The theme for the Women in Technology event last night in London was all about flexible working. Now the first thing most people think about when talking about this sort of thing is children and families. However flexible working is much more than that. It is all about working the hours and in a manner that suits you and the team that you work with. For example think about co located teams... You need to have the flexibility to work late at night and early mornings in the UK to catch the US online. This is when flexible working comes into it's element.
Big themes that came up were monitoring people doing flexible working, trust, reasoning for doing it, how flexible the job is, family, support team, professionalism, promotions.
Questions that were asked on the evening were more about the way that companies cater for children and long distance travel to the office. Eileen Brown, as always did a fantastic speech about her flexible working practice and she doesn't have children, just a very understanding husband and a busy lifestyle! She is a classic example of flexible working in a business environment where communication, technology and understanding come together to make a workable system.
I need to apologise to those people who were expecting a podcast of last nights event... I went out there with the tools and the technology to do the event but somehow along the way the MP3 voice recorder decided there wasn't enough space on it and it didn't record more than one second of the entire event! I will clear down the device and be all ready for the next event! (I'm really annoyed with myself for not checking that out before starting the recording!
The event was a complete contrast to the London Girl Geek Dinner events that we organise, it is very formal and mainly aimed at the high flying executives and senior management. In some ways this is a good thing because it means that London Girl Geek Dinners has a unique market and is hopefully helping to fill the support gaps for people. I like to think of it as an enabler to understand markets, network, learn and explore. I hope others find it useful. From the feedback that I get it seems to just work. I hope that it continues to get the support that it needs. Also look out because there are whispers of Adriana Cronin-Lukas coming over to New York and doing a Geek Dinner or even a New York Girl Geek Dinner! Now how cool would that be! I know so many people are interested in getting these things started around the world. Adriana is looking for a venue that can scale that won't cost us to host the event from in NY! If you know of somewhere central and suitable then let me know and I will put you in contact with her. We are also after speakers for the NY event so if you are someone who is interested in talking at an event on technology and geekdom then we would love to hear from you! :)