• WHEN: March 25, 2013 – 6:00 p.m.
• WHERE: Innovation Guelph, 111 Farquhar Street – 3rd Floor, Guelph
• SPEAKER: Candice Lepage, “Changing Your Life Through Social Media”
• COST: $15, which includes a light catered dinner
• DEADLINE FOR REGISTRATION: March 20th  Click here to register

ABOUT OUR SPEAKER: Candice has been an active member of the online social community since 1997 when she joined rec.arts.xfiles. After having spent 17 years in the food industry while chatting about film, tv and music online, she chose to turn her world upside-down and make her hobby her career.

Candice spent almost 2 years working with a media arts studio, primarily in marketing, but also as an assistant director, voice-over artist, event manager and basic monkey wrangler and lion tamer.

During that time she split her marketing time between in person appearances locally and online relationship, buzz and fan building through online social tools.

Now she owns Cinn48 Online Media and helps clients be more awesome online. She’s worked with local independent businesses such as Clear Path Chiropractic and Grey Rock Clothing Co, to not-for-profit companies such as Street Health in Toronto and the Guelph Community Health Centre, and everything in between.

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We have some great speakers lined up for the next few months of our Girl Geek Dinners in Guelph.

February we’ll be hosting Tammy te Winkel and Kym Ho, who work for a startup in Kitchener called “Encircle”. Their talk is titled: Passion Ignited: UX and Start-ups
Kym and Tammy will be talking a bit about UX and the energy applied to working with startups, working with all the start up groups at VeloCity (U of W entrepreneurship program) and about working at Encircle. (CANCELLED)

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March 25th we’re moving the dinner to Innovation Center Guelph for a catered dinner. Our speaker will be Candice Lepage of Cinn48 Online Media, who helps business professionals understand how to use online and social media to build their network of peers and customers.

April 29th we’re back at the ebar and we’ll have Kristel Manes, Director, Innovation Centre in Guelph as our speaker.

In May we’re hoping to be at DIYode for a bbq dinner, to check out the maker space, see laser printers and code shields in action, and make some tshirts using the laser cutter for our templates.

Last Monday some Girl Geeks had a great time hanging out at the University, showing off our Girl Geek Dinner awesomeness to everyone who walked by the table. The event was excellent, well organized, and fun. Tech businesses and community groups filled the room with tables, taking resumes and passing out information.

Guelph Technology Showcase

I think we managed to talk to every female at the event, and a good number of males who wanted to take our flyers and information back to their geeky female friends. (Well, there was one male who was willing to take the information back to the one female in his engineering class, but he wouldn’t take a flyer because he didn’t want to be seen with it, he said.)

Thanks to Valerie Lalonde for organizing and inviting us!

Girl Geeks

Judi’s research interest is Intelligent Tutoring Systems. She is specifically interested in tutoring systems that adapt the way information is given to a learner based on the learner’s needs or characteristics. She recently visited Ghana where she was asked to be the science and technology specialist for an all-girls high school.

They’ll be more details to follow soon, but you won’t want to miss this dinner.

Click here to register now and save your spot. Food and drinks can be purchased at the dinner.

MORE DETAILS:

When: Monday, January 28th @ 6:00 p.m.
Where: Bookshelf eBar (upstairs) 41 Quebec St. Guelph, ON N1H 2T1
Speaker: Dr. Judi McQuaig

Format:  We meet at 6, and those who want can order food by 6:30, to be delivered by 7:00.  Our speaker will be on stage at 7:00.  The group is small (20 – 30) and the meetings are informal and fun.

Learn more about Girl Geek Dinners here.

QUESTIONS? Email me here.

Guelph Web Maker Meetup

Meets on the 2nd Wednesday of every month at the Symposium on Stone Road in Guelph.

The Guelph Web Maker Meetup is monthly gathering of web makers to meet up, share some food and drink and our stories about making websites.

So, what’s a Web Maker? Anyone who is part of making a website: developers, designers, sysadmins, content authors, SEO consultants, project managers. If you help getting a website online, we want you to join us and join our conversation about how to make websites better and maybe even how to do it together.

Learn more about GWMM

The DIYODE Community Workshop

Diyode is a place for making, a 1,600 square foot space filled with tools for wood working, metal working, electronics and crafting.

Diyode is a community of people who like to get their hands dirty, and are always willing to lend a hand to anyone that wants learn something new.

Diyode is a non-profit organization with a mandate to foster an enthusiasm for DIY, to spread the idea that it’s better to build something than to buy it, and that it is better to fix something than throw it away.

More about Diyode

Democamp Guelph

DemoCampGuelph is for anyone in and around Guelph interested in software, the web and technology! Startup junkies, wave slaves, consultants, students, indie professionals, engineers, designers, money and marketing guys.

You don’t have to demo to attend.

Learn more about democampguelph

Guelph Technology and Design Cluster Co-operative
The Guelph Technology and Design Cluster Co-operative is a not for profit organization for bringing together technology, design, and knowledged based companies\individuals. Its purpose is to encourage collaboration amongst companies\individuals and to bring recognition to the knowledged based community.

Learn more about Guelph Technology and Design Cluster Co-operative

About our November meeting

If you were walking down Quebec Street last Monday, you might have seen the light from the glitter ball that lit up our second Girl Geek Dinner in Guelph.

