Tech girls are chic, not just geek

Technology Takes You Anywhere 2010

2010-08-02T18:51:00.000-07:00

This year's TTYA event in July was a huge success!
With over 400 girls attending from around 15 schools from all over Brisbane, we had a great time. The girls got to try out creating some Flash animations, did some programming with Alice, and got to hear from a bunch of role models in the industry, just to name a few things.

Check out the blog posts of some of our presenters to find out more:
Reading Room Blog

Soul Solutions Blogs
General info about the event and navigating the surface table
Technical info about their awesome surface table

Looking forward to next year's event already!
Jenine :)

If you would like to see the evaluation reports of events from previous years, click here.

Happy International Womens Day 2010!

2010-03-07T23:13:00.000-08:00

To all of your fabulous gals out there, I hope you are celebrating your achievements today. You deserve it!

I was fortunate to be invited to present at the Public Trustee in the Brisbane CBD for their IWD morning tea. I was alongside some inspiring women:

Linda Lavarch - Research Fellow at the Australian Centre for Philanthropy and Nonprofit Studies and former Attorney General and Minister for Justice
Kerrin Benson - CEO Multicultural Development Association
Alana Pelly - Cancer Survivor - Queensland Cancer Council

About 80 attended, and all received a free copy of the Tech girls book. There was a big line of people for autographs, so much fun :) I was treated to lunch at customs house on the river, and received the biggest bunch of flowers ever! Very special day :)

Grace Hopper Conference 2010 Call for participation

2010-01-18T19:42:00.000-08:00

If you want to be inspired by thousands of creative and intelligent technical women, then consider attending the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women Conference.The call for participation for the 2010 Grace Hopper Celebration is now available at

http://gracehopper.org/2010/participate/call-for-participation/.

Congrats Tech Girl Anitza!

2009-11-14T23:52:00.000-08:00

Huge congrats to Anitza Geneve, one of our tech girls, who was a finalist this week in the Office for Women's (Qld) Our Women, Our State Awards in the postgraduate category. She was up against some tough competition, and she came away as highly commended. Details can be found here about the categories, finalists and award winners.

Update on Tech girls event - Central Coast NSW

2009-11-08T16:52:00.000-08:00

A great article about the Tech girls event in September posted on the youth connections website. Reposted here. See original site for pics.

Thomson thinks pink in IT
Updated: 09-10-2009
“Girls should not be missing out,” said Federal member for Dobell Craig Thomson when opening this year’s Tech Girls. Centrally positioned between Sydney and Newcastle, Thomson believes Central Coast youth and especially girls need to identify the versatility of a job in the Information Technology industry as an alternative to commuting, “you can work from home or work remotely, it’s a really great attraction.”

Held at Mingara Recreation Club, Tech Girls is a Youthconnections.com.au event which speaks out against the male-labelled industry, inspiring high school girls to consider Information Technology and science-based subjects at school and a future career in IT.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, males make up 85% of all people currently employed in the IT industry. Youthconnections.com.au chair person and IT business owner, Dave Abrahams says more women need to dare to challenge the geek stereotype, “It is a cool sector but most people see it as a geek sector.”

Tech Girls has run annually for the past four years and since its inception Youthconnections.com.au statistics show a rise of 13% in female students selecting VET IT subjects compared to a 26% decrease for boys during the same time period.

This year 150 girls from 12 Central Coast schools attended, joined by eight key women speakers who ranged from a Software Engineer for Google to an Organisational Change Manager at Commonwealth Bank. These women and several IT businesses represented diversity and change in Information Technology, which was part of the event’s focus. Griffith University researcher and co-author of Tech Girls are chic (not just geek), Jenine Beekhuyzen gave a presentation about investigating the technologies people use to download music and said she loves working in IT, “I get to travel lots, I get paid well and I work in my pyjamas most of the time.”

Tech girl Bronwen talks about her experiences working in the IT industry....

2009-10-10T21:35:00.001-07:00

Have a listen, and learn about the new Bachelor of Information Systems at Griffith starting in 2010. A great combination of technology and business skills.

Tech Girls 2009 - Central Coast of NSW

2009-10-06T15:07:00.001-07:00

On the 22nd of September I was invited to be the keynote speaker for the 4th annual Tech Girls event on the Central Coast of NSW. The event is run by YouthConnections, who did a fabulous job!

