Nerd Girls Merch

(posted also on http://www.nerdgirlsgroup.com)

If you’re at IBM Connect, IBM InterConnect or many of the ICS User Groups this year you will find us there handing out merch as usual but this year we are excited to have a series of new badges and stickers which we think you will love.  In fact we think you’ll love them so much you’ll want to put them on t shirts and bags and even your computers and cars. So we are excited to introduce

The Nerd Girl Zazzle Shop.  The logos we are using this year are shown below and we have designed some t shirts as well as the badges and stickers you can order yourself.  In fact if you order quickly you should be able to wear your merch to IBM Connect in two weeks’ time.  Even better until Thursday there’s a discount site wide of 15 - 40% (this is a Zazzle site wide promotion using code STUCKONYOU40)

Any funds generated from sales of items on the store will go towards producing more badges and stickers to hand out at user groups throughout the year.  It is not intended that we profit from the merch, we just want you to be able to order it.

If there are any other items you would like to have on the zazzle store branded with any of our logos we’d be happy to hear from you.

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Nerd Girl Badges - Your Votes Please

As some of you may know the Nerd Girls group has produced lots of badges in the past which we’ve handed out at conferences including Connect around the world.  We haven’t produced new ones in a few years and we would like to do that again with a plan to have them available at IBM and non-IBM events as well as available to order on other items from a zazzle shop.

I’d like to thank the team of Kathy Brown, Maria Enderstam, Amanda Bauman, Wannes Rams, Francie Tanner, Katie Harrison, Jamie Magee and especially Jennifer Stevenson who managed to turn our ideas into the images below.

We hope to produce the images in badge format and in some cases decal format for sticking on cars or computers so we’d like some feedback from you. With Connect fast approaching we hope to have them to hand out to attendees there.

For each image please let me or any of the team know via comment or twitter , email or anything else and spread the word

  1. Do you like it
  2. Would you wear it / gift it as a badge
  3. Would you wear it / gift it as a decal
  4. Do you have an event you would like to distribute these at

Please bear in mind the materials aren’t sponsored in any way so we may have to make some hard choices about what and how many are produced to fit within our budget but we hope you like them all 🙂

nerdybynature

We think this works as both badge, decal and t shirt

ifiwereawoman

The guys said they would wear “if i were a girl I’d be a nerd girl”. We think this works as a badge

keepcalm

We think this works as badge and decal .. possibly t shirt

proud

this is slightly off brand but it replaces our ‘my daughter is a nerd girl” as a badge

We think this would work well as a decal for either computer or car

Connect 2017 Plans & Presentations

I’m very excited to confirm that three of us from The Turtle Partnership will be at Connect 2017 in San Francisco in February.  Between us there is some overlap in what we hope to get out of a conference but our interests are very different. My fellow IBM Champion Mike Smith will be attending strategy briefings, client stories and anything to do with futures.  Tim who looks after the development side of Turtle is keen on Monday’s hackathon and the new technology sessions as well as the Workspace and Watson APIs.  For me, as well as technical sessions about new products, I’m working a lot in the hybrid and security spaces so those sessions (including my own) are of interest to me. I also always enjoy the expo and this year the pop up and theater sessions that fall outside the traditional breakouts are something very different I’m suspect I’ll get a lot out of.

I am presenting and hosting three sessions this year:

On Wednesday at 12pm in Moscone West, Level 2 - Room 2009 I am presenting

Benefits and Risks of a Single Identity

What is valuable about a single identity, why is that something people want and how achievable is it? As people work across multiple systems they encounter an equal number of barriers where they must authenticate or otherwise prove their identity in order to gain access. Ideally we always want to be showing the same information about ourselves regardless of where someone searches or how we are found. In this session we’ll discuss the issues behind both creating a single identity and simplifying authentication. We’ll also review the risks you need to be aware of, the technologies available to you and the importance of good and current personal information.

On both Wednesday and Thursday in the Expo Engagement Theaters on the Expo floor we are doing Nerd Girl sessions.  On Wednesday we will have sparks talks around the topic of The Imposter Syndrome and on Thursday around the topic of Relationships IRL.   

