I’ve not been in this consultancy business for long, but I have been a technical architect for some time. The difference with consultancy is that it seems even more cut throat in a highly competitive environment. Why? Because there are even more egos floating around that is desperate for attention. Before I begin, being a woman means nothing in a constantly male dominated arena. Suffice it to say, there is no need to male bash at all because your gender is irrelevant if you know your line of work. However, that is not to say there aren’t stigmas and obstacles along the way.

Not long ago, I previously worked for a top tier global consultancy firm. They were big, they were very big indeed. At first it seemed all roses; a supportive sphere of people with more fluffiness than a Persian cat. But as soon as I started on my first project, it became apparent that working as a team was proving to be a difficult prospect. The problem was that the stereotype of women in I.T was actually proving true.

The guys I worked with were very talented but because of how the career laddering system worked it proved to be a stumbling block to agree a way forward. This was where the male egos came in. Meanwhile, the other girl on the team acted as though she had no idea about I.T and instead spent most of her time getting into as many powerful cliques as humanly possible (possibly to avoid the male ego problem). I have worked with many women on I.T projects in the past that were nothing like this, but seeing this made me cringe every day. I could only hope this was not a common occurrence, but from discussions with others this happens very often… including men too but the majority were women. Perhaps her knowledge was lacking somewhat, but she had no impetus to learn or become involved.

The work was a datacenter transformation and virtualisation project, an area I am quite familiar with. For the first few days, the assumption was that my knowledge was limited and my male colleague who also started at the same time was the first port of call. It was more of an annoyance than a hindrance, but this colleague and I worked very well together; in hindsight we were the only ones that were collaborating the most effectively. Ultimately, it became apparent that my knowledge was more than the team envisaged and within a couple of weeks I was given more responsibility and was consulted on the best approach to problems.

As the project came to a close, the difference between me and the other girl became apparent. I garnered mutual respect in the team while she was secretively despised. I later discovered that she received a promotion during her review while another guy on the team did not. I can tell you now that this guy worked insane hours and he was pivotal in the overall success of the project. It was obvious during our conversations in the datacenter (because of course you can have secret discussions from so much server noise) that she “cliqued” her way to the top. The scary part was that she became a datacenter transformation consultant, and as far as I was aware she did nothing of the sort. I have no idea how she even got onto our project; adequate resourcing was also another problem, but I digress.

It occurred to me that the reason why there is this male/female divide in I.T was because there are the odd occasions where the actions of one create the perceptions of many. I still get the question ‘So how do you cope with being a female I.T consultant?”. Well the answer is simple; know your stuff, work with others and show what you can do. It really is that simple.

About Motoko

First embraced the inner geek at the age of 10 with a Commodore 64 and programming in BASIC. Avid PC gamer, Gundam Gunpla builder, manga editor and anime enthusiast. Loves Mountain Dew and Ghost in the Shell. Twitter: @Motoko_K

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I’m sure that a lot of you have been following the HP saga for some time now. The result as of yesterday comes as no surprise; Leo Apotheker, the CEO and director of HP finally had to step down. The board was not happy and with good reason. A quick recap; Apotheker announced to the world that the HP Touchpad is dead and development will cease on the WebOS platform. That was blow number one, but on the same announcement he decides to also drop the bombshell that HP will spin off its PC business as it was no longer profitable. There are a few glaring issues with this.

First of all, contracts were already in place with hardware manufacturers to churn out thousands of HP Touchpads, with the Touchpad discontinued what exactly do you do with all those parts sitting in a warehouse doing absolutely nothing? You make more Touchpads and sell them cheaply to get a third of your money back, which is an improvement from zero return. They made one final production run after the Touchpads already out on shelves disappeared rapidly.

One thing you can learn from this costly exercise; consumers will buy anything if the price is right. The Touchpad is not the massively popular iPad, but at less than £100 you get A LOT of hardware for your money. The initial price point was not competitive; it may even have to be priced at a loss but you need traction and the Touchpad wheels barely touched the ground before it was labeled defunct and unsupported.

Trust and reliability

The second problem was the PC business spin off. This in itself is not an issue if they had executed this correctly, but because the announcement was so sudden this unnerved channel partners that had tons of HP PCs stockpiled. As a consumer, why would you buy a piece of hardware that had its warranty in doubt? In a year or two, will there be HP support for your broken workstation?

This leads me onto how I and many others in my field feel about their transformation. As an infrastructure engineer and architect, I know how many HP servers are out there being used by companies. My initial reaction is, if they can so easily do this to their PC business what of their server business? It would be financial suicide if they decide to axe this revenue stream. But then again their PC business was worth a big slice of their total revenue and they had no qualms about potentially wiping that off their books.

Companies and corporations need a hardware vendor they can trust and rely on to deliver; and there is doubt they can achieve this with their indecision and lack of direction. The vultures are already swooping overhead sensing a bleeding animal waiting to die. Dell have been quick to react; they have a strong PC and hardware business. To them, this is the perfect opportunity to take what HP discarded.

Bring back the old HP

I’ve had huge respect to HP as a company for a long time. I remember when I first got my hands on a DL385 server. It literally came in pieces; the fans, CPU, heatsinks, hard drives, power supplies… and yet I was able to build it from scratch in 25 minutes flat. That included unpacking it all as it came in so many boxes; I had to build 5 of these that afternoon and I was swimming in cardboard by the end of it. But the build design is genius, each part is modular. The same with attaching server rails, everything required zero tools to assemble. It was a pleasure to work with and I still feel the same about it now.

This is the kind of ingenuity I miss from HP, and by the way their printer business was booming back in the day too. Now, I’m not really sure what HP’s focus actually is or how they intend to get back to that pinnacle once more. The purchase of EDS a few years ago goes some way to indicate they want to be an I.T services company, ala IBM. But IBM took baby steps, planned their strategy early on over several years. Apotheker seemed to think he can do the same thing overnight by axing their hardware divisions. The Palm WebOS acquisition was wasted; I am secretly hoping that HTC or a similar company will take it off their hands to unlock the potential and make some great devices.

I wish the new appointment of Meg Whitman as CEO every success and also a great deal of luck. She is inheriting a PR disaster and needs to re-evaluate their overall strategy. Their mission still seems unclear, and some focus will go a long way to bring them back on track. But I am on the fence about how well she can turn HP around. Around 50% of HP’s share price got wiped off the stock market, this will be a mountain to climb.

P.S: As a side note, this made me chuckle. Here’s a snippet from The Register about the Meg Whitman’s appointment: “On the conference call, Lane said that Whitman was prepared to handle a large hardware operation because, as the CEO of eBay, she was required to purchase large amounts of hardware.” So buying a bunch of servers makes her eligible for the role of CEO?!

About Motoko

First embraced the inner geek at the age of 10 with a Commodore 64 and programming in BASIC. Avid PC gamer, Gundam Gunpla builder, manga editor and anime enthusiast. Loves Mountain Dew and Ghost in the Shell. Twitter: @Motoko_K

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Automatic Lover Book Review

Not so long ago I got sent Automatic Lover by it’s author Ariadne Tampion. She called it a steamy love story for geeks. Now one thing I will say before I go any further, this is not a book for young children. Personally I’d give it an over 16 age limit.

The story line is fun and interesting providing lots of questions about human computer interaction. It also brought up the question of computer ethics and at what point HCI becomes more than just humans controlling and programming computers. Is it possible for a computer robot to learn and analyse human emotion and react in a way that pleases a person. It also shows some of the risks and benefits of such interactions.

The book although light hearted really does make you think about what might become the future of robotics and in some ways it’s fun and others slightly disturbing.

Ariadne Tamion’s background is as an electrical engineer with a passion for robotics and programming. In her own words, Ariadne sees Automatic Lover as an ode to women engineers and the contribution they can make to society.

If you want an interesting read that is both fun, geeky and sexy then this book is definitely one for the beach!

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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First of all, a big THANK YOU to Alienware for providing us with complimentary tickets to the show. It was a lot of fun and absolutely jam packed with gadgets galore. I cannot stress this enough; there were an insane amount of gadgetry toys on show that when Sarah and I got there, it was difficult to know where to start!

The show was spread across several areas within the Birmingham NEC; I can see why they needed so much floor space. Categories ranged from gaming, to home improvements and consumer electronics. Not only could you see and play with the gadgets, but you could also buy them from many of the stands. We showed much restraint in not purchasing any of the wonders on display, but believe me we wanted to walk home with everything.

Unfortunately, we did not get to see the presenters from The Gadget Show (sadness), but we did see Jason Bradbury for his book signing (woot!). It was great to see him take time out in between to talk to the children waiting in line. A welcome break I’m sure, as the crew had been working hard all week.

Nostalgia

One of my favourite stands was the 1980s; a warp back in time when the Commodore vs. Spectrum wars began. It brought back a flood of memories from my childhood, and to see my beloved Commodore 64 on display, fully functional, was a joy. It was amazing to see how far technology has become, and to think it all began here… the first Sony Walkman, the first Apple Mac, the ancient television set. Without these innovations, we would not be where we are today.

And now, The Gadgets!

As painfully difficult as it was for me, I decided pick the top gadgets we saw at the show. My considerations include, design, usability, and of course the coolness factor. Without further ado, drum roll please…

Futuristic bathroom. I love this, so much. Not only does it look the part, but the entire bathroom suite can be controlled via an iPhone app. That’s right, you can call for champagne, switch the taps on or off, turn on the built-in TV… everything. Controllable bathroom sinks were also on show. This is the future!

Desk Pets. These little critters come with a small remote control to dictate their movements. An iPhone and Android app is in the works and these electronic pets will make a great addition to any office or home. Your productivity in the workplace may nosedive however…

Child of Eden. This Kinect game from Microsoft has been in the pipeline for sometime. Stuck in development hell, it has finally surfaced and it does not disappoint. It looks lovely; a cross between shooter and RPG elements. I haven’t really seen any outstanding Kinect games yet but I think this might just be it.

BFB 3D Printer. The hobbyist’s dream come true. See your creations come to life with this 3D printer. It doesn’t come cheap at around £2000 but the possibilities for model making are endless. A reel of resin is about £20 which isn’t too bad and the plastic used to form the models are surprisingly tough.

Doctor Who PC Case. This was on the Scan.co.uk stand (which by the way I now have lifetime free delivery from signing up, woot!). It looks awesome, I assume it will take a smaller motherboard form factor inside such as mini-ITX etc. as I don’t think a full ATX will fit inside. On my wish list.

Sony NEX VG10 Camcorder. We were quite impressed with this. It is very compact and the lenses are interchangeable. The LCD display is sharp and clear, recording in full HD on SDHC cards (yay to SD thank you Sony). The video quality was amazing, but you get what you pay for at around £1800.

NVIDIA TEGRA mobile graphics chip. NVIDIA are really pushing the envelope with their grapics technology, seizing an opportunity with the growing mobile devices market. The TEGRA will blow your mind; Crysis 2 on your phone anyone? Well maybe not now but this is definitely a step in the right direction.

Husqvarna robotic lawnmower. I had a conversation with my better half about this. Apparently I don’t do enough mowing to warrant buying this, but who cares I still want it! If you modify the top and bolt a drinks holder, it can even be a portable waiter while you sunbathe in the garden!

LG EL9500 OLED TV. The wonders of OLED technology. This TV is ridiculously thin, and it would make a perfect electronic photo album showing holiday snaps when idle. I cannot express in words the crystal clarity this screen brings. However the price needs to come down drastically from £1500.

Yamaha Waverunner Jet Ski. This crazy jet ski packs a 1052cc, 4-cylinder, 4-stroke, DOHC engine and tops in at around 50 MPH. Also included is a glovebox with dual cup holders, just perfect for those thirsty moments while riding those waves!

A guy from E-Lite doing a Portal pose for me. Time to go and play!

Coming back from the show, I realised I need a much much bigger payrise. Below is my Flickr gallery of all the pictures I took at the show, I hope you enjoy them. And that’s a wrap!

About Motoko

First embraced the inner geek at the age of 10 with a Commodore 64 and programming in BASIC. Avid PC gamer, Gundam Gunpla builder, manga editor and anime enthusiast. Loves Mountain Dew and Ghost in the Shell. Twitter: @Motoko_K

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I recently installed Kubuntu on my MacBook Pro, to triple-boot alongside Mac OSX and Windows 7. Kubuntu is the operating system I use the most, and one that arguably looks the prettiest. Unfortunately, enabling such beauty isn’t as straight forward as ticking some boxes. This may deter some, but hopefully this guide will help you along the way. The 3D Desktop Cube is an awesome way to navigate around your multiple desktops. I use four, but you can enable six to use all sides of the cube.

OPENGL graphics drivers

The 3D Desktop Cube works via OPENGL graphics. When you install vanilla Kubuntu, the default drivers do not have the necessary libraries to fully enable the graphics capability of your card. The first port of call is to get the latest drivers, such as the NVIDIA website or the ATI/AMD website depending on what you have. In my case, my MacBook Pro has the NVIDIA 8600M GT. To install the drivers, you need to be outside of X Server/KDE daemon; the easiest way is to boot into recovery mode to get the terminal only. Full instructions on how to install are outlined by NVIDIA.

