Manda QoP

This year I'm talking at TechEd in the Architecture Track (ARC206 if you're interested) and it's my first time speaking at TechEd. It's a great topic and one that I'm really enthusiastic about so I can't wait to let other people know about it. There is a big, splodgy black cloud hovering at the moment though. I am really struggling to find time to make the talk as fantastic as I want to. Why? Clients tugging on both arms. Well, not literally though it does feel a bit like that at the moment. After working for 10 hours at one client (who are an hour south of here), I have to stop off at the other client on the way home and work 2 hours there + all weekend at this second client. Yes, I'm knackered! Yes I've put my foot down and am refusing to work the evenings. I really need to get this talk written and am beginning to feel like there is some major conspiracy going on to stop me getting it done. All this work is also really starting to interfere with Half-...

We've got another Girl Geek Dinner coming up in August in Auckland. This time we'll be holding it in a Chinese Restaurant, so there will be lots of lovely food, a speaker, a quiz, some prizes. The ladies who came to the last event got pretty lucky with the prizes as Microsoft gave us some fantastic goodies to give away. For more information on the next event go to: www.girlgeekdinners.co.nz See you there.

HARDWARE GEEKERY When: Wednesday 28th May 2008 @ 6pm Where: Microsoft House, Level 5, 22 Viaduct Harbour Ave, Auckland Central Cost: $30 from www.girlgeekdinners.co.nz The theme for this event will be hardware development, including designing modern home entertainment systems (codecs/coding/firmware) and building homemade game console interfaces. These speakers know which end of a soldering iron to hold. J We have Cherie Carbines and Steven Ellis from OpenMedia who will be demonstrating MediaCentres and explaining the technical nitty gritty that goes into building them, plus we have a young lady called Tamara Olliver as a speaker. When Tamara was 15 she rebuilt the playstation dance mat to make it more robust then open sourced the code and hardware designs. There will be a quiz and maybe some other fun things to get everyone talking and mingling. Tickets are available from the website: http://girlgeekdinners.co.nz/ and I will need to limit them to 50 because of the venue size, so firs...

Well, we finished recording the CD and now all the hard work is starting, the editing, mixing, production etc... We've also got some guys working on a video for us which sounds as though it's going to be interesting. Time to sell the house in order to pay for the tour of Ireland next year I guess. :)

www.girlgeekdinners.co.nz The next dinner in Auckland is on the 27th March, doors open at 5.30pm. There's a geeky quiz, 5+ speakers, food & drink - you're also welcome to bring your own drink with you if you prefer something in particular. Tickets are $30 and need to be purchased in advance from the website.

It was brought home to me at the weekend just how important it is for people to attempt CPR. Most people seem to be afraid of doing chest compressions, they're scared they'll do it wrong or cause more damage than good, or they're squeamish about touching someone, or they're not sure if it's a heart attack and hold back for that reason. If you see a person having a heart attack and do nothing it is highly likely that person will die. If you're that freaked out that you don't know what to do, then do a course. St John run courses most weekends and they're not expensive, you even get your own dummy to take home with you to practise on. I'll make it even easier for you, here's their web address: www.stjohn.org.nz If a person collapses in front of you, clutching at their chest in a great deal of pain, it is highly likely they are having a heart attack. People will sit passively by their loved one waiting for the ambulance to turn up, begging them to ...

NZ Girl Geek Dinners event #1 has been successfully completed - yay! People have been telling me that the first one is the hardest and that is good to know as it was quite nerve wracking at times in the run up to opening the doors. I really enjoyed the Silverlight presentation from Nas Khan and Nigel Parker and hope that everyone attending did as well. The Q & A session afterwards was quite lengthy with a lot of delving questions from the audience which Nigel answered really well. I'll sort out putting some Silverlight information and details of the sample sites Nigel presented to us on the GGD site in the near future, that way, if you couldn't attend you can still check out some of the fantastic sites being created with Silverlight. The next GGD NZ event will be on 17th January and the topic is Agile. Two speakers have already confirmed for the event, so now I just need to find a room and book some food. :)