With a name like The Altassian and a location on Sussex Street I was expecting an upmarket bar overlooking the water, but as I was welcomed into the lower ground floor of a company which informally lists its purpose as ‘creating useful products people lust after’ and values such as ‘open company, no bullsh!t’. I was not disappointed. Pizza was lined across one wall, fridges full of drinks on another, and all around the room a group of smiling and welcoming faces affirmed that I was in the correct location.
Fresh slice of pizza in one hand, bottle of red wine in the other I mingled with the other attendees, some of which like Sarah, an auditor from Westpac, were first-timers here like me, and others like Georgie – a chirpy peroxide blonde coder, who was a veteran of the geek girl dinners.
The first speaker of the night was Paula, a psychiatrist who took a mid-career plunge into HR consulting in the sports world and was working at Altassian on a sports website (www.knowthegame.com.au) had three pieces of life advice based on sport (as she was a self-confessed sport’s nut).
- Know the game – linking this to netball she identified that we should know what position we are playing and what the rules of the game were.
- Work as a team – involving not only knowing what our roles were but that of others, likening this to rugby she highlighted the importance of communication in a business.
- Know yourself. Learn to adapt and change – linking this in with her sailing experiences she reminded us to work with the wind, know where our end goals are and read the current conditions, set a goal and work for it.
The next speaker was more true to the geek girl theme, Sasha Bermeister, a 3rd year USyd student who won the Anita Borg scholarship gave us an introduction and tutorial on Markdown – a markup language that was used to create webpages, pdf’s and other documents. For those that are new to what a markup language is, she defined it as ‘a way of describing how a document looks, inside the document’, likening it to a more simple verion of other languages such as html, latex, and restructured text.
As the questions came to a close, and she urged those who were interested to contact her (at sbermeister@gmail.com).
Tonight’s Geek Girls Dinner was an informative, and informal experience that was quite enjoyable, even for someone who had the coding ability of excel, like me. There was a wide range of women and girls from all ages attending, from industry professionals, students and overseas. All the speakers were bright, passionate and clearly loved what they were doing with their lives.
Anyone who is working in the industry, or a self confessed geek is invited to attend the Geek Girls Dinner, which meet regularly and are friendly to all.
Captain Frankie – signing out!
(BEngDipEngPrac-Mechanical)
More information can be found at:
