geek – Page 8 – Cubicgarden.com…

Being a geek girl in a male dominated geek world?

Ok i'm late to the party, but its time to reclaim the word Geek! I mean have you looked at the Flickr Geek clusters recently? I'm sorry but all the people I've known who are self described geeks do not have terriable dress sense and are really passionate and interesting people. The killer thing is also that Geeks usually hold down a good job and earn quite good salarys.

So I can not work out for the life of me why all the geek girls I've met are single? And from talking to them its not because there not trying. Someone female and single who would rather be annoymous sent me a link to the Geek girls are sexy photo pool. Then compared it to the Geek boys are sexy group. Yeah she's right, the boys are letting down geek culture. Not good, even I'm not doing my part. But it gets worst… I was sent a link to Geek guys are sexy. Something needs to change…

Cafe Geek now thats a concept worth exploring…

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Last nights Geek Dinner with Molly, was fantastic…

Thanks to everyone who turned up and made the Geek Dinner with Molly the best yet

Everything went so well I'm actually still up with a big smile on my face, but am speechless in what to write at this moment. I'll fill in the details tomorrow. Till then you can catch all my photos here on Flickr. And all public ones here and here. Interestly, I'd not seen the Tim O'reilly geek dinner photos till now.

Ok so some observerations from yesterday
No matter how early I get to the venue someone will beat you. Even a full 45mins before the start of the Geek dinner with Molly, there were about a group of 8 guys drinking and chatting. The group included Don from Amazon.
Name badges are a good idea. Some people liked the idea of the sticky badges, others didnt. But it was great for me as I can now look through the photos and remember everyone name (for example Elly). But it doesnt stop there, it helps me go and speak to everyone at least once.
I need to rotate round more. There were some people who I spent a bit of time with and then there was Sheila, who I swear I spent about half the night talking to. We had some quite amazing and open conversations about being geek, relationships and a ton of other stuff. Fantastic but not ideal when your the host. Next time Sheila, I'm going to have to pass on my contact details so we can chat over email or something.
Find a venue where you can control the noise level. It was hard work for Molly and Andy shouting over the hogs heads background noise. But next time, we will be in a different venue. Imp also offered me a mini PA system if I need it next time.

Talking of Improbulus, I had a couple of interesting conversations with her about privicy and security online. I used my audioscrobbler experience as a example. When audioscrobbler first came online, I thought its cool but do I really want everyone knowing what I listen to? At the time it was a no. But I've come to realise that if you dont realese the information yourself with a little bit of control, someone other company will do it for you, and you will have even less control. Imp disagreed, which is fine and I like think shes right, but in my experience the opposite is true. Its just more amount of how much your willing to pay for your privacy and if its more than the next company. I remember quickly reading some advice to newbies online guff guide, and they were recommending that you do not let online sites store your card number because usually its store in a database with little or no security. Once again in my experience this has been true.

Imp's post also reminded me of a conversation which me, her and Shelia had about taxonomies and folksonmies. I couldnt go into details at the time because I really needed to circlate around and give out sticky labels for names badges. But trust me, Imp and Shelia were not done yet and I'm looking forward to talking about it more next time. Hey if you guys are up for it, we could do it at the scoble geek dinner?

Anyhow back to the geekdinner…

Fatbusinessman has created a group photo pool for Molly's Geekdinner. Should have thought about doing the same myself, good call Fatbusinessman.

More observations.
I should pick less technical people to do the dinners for. I got a feeling Molly being a designer really opened up the geekdinner to a range of people who may not have gone if it was Tim O'Reilly. Nothing against Tim or Scoble, but I'm thinking its best if I leave Hugh to do that category of people and I should focus on people like Molly. I mean we had many developers as usual, but also quite a few designers and even a librarian and architect. Everyone was fully at ease to express there geeky nature. And there's nothing better than hearing another person express there passion for something which the mainstream of people would see as kind of weird. I wont go into my post about being a self described geek but its quite interesting and quite relavent.
I'm sure I've seen you before? I must have said that too many times yesterday, I'm going to have to think of someother way to say the same thing. But I did finally meet Rachel Clarke and I was actually right, I had meet her before but at a different Geekdinner. I also met Pixel Diva (love the site design by the way) again, its been such a long time that I forgot what she looked like, but I knew I had seen her before. I seem to never forget faces, just names. Once I heard her voice and that strong accent, it all came back.

This was the last Geekdinner for this year by myself, but dont worry I'll be back in the new year with a new venue and more interesting guests. Don't forget Hugh's arranging the big christmas geek dinner with Robert Scoble which I'll be attending in the usual London tech lovey fashion. If your woman with a partner the girl geek dinner is well worth checking out.

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!

