The birthday events are always very popular, and this year has been no exception. We decided to enter everyone who wanted a place into a raffle, and our lucky winners are now listed below. We look forward to seeing you on 4th August!

If you don’t see your name below then we’re really sorry. London Girl Geek Dinners is reliant on volunteers and the generosity of our sponsors, and we’re only able to do so much, but please keep an eye out, we really value your membership and we have lots of exciting stuff lined up!

LGGD 5th Anniversary Ticket Holders:

We are looking for volunteers to take part in the ‘Careers Hotel’ – an area where young people can find out about the range of careers and jobs available from a science, technology, engineering or maths background.. Here’s the kind of thing we’d like volunteers to do:

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– Mingle with the young people in the careers zone area, striking up conversations about STEM careers and their own jobs. It might be useful to bring an object which represents their job, or photos of colleagues in the work environment. The ‘minglers’ will also be asked to gently shepherd handfuls of young people towards the activities they can do in the careers zone: laptops with careers websites on; TV screen showing media clips; conversations with trained careers advisors; questionnaire about likes and dislikes; graffiti board for young people to give their own views.

- Speed networking. This facilitated session will invite young people, in pairs or by themselves, to have 3-minute conversations with a variety of role models about their jobs and their STEM backgrounds. We’re looking for as broad a range of role models as possible so technicians, HE/FE students and managers are all welcome as well.

Volunteers can choose whether they’d like to act as minglers or speednetworkers or both!

We’d like volunteers to join us for one or more half day sessions during:

– Wednesday 4th Mar afternoon
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- Thursday 5th Mar morning
- Thursday 5th Mar afternoon
- Friday 6th Mar morning

If you are interested in helping us or you know anyone who may be interested, please pass this to them. We’re happy to answer any questions – you can contact me by email (k.mathieson@sciencecouncil.org) or by phone (07775 908 750).

Amplified 2008, a ‘network of networks’ event bringing together entrepreneurs, creatives, digital media practitioners, and geeky types, was held from 4-8pm on Thursday, 27th November 2008 at NESTA’s offices by Chancery Lane. NESTA did a great job of hosting the event, also providing much-needed refreshments throughout. Amplified 2008 attracted around 200 attendees, followed an unconference format, and covered a wide range of topics, some of which are summarised on the Amplified Wiki. Congratulations to @sleepydog @joannejacobs @DT @loudmouthman and @sizemore on bringing together such a diverse range of people and stimulating some great discussions.

A session of interest to me — as an obsessive reader who absorbs fiction/non-fiction in any form readily available while also collecting first edition children’s books and so appreciates the book as fetish object — was the ‘Future of the Book’ session that had stimulated some debate on Annie Mole’s Going Underground blog, and has been a topic of interest in pop culture for decades, it seems. I’ve posted my notes from the session, below, which I hope might be of interest. Below these notes I’ve also made some suggestions for the dream eReader which it would be fantastic to have your ideas about, perhaps we can send these ideas to a mobile lab so they might start producing the types of eReaders we’d like to use (and not in pink)!

The Future of the Book (rough notes)

Held By: Annie Mole, Billy Abbott, Chris Meade
Details: 4.30-5.10pm session in T2 @ NESTA

Future of the Book :: Introduction & Overview
Annie Mole
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Annie sees many reading on the tube each day, wonders if people will be reading differently in 5 years. In November 2005 saw her first eReader (size of the Asus Eee) and yet she’s still not seeing many people with eReaders on the tube. She believes the eReader-centric reading future may not be quite as near as 5 years away. We’re used to seeing scary titles such as ‘The Death of the Book’ (“Publishers are braced for the slow death of the book”, February 13, 2008, Times Online) – often there’s a book vs eReader discussion where it’s considered one will die and the other survive – why can’t they co-exist?

Beyond Borders movie Phillip Pullman currently protesting against a school librarian being surplus to requirements – this has stimulated debate. Whatever happens to books, we still need guides around libraries – in Annie’s blog comments on this topic a contributor made the point that “a library without a librarian is like an internet without search engines”. You can’t make sense of that much information without having someone to guide you through it.

Consuming Books – does the device matter? As long as people continue to read, that’s the primary concern, whatever device they use to read? Whatever you may think about the Richard&Judy bookclub, it’s managed to get more people reading than many similar initiatives in this country (as has its inspiration, Oprah Winfrey’s Book Club internationally).

Entertainment on the move (books versus movies versus gaming) – much discussion is around portability of our entertainment on the move, not necessarily about books. There’s no reason that future media can’t incorporate story-rich elements, for example, ARGs have amazingly complicated storylines, and if children are able to embrace those worlds through gaming that’s equally valid.

