Next Dinner

Bristol GGD #13 – February 16th 2012

Register here

This month’s event is being sponsored by SETsquared – The SETsquared Partnership develops new businesses from university research (‘spin-outs’) and supports early-stage, technology companies with high growth potential from the wider business community. Their business acceleration centre offers a fantastic service to start-up businesses yet very few of these have included female technologists and they would like us to help redress the balance.

The event is being hosted by the Pervasive Media Studio which is based in the Watershed – The Pervasive Media Studio is a creative technologies collaboration between Watershed, University of West of England and University of Bristol.

Our speaker will be Verity Alexander from the Pervasive Media Studio:

Verity is responsible for curating and managing the Pervasive Media Studio, promoting and coordinating the vibrant community of residents and partners and supporting the innovative portfolio of work that is developed here.

A key part of her role as Producer is to document and disseminate the research undertaken by collaborators.

With a diverse background in public exhibition across the visual arts, live art, film and performance, and working in the public sector funding innovative digital businesses, Verity is passionate about championing all things creative, experimental and unexpected. She is currently hoping to up her geek girl credentials by taking on the Codeacademy ‘Code Year’ challenge and trying to understand the difference between a ‘for’ and a ‘while’ loop!

Following on from the success of our short ‘Pecha Kucha’ presentations from PhD students at Event #12 we also have several slots available for anyone wishing to give a short presentation about their PhD progress. Please contact us if you are interested.

Dinner at this event will be a selection of wraps, fresh fruit and brownie squares with tea and coffee or you can also buy drinks at the Watershed bar if you fancy something stronger!

As always this event is free and men are welcome as long as they are invited by a girl geek – we don’t want to be outnumbered! Places are limited so please register your interest and do let us know if you can’t make it so your place can be made available to someone else if necessary.

Thursday 16th February 6:30pm for 7pm – The Pervasive Media Studio is based in the Watershed. Visitors should come to Watershed Box Office where they will be directed through the bar.

Past Events

Bristol GGD #11 and #12 – January 2012

We’re kicking off the new year with two events in January:

Bristol GGD #12 – Pizza with Infineon

The second of two events in January. This event promises to be lots of fun. It’s being hosted by Infineon from their offices in Stoke Gifford in Bristol’s Silicon Gorge. The offices are close to Bristol Parkway station, located behind Esporta Fitness Centre in Stoke Gifford – please see the map on Eventbrite for further information.

Infineon are sponsoring the event and will be providing us with pizza.

The Speaker at this event will be Dr Constance Fleuriot

Dr Constance Fleuriot is currently a Research Associate at the Digital Cultures Research Centre, part of the University of the West of England based in The Pervasive Media Studio. She is working with Professor Jon Dovey on an AHRC funded Knowledge Transfer Fellowship investigating the language, aesthetics and value of pervasive media.

Constance has always been interested in playing with interesting things when she has time, which probably qualifies as geek behaviour. For this geek girl talk she will talk about some of the things she has liked or used over the years, not just for playing.

At this event we would also like to offer the opportunity for any female PhD students to come and give a short talk about their work – max 5 minutes each – if you are interested in doing so then please contact us to arrange this by e-mailing: bristolggd@googlemail.com

The event is on Thursday 19th January at Infineon – 6:30pm for 7pm www.infineon.com

Register here

Register for this event

See below for our other event

Bristol GGD #11 – Wikipedia Birthday Editing Party

Following on from the success of our Girl Geeks vs Wikimeet event back in August, we are teaming up with Wikipedia again, this time to bring you a hands-on editing event, at the University of Bristol.

This event will run from 1pm until 5pm on Sunday 15th January at the Virtual Reality Centre, Room 1.06, University of Bristol Merchant Venturers Building. Experienced Wikipedians will be on hand to help you explore how to edit Wikipedia, so please bring a laptop with you.

It is also Wikipedia’s birthday on the 15th January so Wikipedia will be providing the nibbles and hopefully another fabulous Wikipedia cake.

Places on this event are limited so please only sign up if you are sure you can come and if you need to cancel do let us know for numbers. It is going to be difficult to get into the building on a Sunday so I will contact attendees with a mobile number nearer the time to ensure that you are all able to get into the building and enjoy the event.

Register for this event

Bristol GGD #10

Back to the Watershed for our final event of the year – Girl Geek Drinks on Thursday 1st December. Our first dinner of next year will be in January and we will announce all the details of that soon.