It was a really great event, and Tech Girl Lauren presented too. Look forward to next year!

Robogals!

2009-09-16T16:58:00.002-07:00

Robogals is a not-for-profit organization which aims to increase the number of girls undertaking science, engineering and technology courses at university. It has already been super successful in Melbourne and the UK. UQ has the opportunity to start up a chapter too! Robogals is run by university students like us who promote robotics to school girls. So, we'll have to opportunity to go round to schools, play with LEGO and just have some fun!

To start us off, there is a Robogals Bootcamp which will take place in the upcoming holidays (29 Sep - 1 Oct, 2009). We'll get an all-expenses paid trip to Melbourne, and get to hang out with other geek girls from all over Australia.

Please put in application so we can get the UQ chapter of Robogals up and running! Make sure to put in an application asap. If you know anyone else who might be interested, please pass this on (this is open to anyone studying at any level - undergrad or postgrad, and any discipline).

Here's the link to the application form.
www.robogals.org.au/application_form.html

For more information check out their website
www.robogals.org.au/index.html

More info on the Bootcamp?
www.robogals.org.au/bootcamp.html

Our Women, Our State Awards 2009

2009-09-13T20:38:00.000-07:00

http://www.women.qld.gov.au/awards/

The deadline for submissions to this year's awards has been extended until this Friday, get your entries in!

2009 report on why girls still dont choose ICT

2009-08-15T14:28:00.000-07:00

http://insight.eun.org/ww/en/pub/insight/misc/specialreports/eun_white_paper_women_it.htm

really interesting report on the current skills shortage in Europe, and the attitudes of school girls in the 'pre' university years. It seems that the same reasons for not choosing ICT careers and study still apply (as we have known for some time) - lack of positive female role models, and lack of understanding of the types of ICT jobs and careers available.

A huge skills shortage is upon us, so the lack of females is negative in two main ways, they are an untapped resource that the industry needs, and women are also missing out on great career opportunities. This report shows the importance of informational resources such as Tech girls are chic :)

Tech girls book available on ThinkGeek.com!

2009-07-15T12:59:00.000-07:00

The tech girls book is now available on ThinkGeek.com! Very exciting, the guys there are uber supportive of us Aussie gals, and gals in tech all over the world! So if you have any contacts in the US, feel free to promote it to them! xxx

An ode to a coder girl

2009-07-13T17:58:00.000-07:00

Thought you might find enjoy this vid..well done to the creators!

Tech girls profile on Spy Journal

2009-07-07T14:19:00.000-07:00

I was recently profiled by local Brisbane company SpyJournal so I thought you might like a read...Thanks Tim and Amanda!

Jenine's geek girl blogger profile

While you are there, you should check out the other geek girl blogs, very interesting reading!

Geek Girl Dinner # 6 an insight into the legal side of IT

2009-07-07T13:44:00.000-07:00

Thursday evening the 2nd of July was our 6th Brisbane Geek Girl Dinner. Kay Lam-Beattie, our resident legal IT expert who runs her own business IdeaLaw answered the many legal questions from our Geek Girls. UQ Law Professor Kim Weatherall also helped out with all the many questions....the discussion went well into the night which was a sign of the interest in the many legal challenges that we all face every day as technology professionals, and as everyday users in the online world.

It was a great night of catching up and stimulating conversation, and it was nice to see lots of new faces! Thanks also to the Hutch Bistro for the great food and service! And thanks Tim from SpyJournal for the great pics! Here are just a couple of the pics you can see the rest on Flickr.

National ICT Careers Week 2009

2009-07-07T13:37:00.001-07:00

Its that time of year again with the National ICT Career Week nearly upon us. It is held during the week of the 27th July to the 1st of August. Check out the website for information on events all over Australia.

Awards and scholarships - apply now!

2009-05-18T13:13:00.000-07:00

Just a quick note about 2 scholarship and award programs which are now available.

The WIT award is Qld based and covers a range of ages and categories:
http://www.wit.org.au/default.asp?PageID=103

and the Grace Hopper scholarship is to get you to the US for the annual Grace Hopper Conference (I have never been but I hear it is incredible!
http://www.gracehopper.org/2009/participate/student-scholarships/

apply and reflect on your great achievements!
Jenine xxx

Geek Girl Dinner # 5 a huge success - go girl gamers!

