Re: [Fsuk-manchester] Fwd: Event: Manchester Girl Geek Dinner #2 - 7:00 PM Friday, July 25, 2008

[Paul Robinson]

On 27 Jul 2008, at 12:16, MJ Ray wrote:

> The email is fine.  I never requested a ban. Please stop making
> stuff up.  Manchester Girl Geek Dinner is clearly on-topic but evil,
> bad and wrong.
> http://home.att.net/~srschmitt/jargonfile/jargon_file-060.html



The issue of whether Girl Geek Dinners was a good/bad thing was  
discussed at considerable length on GeekUp when the first Manchester  
event was organised a few months ago.

The conclusion was that those protesting the loudest didn't like  
feeling excluded, yet had been unable to understand that feeling of  
exclusion was *exactly* what women in the "geek industries" had been  
feeling prior to the invention of GGD events which now happen all  
across the globe.

I was invited to attend the first event, did so, and I can clearly see  
the benefit of it to the community as a whole. As was discussed on the  
GeekUp list, most events in the tech sector are male-dominated both in  
audience and in terms of topic and the change of tempo that happened  
was refreshing.

At the 1st GGD there were women in attendance I'd never see at any  
other event in the North. I go to a *lot* of events in the North of  
England. Let me just try and quantify that a little. They had never  
been to:

* GeekUp Manchester
* GeekUp Leeds
* GeekUp Liverpool
* GeekUp Preston
* BarCamp Leeds
* BarCamp Manchester
* OpenCoffee Manchester
* OpenCoffee Leeds
* OpenCoffee Liverpool
* Co-working Manchester
* VBUG .NET User Group
* Wordpress User Group
* FSUK Manchester (most, incidentally, didn't even know such a group  
exists, which shows how female-friendly your marketing efforts have  
been so far)
* NWRUG
* BSDUG Manchester
* AgileNorth
* Drupal North West User Group
* NW Startup 2.0
* The majority of Manchester Digital events
* Many had never even heard of MDDA (!!!!!!)

Yet they there were. Why that event and not one of the other 18 events  
they could have gone to? Because the other 18 were perceived as being  
"boys" events, or had been marketed in such a way that they had no  
appeal to female attendees.

GGD allows for women in multiple industries to come together to share  
experience, network, and promote industries that are perceived as  
"male-only" to be more accessible to women.

It no more "evil, bad and wrong" than a get together around a single  
point of discussion whether that be free software, programming in a  
particular language or promotion of a particular industry. Would you  
call it "discrimination" if I had a talk prepared on Ruby which was  
rejected at a PHP conference? Or if people refused to listen to a talk  
on how wonderful EULAs were at an FSUK meeting?

NWDC members in attendance use it as a means to try and increase the  
diversity of their own events. "You liked this event? Well, given your  
industry, you might like to meet some other people at GeekUp/.NET UG/ 
whatever". As a result, those groups have seen a slight increase in  
female attendance which *has* to be a good thing for the community.

Learn more about it before criticising it next time, please.

If there are guys looking to go to the next one, I'll try and arrange  
some invites providing you're not going to show me up and talk down to  
women self-organising themselves into a community project that helps  
the sector as a whole.

--
Paul Robinson

http://vagueware.com :: address@hidden :: +44 (0) 7740 465746

Vagueware Limited is registered in England/Wales, number 05700421
Registered Office: 3 Tivoli Place, Ilkley, W. Yorkshire, LS29 8SU
Correspondence:   55 Velvet Court, Granby Row, Manchester, M1 7AB