COMPIZ

Next you need to install a package called Compiz. This will allow you to enable settings for the Desktop Cube amongst other things. You should be able to find it if you do a search in KPackageKit. You will need compiz and compiz-fusion.

You can also do an apt-get to grab the packages you need as outlined here, with the following commands:

sudo apt-get install compiz compizconfig-settings-manager compiz-kde compiz-fusion-plugins-main compiz-fusion-plugins-extra emerald librsvg2-common

Now go into System Settings > Desktop Effects > All Effects. This will bring up a plethora of options for you to enable including the Desktop Cube. And that is pretty much it! If you get stuck, refer to the links I posted above which will guide you through some of the steps in more detail.

I made a quick video below to show you what the cube will look like. Also, if you want to know more about how I did the triple-boot on my MacBook Pro, head on over to my personal blog to find out!

About Motoko

First embraced the inner geek at the age of 10 with a Commodore 64 and programming in BASIC. Avid PC gamer, Gundam Gunpla builder, manga editor and anime enthusiast. Loves Mountain Dew and Ghost in the Shell. Twitter: @Motoko_K

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The Scott Trust Ltd, owner of Guardian Media Group plc, is offering two bursaries to assist students who face financial difficulty in attaining the necessary qualifications needed to pursue a career in software development for the web.

The Scott Trust was created in 1936 following the death of CP Scott and his son Edward in 1932. Edward’s brother John was left as the sole owner, and was faced with the threat of death duties, which would have crippled the business and jeopardised the future independence of the newspaper.

To avoid this, and to secure his father’s legacy of the Manchester Guardian’s independent liberal journalism, John Scott voluntarily renounced all financial interest in the business for himself and his family, putting all his shares – worth more than £1 million at the time – into a trust.

Applications for 2011 are now open.  To apply go to www.gnmcareers.co.uk and search under the reference LS34.

Closing date is March 15th, 2011.

As a media organisation The Guardian are keen to reflect the society we serve. We encourage female graduates who have been disadvantaged in terms of their career as a result of family or other domestic

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 incredible team at the University of Southampton successfully launched a Windows Phone 7 handset into the stratosphere as a testbed for a series of experiements to further atmospheric research into pollution. Friday’s launch utilised a helium filled balloon to elevate a small package to an altitude of 18237 meters/59832 feet. The package contained a Windows 7 phone handset, additional power supply and a commodity digital camera which recorded 1,200 images during the flight.

At it’s maximum altitude the balloon burst (as expected!) and the package returned to Earth via a small parachute. During the flight a custom application on the phone recorded the latitude, longitude and altitude. While in range of the cellular network the application streamed it’s data to another application running on Windows Azure.Windows Azure provided the computational “horse power” to project the likely landing point of the package.

The image below shows the team preparing to launch Astra 7

This is a great example of inexpensive hardware being combined in a creative way with phone software and a cloud service to enable something (scientific research in this case) that would otherwise have been prohibitively expensive yet which can bring benefit to us all.

The team’s write up provides much more information as does Stuart Dredge’s article on the Guardian tech blog and Cliff Saran’s piece on Computer Weekly.

Kudos to Keith who beat me to it in his post which gives a heads up of the flight’s impressive statistics.

The image below shows the package containing the phone at it’s maximum altitude

Congratulations to the Astra 7 team including Dr Andras Sobester, Dr
Elizabeth Hart, Dr Steven Johnston and Neil O_Brien. Thanks to Geoff
Hughes, Ben Nunney (@bennuk), Will Coleman and Lou Waller for their support

I’m delighted to be able to say that this wasn’t a PR stunt – it was
serious scientific research as part of The University of Southampton’s
ASTRA (Atmospheric Science Through Robotic Aircraft) project

About Stephen Lamb

Steve Lamb is known to be a positive disruptive force and is a geek with a passion for making the most of every day!

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After a few months off to regroup, film and edit, LadyGeek TV is now back in full swing and just in time for spring too!!!! We know you missed it, we heard your dismay when the last series finished and we are now back into the swing of things super heroes and all!!!

Have you ever fancied yourself as an international figure of mystery but worry you’ll give away your secret alter-ego? Or perhaps you fear your friends will discover your guilty crush and then shame you forever?

Well help is here because the Lady Geeks are back.

The first episode of series 3 shows our Lady Geeks turn super spy with Kaspersky and LastPass – apps that protect your smartphone and any personal information you hold on your phone.

