Showing posts with label Imran Ali. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Imran Ali. Show all posts

Sunday, 17 August 2008

BarCamp Leeds 2008

We had such a fantastic time at the last BarCamp Leeds and this one was no exception. We've been eagerly awaiting news about this year's BarCamp so when the news came through from Imran Ali, one of the organisers, we got ourselves signed up straight away. BarCampers were treated to a free Orange goody-bag containing Orange USB pen drives, badges, balloons, pencils and groovy Yorkshire Forward USB mice.

This time round, rather than manning the reception throughout the day, we attended more of the talks, discussions and workshops. There was an unmistakeable design flavour seeping through at this year's event with one of the highlights being Dean Vipond's talk on Design Vs Usability. Dean is a designer from Orange and his talk focussed upon the relationship between and balance of these two fundamental areas. During the discussion he presented a diagram illustrating the project lifecycle of his design projects at work. This was a very interesting subject to discuss as it is a consideration every designer has to keep in mind: the constraints that usability can place upon the design process and at the same time the importance of the end user's requirements.


All the BarCampers were really well catered for with some tasty sushi nibbles at lunchtime followed by a hearty helping of pizza for dinner. The Space Invaders and lollies went down well, with Imran kindly letting us run away with the remainding lollies at the end of the day. The evening was rounded off with a few drinks in the Fenton across the road from Old Broadcasting House.

Thursday, 14 August 2008

Leeds Girl Geek Dinner

After an invitation from Linda Broughton, Head of NTI Leeds, and Imran Ali, from CARBON:imagineering, we went along to Leeds' first Girl Geek Dinner, held at the Living Room in the city centre last night. These networking events are designed to promote and support women primarily in the technical industry, but also crossing into the creative and digital industries. The venue was packed with a range of professionals representing these disciplines and it was a great opportunity to make new contacts and to catch up with old ones. We managed a quick chat with Maz Hardey who we'd met earlier this year at OpenCoffee. There were two speakers: Lydia Machell and Lorna Mitchell whose talks covered the subjects of 'code as poetry' and 'professional development for girl geeks' respectively. The organisers did a fantastic job and we had a great night.


http://leedsgirlgeekdinners.com/

Sunday, 18 November 2007

BarCamp Leeds 2007

Linda Broughton, Head of the New Technology Institute in Leeds, mentioned BarCamp earlier this year and, after taking a look at what people had said about it online, we decided it'd be something we'd really enjoy. Unfortunately by the time we found out about when it was being held the registration had already closed, so after some good old-fashioned pleading with Linda we were able to secure ourselves places by offering to help out with reception duties. This was a fantastic opportunity as it meant we were able to meet and greet everyone who attended. Groovy BarCamp mugs were dished out to all too, along with some particularly tasty lollypops.

Photo © Richard-G

Armed with a handy Kodak camera we took photos of each BarCamp attendee and began putting together a 'Networking Wall.' If you go here you can find almost everyone's names from the wall, on Flickr.

Photo © Mohsin Ali

Who can forget the 'Box of Mystery.' I had this crazy idea to tempt people in with a cardboard box. Personally, I think too many sugary sweeties and coffee were to blame. "Oooh BEHOLD the Box of Mysssterryyyy!"
Here's a photo of Katherine with Professor Reinhold Behringer from Leeds Met University. He works in Innovation North, the faculty where we both studied.

Photo © Mohsin Ali

Who says you can't draw on walls? :P

Photo © Mohsin Ali

Here's us doing some networkin' schmoozin with Johnny's bro, Andrew.

Photo © Mohsin Ali

RockStar Versus Kooji - FIGHT! A game of Virtual Table Tennis with Ian Bowden from RockStar. I totally beat everyone that night (including the lad to my left (Simon) note the fear in his eyes) :D RockStar took us all out for drinks and burgers afterwards too!

We met some very nice people during BarCamp Leeds 2007, including some we already knew or were later about to know. Here's a shout out to all who crossed our path (all in alphabetical order cos that's the way we like it!):

Mark 'Ernie' Earnshaw
Paul Jenkins
Paul Stanton
Simon Edwards (Freestyle)
Simon Wheatley (Virtual Tennis Virtuoso)
Tom Smith (Wacom Extraordinaire!)