We want to hear from you!
June 4, 2012 by Melle Leave a Comment
We have a year of Girl Geek Dinners under our belts now here in KW, and we’ve had some awesome speakers and fantastic venues. And a few moments of scrambling behind the scenes… 
We’ll be revving back up in September, and though we’ve already got a few plans in the hopper, we want to hear from you.
For our first Dinner of the next season, we are working on having three of the fantastic speakers who will be in town for the Fluxible UX conference: Michal Levin, Whitney Quesenbery, and Jessica Ivins.
We have some options for how to approach a presentation with them, so please take our quick survey and help us plan the coolest Dinner ever!
Additionally, we always love to hear from you about the Dinners in general. What venue(s) do you prefer? Do you like a restaurant or bar setting, or prefer a more office-like space with catering?
What kinds of topics would you like to learn about? Are there any particular Girl Geeks out there you’d love to have present?
Are there other little things we could improve on? Event dates and times, AV setup, networking, cupcake flavours, swag…? We’re all ears.
Feel free to get in touch on Twitter, or send us an email. These events are to get YOUR brains buzzing and help you grow your knowledge and network, so help us make them marvelous.
See you in the fall!
Filed under Uncategorized
Join us in welcoming Guelph to the Girl Geek Dinners fold
May 31, 2012 by Melle Leave a Comment
On the evening of June 27th at the Innovation Centre in Guelph, the brand, spankin’ new Guelph Girl Geeks chapter will be holding their first event.
We’ll be posting and tweeting info about those events from our accounts, too, since there are plenty of Girl Geeks in the Region who might be interested in the events of one or both chapters. And hey, more great presentations and meeting new Girl Geeks is never a bad thing!
For now, keep an eye on ggdguelph.ca, their Twitter account, @ggdguelph (more content coming soon), and the #ggdguelph hashtag to get all the details.
Filed under Events Tagged with Girl Geek Dinners, Guelph, new
Recap: May Girl Geek Dinner with Dr. Alice Bonhomme-Biais
May 31, 2012 by Melle Leave a Comment
A year after we gathered at the Google offices in Kitchener for our inaugural Girl Geek Dinner, last night we returned for the final Dinner until the fall. After some noshing, courtesy of Little Mushroom Catering and I Heart Cupcakes, and networking, courtesy of the large crowd, it was time to head upstairs for the main event.
In January of 2010, Google.org existed, and Alice was working for Google, but the Crisis Response group did not yet exist. It was that month that the earthquake in Haiti happened, a place where Alice has close ties through family and friends.
She found herself in a frustrated “What can I do?” state, given that, professionally, she spent her days in front of a laptop, and meanwhile Haiti’s immediate needs all seemed to require people on the ground in the country, providing very tangible things for an overwhelming number of needs.
But through helping a friend in Haiti communicate with his aunt outside the country, letting her know how the family was and the state of things, the ball got rolling. Google created a resource page with emergency information, and created Person Finder, enabling those looking for news on loved ones, and those in crisis zones to connect. People could report on their own or others’ status, or use “last known” information if people were still unaccounted for.
Google Maps were also put to sophisticated use, incorporating satellite imagery (nothing better for seeing how a refugee camp is growing in an abandoned golf course), infrastructure data (these roads are passable, these bridges are gone), and information like the location of devastation, refugee camps, functional electrical grids, etc. Think of how handy Google Maps is with traffic data turned on is. Now think of that on steroids for all the types of data needed to launch disaster response and rebuilding efforts. This data is particularly valuable in areas of the world where maps and addresses can be somewhat “fluid”. (To this end, sometimes there is strong reliance on ex-pats for translation services, provision of local knowledge, etc.)
Also consider that after disasters, communications links are often very limited. There may be no landline or cellular telephone access, but a thread of internet connection with the world may still remain active. Or vice versa. (It was possible for some to send their location to rescuers via SMS, a story I’d heard previously from a US military officer who’d been stationed in Haiti after the quake.)
