Last night I went to my first Girl Geek Dinner. It was awesome. I don’t think I’d even realized how male-dominated my existence was, until I was in a room full of women (and maybe 2 guys). Yes, there was some talk of handbags, but everyone seemed interested in everyone else, there was so much talk of the projects we’re working on and when people stood up to do the open mic, it was great to hear about what they’re doing.
I really felt that this was a community of women who gather together – not to compete – just to connect and cheer each other on. That’s amazing.
Last call for Open Mic, I was brave enough to do it! Earlier in the evening I was all, nooo could not do that, too scary but I did it. And the other women I was sitting with were literally cheering me on. Wow.
I talked about WISE, and how we are always looking for great speakers (afterward a couple of people connected with me and now February’s event is covered, it’s going to be on entrepreneurship – more soon!). And I mentioned what I was working on and invited suggestions from people as to what they’d like to see about their Twitter network.
There was in fact no dinner last night, so once people had dispersed I went for sushi with Terri from CU:WISE and her boyfriend John. There was some competition for biggest geek (it will come to no surprise to anyone who knows me that I lost) and we talked about programming and open source (another blog post, coming soon) and it was really great.
So what did I come away with? A stack of business cards, speakers for WISE in February, a bit more confidence after speaking in front of people with a microphone and total impatience for the next event. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to follow all the awesome people I met on Twitter.
Thanks to everyone who organized it!