We have a speaker for October's Dinner!

Leigh Himel, President and founder of Oponia, a homegrown startup that's bringing a proprietary desktop sharing service called ucaster to market, has graciously agreed to speak to us at October's dinner. If you're planning to attend - please sign up on the TGGD wiki. We'll be at the same place as the last dinner, but we'll have to start a little later, at 7 p.m.


Wednesday, October 17th at 7 p.m.
The Hot House Cafe
35 Church Street between Wellington and Colbourne (Google map). The entrance is right on the corner of Front & Church.
Toronto, ON
416-366-7800

The Hot House has a buffet dinner. It's $22 taxes included (!!). Show up anytime after 7 p.m., help yourself to your meal and schmooze. To make things easier, please bring cash with you to pay your bill and pay for drinks as you go, that way the bill printing/credit card processing time at the end of the evening will be minimal. A 15% gratuity will be included in your bill.

Once again, we're still looking for sponsors for October's dinner - if you or your company would like to kick in for a few female technology students to attend at no cost, please contact us via the wiki!

We need a speaker for October!

Or else we'll have to skip the month and meet in November! Time's a-wasting, so if you have any suggestions (yourself or someone else) please let us know! We're looking for female speakers who can talk to our group about any topic Internet tech-related. Please leave a comment here with your thoughts or make a note on the wiki!

2nd Toronto Girl Geek Dinner a Hit!

Just a quick post to thank everyone who came out to the 2nd TGGD this week (and thanks too to those who sent their regrets but who were there in spirit)! I counted 40 people in attendance -- just enough to fill our little private room without it being too cosy. :)

Thanks also to our speaker, Leila Boujnane, whose talk on the challenges and opportunities in tech and software development was both witty and inspiring. Leila's point about not being afraid to take risks, and about starting your own company early and often, was well taken by everyone, especially the 12 students in attendance.

And thanks again to Leona Hobbs and TuCows -- thanks to their generous sponsorship, students who wouldn't otherwise have attended did so, and got the chance to be inspired to action by Leila.

And a final thanks to the Hot House Grill, whose buffet dinner and cash-and-carry drinks policy allowed for a much smoother bill-tallying process at the end of the evening this time around. (Personal note for next time: ask them to turn off the muzak BEFORE the guest speaker starts. Did anyone else find the melodic jazz a little disruptive??)

If you attended, please, let us know your thoughts! Did you like the Hot House as a venue? Was the room too big, too small, just right? Who would you like to hear speak in future? Leave a comment or post your suggestions on the wiki!

Should More Men Attend the Girl Geek Dinners?

What do you think? PR practitioner Joseph Thornley, who was the sole male attendee at our inaugural dinner thinks so, and he's posted about it here.

Of particular interest is the following excerpt from his blog post:

Now, I’m old enough to have entered the work force when the workplace culture really did resemble that portrayed on Mad Men. But the world has moved on.

Every male executive I know today wants to build an organization that will attract and retain the best women. We’d be stupid to do anything else...

I plan to attend future Girl Geek Dinners. And I’d encourage other male executives to do so as well. Not only will we learn a lot about the experience of women in business and technology, but we’ll also get to hear some top notch speakers.

Since this is a group effort, I'm going to throw it out there to you - what do you think? Should we actively encourage more men to attend, or should we preserve our original intent in making a place for women who work in technology (and who are vastly underrepresented in this field) to network and share with one another?

Thoughts?

Making Women in Technology More Visible

Here's a great article from Tara Hunt, a Canuck living in Silicon Valley. It was published this week on the O'Reilly Network:

Women Who Risk: Making Women in Technology Visible

Do you know anyone who should be added to this list? Submit them to Tara via her blog.

Update re: Wednesday's dinner...

Since student response for the sponsored spots has been a little slow to build, whereas there were a number of people on the regular attendee standby list, we've re-jigged things a little, adding another 10 spots to the "regular" list and reducing the student list from 25 to 15. If you have any suggestions on how to better reach out to the kids - do let us know!

So there are currently about 6 spots open for attendees - if you're planning on coming, please sign up to secure your spot on the TGGD Wiki...

Location for the 2nd TGGD

Hi everyone, sorry for the lateness of posting the location details. I think I had a dream about sharing this info, and then never actually did:-)

The new venue should be a good one, and we're really hoping it will eliminate the wait for dinner (which was lengthy last time) as well as the endless bill printing/credit card processing time at the end of the evening, which held a lot of people up.

They key to timing success on this one will be twofold:

1) bring cash to pay your bill (the buffet dinner is just $22, taxes in)
2) pay for your drinks as you go

Let's hope the food's good and the room works - this may just end up being our permanent home if all agree!

Speaker: Leila Boujnane (topic TBA)
The Hot House Cafe
Wednesday September 19th 6:00 p.m.
35 Church Street between Wellington and Colbourne (Google map)
Toronto, ON
416-366-7800

Show up anytime after 6 p.m., help yourself to your meal and schmooze. We'll aim to get Leila talking by about 7:30.

And a reminder once again that Tucows has generously offered to pick up the dinner tab for up to 25 female technology students. To register for the event as a student or attendee, please visit the TGGD wiki.

See you the 19th!