In the past Nottingham Girl Geek Dinners has had some excellent guest speakers including:
Simona Tassinari
A Software Engineer in the Shared Technology Group at Rare Ltd, a UK-based videogame developer, will do a short presentation about the development process for games and what it is like to work at Rare. After completing an Honours Degree in Computer Science in Italy at the “Università di Bologna” in 2003, Simona spent over a year in Amsterdam, working on an immersive virtual reality system for medical purposes, implementing the renderer and various modules. In 2005 Simona joined Rare in the Shared Technology Group, where she works on the R1 SDK, Rare’s internal middleware solution, especially focusing on the math library, the preview pipeline for art content, and supporting games teams. The R1 SDK has been used for the recently released titles “Viva Piñata” and the Xbox360 launch titles “Kameo: Elements of Power” and “Perfect Dark Zero”.
Eileen Brown
Gave apresentation on how women who work in the Technology industry feel about working in IT. The results from the Microsoft commissioned survey are surprising – especially the comments by women, about women. Eileen Brown talked about her unconventional route into IT and discusses the survey results.Eileen joined Microsoft in 2001 as a Systems Engineer, initially focusing on Mission Critical Windows before moving to the Exchange team. She now manages the team of IT Professional Evangelists and is responsible for Messaging, Collaboration and Productivity technologies.
Susan Hallam
An internet marketing strategy consultant and trainer will be talking about search engine optimisation - improving your visibility in the search engine results. She will talk about best practice thinking and guidelines for improving your rankings in the natural search results.Susan is an independent business consultant specialising in web marketing strategy and tactics, customer relationship management and the business impact of emerging Internet technologies.
Rachel Jacobs
From Active Ingredient, Rachel presented on "Ere Be Dragons". A game that maps unknown territories, controlled by the heart beat of players as they walk around the city, resulting in an interactive installation.Active Ingredient create art works, using everything from household chemistry to emerging technologies. Thier artwork explores the relationship between real and imaginary digital spaces attempting to unlock everyday magic from the rigid systems of new media.
Gerry Emmerson
From "Accelerate Nottingham" - Nottingham's bid to win the Digital challenge.
Gillian Hunter
From Aardmaan - "Cities of the Future - Fact or Fantasy?" - opening a discussion about technology, women and how they can make an impact on all kinds of planning!Gillian is an experienced sales and marketing professional (and girl geek) and has headed up huge international bids and tenders for large telco and construction companies.
