Even if you can’t join us for the full OTA11 event, you should definitely try to make it out to Bletchley Park for Friday evening, as we will be introducing an exciting new element to the programme:

Ignite is a global event, organized by volunteers, where participants are given five minutes to speak about their ideas and personal or professional passions, accompanied by 20 slides. Each slide is displayed for 15 seconds, and slides are automatically advanced. The Ignite format is similar to Pecha Kucha, which features 20 slides displayed for 20 seconds each. The presentations are meant to “ignite” the audience on a subject, i.e. to generate awareness and to stimulate thought and action on the subjects- Wikipedia

The event-within-an-event is being organised by Ignite Cardiff’s  very own Claire Scantlebury, and the submission form is now open for speakers to come along and volunteer to give a five minute talk. The rule is – you can’t talk about yourself or your job (so no blatant self-promotion is allowed) but if you’re passionate about something or want to talk about something cool and innovative then just fill in the form below and we’ll be in touch.

Our Opening Speaker – Bill Thompson

We are thrilled to announce that our opening speaker is Bill Thompson of the BBC, who will be taking a philosophical look at the way the proliferation of online and mobile has changed society and will introduce the Digital Public Space as a concept which will potentially change the landscape of society and the internet.

If you would enjoy the chance to speak passionately for 5 minutes (yes, you get only 5 minutes!), keep your eyes peeled, as once a number of speakers have been confirmed we’ll be opening up the Ignite Bletchley Park programme to proposals.

See you on Friday night!

About Sarah Lamb

Sarah is the founder of the Girl Geek Dinners & GirlyGeekdom. She is a lover of gadgets, geeky things and sport! Find out more about her on her website.

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Symbian are excitedly preparing for SEE 2010 in Amsterdam and Symbian are looking for inspired individuals to bring the industry’s hottest topics to life at the event. The Call for Speakers is officially now open and anyone can submit to present.

This year SEE 2010 will feature four dynamic tracks, allowing the community to share its experience and knowledge on engaging topics. These include:

* Application Developer Track
* Horizon Track
* Platform Developer Track
* Business Track

To learn more about the audiences and suggested themes in each category please visit www.see2010.org/call_for_speakers.

The deadline for entry is 3rd September 2010 and all submissions will be reviewed by experts in each area to ensure that the line-up for this year is the most comprehensive and compelling to-date.

See you in Amsterdam!

About Sarah Lamb

Sarah is the founder of the Girl Geek Dinners & GirlyGeekdom. She is a lover of gadgets, geeky things and sport! Find out more about her on her website.

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In its 5th year, Launch: Silicon Valley is now the premier product launch platform for cash conscious startups. Up to 30 exciting young startups in Information Technology, Mobility, Digital Media, Next Generation Internet, Life Sciences and Clean Energy will be selected to present at Launch: Silicon Valley on June 8, 2010 before an audience of several hundred of the most influential people in the Valley. We are calling for emerging startups to send in their submissions for consideration.

Launch: Silicon Valley is once again co-presented by Silicon Valley Association of Startup Entrepreneurs SVASE, the early stage venture capital firm Garage Technology Ventures and Microsoft. Over 1,500 VCs, angel investors, corporate executives, blogger, press and TV reporters have viewed participants to date, and presenting companies have subsequently raised over $100MM since the event began. In addition, entrepreneurs will have the opportunity to meet with members of the audience one-on-one between general sessions and during the June 7 pre-conference networking party.

“Trooval is doing wonderfully.  Our monthly revenues have grown substantially since LAUNCH, we raised a first closing on our Series A in December 2009 and we have executed contracts with several of the largest companies (in our target vertical) in the world.  Our team is solid, revenues are growing and our clients are enthusiastic.” – Jonathan Lowenhar, Founder/CEO of Trooval said about Launch: Silicon Valley 2009

Launch: Silicon Valley 2010
When: Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Where: Microsoft Campus in Mountain View, CA.

Companies interested in presenting their products at Launch: Silicon Valley 2010 should send an Executive Summary of no more than two pages to Launchsv@svase.org by May 7, 2010.  Companies must have a product or service available as of June 8, 2010, but cannot be introduced in the marketplace for more than a few months prior to the event. Selected companies will be invited to present on stage for 6-minutes, followed by 4 minutes of constructive feedback, from a panel of professional investors.

For further information on Launch: Silicon Valley 2010, please visit http://www.launchsiliconvalley.org

About Sarah Lamb

Sarah is the founder of the Girl Geek Dinners & GirlyGeekdom. She is a lover of gadgets, geeky things and sport! Find out more about her on her website.

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So as usual I was trawling through my e-mails and this time came across an interesting one from a BBC1production company… and here’s how it goes…

“I’m not sure if you are aware of the show or have seen any programmes. The basic premise of the show is completing lists. You may be given topics such as ‘Shakespeare plays’, ‘countries of Africa’ or ‘US presidents’. You have to name as many as you can to beat your opponents, with the possibility of winning £50,000 on each show.

About Sarah Lamb

Sarah is the founder of the Girl Geek Dinners & GirlyGeekdom. She is a lover of gadgets, geeky things and sport! Find out more about her on her website.

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Still very alpha but interesting nonetheless: Geekspeakr.com. “Many organisers of technical conferences, meetups, and dinners want to have more gender-balance in their lineups, but they don’t know where to find technical women speakers. Enter geekspeakr.com, a simple directory and connections system to help technical women speakers and event organisers to find each other.”

The top 5 speaker topics are:

1. blogging
2. Web 2.0
3. open source
4. social media
5. social networking

And Sarah also wrote about it here!
If you love public speaking, make sure to register!