Also check out our fabulous app of the week Podcatcher.

To be in with a chance to win a fantastic Nokia C6 watch carefully to spot our Lady Geek logo appear somewhere in the episode.

Don’t forget to join the Lady Geek community on Facebook and make technology more fun or follow us on Twitter.

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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As part of Google’s ongoing commitment to encouraging women to excel in computing and technology, we are pleased to announce the UKUUG 2011 Conference Grant to encourage more female computer scientists to attend and participate in the UKUUG 2011 conference, 22-24 March 2011, Leeds, UK. We encourage all female computer scientists interested to apply.

Two people will be chosen from the applicant pool to receive:

• free registration for the main conference (Accommodation not included).
• up to 400 GBP for travel costs and accommodation (to be claimed back from UKUUG after the event).

To be eligible for a conference grant candidates must:

• Be a female working in or studying Computer Science
• Maintain a strong academic background with demonstrated leadership ability
• Attend at least 2 full days of the main conference

How To Apply

To apply send, no later than February 22 2011, an e-mail to europe-events@google.com with the subject heading ‘Google UKUUG 2011 Conference grant’ containing:

• your full name and email address
• current address, contact phone number and copy of photo ID
• your CV
• 1-page statement (no more than 600 words) about why you wish to attend UKUUG 2011 and why attending is important to your research and/or future career

Winners and claim process

The winners will be notified by e-mail by March 1st 2011. If you are a successful applicant, you will be sent your free ticket and a payment form to expense your travel contribution, to be completed and submitted after the event.

Details courtesy of Hannah York via @johnpinner and UKUUG

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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This review COULD be VERY short! Three.co.uk kindly lent Sarah a MiFi device as pictured below – it worked perfectly and was a doddle to use. You can save money by no longer having to buy the “3G versions” of devices – use MiFi instead!

Full details of the device, pay as you go / contract costs et al are available here

In case you not familiar with MiFi devices they are essentially mobile wireless hotspots with 3G network access – like a stripped down mobile phone with an integrated wireless access point. The beauty of MiFi is that you don’t need to pay extra for the 3G versions of iPad or Kindles and it can provide mobile Internet access to any laptop that supports WiFi.

I firmly believe that work should be something  one does, not a place one (has to) go hence being able to work from wherever I happen to be is important. I have a fluid line between “work” and “social” as I enjoy both so mobile Internet is a must-have. Of course there are many types of work that are location dependant but “information workers” shouldn’t have their work location (nor time) forced upon them. Clearly there are “gives” and “gets” both from the employer and the employee for this approach to work – trust is key and often lacking as are clear, measurable objectives. There’s a really interesting micro-site named ”The Hybrid Organisation” which expands upon this broad topic.

 I’ve used a USB 3G dongle (Vodafone “Pebble”)  for many years to give a range of laptops mobile Internet access – it’s worked well but requires the dongle to be plugged in which isn’t ideal while on the move and can only be used with a laptop. My USB dongle required client software including a driver hence a reboot at install time. I thought it worked pretty well until I tried the MiFi device which I simply powered up and off I went – sooo much more convienient!

The MiFi allowed the 3G signal to be shared between up to five devices at any one point in time – it’s worth bearing in mind that the more it’s shared the less bandwidth will be available per device. I used it for a couple of weeks while travelling around Hampshire, Berkshire, Oxfordshire and London. I shared it’s 3G connection with friends on trains and at technical community events across a range of devices including my laptops, iPad and mobile phones. It was handy to be able to browse web via the MiFi device on my phone when my carrier (O2) was unable to provide a reliable signal for my location. In each case the battery on the MiFi device outlasted that of the laptop/iPad/phone

Setup was REALLY easy. Simply charge the MiFi device, power it up (took a minute or so) connect via WiFi from the laptop/iPad/Kindle/phone in question - enter it’s key/password the first time for each laptop/iPad/phone – that’s it!

The “Pay As You Go” option appealed to me as you buy the MiFi device for £39.99, intially buy £30 of data credit and then pay for top ups as you require them – they are not time latched so you don’t need to worry about wasted credit. Three.co.uk also offer MiFi on a contract basis which is fine but I’ve found that I rarely use anywhere near their minimum contract amount of 1Gb data/month – if you download fims/music/large software kits often then this may be a better option for you – I mainly browse/tweet/IM & email.

I hope you found this useful.

Steve

About Stephen Lamb

Steve Lamb is known to be a positive disruptive force and is a geek with a passion for making the most of every day!

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