Category Archives: Girl Geek Dinners

Catch up

Catch up

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.

Girl Geeks Technical Speaking workshop

Girl Geeks Technical Speaking workshop

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 26th 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 5th 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 12th 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 19th 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!

Some people are just very helpful

Some people are just very helpful

And others are not, though I do find women are more helpful than others, and will in fact go out of their way to find information for you.  This evening was just such a case.  I’m running a barcamp in March, and one of the streams that will be set aside will be for Girl Geeks :) I was twittering this, yes I twitter, get over it. Roseanne Smith very nicely gave me some contacts and also suggested a site I’d never seen before and in fact cannot believe I never knew about it. It’s brilliant it’s called Geek Speaker.

Anyway thought it was very nice and useful site that folks may want to use.