What do you get when you throw a bunch of women in a room and mix in a little tech talk? She’s Geeky! At this past weekend’s unConference women gathered to discuss the latest and greatest topics affecting them.
The conference started with all attendees introducing themselves and completing this sentence: “I’m geeky because…” There was a wide variety of answers ranging from “…someone I work with called me geeky so I must be geeky” to “I know the entire hierarchy of Star Wars” There were even multiple women with comments like “…I had 236 worksheets in my wedding spreadsheet”! After introductions, we defined the agenda by writing interesting topics on construction paper and posted it on the agenda wall.
I have been to conferences that host open sessions, but never an unConference where the agenda for the entire day is decided within the first hour. This format lets the attendees define the conference, to alter it throughout the day, and encourages moving between sessions to ensure attendees get the most out of it. In one day, I was able to learn more about organizing conferences, submitting sessions, and presenting at conferences, starting, fighting for, and sustaining women’s technology groups, being a “jill of all trades” in a specialists world, improving estimates, and teaching programming to others. Best of all, I was able to connect with other women in the technology industry.
I must admit I was impressed with how information was being shared with attendees. A twitter list of all attendees and a hash tag were set up before the conference started. There was a dedicated Note Taking Center for gathering session notes from attendees for distribution. I have yet to see the output of this (it has only been one weekend day) and wish I had suggested getting a wiki set up for people to post to throughout the event as there were sessions I had to miss out on.
While I don’t deny there are roadblocks and significant challenges (ratios of men to women, salary discrepancies, etc.) for women in the technology fields, I do believe that everyone must make of it what they want out of it. Don’t stand for the roadblocks and challenges. Speak up. Ask for that raise or promotion. Show that you can do the job. Most of all, be confident and know what YOU want to do.
Interested in hearing more about the experiences of She’s Geeky attendees? Check out these:
- She’s Geeky Twin Cities Twitter list: @shesgeeky/tc10
- She’s Geeky Twitter hash tag: #shesgeeky
A special thanks to those that made this weekend happen, the conference sponsors:
The Science Museum of Minnesota, Clockwork, ipHouse, Fabuliss, Minnebar, Sieent, and MinneWebCon.