Note as well that all these different data tend to come from various agencies and organizations, and are often in disparate formats, so very fast and extensive work was and is required from Google engineers to standardize it. As Alice noted, tools used during times of crisis need to be simple, use standards, and be open to allow for rapid collaboration (both on the engineering and consumer sides).
Crisis Response has since grown, driven by other major events around the world since January 2010. Earthquakes in Chile, New Zealand, and Indonesia; a volcano eruption in Iceland; flooding in Thailand, Pakistan, and Australia; the Japanese tsunami; tornados in the midwestern US; and a host of other disasters around the world. They can’t take on every big event, but they have assisted with at least 10 since the Haiti earthquake.
Next time a disaster strikes, you may well see Person Finder displayed on Google’s homepage. (The registries do eventually expire.) Alice made the very interesting point that in times of crisis, people do what they know. It is not a time for learning (literally, the brain is incapable of higher function under great stress), and so the tools people already use must be there and able to help. And Google offers a very well known, broad, and powerful set of tools for day to day use. (Imagine no Gmail, no Google Maps, no Chrome, no Google Docs, no YouTube…)
Alice’s team has also built Public Alerts (more info here) so you can find out, as Alice humorously noted, whether it’s a good idea to go out for pizza or not. Public Alerts are another great example of collaboration with a variety of agencies to help keep people safe and informed.
Alice also mentioned a number of other groups working in crisis response, like Random Hacks of Kindness, Ushahidi, and Crisis Commons, for those inclined to investigate or pitch in.
And with that, and a few swag giveaways, we adjourned to the Firkin for continued conversation. Many thanks to Alice and her husband for making the trek up from New York to join us, and for a fascinating, enlightening, and inspiring presentation.
We must also wish a hearty Bon Voyage to Cate, one of our intrepid founders, as she jets off to new adventures in Sydney, Australia later this summer.
We are now adjourned until the fall, but already have some excellent speakers lined up, starting in September. Stay tuned!
Filed under Event Recaps Tagged with Alice Bonhomme-Biais, crisis response, Girl Geek Dinners, Google, Haiti, Japan, Public Alerts
Alice Bonhomme-Biais to present on crisis response and Google’s related initiatives
May 8, 2012 by Melle Leave a Comment
For our last Girl Geek Dinner of the season, we’ve got an amazing speaker lined up. On May 29th, starting at 6pm at the Google office in Kitchener, Alice Bonhomme-Biais from Google’s Crisis Response Team (based in New York) will be joining us to talk about how global responses to disasters have been evolving with technology, some of the systems that have been developed to help people, and some of Google’s initiatives in disaster response.
Tickets to this Dinner will sell out crazy fast, so purchase yours right away! (Plus, it’s your last chance for some inspiring and invigorating Girl Geek interaction until the fall…)
A bit more about Alice, her background, and what she’ll be presenting on…
Alice Bonhomme-Biais is a Senior Software Engineer at Google on the Crisis Response Team. She holds a PhD from ENS-Lyon, France. In 2005, she joined Google in New York and worked onsearch quality for Google Maps. In 2010, Alice joined the Google Crisis Response Team as one of the first software engineer on the team.
In the last decade, pervasive cellular data and Internet access have enabled new approaches to saving lives and reducing misery in times of crisis. Several organizations are developing systems to help disaster responders and people affected by a disaster.
In this presentation, I will present examples of such systems used after the earthquake in Haiti in January 2010 or in Japan in March 2011. I will also introduce some of the new products Google is developing to help the crisis response ecosystem.
Note: If you are a student (high school, college, university, etc.) and would like to attend the Dinner for free, get in touch! One lucky student will get a free ticket and dinner, which will just make the evening that much more excellent.
Filed under Events Tagged with Alice Bonhomme-Biais, crisis response, dinner, disaster response, Girl Geeks, Google