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/

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!):

Ben Dalton

Deb Bassett

Dominic 'The Hodge' Hodgson

Imran Ali

Linda Broughton

Lorna Mitchell

Mark 'Ernie' Earnshaw

Maz Hardey

Paul Bacchus

Paul Jenkins

Paul Stanton

Reinhold Behringer

Ryan Taylor

Simon Edwards (Freestyle)

Simon Wheatley (Virtual Tennis Virtuoso)

Tom Smith (Wacom Extraordinaire!)