If you are interested in helping out with Bristol Girl Geeks or have ideas for venues, dinners or speakers or you’d just like to socialise with a gang of friendly, like minded individuals then please come along!

As always we do not exclude men, but they must be accompanied by a Girl Geek so we don’t get outnumbered!

Please register here: http://girlgeekdecemberdrinks.eventbrite.com/

So after our brilliant event with Wikimedia in August we are determined to keep the ball rolling and have decided to alternate dinner with drinks every other month.

This means that for our next event on 22nd September we’ll be meeting in the Watershed for drinks and an informal chat. If you’re interested in helping out with Bristol Girl Geeks or have ideas for venues, dinners or speakers or you’d just like to socialise with a gang of friendly, like minded individuals then please come along!

As always we do not exclude men, but they must be accompanied by a Girl Geek so we don’t get outnumbered!

Please register your interest so we can get an idea of numbers:

girlgeekdrinks.eventbrite.com

Bristol GGD #8

Date: Thursday 18th August 2011                    Time: 7.00pm

Location: The Merchant Venturers’ School of Engineering, Department of Computer Science, University of Bristol

For our next event – something very special! We are teaming up with Wikipedia to present a Girl Geeks vs Wikimeet event!

Wikimedia (the parent organisation of Wikipedia) contacted us a few months ago as they wanted to encourage more women to edit Wikipedia – there is currently around a 13 vs 87 % gender split in Wikipedia editors in the UK and they wondered if we could do anything to help.

As you probably know – anyone can edit Wikipedia but it takes a bit of practice and understanding of the basic protocols and principles to get started – so this is why we want to hold this event and encourage more participation. A Wikimeet is a general gathering of Wiki geeks who like to get together and chat informally about Wiki things, so we decided to combine forces and put on this event to enlighten, inform and inspire more women to become involved.

As usual, men are welcome to the event as long as they are invited by one of our female participants. We are also want to invite non-geeky females who might simply be interested in editing or writing for Wikipedia – so if you know one of those please bring her along! Wikipedia are providing us with a buffet and a Wikipedia cake!

Our speaker is the trailblazing female Wikipedian Fiona Apps; Fiona is an administrator on the English Wikipedia and a member of Wikimedia’s Volunteer Response Team. She first began editing in 2007, fixing spelling errors and adding small trivia to articles, but now works with articles that appear on the front page. She has also assisted Wikimedia, the charity behind Wikipedia, with their 2010 fundraiser; connecting with users and the public through social media. When not improving Wikipedia online, she helps with University Outreach for Wikimedia UK and has helped to create the first Wikipedia Society at Imperial College, London. She studied at Sarah Lawrence College in New York and is currently building her writing career.

Please bring your laptops to the event as we will be holding a hands-on Wikipedia editing session as part of the evening – with lots of Wikipedians on hand to help.

The event is free. Please register before Wednesday 17th of August.

If you are interested in helping us run Girl Geek Dinner Bristol please contact us through our blog and come and meet us  at 6pm, before the event starts –  to discuss possible roles and future events.

Bristol GGD #7

Date: 23rd March 2011                    Time: From 6.00pm, talk at 6.30pm

Location: University of Bristol, Department of Computer Science, Merchant Venturers Building, Woodland Rd, Bristol BS8 1UB

Professor Ann Blandford gave us a brilliant talk on an unusual topic: Designing to facilitate serendipity!

The Merchant Venturers’ School of Engineering, Department of Computer Science hosted and sponsored this event!

Ann Blandford is Professor of Human–Computer Interaction in the Department of Computer Science at University College London, and Director of UCL Interaction Centre (UCLIC). She has a first degree in Maths (from Cambridge) and a PhD in Artificial Intelligence (from the Open University). She started her career in industry, as a software engineer, but soon moved back into academia, where she developed a focus on the use and usability of computer systems. Ann leads research projects on human error and on interacting with information, with a focus on modelling situated interactions. She has over 150 publications in international, peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings. She has been technical programme chair for several conferences, the most recent being NordiCHI 2010, and is currently Chair of the BCS/CPHC Distinguished Dissertations Committee.

Bristol GGD #6

Date: Thursday 27th January                    Time: From 7.00pm

Location: Watershed, Harbourside, BS1 5TX Bristol

This year we’re happy to announce we are back and we’re determined not to lose momentum. To start the year we’re going to have an informal social event at the Watershed in Bristol this will be on Thursday 27th January at 7pm.

