd, you can probably find her at community events like OpenCoffee, BarCamp, Age Action or Girl Geek Dinners.

Ana Nelson – Having fallen in love with programming while studying for her Ph.D. in economics, she now develop open source software and write web applications. Currently  she works as an investment analyst based in Dublin, Ireland and loves to build tools to analyze and visualize data, run simulations and automate anything boring. She spoke at OSSBarcamp and hopefully she will do again.

Andrea Magnorsky – Andrea is a professional software developer and has accrued many years of experience building solid applications. Looking for ways to improve code she came across Rails and the Castle stack, which includes Monorail. Andrea is heavily involved in the organisation of Alt Net in Dublin.  She is also involved in Ruby Ireland as she has a growing interest in Ruby. Andrea liked the Castle stack so much that she co-developed an eCommerce solution using Monorail in her spare time.

These are just some of the cool women I get to meet in Ireland working in technology, it’s fascinating the diverse topics that come up and the lengthy and interesting conversation we have. I don’t necessarily get to meet women in Open Source, but that’s fine. Meeting others from different groups and areas leads to more discussions and learning from one another.

I’m not entirely sure where the last 12 months have gone.  I drove over 5.5 hours yesterday back to Dublin, from spending Christmas with my family in Castleconnell, Co. Limerick.  I did the drive two years to the day moving myself to Dublin for my current job.

When I was leaving the mothership was asking when I’d next be home, and already looking at my google calender I can see an opening in February, and if not then March for Mothers day. That’s 3 months into 2010 or a quarter the way through. Which made me think where had 2009 gone.

January 2009 was a quiet month, I don’t think anyone really is in the mood to do things, everyone is exhausted after Christmas and waiting on pay day! I did get the brain fart of having my own event over in Ireland for OSS events as I  was tired of always having to travel to events, and wanted one in my own back yard, and so I created OSSBarcamp.

February kicked started nicely by waiting for 6 hours for a flight to FOSDEM due to 2 inches of snow in Dublin airport, the inability to cater for a bit of snow is  baffling.  It was my first year at FOSDEM, and it was well worth the wait, I’d tried to go in the past and always other events clashed.  I’ve booked to go again this year and looking forward to seeing more of Brussels this time. Towards the end of February, Ubuntu-ie had its first big event, taking part in Global Bug jam.  We had the help of DIT sponsoring us a venue and had students come along and learn how to take part in logging bugs and triaging them. Good day out followed by a few quiet beers.

March swiftly arrived and my brain fart of OSSBarcamp turned into a reality, turns out if you organise it, set a date, book a venue folks do come! Great day was had and lots of good discussion took place.  As with organising any event, it takes it toll on you and you clearly need a holiday ( any excuse really) and I went over to London for a few days as a holiday.  Great break away and saw London again for the first time in a long time and did all the touristy things and thoroughly enjoyed myself.

April saw Jaunty release party and the Irish LoCo in full swing burning cds in the pub and handing them out to people, having a pub quiz and meeting more people off IRC land and over a drink having a chat.  I should add that once a month we all meet up in Dublin for a face to face meet up, but we did have over 20 people turn up for the Jaunty party, dinner and drinks, and a late night.

May, Kick starting the month was our first Geeknic – a picnic for Geeks. Knowing Ireland you cannot always guarantee the sunshine, but we had a nice day out and people brought along their kids and it was nice to do something different. I sponsored myself to attend UDS Karmic in Barcelona, but before I got here I went via Edinburgh for the weekend to see the Heineken Cup final, at least an Irish team won!  I’d bought the tickets Months in advance!

I’d never been to a UDS before, and it was fantastic, to quote ubuntu folks  it was AWESOME! Getting to meet people you’ve spent time talking online about the work you’re involved in, to work on projects face to face for a week and come up with ideas, solutions and a way forward is remarkable. I got to meet some great folks and I’m really glad I went.

June saw the first MySQL meet up in Dublin, not sure more were planned but it was nice and great to see more groups starting to have more meet ups and discussions take place.  I came back so energised from UDS I went for my membership which I’d been putting off as was nervous.

July moved house, bloody stressful!  Summer months tend be filled with weekend trips home and to Lahinch and visiting mates.  Ubuntu Ireland became a recognised LoCo in July, so we were rather happy as a team!

August, we had our second Geeknic in Farmleigh Park followed by drinks and meeting some of the people behind Ubuntu who were in Dublin for a sprint!  My mate TC came home from Canada for 2 weeks so was back and forth to Lahinch and Limerick. Busy month.

September, I ran another OSSBarcamp, and 3 of the presenters from Ubuntu-uk Podcast, Laura, Tony and Daviey came over!  It was a great way to celebrate Software Freedom day and meet more people.  Pretty sure there will be more of these to come. I just need to work on a venue.

October I turned 30 and fled to Canada for 12 days to see what all the fuss was about.  I had an amazing time and celebrated my birthday in multiple timezones to keep everyone happy.  Ubuntu Ireland had another Bug jam day and release party, Karmic Koala  this month so all around a busy month.

