Philadelphia’s Geek Women Gather for Successful Kickoff of Girl Geek Dinner Chapter
Over 30 self-proclaimed “geek” women met up at Triumph Brewing Company in Old City on Tuesday, April 26 to kick off Philadelphia’s Girl Geek Dinner Chapter during the first ever Philly Tech Week. The event started at 6:30pm with the opportunity for attendees to network and enjoy drinks from the cash bar. At 7, Tristin Hightower, Chapter organizer, welcomed the group and gave a brief introduction to the overarching organization, explaining why she started the chapter and her goals for it. Jamie Allen from Chariot Solutions dropped by to give a quick announcement about an upcoming Scala event that he’d like to see more women get involved in and then Tristin introduced the evening’s speaker.
Maggie Avener of the Prometheus Radio Project spoke about demystifying technical topics to make them accessible to less geeky audiences, emphasizing techniques borrowed from popular education. She covered tips on audience-appropriate advertising for beginner technical trainings, assessing and acknowledging what participants already know, designing trainings that reach people with varying learning styles, and pushing people beyond their comfort zones while maintaining a feeling of safety. [click here to see slides from Maggie’s presentation, PDF]
Tristin closed out the speaking portion of the evening by thanking everyone for attending and doing some Q&A with the audience about where to go from there. Attendees ate dinner and mingled until about 9pm.
Pictures from the event can be found on Flickr and Facebook
Up next for Girl Geek Dinners Philadelphia will be a May Happy welcoming to all. To stay connected with upcoming events or activities, follow GGD PHL on Twitter, like them on Facebook or join the GGD PHL announcement mailing list.
To learn more about Girl Geek Dinners Philadelphia, visit www.ggdphl.com.
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[...] the first of which was back in April, and had Maggie Avener of the Prometheus Radio Project give a talk on making technical topics more accessible to less geeky audiences. The next dinner will be held in late July or early August. For now, dinners are for women only. [...]
[...] first dinner, held during Philly Tech Week, had an attendance of 32 ladies from a variety of technical backgrounds and interests. We’re [...]
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