Bristol GGD #5

Date: Monday 21st June 2010                    Time: From 6.00pm

Location: The Hole in the Wall, 2 The Grove, Queens Square, Bristol, BS1 4QZ

To celebrate the first day of Summer, we had our first night out, and even the sun decided to come along!

Bristol GGD #4

Thank you again to all of you for this brilliant evening!

Many thanks  to our sponsor STEM SW for making this event possible in such a beautiful venue.

Date: 20th May 2010                    

Location: Engineers’ House, The Promenade, Clifton Down, Bristol BS8 3NB     Map and Directions

Josephine works in gender and food security within international development. Which basically means she gets paid to figure out why people don’t have enough food to eat, how to move people from welfare into self-sufficiency and the theory that the reduction of poverty cannot be done without the full uncompromising leadership of women. She started her career through Engineers Without Borders Canada and started her school career with two BSc’s in Biology and Psychology. Her whirlwind career has taken from Zambia, to Ghana, to the UN in Switzerland and finally Bristol! She’s now working as a research consultant at theIDLgroup.

Bristol GGD #3

The e-Office offered us a beautiful venue for the dinner and Infineon sponsored some pizzas and chocolates!

Date: 29th April 2010                    Time: Registration from 6.00pm

Location: e-Office, 11-19 Wine Street, Bristol, BS1 2PH

Dr. Julie Greensmith from Nottingham University gave us a brilliant talk about how computer science can be used to detect people’s emotions and how that is applied to different things, such as the design of roller coasters!

Julie Greensmith is part of the Intelligent Modelling and Analysis Group within the School of Computer Science at the University of Nottingham. She is currently researching the development of an immune inspired algorithm, the Dendritic Cell Algorithm and the application of intelligent methods and data mining to ‘thrill & fear’ discrimination. This means she gets to ride a lot of rollercoasters, all in the name of research! Her work with Artificial Immune Systems involves both abstract modelling of the immune system for the purpose of constructing novel algorithms and modelling of the immune system to figure out how select mechanisms actually function. In particular Julie is interested in the Danger Theory and the function of the innate immune systems, in particular Dendritic Cells.

Bristol GGD #2

Our sponsor for the event was the University of the West of England  . We had a very nice buffet, especially the cake!

Date: 25th March 2010                    Time: Registration from 6.30pm

Location: UWE – Frenchay Campus – Street Café

Ana Kronschnabl, CEO of Fluffy Logic, talked about her career in the Game industry. We had a brilliant Question & Answer Session at the end of the talk!

Ana Kronschnabl began a career in business management in 1987, when she set up and ran a video production company; clients included Ford UK and the NUS. Since then she has worked at the BBC & Granada as well as in further education. Following work as Research Fellow in Digital Content Creation at UWE, Ana established FluffyLogic in November 2003 and it has grown in size and reputation since then! Ana is currently finishing a PhD in content creation for delivery over new distribution platforms and has a degree in Film and Theatre and an MA in Television Production.

Ana is the co-author of “PlugInTurnOn: A Guide to Filmmaking for the Internet”. Published by Marion Boyars Publishers (May 2004) and set up plugincinema.com, one of the earliest independent sites devoted to the creation and distribution of films for the Internet. Ana enjoys VJing, singing, Runequest, House of the Dead, Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War and making stained glass art.

Bristol GGD #1

The Department of Computer Science sponsored our launch event! We had 70 people coming to the wine reception.

Date: 15th February 2010                Time: 6pm onwards

Location: University of Bristol, Department of Computer Science, Merchant Venturers Building, Woodland Rd, Bristol BS8 1UB

We had an inspiring talk from Jo Reid from Calvium, our first keynote speaker.

Josephine Reid is currently the Creative Director of Calvium, a company that enables people to build exciting mobile applications based on sensors and context. Jo was formerly a senior researcher at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories working in the Pervasive Computing Laboratory. Whilst at HP she helped to design, lead and analyse a number of field trials to test the value of situated mediascapes and mobile and pervasive technologies. Her research has involved several experiments, observational studies, knowledge elicitation interviews, field trials and concept prototyping giving Jo expertise in experience design and user centred research, specialising in mobile location aware experiences or mediascapes. Jo has also worked for Texas Instruments on information engineering expert systems and prior to that Jo worked for Xerox on HCI prototyping systems. She holds an MBA, a BSc in Computer Science and is currently working on a PhD researching how people make sense of pervasive technologies and environments.