2009-05-04T18:16:00.000-07:00

On the 30th of April we hosted our 5th Brisbane GGD at the Microsoft offices in the city. Was so much fun to play games against other tech girls, and about 50 people attended. Huge thanks to Bronwen for doing most of the organising this time around (so little time at the moment with writing up my PhD) and to everyone who helped to make the night a success. Bronwen has a great blog post here which thanks everyone that needs to be, and gives a great recap of the night.

A few pics of me and Anitza, us tech girls from the book playing our hearts out! :)

Not tech, but music related, my other love....

2009-04-27T15:26:00.000-07:00

http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/story/0,28383,25387052-10388,00.html

a great story, go Ruby - talks about how she was bullied in school, and how she now has the best revenge through her success. I was bullied in school also, not to the physical extent of Ruby, but I still remember it to this day (wish I could forget!) But like Ruby, I believe success is the way to show them all! Go girls, be a fab success in whatever you do, be happy, and dont let bullies rule your life!

Nikki - the geek girl blogger

2009-04-22T20:14:00.000-07:00

Check out our tech girl Nikki's great profile on Spy Journal. Tim, keep up your great work of supporting women in IT, we need more guys like you! :)

http://www.spyjournal.biz/geek_girls/NikkiCurtiss

Happy Ada Lovelace Day

2009-03-23T12:43:00.000-07:00

I am so very honoured to be part of today celebrating the incredible achievements of Ada Lovelace, who is widely regarded as the first woman programmer (see http://www.agnesscott.edu/lriddle/WOMEN/love.htm). Ada is a fantastic 'tech girl' role model who paved the way for where we are today.

So that means today is also about celebrating women who now study or work in technology careers, women who are innovative, intelligent and chic!

Working in IT (or any similar names) is a great career for women, and one that I feel very lucky to be part of. So I would like to say Happy Ada Day to all of the fabulous women out there who challenge technology and the stereotypes every day to pave the way for the next generation of women!

There are just so many women who inspire me everyday so I send a huge hug out to you all :)

Enjoy, enjoy, enjoy! :) and most of all, be proud!
Jenine

For other bloggers who pledged to blog on this day, see http://ada.pint.org.uk/

Geek Girl Coffee #1 at Griffith Uni

2009-03-11T15:11:00.001-07:00

The first of the Geek Girl Coffees sponsored by Google was held on Friday 6th March at the Griffith Campus Club. It was small, but it was great to meet the girls. To find out about future events, go to: http://sites.google.com/site/girlgeekcoffees/Home

pics are here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/24088643@N00/sets/72157615118377908/
and also posted here: http://sites.google.com/site/girlgeekcoffees/Home/inspirational-women

Announcing another baby tech girl!

2009-03-11T14:02:00.000-07:00

Huge congrats to Sarah on her beautiful daughter born on the 14th Feb (how sweet, a Valentines Baby!)

Jaiden-Lee Afia May weighed 6.5 lb. I dont know where Sarah finds the time but she has created this awesome website to share pics with family and friends: www.jaiden-lee.com

Best wishes to Sarah and Kieran :)

Jaiden-Lee is the 3rd baby born to a tech girl in the past year. Bronwen and Lilah, and Vanessa and Zach are all doing well too, but growing up much too fast! :)

Happy Birthday to Tech Girls are Chic!

2009-03-06T00:11:00.000-08:00

A huge happy birthday to the Tech girls are chic, not just geek book!

This sunday, International Womens Day (8th March) marks the 1st birthday of the Tech girls book, so happy birthday to all of the book's fabulous authors for helping to make it happen!

To celebrate (and very timely) a podcast about the background of the book has just been published by the Sydney Writers Centre. I did the interview back in September and have been hanging out to hear it, and perfect that it arrived in the inbox today!

You can listen to the podcast or read the transcript at: http://www.sydneywriterscentre.com.au/podcast/jeninebeekhuyzen.htm

Or visit the facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Sydney-Writers-Centre/13402093390

I encourage you to blog about the book if you have the means to, or link your facebook page to it, I will be shouting it from the rooftops!

