Eileen Brown's WebLog

Women in Technology - and food

(Sounds better than the term girly geek dinner doesn't it).  Sarah did a fantastic job mobilising women to mix, network and interact with each other the other night.  Almost all of the women I chatted to were energised and motivated.  There were some amazing men there too who seemed to be failry chuffed to have been invited.  I'd have loved to spend more time chatting to everyone (and persuading the lovely Dave that he needs to upgrade his eglu to increase his production line.  Sorry that Neil had to go too - would have been good to talk for a little bit longer.  Improbulus did some serious networking too, and captured lots of names

And the great thing was that almost everyone said that they'd go to the next dinner too.  its just the term "geeks" that seem to put women off.  So ok, what do we call a female geek then?  I'd love to know...

Will the Real Rob Marshall please stand up?

<pinched from an Eminem song I think...>

This is a plea for Rob to get in contact with me.  I've tried to leave a comment on his blog, and also use the contact me field, but I think the guys in myItforum have some challenges with receiving comments on their blogs (I gave up trying to comment on their blogs months ago - sorry Rod, Ron, Brian, John etc...)  Trackbacks do still work however - hence this post.

So Rob, or anyone who has access to his smtp address - please can you contact him and ask him to get in touch.  I want to make him an offer....

Insiders forums

Steve Lamb blogged about creating a Security Insiders forum and so far has received very positive feedback about the need for this type of community.  I'm thinking about following his lead and creating 3 different types of Insiders forums:

Messaging Insiders

Real Time Communication Insiders

Windows Management Insiders

I wanted to include Insiders who didn't specifically use Exchange for messaging, or MOM for managing the Windows environment, to encourage sharing of industry wide best practices and to encourage debate.  I'm also looking for presenters / technical writers etc.

If you're interested please let me know, if this is a good idea or not, either by adding to this post by posting a comment, or by using the contact link on the blog.  I'd be interested in your thoughts. 

User Forums - is online really better than face to face ?

I spent the whole of yesterday, with the UK based MVP community who were at campus in Reading, and I was keen to know their views on how they feel about how Microsoft interacts with the IT Pro's, and to capture some of their thoughts.  Most of the MVP's I spoke to seemed to be happy with their involvement through newsgroups and other online user forums, but none of them interacted with their contacts in a face to face user group or forum environment.  So this got me thinking.  Are user groups happy to interact with each other primarily through the newsgroups, or do they feel that there is benefit from regular face to face meetings?  I had a quick search on the web for some UK centric User Groups or Forums in the messaging or management technologies areas and found very few IT specific user groups for platform people (as opposed to developers who seem to have lots).

Why is this?  Don't the IT Pro's have the same sort of challenges as developers?  Don't we need to have user groups in the UK?  Or are we happier in front of our PC's with blogs and newsgroups?  Is this a UK specific issue, or is it just down to the good old UK weather?...