Thanks to Kathleen Dollard for hooking me up with the London Geek Girls giving me somewhere to go and something to do with myself in the 3 days between SDN in Amsterdam and DevReach in Bulgaria!

I'll be heading to London for the interim and speaking at the 3rd Anniversary of the London Geek Girl Dinner. I'm so looking forward to this because I get to talk about being a geekette and don't have to write a lick of code. The geek girl dinner's are non-denominational, so to speak, crossing over many technology areas. It's a coincidence that this month's meeting will be at the Microsoft office. The fruit just does not fall far from the tree, does it? :-)

Here's the abstract for my talk.

Julie Lerman: “Defining the –ette in Geekette”
Twenty years ago, Julie Lerman learned that she had to act and dress like the guys in order to fit into the IT Industry. Today she’s found that the cover-up is no longer necessary. Many of her “girly” qualities have become advantageous in a world of geeks where she now speaks at conferences all over the world and has just finished writing her first programming book for O’Reilly Press. Julie will share with the London Girl Geeks some of this historical perspective and lessons learned.

But wait there's more. I'm going to be in pretty intellectual company! The other speaker for the evening is Dr. Elisabeth Kelan who is a Senior Research Fellow in the Lehman Brothers Centre for Women in Business at London Business School (http://www.london.edu/womeninbusiness.html). (I sure hope that Centre was endowed for the long term! :-( ) Elisabeth will be presenting on research she has done on gender proportions (such as the oft-quoted percentage of IT workers that are women (it's 10% if you were wondering)) and gender stereotypes in the workplace.

I've heard these gatherings have upwards of 150 GEEK CHICKS. I am SO excited to be able to participate in this. I'd be thrilled just to be a fly on the wall, much less an attendee or even a presenter. Thanks to Microsoft for sponsoring this large meeting.

For my other two days, I plan to wander around the V&A (you can find me among the glass, ceramic and armor collections oh and maybe the tapestries and well, so much more...) and consume tea & scones.