Ireland Girl Geek Dinners

Upcoming event – May 30th

The next GGD event will be held on the 30th of May in the Science Gallery! The event is kindly sponsored by Microsoft Ireland, please see our Sponsor page for more information.

Where: The Science Gallery
Address: The Naughton Institute, Trinity College, Pearse St, Dublin 2
When: Thursday, 30th May 6 pm – ? pm

Please RSVP by noon on Monday 27th so that we know who to expect. Men are of course welcome to attend, but only at the invitation of a woman – if you are bringing someone or are looking for an invitation, please feel free to note this in your reply either here on the blog or by sending us an email.

Look forward to seeing you there,

Christina

Google Summer of Code and FOSS Outreach Program for Women internships

Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) is software that gives the user the freedom to use, copy, study, change, and improve it. FOSS contributors believe that this is the best way to develop software because it benefits society, creates a fun collaborative community around a project, and allows anyone to make innovative changes that reach many people.

Google Summer of Code is a global program that offers students stipends to write code for FOSS projects. Participants work remotely from home, while getting guidance from an assigned mentor and collaborating within their project’s community. The application deadline for Google Summer of Code is May 3 and the program dates are June 17 to September 23. The stipend for the program is $5,000 (USD). The organizations that will participate in Google Summer of Code this year were announced on April 8. Starting to work with an organization as early as possible and making a few code contributions to the project you want to work on is essential for a successful proposal.

http://code.google.com/soc

In an effort to get more women involved in FOSS, a number of organizations are offering Outreach Program for Women internships through a program organized by the GNOME Foundation. The internships have the same structure, the same stipend and similar program dates. The application deadline for the Outreach Program for Women is May 1 and the program dates are June 17 to September 23. Unlike in Google Summer of Code, participants do not need to be students and non-coding projects are available. In addition to coding, projects include such tasks as graphic design, documentation, bug triage and marketing. To apply, you need to connect with an organization early and make a few contributions relevant to the project you want to work on.

https://live.gnome.org/OutreachProgramForWomen

The mentorship opportunities are also available throughout the year for anyone interested in getting started contributing to FOSS outside of the formal internship program. In addition to the organizations participating in the Outreach Program for Women, more organizations that offer informal mentorship to all newcomers are listed here: http://code.google.com/p/google-summer-of-code/wiki/Mentors

Please consider applying for Google Summer of Code or FOSS Outreach Program for Women, encourage someone else to apply, or help spread the word by forwarding this message to any interested university and community groups. Julie Pichon, who talked to us about
open-source in January was a mentor
for the winter round of the Outreach Program this year and would be
happy to help answer questions about it. Feel free to get in touch
with her or leave a comment here.

Coder Dojo @ DCU presents Coder Dojo Girls

Want to learn how to create your own pop band fan page, build pianos or have fun with social media. Well then welcome to CoderDojo Girls. This is fun place where you define your tech adventure with the support of our cool girl tech leaders. We created this dojo to meet your tech interestes so we hope you enjoy it.

Note:
Participants under 17 must be accompanied by a parent.

What is Coder Dojo?
We hacked together a cool hangout that puts the real power of the internet and technology in the hands of the Irish youth. The true power of the net comes from coding, designing and having fun. CoderDojo is a place where you can learn from others and share what you are doing! Each week we have a hands on session with technologies like HTML5, App Development, PHP or Python.
CoderDojo is aimed at ages 10 -18 years. You need to bring a laptop (if at all possible)

Only those attending need register, parents need not.

Location
The event will take place above the canteen, so you will need to enter from the rear of the canteen. This access will be from the back road in DCU between the back of the Heilx and the President’s Office.

Google Groups
Please join our google group as all communication will go out over this platform

CoderDojo URL

Code is available here

NOTE
* Kids must not be left unattended
* Kids must have a laptop

Any questions can you please put them through the http://groups.google.com/group/coderdojo-dcu?hl=en (coderdojo-dcu).

Visit Eventbrite to register

Louise Phelan of PayPal discusses Girls Tech, Business & CoderDojo

Girl Geek Dinners, CoderDojo Drogheda & Network Louth Meath invite you to a ‘Girl Tech & Female Entrepreneurs’ dinner with special guest Louise Phelan of PayPal.

An Informal & Fun evening to discuss female leadership in technology,
media and business.

Louise Phelan, Vice President Global Operations EMEA at PayPal, is an
outstanding speaker and role model for Irish women in technology and
business.

Well also be exploring how initiatives like CoderDojo can encourage more girls into STEM in schools & colleges plus what more needs to be done.

CoderDojo is holding its annual mentor conference in Drogheda & Slane castle on April 12/13 and has a fantastic line up of Girl Tech speakers from USA, Belgium, UK & Ireland. Uniquely amount tech events it consciously set out to get a 50/50 split in female/male speakers.

When: Thursday 4th at 7:30pm
Where: Tower Restaurant, Millmount, Drogheda.
Cost: €20 for your dinner

Feel free to bring a friend.

I hope you can join us!