November, I got sponsored to attend UDS Lucid which took place in Dallas, USA.  It was a fun packed week, with working on Ubuntu and night time events, from firing range, ice skating, and meals out to having an afternoon in the A&E Department at local hospital.  Y’all come back now ye’ here!

December is the month, of Christmas meet ups, and working crazy to get it all done so I could take a few days off, and catch up on doing diddly squat.  I did just that!

Cripes, I did a lot, and now I know where the time went. 2009 was amazing fun packed and entertaining, I hope 2010 is just as good!  Looking forward to working on more cool projects and helping where I can.

Once again there seems to be a packed week of things to do in Dublin. Sunday of the August (2nd) bank holiday weekend there is a picnic for geek = Geeknic taking place in farmleigh park, it’s open to everyone, bring along partners, and kids, it’s a lovely venue and the farmers market is also on. Afterwards we’re heading to O’Donnoghues Bar a tradtional Irish bar in Dublin. All of the details are here.

Wednesday 5th August, we’re having a Girl Geek meet up.  I’ve not been able to make the last two, so I’m really looking forward to catching up and seeing what folks are up to, I’ve added a small post to the Ireland Girl Geeks site for folks to leave a comment.

Finally, the PotD is on as usual on the 1st Thursday of the month, in the Longstone bar top floor. The Ubuntu-ie LoCo has decided to start doing a small short 15 min talk before hand just to see if folks are interested in adding this to the PotD in future, so we’re meeting at 6:30pm Rory and myself will be talking about the Ubuntu-NGO project.

So lots of events lined up, all free and hopefully see some new faces coming along. That’s just the 1st week of August… lordie!

I’ve neglected here some what over the last while, what with the run up to Ossbarcamp and then post Barcamp with a trip to London, my back giving up on me and in general just craziness and mayhem.

OssBarcamp was great fun, entertaining, and very enjoyable. It was great to catch up with some folks I’d not seen in ages and on top of that meet people who I’d been talking to over twitter/email/irc and put the faces to the names, though knowing me I won’t remember the name again. I’m definitely one of those people who remembers the face and draws a blank at the name (can’t be good at everything now can I ).

So post any event I run I like to go off on a mini break and mull back on the event and also relax. This time I went to London and it was great as I’d not been there in years and it was I was really lucky that I had really good weather and was able to enjoy some lovely walks around London. Walking around China town and  relaxing is a great way to spend a few days just doing nothing and I needed it.

Back to Dublin, and we had another Girl Geek meet up at herbstreet again with a great turn out. New folks turned up this time and it’s always great to meet new people who share a similar interest and have new ideas.  I even brought a +1 with who had asked to come and I think he enjoyed the evening, so thanks to Luis, for coming along and taking part in the evening discussions.

Coming up soon is the Geeknic, the freenode staffers want us to leave our pc’s behind and venture out into the open… ok not that scarey, but head to St.Stephens green park and meet other folks and bring along some nibbles and meet other folks. I’ll be there as will some other folks. You can seen here and here for more information on the event.

Finally I’m going to run another Ossbarcamp, on September 19th, new site to be launched late May, but you’ve been given loads of notice now! Put the date in your calander.

Oh and I’m also going for my ubuntu membership soon.

It’s great to see more and more technical events here in Ireland and Northern Ireland, finally events like these are becoming more and more regular.  But I have noticed a distinct lack of female speakers at these events.  Talking it over with Martha we said we’d love to do a training public speaking work shop.  This may be because they are shy, or just thought they never would be able to give a talk or “that there is someone else better than they are” at giving a talk. Actually most people male and female including myself hate public speaking!

With this in mind, Ireland Girl Geek Dinners group are going to organise 3 sessions to help folks with some key pointers on how to present and maybe gain a bit more confidence in taking part in events.

We have to say thanks to the folks over at Echolibre who are very kindly letting us use their workspace, so thanks for that!

Speaker Night 1:               Thursday, February 26^th from 6pm-7:30pm

Topic: What Am *I* Supposed to Talk About?

o Finding your voice

o Coming up with topics/content/titles

o Building a story from your content

Speaker Night 2:               Thursday, March 5^th from 6pm-7:30pm

Topic: The Nitty Gritty of Technical Talks

o Demo-ing with code

o Useful tools for technical demos/presentations

o Things everyone hates

o Failure recovery

o Your failsafe list

Speaker Night 3:               Thursday, March 12^th from 6pm-7:30pm

Topic: Grooving and Improving

o Handling Q&A

o Techniques for self-improvment

o Critiquing your own performance

o Finding your honest feedback crowd

Speaker Night 4:               Thursday, March 19^th from 6pm-7:30pm

Topic: TBD – we’ll either repeat a session or do a special request like slide-building?

Please register on the Girl Geek site, places are limited to 10!