And the book has been picked up by thinkgeek.com who has asked if they can buy the books wholesale to resell them in the US on their very popular website. How could I say no! So it seems we have cracked the boy geek club, they said they loved the concept and would be 'honoured to show it off to as many people as possible!'.

So the book now seems to have a life of its own, and may there be many more birthday celebrations! Congrats to every single tech girl for helping to make it a reality. I cant thank you enough!

Enjoy :)
Jenine

the month of February

2009-03-03T17:33:00.001-08:00

Lots happening as usual!

* We hosted our 4th Girl Geek Dinner last week which was a great success. See Bronwen's blog for a roundup of the night. Thanks Jess for your great presentation! Book in early for our next GGD5 which is going to allow the girls to battle, on the gaming console that is. Join us at the Microsoft office in the city to show your skills at Guitar Hero, Rock Band and Dance!

* I visited Lourdes Hill College last Wednesday to present about the book. Thanks to the students for their participation and thanks to the student's great IT teacher Robin for organising the visit. It was fun!

* When I went to the Game On Wired Women presentation a few weeks ago, the Courier Mail snapped a pic of my friend Heather and me.

* And lastly, dont forget to celebrate International Womens Day this Sunday the 8th of March. This date also marks the 1st anniversary for the book so please tell us what you think about it. And to celebrate its birthday, IBM just purchased 500 books to distribute to their staff for IWD. How exciting! :)

Happy Birthday Tech Girls!

You heard it here first! Apply for the Google Australia and New Zealand Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship

2009-02-11T19:59:00.000-08:00

I am very happy to announce that the Google Australia and New Zealand Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship is about to open!

As you may know I was lucky enough to be a finalist in last year's awards and I highly recommend applying. It was an awesome time at Google in Sydney. So I am pretty excited to be blogging about this so that I can encourage you to apply. Excited also because this news hasnt yet been released by Google, it will in the next day or so. But I was sent the flyer today by my great contact at Google, because I am on it - can you see me? So I had to take this opportunity to share it with you. (See I was really there :)

So apply, apply, apply! Open to all women studying in IT related fields. You wont regret it! :)
And please send the flyer to anyone you know who should know about this.
I will post the official Google link as soon as it is available.

You can download the flyer here.

Doing IT Around the World

2009-02-09T17:04:00.000-08:00

If you havent yet seen this interesting international project - go to: http://passionit.info/

36 women from every continent in the world are profiled in albums plus their work lives captured via a day in their life diary. The role models represent a wide diversity of women in technology industries. Their ages span from early 20’s through to near retirement. Their areas of technology passions span traditional information technology (e.g. CTO, software, hardware, support, consulting, sales and marketing services) to communications, knowledge management, governance, data mining, open source advocacy, web design, graphic art, instrumentation design, configuration engineering, computational biology, microelectronics, molecular biology, research, geo spatial, educational, medical and legal technologists).

For the freebie pdf downloads go directly to: http://passionit.info/albums.php

Game on girls!

2009-01-29T12:59:00.000-08:00

Have you seen the Game On expo in Brisbane? I went to it in Melbourne early last year and it was fantastic! A blast from the past, my fave part was the old Galaga stand up console! Another fave part was finding out all of the roles that make up developing a computer game, from artists to techies. I am planning to go again to the expo in Brisbane, hope to see you there!

As part of Game On, I went to the Wired Women panel presentation on Wednesday night. Four fabulous role models discussed working in the Brisbane gaming industry. Was great to see so many high school girls there asking questions! As part of this, the State Library have a full day of panel presentations next Friday called More than Games - a great chance to get info about working in this industry. And girls, they are calling out for you to get the qualifications and apply for jobs! There are so many great side events to this expo so dont miss out!

And wanted to share some pics with you from an AWISE planning event I was part of late last year. All of the AWISE women have been fabulous supporters of the book, and my friend Madeleine is one of the book's best supporters! You're a star Madeleine :)

While talking about fabulous women, I wanted to mention that my good friend Sue Nielsen launched her sci fi adventure novel this week! www.suenielsen.com and her book is available on Amazon.com. It is 7 years of writing and it is sure to entertain! She is already working on the sequel....:) Congrats Sue, a huge impressive achievement!!!

