London Girl Geeks Join In

 

iT4Communities hosted an event at the ITC Hall on 25th June for the popular London Girl Geeks network with over 50 women (and men) in technology attending.

London Girl Geeks is aimed at providing women in technology with a welcoming atmosphere and a platform for learning in an informal environment. The Girl Geek events were featured in 'The Guardian' in May and are linked in with the national and international Girl Geek network.

Rachel Burnett

BCS President Rachel Burnett

There were three presentations given by Kath Moonan of AbilityNet, Rachel Burnett BCS President and Anne Stafford from iT4Communities.

Kath Moonan talked through and demonstrated the problems that Web 2.0 applications such as twitter and technologies like AJAX can cause people who use assistive technologies (screen readers etc) or people who have cognitive disabilities or other problems. Kath called for APIs to be released with accessibility built in from the start.

Rachel Burnett, BCS President and a solicitor specialising in technical copyright and technical contracts, gave an overview of how IT law is designed to change in relation to the fast moving world of IT. She prompted a discussion about the rights of governments to watch our data and how http transactions inevitably include content and not just a record of date stamp, recipient and sender. For those who wish to get more involved in this see the Open Rights Group website or the BCS ethics group. Rachel promoted the BCS Women's forum as a very supportive and useful place to exchange ideas and ask questions.

Our own Anne Stafford presented on iT4Communities. She spoke about how iT4Communities supports small to medium sized charities, social enterprises and community/voluntary groups to make the best use of IT by introducing them to skilled volunteers. There was a very enthusiastic Q & A session where people showed their commitment to sharing their technical skills via volunteering, trying to help the third sector make good use of new technologies. Lots of good ideas also came from people to help iT4Communities access new funding sources so the good work can continue. Thank you to everyone.

The iT4Communities slides are on our website as a PowerPoint presentation and there are photos of the evening on our Facebook group. You can find more about London Girl Geeks at http://londongirlgeekdinners.co.uk.