Dinner Zero

The date is set for the first Girl Geek Dinner in Sydney!

Where + When

Date: Thursday 21st February

Time: 6pm

Where: Lindt Chocolate Cafe, Cockle Bay

Who is invited?

If you are a geek and a girl or know of one who is willing to escort you then you are welcome and encouraged to come along. There is a technical focus with the intention of having fun and connecting with other women in IT.

The plan

The first dinner is an open mike night. Think of topics that are interesting to you. You don't have to give a talk but you are most welcome to.

Who pays for dinner?

This is our first gathering and we don't have sponsorship yet so you'll pay this time. There is chocolate so we're hoping that is an incentive.

RSVP

RSVP by commenting on this post.

The cafe doesn't accept bookings but we would like an idea of numbers so please RSVP before the event. There is no cut-off date so feel free to turn up on the night anyway. A list of people who RSVP will be added to this post so stay tuned.

So far...

Damana Madden - ThoughtWorks

Mei Zhu +1 - CBA

Jason Yip - ThoughtWorks

Zhamak Dehghani - Silverbrook Research

Anita Maehrle - ThoughtWorks

Giles Alexander - Silverbrook Research
Denise Fernandez
Alice Boxhall - Google
Claudia Mikaelian - Yahoo!
Kalinda Hatherly
Catherine Eibner - Cybner
Grisel Carreira
Alison Young
Pia Waugh
Anthony Stamfel - Yahoo!
Isis Nair - Google
Sara Falamaki
Sara Webster - SAP
Amira
Charissa +1
Alison
Kim
Sarah +2
Kate Carruthers
Anna Buttfield - Atlassian

Girl Geek Dinners Sydney

I first learned about Girl Geek Dinners from Hugh Macleod's blog and thought it was a cool idea. I especially liked the attendance rule:

If you are male and wish to attend this event you must bring a female with you or be brought by a female. NO FEMALE, NO ENTRY!!!! Sorry Guys! (We need to keep the numbers balanced!) And ladies, one date only please!

What a clever way to create a different distribution of gender than your typical technology-related meetup.

Recently, ThoughtWorks was having internal discussions about supporting diversity in the community and remembering Girl Geek Dinners, I proposed initiating something similar here in Sydney.

So here we are.

Here's the video that Sarah made for us to help describe what Girl Geek Dinners is as well as provide advice for how to start one.

[video link]

What next?
We've created this blog where we'll post more details and updates. So the next step is to find a speaker and/or follow the example of the first Girl Geek Dinners and try an open mike night.

After that, probably look for an appropriate venue.

Please stay tuned.

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Photo by Tom Harpel