Welcome to 2009!

2009-01-20T16:51:00.000-08:00

Happy new year! I hope 2009 is full of adventure for you :)

I havent posted for a while, but that isnt because nothing has been happening, the opposite in fact, lots has! I will give an update in a moment, but first to tell you that I ended 2008 with a last minute trip to Paris to attend the top conference in my area of IT. I made it there with 3 days notice, I didnt think it was possible! It was a fabulous adventure and I was very inspired by meeting some of the most well respected people in Information Systems. Some pics from the trip below :) The first one is obvious, the 2nd is the girls at the Abbey for one of our dinner (5 courses!), the 3rd is all of us at the doctoral consortium (student workshops where they worked us very hard :) and last pic is a cocktail party at the Sorbonne - the oldest university in Paris (built in 1253), very privileged to be part of it!

This all happened the day after I presented my research at a conference in New Zealand, so it was a very busy time! But it really was a great time. But now to finish writing my PhD.

Other things happening late in 2008....

GGD #3 - in December - was a chick flick and movie, Bronwen and I are now planning Girl Geek Dinners Brisbane for 2009.

Copies of the book went out to all attendees at the NT Roadshow that was held in June and August last year in the following locations. Our tech girl Lauren flew to NT to present to the girls and boys, thanks Lauren! :) and thanks to Rebecca Pan for organising such a fabulous set of events. - 5 June - Darwin High School, 1 Aug - Dripstone Middle School, 11 Aug - Nhulunbuy High, School, 14 Aug - Kormilda College

I was invited by Donna Alexander to present about the book at the Canberra Women in Computing Hot Breakfast series on the 11th of Nov. It was a really fun breakfast and I met many wonderful ladies. Tracey from the book was meant to go but couldnt so I was happy to! Thanks to the AIIA for supporting it.

I was profiled related to the book just this month in the newsletter of AWISE - Australian Women in IT Science and Engineering.

We got a little more promo for the book on the back of my Anita Borg Google Scholarship, a nice article in the newspaper of my home town. And I realise I didnt follow up on telling how I went at the Anita Borg Google scholarship, but I didnt win. Thats ok because I had the best time. It was brilliant! Who wouldnt want to work for Google ... ?

I am sure there are other things I have forgotten and will post them when they come to mind. So many things always happening with the book it can be a struggle to keep up!

Go Girl Go For IT! Melbourne Oct 08

2008-10-30T18:49:00.000-07:00

Another great week! I spent 2 days at Go Girl in Melbourne which was held at Deakin University. I presented 4 times over the 2 days, with 1700 girls attending over both days. The other presenters were brilliant with some awesome topics covered. The presentations and audio of the speakers will be posted on the web soon so I will link to them. Meanwhile, you can see some pics here. A number of people asked me about my pink fluffly laptop cover, my mum makes them for me and you can buy one here. You can buy one of the pink sparkly mouses here.

One of the book authors, Alana, bought along her digital divas from a local highschool, and we were asked for our autographs :) One of my fave pics from the event...

Enjoy the weekend! :)

Jenine

Girl Geek Dinner # 2

2008-10-30T18:08:00.001-07:00

A great event! :) Google were kind enough to sponsor dinner #2 by covering the food costs and sending a female engineer up to talk to us. Susannah Raub was on the selection committee for the Anita Borg Scholarship so I got to meet her while in Sydney at Google in September. She is such a great role model for young girls and for women working in the industry, and was kind enough to share some of her personal and work experiences with us. It was awesome to see such a great turn-0ut on the night. Thanks ladies! :)

Kitty's blog post and pics which sums things up nicely...

Keep posted for Girl Geek Dinner #3 in December 08.

Jenine

What a week!

2008-10-26T22:08:00.000-07:00

I had a fabulous week last week promoting the book. All girls I presented to received a free copy.

On Monday, I was invited by Zonta to present at Tambourine Mountain High School. Was a bit of a drive but it is such a beautiful spot! And it was a student free day so I was most impressed by the 25 girls who came in on the day for the presentations! Thanks girls, and thanks for entertaining me over lunch! And thanks Melanie for inviting me. The feedback was "We were all very inspired by your energetic presentation and we certainly have a greater appreciation of IT and the careers available. The feedback from the girls was extremely positive".