Future of the Book? :: Books ain’t dead
Billy Abbott

Tablets with writing on them have over 8000 years of history, it’s quite extreme to suggest books will be replaced by technology overnight. eReaders have only been pushed to the mainstream in the UK for the past few months (Sony readers are currently priced around £200), though for about a year in the States. eReaders vary from Sony readers to full laptops (Asus Eee etc) – there are portability advantages and ease-of-transfer, for example Billy bought Stephenson’s hefty Anaethem in Sony eReader format, while Sizemore has shown him graphic novels on the iPhone. Some eReaders also incorporate interesting interactive elements, for example the ‘Blue Book’ (as shown in a YouTube video uploaded by account simonwardley) enables readers to play with the story, when can flick through the Blue Book printed book and press on particular page sections the ‘book’ triggers blue-tooth connections between the book and your personal laptop nearby and enables readers to interact with their computer.

Re. publishing costs breakdown, distribution and printing total around 2/3 of the cost of producing any individual book, therefore eBooks really should be cheaper. Publishers are currently working on how to price these, however the cost of books isn’t actually about printing&distribution, it’s really about how much consumers are willing to pay. Some retailers are using pricing as an advantage, for example, Sony is selling Anathaem for £8 (my note: the only version available in print, hardcover, currently retails for £20). Similarly, Charlie Stross & Cory Doctorow give books away for free (Accellerando.org was given away by Charlie initially) and are leading the field in different models of author-public interaction and purchasing models.

The Future of the Book Think Tank
Chris Meade

Chris started paying more attention to eReaders/similar following his becoming depressed by the idea of books as objects. Books, in Chris’s opinion, shouldn’t so much be considered as objects so much as an experience through a certain type of platform. Chris recommended follow up on points made by Bob Styne who set up the Institute for the Future of the Book in the States.

As we transfer from page to web, we’re moving from the Gutenberg Press format just as the press moved from hand-printed publications. Gutenberg went bankrupt when he printed the first book (it cost as much as a farm at that time). Websites are becoming physical books – we get so caught up in the screen being the big issue – however we have to think about what a ‘book’ really is, and it would be useful to try to understand the concern people have about the ‘loss’ people are feeling about these changes.

Unspeakable movie In terms of the writer-publisher relationship – there is a new model emerging – writers may get excited about this as they progress.

Audience Member: Books were initially published through serial magazine publications. Similarly, science-fiction / genre fiction writers are published through those magazines in short form and then using that as the basis for honing their work.

Audience Member 2 – Currently publishing his own work as PDF and focusing on encouraging a community around that work.

Audience Member 3 – How is Piracy affecting the industry?
Chris – Unless someone is buying a work there’s no point in piracy copying it – so it doesn’t change the issue for the majority of works published on the web, but it does affect larger authors. Billy bought Stephenson’s work but actually read them on pirated PDF versions on his PDA.

The Amplified 2008 Future of the Book session provided a great overview with interesting insights into the various issues facing publishers and consumers of eBooks, and was supplemented by some wonderful photos from Annie Mole, documenting reading habits she’s observed on the London Underground.

The Perfect eReader

Further to the great discussion stimulated by the above session and previous posts on Going Underground, I’d like to contribute a starter wishlist for characteristics of the Perfect eReader (you know, kinda like Penny’s Computer Book in Inspector Gadget) – sure I’ve missed many useful features, all contributions welcomed:

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• Ruggedised (eg. a plastic enclosure option similar to those already available for those who go sailing, for bathtime reading)
• Light
• Flexible
• Have a screen that opens like a book in the middle of a phone
• Adjustable to suit backlighting preferences etc.
• Instant-opening of eBooks, as we’ll wait only a few seconds for files to open
• Annotatable
• Universal format and DRM-free (eg. PDF)
• Cheaper than real books as distribution costs so low
• Content accessible to kids in developing countries – focus on linking OLPC, Wikipedia, Project Gutenberg etc.
• Don’t want to separate them from other devices – make the reader either an add-on device for existing phones or build into phones
• Possibly enable people to share annotated versions simultaneously so all can share ideas and comment on each other’s point sharinginfo. Ideally a virtual mobile library connected to friends, with friends checking out annotated versions of each others books, imagine the insights shared. This could be started quite readily with a mobile-friendly site linking to out-of-copyright books from Project Gutenberg) that would be fantastic.

