Girl Geek Speak

I’ve just got back from Nottingham’s second Girl Geek dinner. We had a very respectable turn out too, with a few returning folk and some new ones.

I’d like to thank our speaker Gerry Emmerson, who came along to talk to us about Nottingham’s bid to win the Digital Challenge.

Nottingham is bidding to win the UK’s Digital Challenge; seeking a prize fund of £7million to use and develop new technology for the people of Nottingham.

Success of the Digital Challenge top ten finalists and the ultimate national winner will be how on how effective they can demonstrate meeting the key themes of:

Empowerment – The winning bid will be able to show how they will use ICT to give new choice, voice and empowerment to citizens; it should be about enabling citizens to create not just consume services.

Service Transformation – This must demonstrate radical innovation in service re-engineering, not just applying ICT to current provision but using ICT to transform the whole way a service is provided; used and experienced.

Efficiency – Local Authorities must show that after year one their initiatives are sustainable and cost effective and be prepared to showcase these to other local authorities in years two and three, acting as the UK exemplar.

For more information or to get involved in this exciting competition, visit acceleratenottingham.com.

After our presentation from Gerry, we polished off many plates of tapas and went on to talk about things from gaming culture and the youth of today, to the You Tube generation and trying to meet deadlines at work!

We had another great selection of people, so if you fancy coming along to the next Girl Geek dinner, you should! As stated: “Someone who is female and has an interest in technology, particularly computing and new media. Not necessarily technically minded.”
Signing off…. Nite!