On Thursday I presented as part of a panel of fab IT women at All Hallows' School. It was heaps of fun. Thanks to Chad (the IT teacher) for inviting me and to the other speakers. We sure need more IT teachers like you! :)

The feedback was "Thanks again Jenine, for your time today! Your presentation was truly interesting and inspiring".

Then we had our 2nd Brisbane Geek Girl Dinner on Thursday night. Just waiting for some pictures, post to come! :)

Jenine :)

Geek Girl Dinner in Brisbane 28 August wrap-up!

2008-09-28T07:56:00.000-07:00

Brisbane's first geek girl dinner was hosted by Bronwen and myself on Thursday the 28th of August at Caravanserai Restaurant at Highgate Hill. A great time was had by all which leads us to conclude that our first dinner was a huge success! About 25 people attended, a couple of guys came along but they did come with a geek girl (that is the rule!).

Very impressive was Tim, who wore a skirt for the occasion! Amanda (who works with Tim at Spy Journal) wrote a great blog post about the event. And their great photos are here.

Bronwen's post is here. If you would like to be kept up to date with geek girl dinners in Brisbane, either join our facebook (Geek Girl Dinners Brisbane) or contact us here.

We are now planning our next dinner for the 23rd October, once we decide on a location, we will let you know! Look forward to seeing you all again.

Jenine :)

Vids - meet the authors!

2008-09-14T16:42:00.000-07:00

Just uploaded the videos of our authors that were taken back in March at our book launch. You can see our authors talking about their passions. And be sure to tell us what you think of the vids! Enjoy :)

Jenine

Tracey in the Australian talking about the skills shortage

2008-09-14T15:27:00.000-07:00

A great article was published on Saturday about the skills shortage and attempts in Qld particularly to address it. Our author Tracey was a key person in delivering the 2008 Diversiti Hiring Influence Report. Well done Tracey and thanks for mentioning the book! :)

More on Google

2008-09-08T14:56:00.000-07:00

One week to go, I now have details of all of the other finalists from across Australia and NZ, and also the agenda for the days in Google, it looks like such a great program. I can't wait to meet everybody!

There is a great YouTube vid about the retreat in Europe which gives insight into what the whole experience is about, and you can read the press release for last year's retreat here. So very excited!

Jenine

I am going to Google!

2008-08-27T20:54:00.000-07:00

My great news. I am a finalist in the 2008 Google Australia and New Zealand Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship! I havent won (yet!? :) but I feel like I have! I am so excited that I get to spend 2 whole days at the Google offices in Sydney in September. And I get $1000 towards my studies next year. And I get to meet and hang out with the other 11 finalists, so cool!

An excerpt from my finalist notification:

Dr. Anita Borg (1949-2003) devoted her life to revolutionizing the way we think about technology and dismantling barriers that keep women and minorities from entering computing and technology fields.

As part of Google's ongoing commitment to furthering Anita's vision, we are pleased to recognize you as future leaders in technology as a Scholarship Finalist for the 2008 Scholarship.

So very excited!

Jenine :)

Technology Takes You Anywhere 2008

2008-08-27T20:16:00.000-07:00

Last Friday was the annual Technology Takes You Anywhere event here in Brisbane. We hosted nearly 700 school girls in grades 5-10. I was one of six people on the organising committee, I also presented on the day and signed hundreds of books. Was such a buzz. Julie, Tracey and Monica (also authors in TGAC) were also there to present and volunteer on the day (Julie was on the organising committee too), so they signed lots of books too. It seemed the girls liked getting their own personally signed copy, I even got high-fived by a bunch of primary school books, being told "you are like a rockstar, you are so cool, you have your own book!".

It was such a great day. More details on the official website.

My photos here, but more to come soon from our photographer.

And you can also download our presenter booklet; you can read all about our presenters from the day.

I hope you enjoyed TTYA 2008! :)

Jenine

3rd International Careers Fair, Brisbane Australia

2008-08-07T22:50:00.000-07:00

Monday 1st September

Suncorp Stadium

For more details: http://www.careersfair.org.au

Women in Hard Hats Campaign

2008-08-03T21:12:00.000-07:00

Last Friday's presentation was part of the Office for Women's Campaign 'Women in Hard Hats' which is designed to encourage females into careers in non-traditional areas.