RSVP or queries to drogheda@coderdojo.com

Location:
The restaurant is Tower Restaurant, Drogheda

http://www.drogheda.ie/eat-out/restaurants/the-tower-restaurant-at-millmount.html

Tower Restaurant & Wine Bar
Millmount Tower, Over looking Drogheda and the River Boyne
35 mins via the M1 Dublin Airport

https://maps.google.ie/maps?daddr=Drogheda,+Co.+Louth+%4053.711631,-6.34946

Background:

The global CoderDojo conference ‘DojoCon’ will be held in Drogheda &
Slane Castle in 2 weeks time and it has a focus on encouraging girls into
technology and science. It uniquely among tech conferences has a very
balanced speaker line up with an almost 50/50 female/male lineup.

http://conference.coderdojo.com

Network Louth Meath is the network for women in business in region.
President, Nicola Watkins is a PR professional who has worked for some of
the leading technology companies in the world including Microsoft and
NetFlix.

http://www.networklouth.com

Ireland Girl Geeks First 2013 Meet-up! Guest Blog!

I want to say a big thank you to Lisa Jackson for putting together the below blog on our last meetup. (Definitely check out her Twitter!!! ) I hope everyone had a really good night and I hope to see you again soon at the next one.

The first meet-up of the Ireland Girl Geeks took place in Dublin last week with more than 40 technology, science and engineering ladies getting together to hear some inspirational speakers and have a good old gossip to chase away the January blues.

The first speaker was Sadhbh McCarthy, chairperson of WITS (Women in Technology and Science). WITS are a big sister to Girl Geek Dinners, being almost 20 years longer in existence. The group celebrates women working in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math. WITS also creates initiatives to increase the numbers of women working in these areas.

Sadhbh gave us a run through of all the activities of the group in the last number of years, including creating videos of interviews with inspiring women in technology and science to encourage others to work in these areas. One such inspirational woman is Dr Norah Patten, an engineer who hopes to be the first Irish woman in space through the Lynx Space Academy competition.

The second speaker was Julie Pichon, a software developer at Red Hat, who showed us how to make our first open-source contribution. Julie inspired us to go on OpenHatch,  a not-for-profit group dedicated to helping beginners with free software projects. Although most of the GGD audience had not made a contribution before, by the end of the talk we were all looking for our first bug to fix.

Tog, our friendly neighbourhood hackerspace, is hosting an open-source night on Wednesday, 20 February where Julie and other contributors will be on hand to help everyone out with their first leap into open-source.

The event was kindly sponsored by Deloitte who treated us to yummy cupcakes, brownies and other delicious things we definitely should not be eating in January. It would have been rude not to!

After a year of lying low, Ireland GGD has been meeting regularly for over six months. Christina Lynch, our organiser, keeps it all going and on the night made sure no girl geek was without a cookie, cuppa or fellow nerd to chat with. Thanks Christina!

To keep up to date with Ireland Girl Geek Dinners follow us on Twitter at @irelandggd, like us on Facebook and sign up to our mailing list. See you next time.

By Lisa Jackson, ICT Solicitor, Leman Solicitors

Girl Geek Dinner Event – 30th January

The next GGD event will be held on the 30th of January in the Deloitte offices, see this post for directions.

Where: Deloitte, Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2
When: Wednesday, 30th November 5.30 pm – ? pm

Please RSVP by noon on Monday the 28th so that we know who to expect. Men are of course welcome to attend, but only at the invitation of a woman – if you are bringing someone or are looking for an invitation, please feel free to note this in your reply either here on the blog or by sending us an email.

Christina

Upcoming event – November 15th

The next GGD event will be held on the 15th of November in the Deloitte offices again, see this post for directions.

Where: Deloitte, Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2
When: Thursday, 15th November 6 pm – ? pm

Please RSVP by noon on Monday the 12th so that we know who to expect. Men are of course welcome to attend, but only at the invitation of a woman – if you are bringing someone or are looking for an invitation, please feel free to note this in your reply either here on the blog or by sending us an email.

Christina

Save the date – November 15

Just a quick note to tell you that the next IGGD meeting will be on November 15. We will get more information regarding the speakers and content out to you soon, but wanted to get the date on your calendar early! See you then!

Start-up fever!

Do you have an idea for a company but no idea how to launch it? Are you an inspired multi-talent wanting to bring the next big thing to market?

NDRC’s Inventorium can help and they are now taking applications for Swequity 2! The deadline is just a week away, so sign up now!

Also, check out their 5 minute video summary of Swequity and see how it went!

September Drinks

I hope that everyone has had a great summer! There have been some problems coordinating the schedules of the planned speakers and our gracious sponsor, but we just can’t bear to wait any longer to hear what you have been up to!

For this reason, we would love to have an informal meetup at Dicey’s Garden, 21 Harcourt Street, Dublin (click the link for map or directions) this week on Thursday, September 27Friday, September 28, from 7 pm.

A quick comment, email or tweet to let us know if you are coming will enable us to tell Dicey’s how much space we need! Hope to see many of you there!