Which I personally feel is fine because these events are usually over run with men and this is a good way to achive some balance. I have not quite convinced Sarah that we should go, but I'm working on it. If anyone of the beautiful woman I met yesterday have no partner to bring with them, please drop me a email.

I've just learned that there is also a Molly podcast which I guess the interview was about. Its titled the worst podcast ever because of some podcast disaster with a Sony Minidisc recorder. Interesting Hugh's comments about the BBC…

If this was the BBC, I would just cover my tracks, cut out a few seconds, and tell my boss that I grabbed a great clip of Molly. But in the spirit of podcasting, I let the tape run out in mid sentence.

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Are you a self described geek?

…well do you? Why not? Is it because you failed the Geek test or more likely because you dont like the idea of being a geek? Wikipedia takes the sci-fi route but could it be the mainstream view of geeks which is putting you off? There was a short piece in the telegraph recently, which was sent to me by Birch about the fact that the UK Sci-fi Channel now has more Female viewers than Male. Ann McMeekin's quote is perfect if you swap sci-fi for geek, or even nerd, or even techie.

People have an impression of sci-fi fans being small men who sit in the dark watching Star Trek but it's not like that now

Will this perception change? knowing the mainstream media, not anytime soon. But it is certain that the old boys club of geek culture is being slowly taken apart, and I for one think its a good thing. The other day Sarah made a comment to me while I was watching Rocketboom which just celebrated its 1st year anniversary (26th October, which is also shared with me and sarah's anniversary too). Its great to see you watching a great looking geek girl for once. After a brief discussion about what exactly she meant, I got it. Its true all the geek media I watch tends to have a strong male lead and if there are any women at all, there role is usually irrelevent or very small. And shes right, Geek culture is still mainly run by white males. Take for example Nerd TV which still has no female interview after its 8th show now. To be fair Anina is next on the list but shes the only one, not even Molly or Meg Hourihan is on there.

Macintosh OS programmer Andy Hertzfeld (9/6)
PayPal co-founder Max Levchin (9/13)
Sun Microsystems co-founder Bill Joy (9/20)
Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle (9/27)
Internet publisher Tim O'Reilly (10/4)
Father of RSS Dave Winer (10/11)
Autodesk co-founder Dan Drake (10/19)
Intel Capital co-founder Avram Miller (10/28)
Anina the WAP Queen
Computer mouse inventor Doug Engelbart
Former Lotus chief scientist Jerry Kaplan
Apple Computer co-founder Steve Wozniak
Former Apple chief scientist Larry Tesler
Google CEO Eric Schmidt
The father of Linux, Linus Torvalds
TCP/IP inventor Bob Kahn

Yes I know theres many cultural and social reasons for this but you have to wonder how much things have changed. lets not get started on the different cultures and race point of view either, NPR has a few podcasts about this but its American focused, Reversing Technology's Racial Divide and Black Students and the Future of Technology.

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Sunshine, wireless and holiday geeks camps

A long long time ago I went on a geeky holiday in Ibiza. It was my second time on the island and its was just after I finished my Interactive design BA at Ravensbourne, so I was in need for a break away after the years of stress. The holiday was simply a very last minute cheap package holiday costing 40 pounds a person for 2 weeks which included flights and 3 star hotel. Because I could not get someone else to come with me on such short notice (next day), I had to pay a single suppliment fee of 30 pounds. But 70 pounds for 2 weeks away in the hills of Ibiza wasnt bad at all.

Anyway, I took my laptop with me and spent most of the holiday working on cubicgarden.com (should have just setup a blog all that time ago) and learning more XML technologies like Xlink. And although it was very geeky, it was kinda of nice because some of the people in the same hotel were from the IT field and didnt really think of it being super strange me sitting at the outside hotel bar with my laptop drinking and messing with CSS.

I had thought about running a couple of holidays along this same type of idea, geek holidays or something. But never found the time. Well I'm starting to think its a idea maybe worth revisiting with all the BarCamp, FooCamp, etc Camp's going on. Yes I know most people go away to get away from it all but theres a small but long tail of people which dont see it holidays like that, me included. Geek Dinners is another one of those things which should not make much sense on paper but it does in reality. The key thing in all these things is getting like socially minded people in to a venue and providing aspects of the tradional experience and there lifestyle. So in the camps you still got tents, fields and nature. But you've also got electricity, wireless and computers.

This isnt that new however, there's a camp event which has been running for years which I keep wanting to go to but keep forgetting (need to actually add it to my calendar or todo list one day). Its called What the Hack? and involves people coming together for a hacker event in the middle of a grassy field. I always thought about what the hack, as the Burning man for geeks and hackers. I can imagine something just like what the hack? but for bloggers, geeks, techies, etc?