I have been profiled...

Follow up on Sunnybank High School - Make or Break Conference

2008-08-03T20:09:00.001-07:00

I was lucky enough to be invited to present at Sunnybank State High School's 'Make or Break Womens Conference' last Friday. I was part of a session chaired by Alix Winter from the Office for Women, and presented to 6 different groups of year 8/9 girls alongside Radmila Desic who is an Industry Engagement Officer for Construction Skills Qld, and also has a trade in construction (she can build houses!), and alongside Carlie Wright, who works for Brisbane City Council and is the only female plumbing inspector in Australia, - pretty impressive huh! All girls got a free copy of Tech girls are chic, not just geek.

The entire day was organised by an amazing girl named Jamie, who is the School Captain and visionary behind the day to inspire the younger girls at her school. Well done Jamie for doing such an amazing job. It was a fabulous day.

Jenine :)

National ICT Careers Week

2008-07-30T22:24:00.000-07:00

As part of National ICT Careers Week, I was invited to present at a number of Brisbane schools about ICT Careers, and to give away Tech girls are chic books.

I presented at Cannon Hill Anglican College on Tuesday to year 12 girls, and St. Aidans Anglican Girls College today (pics here) to year 10 girls (and so great their teacher has been promoting our book and had the downloadable screensaver on many of the school computers in previous weeks, so many of the girls had actually heard about the book before they met me!) I will be going to Sunnybank State High School tomorrow to present with the Office for Women. What a busy week! :) Thanks to all the girls who attended, and their teachers for inviting me :)

Jenine :)

Sydney Writers Centre wants us!

2008-07-28T18:34:00.001-07:00

Great news, we have been invited to do a podcast with the Sydney Writers Centre. They love our website and that each of our tech girls wrote a fiction story. They are interested in what inspired us to include fiction as part of our book. I (Jenine) am going to do the interview on the 15th September and the podcast will be made available. I will keep you posted!

Jenine :)

------

Sydney Writers’ Centre has just commenced podcast interviews with a range of authors - resources page - http://www.sydneywriterscentre.com.au/resources.htm and with iTunes.

Aint gonna hold us back now....must see video!

2008-07-20T18:06:00.000-07:00

I see so many great links every day and usually post them here. But I had to blog about this one. A great video with voices from young girls chanting 'we are digital' and 'you aint gonna hold us back now' - very powerful, a must see!

have fun - Jenine :)

Geek Girl Dinner in Brisbane 28 August

2008-07-09T16:36:00.000-07:00

I recently met a fellow tech girl who also thought there was a need to have somewhere for us Brisbane tech girls to network, meet and catchup. So we are bringing Geek Girl Dinners to Brisbane! GGD has been a really successful way for tech women to get together around the world, so join us to make our first Brisbane Geek Girl Dinner a success too!

The idea is that you come along, pay for your own dinner and network and have fun!

To reserve your seat, please register:

http://girlgeekdinnersbrisbane01.eventbrite.com/

SA Innovation & Career Evening

2008-06-23T07:09:00.000-07:00

We posted books down to Youth Jet in Adelaide for their Innovation and Career Evening. The event was held on the 14th March. We hear they went down well! :)

Pics here

Tech Girls event - Central Coast of NSW

2008-06-16T15:06:00.000-07:00

Five of us from the book presented at the annual Tech Girls event on the 10th June on the Central Coast of NSW. Jenine, Bec, Lauren, Clare and Sarah met the girls, and we had a fantastic time!

200 girls attended, learnt all about IT careers and got a personal book signing. A really well run event, and girls received some great prizes such as tablets and mobile phones.

Some pics here

This was the second largest group to get the books, I (Jenine) and Monica presented at the Sunshine Coast SET day on the 5th June. Another great day!

Welcome!

2008-01-22T04:20:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the blog for the new book 'Tech Girls are chic, not just geek' This blog is a space for you to leave your comments about our website, our upcoming book or any of our other projects, or for general discussion on the topic of women and girls in Information Technology.

Happy commenting!
Jenine & Bec