Girl Geek Sharon Bennett shared her thoughts on why there are so few geeky ladies. She talked about growing up playing with a Merlin and an Atari and watching Battlestar Galactic. And she talked about wondering where all the girls were in highschool math and physics.

Sharon suggested that we can draw inspiration from role models likeKari Byron from Mythbusters

• Sheryl Sandberg from TED talks, COO of Facebook
• Molly Wood, an editor at CNET
• Marissa Myer, CEO of Yahoo!

Sharon wrapped up her talk with a challenge for everyone to find a way to encourage a girl in science or technology.

Some of us (including Sharon) had a head start on our homework because we brought along our pre-teen and teen daughters. Girl geeks!

But what about October?

Props and fist bumps to Kem Kramer for kicking off our Guelph dinners. We’re grateful to her. It was a great way to launch our local group. And thanks to all who attended!

When: Monday, November 26th @ 6:00 p.m.
Where: Bookshelf eBar (upstairs) 41 Quebec St. Guelph, ON N1H 2T1
Speaker: Sharon Bennett of Bennett Business Connections
Topic: The Lack of Women in Tech/Science or Why are There So Few Geeky Ladies

Sharon Bennett, author of “Keep IT Simple, The Small Business Guide to Computers and Networks“, is a dedicated IT Professional with a passion for helping small businesses maintain and develop technical capabilities.

With 15 years Information Technology experience, Sharon understands the unique IT challenges that small business owners face.

Sharon prides herself on keeping up with the fast pace of changing technology. Sharon holds many industry certifications including Microsoft Systems Engineer 2003: Security, Microsoft Small Business Server 2008 and is a Microsoft Certified Trainer. Sharon has taught and continues to teach the MCSE curriculum, Microsoft Office Suite and Quickbooks.

In her spare time, you will find Sharon on the local off road bike trails or volunteering at the local gym.

Here are all the details!

WHEN: Monday, October 22nd at 6:00 p.m.

WHERE: Bookshelf Green Room, 41 Quebec St. Guelph, ON

WHAT: The format of a Geek Girl dinner is that we gather, order and eat dinner or drinks (for those who want), meet some great people, network, chat, socialize, and hear an assume speaker.

WHO: Our first speaker will be Kem-Laurin Kramer.

TOPIC: User Experience & Usability Strategist – How to design products that create a more sustainable user experiences.

SPEAKER BIO: Kem-Laurin Kramer is a User Experience Strategist, Innovator and Dreamer of Solutions, and author or the book User Experience in the Age of Sustainability: A Practitioner’s Blueprint. She has worked in a number of market vertical including Mobile, Web Design, Logistics & Assembly, Energy & Automation, Information & Communication Networks, Medical Imaging & Health Information Systems (Financial & Clinical), to name a few. More recently, she has been engaged with GIS, Courts & Justice, Permitting, Licensing and Compliance, and Freedom of Information in the space of citizen centric solutions.

Kem-Laurin is also a pioneer of formal User Experience research practice at Research in Motion (makers of the Blackberry), championing the building of the company’s first ever Usability lab and subsequent growth of the practice at the company.

Prior to her current roles, she has worked with Siemens USA & Germany, in the field of Medical, Logistics, Automation, and Telecom, where she used her unique background in media, usability and communications to drive this practice through a growth period. Today she works as a UX Consultant and occasionally speaks at local events on the topic of user experience and sustainability. Apart from being active in local User Experience community, extolling the virtues of embracing Sustainability UX analytic practices, Kem-Laurin has also given lectures and talks at local universities, as well as written for Johnny Holland UX Magazine. She has also co-authored a chapter in “Usability and Internationalization of Information Technology: Travel Planning on the Web: A Cross-Cultural Case Study.”

She is passionate about sustainable design and in her spare time, she spends time writing, adores gardening, renovating, and spending time with friends and family.

We’d like the dinners to be a positive environment for women to connect over good food and interesting subjects. The dinners will provide a chance to network with like-minded women in your community, establish informal mentoring relationships, and to explore some interesting subjects. Previous dinners in KW have discussed how Google uses its tools to support disaster response and girls and gaming.

We had a false start in June, so we’re planning at a shiny new Girl Geek Dinner for September. We’re looking for the sweet spot that gives us Girl Geek Dinners with

• Accessible cost
• Downtown venue
• Fresh speaking roster

Cost

We want the Girl Geek Guelph dinners to be affordable for students as well as professionals, so we’re looking at ways to keep costs down. One way is by finding venues that allow attendees to purchase their own meals. If this isn’t possible, we’ll make sure we tell you about the catered food that your ticket will buy. Once we’re up and running, we’ll also look at ways to sponsor attendees who might find the cost a barrier to attending.

Venue

We want to keep the venue near Guelph’s vibrant downtown. We’re looking for a place that can provide meals for purchase as well as the meeting space and Wi-Fi that we require. This is a challenge. We’re open to suggestions and to hearing from local businesses who would like to host.

Roster

We want speakers that you haven’t seen much of at other local tech events. We’re also discussing alternating speaking events with social events.

Stay tuned for more details as September approaches. If you have questions or suggestions, you can tweet them to @GGDGuelph.

Thanks to everyone who signed up, and you should have received a refund by now. If you have not, please leave a comment here and we’ll deal with that right away.

I hope everyone will sign up again in the fall. We’ll post the date as soon as we know it!