Girl Geek Dining
By Simon Bisson & Mary Branscombe in Editorial
Posted in People on
I used to work in the Countess of Lovelace’s town house.
The only reason I found out was the blue plaque on the fence outside. The company I was working for was a web consulting start-up, and I shared the news of our office’s auspicious history with my colleagues. Only a handful even knew who Augusta Ada Byron King was.
If I was writing the National Curriculum, I’d be making her the centerpiece of the technology lessons. There’s something inspiring in knowing that the first programmer was a woman, in a time when women of her class were expected to do very little. Her programs may not have run, but Admiral Grace Hopper’s did. Women have always been at the heart of computing and computer science – but it’s been an invisible heart.
Back when I did my engineering degree there were only two women on my course, and over 80 men. There’s something very wrong with those numbers, and it’s the way educate and the expectations we inculcate that push women away.
That’s why I’m blogging about the women who run London’s Girl Geek Dinners. Sarah Blow started the regular meetings after being one of very few women at one of London’s first Geek Dinner events. She released that there needed to be a place for women who work in technology to meet, to hear from other women, and to, well, just hang out and chill after a day in the office. She arranged sponsorship from many of the UK’s biggest technology companies, set up a web site and mailing list, and now, over three years later, there are Girl Geek Dinners all over the world.
I’ve been to a couple (yes, men are allowed, if they’re invited by a girl geek), and they’re inspiring events. I’ve heard great speakers, and met inspiring people who have given me new ideas and fresh insights. There’ve been sessions at Google, at Microsoft, and at Skype, London technology companies that have opened their doors and offered space and sponsorship. It’s a phenomenon that’s spread by word of mouth, by blog and by tweet. Each time I’ve been, there’ve been more and more women attending - women who are no longer the one or the two, but instead the many.
Girl Geek Dinners are a wonderful idea, and one that needs to be spread to every city and to every town. Technology isn’t just a place where women should be, it’s a place where they should be leading. Women were the first to build this IT-powered world – and it’s one that needs them working to inspire and educate and inform, turning the invisible heart into to the visible again.
–Simon
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