Report on TGGD #7 with Sandi Jones

I think I can safely say that last night's Toronto Girl Geek Dinner with Sandi Jones from Rogers was a resounding success.

A special thank you to our sponsor Microsoft. It was good to hear about all the impressive initiatives for women in technology that Microsoft Canada is working on. If you're interested in being involved in the mentoring program Qixing spoke about last night, please leave a note in the comments and I'll send along her contact details.

Last night's discussion (wonderfully facilitated by Sandi, don't you think?) about the fundamental shift in technology from big business to the consumer was great. Here are just a few of the examples you shared last night of how we're doing neat things with consumer technology:

• At Jack.fm radio personalities are using Twitter for audience interaction.
• Heather is getting a grassroots project up and running with free wiki + FriendFeed + Twitter
• Allison who works for a publishing company is overlaying their subscriber data with Google maps to help them decide where to hold events
• Julia worked on a Facebook application that overlays Google Maps to show people where to find dog parks. She's also pitched a pharma company on using Twitter + Facebook ads.
• We are using Google Docs for a side project to collaborate (cheap & easy)
• Meredith is using Google Calendar to keep track of remote employees and share schedules
• Qixing at her team at Microsoft Canada are applying social bookmarking features to three big technical resource sites and so users can easily save, find and share useful information
• I know we had a bunch more examples, feel free to leave the ones I missed in the comments!
  

A big thank-you again to Sandi. I think you'll all agree that this is an exciting time to be in technology. And that being smart about the tools and technology options available for you (in your personal and business lives) is a great advantage for Girl Geeks.

Update:

Roxana Vidal-Shand took some great photos. She says, "they capture the camaraderie of the evening..." Thank you for sharing, Roxana. View the rest of her photo set on Flickr.