About Clo Willaerts

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So I’ve heard about this from a number of different sources and it’s taken me til now to get myself into gear and get back into blogging! Yep you heard right… All this tweeting and doing the London Girl Geek Dinner website re-designs has been using up a fair bit of time. So now that’s out of the way and I only have the Girl Geek Dinners dot com site left to go maybe, just maybe I’ll have a bit more time free to be able to get back into blogging again!

I’ve got a whole host of interesting things to post over the next few weeks and the first one I wanted to share with you was a new website called GeekSpeakr. In true web 2.0 style it’s got a mis-spelt name and a nice shiny web 2.0 style to it. However there is an important reason for this site being in existence.

At technical conferences how many of the speakers are female? Usually I see that it is a minority… maybe 2 in every 40 speakers is female (on a good day!). This website is there as a portal for women who are willing to speak at technical conferences. It gives organizers of conferences a single location to look to find a speaker on the right subject for their conference. It is also a great way to find out who else in your area is into the same things as you!

Next time you go to a conference and are disappointed about the no of good quality female speakers put a note in the feedback form and refer them to GeekSpeakr. Hopefully in the long term we will start seeing a few positive changes!

Also this isn’t just for the conference organisers, if you are female and interested in speaking at public events then do sign yourself up to GeekSpeakr. You’ll find me there and I’m sure you’ll also find a whole host of other well known people on the site too! And if you would like to give public speaking a try and are a little nervous about large audiences you can always sign yourself up to your local Girl Geek Dinner as a speaker! I’m sure they would be happy to have you!

A word of advice when filling out your profile information, I did try to search for speakers in a specific location on the site. What you need to do to come up on that list is to put somewhere other than in Location where you are based and willing to travel to. It makes the searches for speakers much easier to find!! And will probably get you more hits!

About Sarah Lamb

Sarah is the founder of the Girl Geek Dinners & GirlyGeekdom. She is a lover of gadgets, geeky things and sport! Find out more about her on her website.

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Where: Dublin, Ireland. 6-9 May 2008

Proposals for presentations and tutorials are invited for XTech 2008, Europe’s premier web technologies conference. The deadline for submitting proposals is January 25th, 2008.

Read the calls and submit proposals online at http://2008.xtech.org/public/cfp

XTech’s theme this year is “The Web on the Move”, focusing on the emerging portability of data, applications and identity on the internet. We will explore the benefits, issues, practicalities and fun of a web built on open standards, open source and commodity technology.

XTech presentations should inspire, educate and challenge. Your audience will be people like you, responsible for steering the technological direction of their organizations and the web as a whole.

Suggested topic areas include social network platforms, identity management, Ajax, web of data, databases, operations, programming, browsers and mobile devices.

Last year’s schedule can be viewed on the XTech 2007 web site, http://2007.xtech.org/

Please direct any questions to the conference chair, Edd Dumbill. Email edd@usefulinc.com.

About Sarah Lamb

Sarah is the founder of the Girl Geek Dinners & GirlyGeekdom. She is a lover of gadgets, geeky things and sport! Find out more about her on her website.

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The October SQL Bits was a resounding success, we had 321 delegates on the day and feedback was brilliant, hot on the success of that conference we have started the planning for the next SQL Bits conference which will be held at the Lakeside Conference Centre in Birmingham on 1^st March 2008.

We are looking for sessions that cover any topic related to SQL Server, Database Administration like Design, High Availability, Tuning etc.., Development like coding (application, CLR etc..), Business Intelligence – SSAS, SSIS, SSRS etc… – Basically anything you think relevant and would interest the general SQL professional using SQL Server whether full or part time.

Please submit your sessions to http://www.sqlbits.com/information/sessionsubmission.aspx, any problems or questions please email me tonyrogerson@torver.net and I’ll do my best to answer.

Sessions are 60 minutes; although we can split the sessions up into multiples if you feel you only want to do part of that time.

The deadline for session submission is 25^th December so get your session proposals in quickly!

About Sarah Lamb

Sarah is the founder of the Girl Geek Dinners & GirlyGeekdom. She is a lover of gadgets, geeky things and sport! Find out more about her on her website.

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Because the event is for the community and by the community we are currently looking for speakers who would like to present. You don’t need to have spoken before, but do want to share your experiences and knowledge of .NET with other developers. The speaker proposals area for DDD6 is now open. The details for the event can be found on the Developer Day website and you can see what subjects have been covered previously on there too to get a few ideas!!

When & Where?

DDD 6
Saturday, 24^th November 2007
9am – 5:30pm

Microsoft UK Campus
Building 3,
Thames Valley Park, Reading, Berkshire
RG6 1WG

About Sarah Lamb

Sarah is the founder of the Girl Geek Dinners & GirlyGeekdom. She is a lover of gadgets, geeky things and sport! Find out more about her on her website.

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Developer Developer Developer day is at No 5. and as Chanel always say, No5 is for the women! So as such I thought I would suggest that the girls in the tech industry put themselves forward to give it a go.

The website takes you through to the page to submit a session, you can also have a look round the site and see what talks have been done in the past and it should also give you a few ideas of what people like to hear about. The event is a great place to give presenting to a mid size audience a go.

The content may seem to be very Microsoft orientated but at the last event the Ruby talk was the hot topic of the day! So you never know… feel free to put forward anything you would be interested in talking about. I’m looking forward to seeing what sessions are up for nomination. Hopefully it will be another interesting UnConference! (oh did I forget it’s a little web 2.0 as well….)

Enough from me for now… go and have a look on the site yourself!

About Sarah Lamb

Sarah is the founder of the Girl Geek Dinners & GirlyGeekdom. She is a lover of gadgets, geeky things and sport! Find out more about her on her website.

Web | Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn | More Posts (288)