The question remains if I can convince Sarah to come to such a holiday? I mean she loves camping but I think this would not count as “real camping” for her. Our friends in Sweden already offered us a relaxing holiday in a place they have in Gotland? They said theres no electricity and no internet access at all. I thought they were winding me up, but no they were serious. Now I know some of you will say it sounds so nice, walks in the forest, no electricity, candle lights etc. And I would agree for a couple of days at most, but a week plus? It sounds as scary as going to Sarah's grandparents house in the middle of no where illinois and having no mobile phone signal of any kind.

A lot of you maybe shaking your heads, but I know a few of you are thinking this is a little consistant with what you see in a holiday too. Hey and don't forget theres already holidays and camps for clubbers, trekies, blues fans, etc. A geek one strikes me as a really good idea.

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Hosting Tim O’Reilly’s Geek Dinner

So first rule of hosting anything, dont turn up late. I broke that rule by about 15mins, but I have a good reason or a good way to shift the blame. Tim O'Reilly had talked in White City only a few hours before the Geek Dinner and spent sometime talking to people afterwards. So by the time I had left White City it was already 18:40 and I still had to ride into Central London with the crazy one way systems and find somewhere to park the scooter. Luckly Hanover square is full of parking and it was after 6 so finding a space wasnt so bad.

When I finally arrived at the Hogs Head (venue for the geekdinner) I was kinda of suprised by how people had already turned up. I would say at 20 people were already sitting around drinking and chatting. After a little talk with the bar man and some pre-printed signs up here and there, we were off. I actually believe Tim and Josette walked in and sat down around about this time, which was perfect timing. Before you knew it a few people had hovered around Tim and pinned him into a corner. I dont believe Tim really got a chance to walk around till the Questions and Answers point later.

I was doing my best to keep the room cool (air con was a little tempermental) and collect the one pound for the buffet later. Honestly going around the room was a joy and although my voice was starting to go, I kept going because everyone I met was interesting and a joy to talk to. Everyone was happy and remarked on how great it was that I was doing this geek dinner. I did many times say that I was helping Lee out while he was away, but people kept asking me if I was running the Scoble one too. More on that later.

The venue was quite warm if a little too hot sometimes due to the packed up Air con and at first it seemed a little small for 60 people but people were quite tightly grouped and there was more room by the toilets and staircase. The bar man, was a young guy and was actually really interested in what geek dinner was and why it existed. He did comment that although there were a high percentage of males in room, they didnt seem very geeky, just normal guys out drinking. I wasnt sure what to say to that, but it came across as a compliment not a insult. I had asked everyone to tell me what they felt about the venue and on a whole most people were quite happy with it, remarking it was so central and easy to get to from the tube. But the noise from upstairs was a little too much and made things a little difficult when Tim did the Questions and Answers session. I guess it didnt help having another party just up on the landing and the quite busy pub above us. The Buffet was actually not bad at all. It did all disappear by the end of the evening but honestly there was more than enough to go around plus there was something for everyone. I feel it was well worth the 1 pound per head cover charge, and I didnt find anyone who disagreed.

Tim's Question and Answer session came a little late in the evening and was difficult to hear with the noise I mentioned earlier. I dont believe anyone got it recorded correctly, the recording Nokia which I was holding for Improbulus didnt record anything and a guy with the video camera was not close enough to get the audio clearly. (Kosso where were you?) Which I'm sure Tim will be happy with because he revealled a new service from O'Reilly which there still working on. The question which sparked the disclosure was "what web 2.0 services does O'reilly have?"
Tim did talk about the good stuff they were doing with O'reilly Safari but then talked about this other project, which I cant remember right now.

47 (not including me) people attended this geek dinner. This is a exact figure because I collected the money from everyone.

I'm not the biggest fan of name dropping, but I have to say thanks and hi to everyone and here's some of the people I remember who were there and I talked to quite a bit or not enough. Suw Charman and Kevin Anderson (geez you guys are cute together, good one Kevin), Alan Wood, Improbulus, Dave from NTK, Richard Sanbrook, Euan, Lianite, Ryan Carson, Jeremy from HP and of course some work mates Sherwin, Henrik and Dharmesh.

Big thanks to everyone who helped and turned up…

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Geek Dinner is back with a bang

So yeah I hear Robert Scoble is back for another Geek Dinner on the 10th December via Ben's Blog. But I've got an announcement to say that I'm currently arranging with Tim O'reilly a geekdinner for thursday 13th October. I'm sure Tim will say yes and hopefully by the time I blog this, he would have agreed already. Lee Wilkins is fully aware of this and is stand by waiting for the final go from myself (just sent him the email).

Obviously he will also be doing some presentations and interviews around the BBC before. So if your a BBC member of staff working on the 13th October, try and keep your calendar clear on that day, so you can either attend a session in White City or Bush House with Tim. If your interested but have never heard Tim talk before, please check out this recommended podcast by Paul

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