The Imposter Syndrome is about the feeling of being unqualified in a situation.  We are looking for only four speakers who can talk to that, either because they live it, have been through it and have lessons to share or have experience of working with or managing people who have it.

Relationships IRL is about how we build and maintain connections with people when many of us work alone, attend web meetings that have no time for small talk or spend the majority of our time looking down at devices and not out into the world.  Again we are looking for 4 people who can speak to those issues or even if you don’t consider it an issue and why.

The Sparks talks do not have to be about your work or career, both the Imposter Syndrome and Relationships IRL can refer to any aspect of your day to day life.

If you are going to be in San Francisco, would be interested in joining us or would consider speaking then please reach out to me or any of the Nerd Girls to discuss.

The really great news is that since both sessions are in a theater room on the Expo floor, anyone with a $89 USD Discover Connect pass can attend.

The Imposter Syndrome is on  Wednesday at 12pm EXPO Engagement Theater # 750

Relationships IRL is on Thursday at 9.20am EXPO Engagement Theater # 300

Icon UK - UI, Sparks and Changing Technologies

Icon UK starts tomorrow, well officially tonight / late this afternoon.  I have a busy week of presenting and helping others present but I wanted to share some of that here

Tomorrow I have a presentation called “Domino in the Front, Party in the Back” which is about all the client options available to you if you’re using Domino for mail.  All 10+ of them.  Including Verse on Premise….

The Icon UK site is down right now but on the agenda I believe I am just after lunch on Thursday http://iconuk.org/iconuk.nsf/agenda.html

Talking of lunch.. that will run from 12.35 - 1.15 and then please come and join Nerd Girls who will be running Spark Ideas from 1.15 - 2pm.  Our speakers are

Amanda Baumann - embracing being a performer
Devin Olsen - Gas, Tires, Oil, and Smoke: Living fast and loud with your hair on fire
Femke Goedhart - The happy pilgram - adventures with strangers on the Camino Portugues
Ben Poole - It’s just twigs and dust isn’t it? Vegan cooking by a meat-eating newbie
Rene Winkelmeyer - pledge1percent

.. this year we will be taking questions for the speakers after their 6 minute talks so come prepared 🙂

Anyone who is at Icon UK and can volunteer to video the sessions for me , please get in touch.

On Thursday night in speedsponsoring I will be talking about how to a maximise your investment in Domino as a mail server including talking to the business about client options.

Finally on Friday, again just after lunch, Mark Myers and I will be holding an open forum discussion on “Changing Your Technology” - how to highlight your skills, work out what to learn and position yourself as a technologist.  I hope you can join us.

So lots of things for me to do , none of them as deeply technical as my usual sessions so that’s a bit scary for me and outside my comfort zone.  It’s going to hopefully be a fun few days

 

Great Geek Challenge - Connect 2014

If you’ve been to IBM Connect (formerly known as  LotusSphere) in the past 3 years you may have heard of the Great Geek Challenge organised by the Nerd Girls.  On Tuesday night of the conference we take over the Fountain restaurant at the Dolphin hotel (the one that sells Ice Cream) and have a fun, loud, stupid, competitive, quiz evening.  Carl Tyler and Paul Mooney have been hosting the past few years and although we are limited by the capacity of the restaurant and the number of events on a Tuesday night, we’ve packed the place out every year.

If you’ve been you know how much fun it is (hopefully) if not - well trust me , it is.  We provide prizes and free food and drink, courtesy of our sponsors. The GGC has never made a penny in profit in its 3 years.  It’s done purely to give our friends an opportunity to have some fun.

This year I’m  starting off by trying to find out if people would be interested in us doing the GGC again and if sponsors want to contribute*.  I hate asking for money and if there’s no interest in sponsoring or attending I won’t put any of us through that 🙂 I did consider asking for contributions on the door but it just doesn’t feel right.  A quick poll seems like a good idea here..

Hope to see you in Orlando in January

The LDC team - having a good time . No really, they were.