As I previously commented at Annie Mole’s Going Underground blog, this topic really isn’t an issue that affects a great proportion of the population at present, however if those in undeveloped countries continue as previously, moving straight to mobile devices (skipping PCs) and absorbing their personal information requirements in that form, with those in developed countries similarly move to smaller and smaller OLPC/Asus Eee style laptops before similarly skipping to amped-up PDAs for day-to-day information needs, then it does seem to be the direction we’re moving in. Many don’t mind how information is delivered, as long as it’s accessible – and books beat most formats for one-to-many efficiency (save text files & MP3 for those of us who don’t mind consuming our info. electronically) — what with books being sold without chains&padlock or ‘this book will self-destruct within a month of reading it’ DRM bombs as most eBook/non-MP3 format publications are currently sold to the few of us who put up with their rubbish.

Dirty Harry In any case, only 57% of UK homes currently have broadband (as of earlier this year), presumably it’s mostly those with broadband who bother with eBooks/audio versions (save those who still use CD walkmans), so until we start sorting out mobile phone screens & delivering Project Gutenberg out-of-copyright text through cross-platform readers, around 40% of the UK population won’t find electronic formats very useful at all – perhaps this is exactly what we need to do…

Now that Developer Day voting is open the competition to an MSDN subscription is closed. We ended up with three potential female speakers, one from an MVP, Bev Hatchard who spoke at DDD Scotland and is now bitten by the presenting bug, one from Chris Hart

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on virtual worlds and a submission from Helen Emerson

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Now the competition was going to end when voting ended; but as Bev is an MVP and already has an MSDN subscription and Chris has a subscription from Dave Sussman that leaves Helen. This isn’t a win by default; Helen has been ramping up her talks at usergroups as well, so last night when she spoke at my usergroup last week I presented her with her prize; please enjoy it Helen!

From speaking to a few others some potential speakers had considered it but were too nervous to attempt it; this is perfectly understandable – my first speaking engagement was a favour for a friend at work who forgot to tell me it was for a major conference and there could be up to 100 people in the room. Nerves are unfortunately part of it, they never go away and I’m not sure how to address that. If you’re one of the nervous folks would a mentor help? I’ve been thinking about this for a while and popping emails back and forth between a few of us; the community needs more speakers – how can the community help you overcome your nerves or objections and get you up to the front?

If you missed the change to submit for DDD you have another option. With REMIX around the corner on 18/19^th September 2008, once again the community is gearing up to provide its own unique brand of  “entertainment while you learn” plus opportunities for all members of the UK Community to take part in events and promote their groups and themselves.

To that end, the REMIX team are organising another Speaking Competition along the lines seen at TechEd and the UK Launch.  The community team is offering a fantastic opportunity to do just this by offering the chance to speak at a major event to your user group members.  In the process they can get some help in improving their speaking skills plus have a chance to win an Xbox 360!  Yes “Ready Steady Speak” is back for REMIX.

The Secret of NIMH rip For those of you not familiar with it, the format is as follows;

Contestants will present a 5 minute session on a subject of their choice relating to Web Development or Web Design.  They will present in front of the REMIX audience and in front of a panel of judges.  If there are more than a  certain number of contestants (TBD), there will be ‘heats’ earlier in the day with the winners of the heats in a ‘speak-off’ in the evening session.  The ‘speak-off’ will take place as stated in the evening of the first day of MIX and the first prize is an XBox 360 and some goodies!

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Mandatory Prerequisites:

• Speakers must NOT have previously presented ‘full sessions’ at DDD, TechEd, DevWeek, SDN, SQLBITS, VBUG Conference, NxtGenUG FEST or any similar such conferences.
• Speakers must create a new session of their own with new material which can be based on existing material but cannot be a simple copy of it.
• Speakers must limit their session to as close to 5 minutes as possible (overrunning time will cause the speaker to be marked down.)
• Speakers must not have previously won Speaker Idol or “Ready Steady Speak” UK Launch
• Speakers must state their desire to enter the competition by no later than COP Monday 15^th September 2008.

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• Speakers should provide if at all possible their own laptop, but one can be provided if necessary.  The speaker should notify the organisers of any software prerequisites.
• Speakers should have spoken previously at a User Group meeting even if only for a 10 min mini-session or ‘nugget’.  This is NOT mandatory.

This is a great starting point for your speaking “career”; all you need is a five minute topic and the feedback you receive will be constructive and helpful, unlike the real Pop Idol. If this is tempting then Dave McMahon is the person to email.

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We thought it was a good chance to get together, share some wine, food and conversation!

It should be a fun event and one that I hope you will all enjoy.  There is only one release of tickets for this event.  After which a reserves list will be created.  Tickets will be strictly on a first come first served basis.  Sign up early to avoid disappointment.  We will also do our best to live stream the event via UStream.tv to here and the girlgeekdinners.com site.

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We have some fantastic speakers for this event and it should be a lot of fun!  The event is sponsored by OpenNETCF Consulting, where pizza and soft drinks will be served.

For more details on the event and to sign up take a look here!

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• We are looking for a couple of people to take part in a panel discussion for our 3 year anniversary Girl Geek Dinner on the 28th August.  What we are looking for in particular are two women, one who doesn’t have children but maybe has a busy social life and the other a mother who is still in the IT industry who has had children who are grown up and have moved away.  If you think you could be what we are looking for and are available on the 28th August in the evening then do get in touch.

I look forward to seeing some of you at the next Girl Geek Dinner!

Firstly; what is DDD? It’s FREE one day events, all about .NET developers learning, sharing and interacting with each other in an informal and relaxed atmosphere. There will be NO Microsoft speakers presenting, just speakers from the UK .NET developer community; although Microsoft kindly donate the space, breakfast and lunch and some of the Microsoft UK Developer Team

on hand to help out and chat to attendees.

What’s the prize? An MSDN “Team Suite” premium subscription for 1 year; basically everything you need for Windows development; Visual Studio Team System, SQL Server, Windows Operating Systems, Office 2007, SDKs and even four support incidents; which, if you buy it, costs just over £8500. You can find out more details on the MSDN subscription pages.

So what do you need to do? Well if you have something you’re passionate about that you want to share with the DDD community submit an abstract. A few things to note;

• DDD only accepts speakers from UK residents, thus this competition is limited to UK residents.
• Only grok talks or 60 minute presentations will be acceptable for this competition
• Because this is to encourage girly geeks in the community you need to be a girl.
• Entering an abstract for the competition does not mean it will be accepted by DDD.
• I only have one subscription to give away.
• You acknowledge that this may be taxed and it is up to you to pay any taxes that may apply.
• This is not an official (or unofficial) competition from Microsoft or the DDD Event Organisers.
• Anyone that moans that it’s a subscription for Microsoft software; or comments that Microsoft are the devil or who uses M$ in a comment will be pointed and laughed at.

The prize will be awarded to a girl geek who has her session accepted and presents it at DDD7. In the event that more than one girly geek submissions are accepted I shall draw names randomly from a metaphorical hat. If no sessions are selected by the community I will draw a name from all session submissions from girl geeks. The winner will announced via the girlygeekdom blog just after DDD7, or if no-one had a talk selected by attendees the announcemen will take place after voting closes on the agenda.

In order to keep track of which submissions are from girl geeks please email the details of your talk to MSDNComp@londongirlgeekdinners.co.uk Ali move once you have submitted it on the DDD website.

Unfortunately, we didn’t have an event in May but you’ll all be happy to know that we are ready to announce our June event!

Details for this event can be found here: http://lggdwithit4c.eventbrite.com.

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The details will be posted up on the www.londongirlgeekdinners.co.uk website as well so that you can find the details without this e-mail. You can subscribe for updates to the site via its RSS feed for the latest news and information about London Girl Geek Dinners. We are looking to put all announcements via there in the near future with an integrated newsletter service for those who prefer the newsletter to the RSS feed. I’ll announce the move from this newsletter provider to the website hosted version when it’s been launched (and fully tested!!!). No one is going to be moved across until then! (too much risk of spam disasters otherwise!)

There’s a LOT of stuff in the newsletter this time from events, and speaker proposal offers through to details about how to get onto Dragons Den. We also have a new section for Jobs. We will aim to bring great jobs including those for student placements and so on! We also have something special for you too! If you are interested in speaking at a local school then there is the first of many opportunities to do so. The details are in the newsletter as an invitation to inspire!!! I do hope some of you might consider something like this if you can manage to spare an hour for a local school.

Also keep you’re diaries free for the 11^th July for an event with a local school to inspire students and former students into the technology arena. And not to forget the 28^th August as we will be doing our big 3 year anniversary event over at the Google office in London. More details about that will pop up closer to the event!

Please do keep an eye out for the Girl Geek Coffee events too! Melinda’s doing a great job with those and is aiming to do them roughly every couple of weeks. The details for them are also up on the London Girl Geek Dinners website, and with the frequency of then it’s definitely the quickest and easiest place to hear about them.

Please do take a look. “The MentorSET scheme is currently FREE to both Mentors and Mentees. Mentors’ expenses will be paid. For mentees, some expenses (travel etc) may be met by the scheme.” So there are no excuses not to join in.

Now I know that mentoring was one of the things that the Girl Geeks were interested in getting involved with so I’d be interested in hearing about any feedback on the MentorSet system to find out if it is something that works or doesn’t. I’m hoping it will be something that benefits everyone who uses it!

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UpdateI think we are pretty much there with the site now… there are a few tweaks still to be done but all in all this is pretty much there!

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