Geek Girls Allowed

Generally as a group we agree on most things – which is always good to hear. I think making some decisions without the full group being invovled felt risky but actually it was a good thing to do. So the edited highlights are:

• The majority of us…
  • would be happy to pay for some events
  • are interested as much by all things digital media as we are by how things work
  • are concerned about issues facing women in the work place
  • sit somewhere between liking and being indifferent about the name of the group

• More than half …
  • are prepared to hand over a donation to support the group (average of £10)
  • want to get stuck in with the organisation of the group
  • are interested in networking, music, science, craft and communications

• More of us are interested in G&T than Tea (only actually by 4.2% but who’s counting?)
• Quite a lot of us are interested in doing something practical or using our time toward helping the community as a whole
• Two of us are interested in us having a uniform (if you had’t worked it out one of them is me)
• One of us really likes Zac Efron

The issue that has confused me the most is that of the groups name. Most of us are indifferent or actually quite positive about it. But for those of us (far less than half) that really do have an issue with the group’s name their feelings are so strong that initially looking at the responses I’d assumed there would be need to discuss a name change. Now I’m not so sure. An suggestions greatly accepted. The full results can be found here.

And here you can find a calendar of events, some are nailed down some are pencilled in but we promise to keep you informed.

I’m working on the October meeting and will post more info about that soon but if you fancy getting some geeky crafting done watch this space!

Em

In my haste to post about last night’s event (I’m a bad blogger), I forgot to mention the interactive art work presented by Barnsley artist Jo Pearson.

Jo based her work on the iChing – instructions at the table told us how to cast an iChing hexagram relating to a question we had in mind. We then matched the number of the hexagram to a set of QR codes displayed around the walls and – get this – used the bar code readers on our phones to translate the QR code into a web link. Connecting to the link took you to a reading and gave you the opportunity to post your reaction to the reading – reactions were displayed on the large screen in the DMC foyer.

As always with interesting art, it’s hard to do it justice in words. But I don’t think any of us ever expected to use the bar code reader on our smartphone to read our fortunes!

You can follow Jo @jopersona. If you don’t know what QR codes are all about, have a look here: http://2d-code.co.uk . And you can make your own codes here: http://www.mobile-barcodes.com/qr-code/generator .

Had a most marvelous evening yesterday at the Barnsley Digital Media Centre and the first ever South Yorkshire Geek Girls Dinner. To those GGals who didn’t make it, you missed an excellent evening, two impressive speakers and some epic chocolate cake. Kudos to Tracey Johnson (@cre8tvebarnsley) for organising.

I didn’t get the opportunity to meet everyone there but, judging by the questions being asked, there was a high geekery quotient. I’m hoping that Tracey will circulate a list of attendees so that we can get to know each other a bit more.

So, speakers: Silvia Novak from publishers Faber & Faber and Rain Ashford from the BBC.

Silvia told us all about the social media initiatives that she is working on – everything from tweeting to helping authors to blog. There was loads more than that but two things really stuck with me: the way that social media is allowing F&F to really engage with its audiences and the amazingly creative things that authors are doing with the web. You can follow Silvia @silviakn and @Faberbooks.

Rain works on BBC Connect (which it would be really interesting to know more about another day) but she came to tell us about her geek passion – Lilypad Arduino. Rain uses Lilypad to make interactive textile creations – she showed us a T-shirt that played a tune and a noughts and crosses game that made noises to show if you were winning or losing. My truly non-technical description doesn’t even begin to do this justice – it was an impressive mash-up of electronics, coding and fabric art. You can see more here: http://rainycatz.wordpress and follow Rain @rainycat.

All in all, an auspicions kick-off to girl geekery in the SoYo region – here’s to the next installment.