Copacetic

At the recent GeekNRolla event in London there was a panel on how to get more women into IT. One of the (well made) points was women in IT typical don’t describe themselves in IT. Despite working exclusively with or for IT companies they are in marketing or sales or PR or design etc.

So I put this to the test with the four women from Merrion BD who ran an excellent marketing event for tech companies here in the Digital Hub today.

There answers, marketing, sales, PR, business development etc. Not one considered they were working in IT. At most they would grant they were working with IT companies.

If we want to encourage women to work in IT, we need the existing women in IT to start admitting it

Well Barcamp Dublin seemed to go well to my eye, the only fly in the ointment being practically non-existent WIFI. We had about 90 attendees in total and 20 or so speakers. Based on Barcamp Dublin and previous Barcamps you seem to get around two thirds of the registered numbers turning up.

Things that came up in this Barcamp:

• Make sure the geography of the building is clear to all attendees, loads of people asked me where the main auditorium was, even though I thought it was obvious.
• Name and label the talking areas and put plenty of signs up for people
• Make sure the speakers have plenty of water available
• I brought a big bag of random stationary to the event (postits, markers, sticky tape, spraymount (invaluable!), pens, elastic bands) etc. that proved useful
• Make sure the speakers clearly label their talk, No acronyms or contractions. I think it would be sensible for speakers to add their mobile numbers so they can be notified of schedule changes in the future
• Having tea and coffee available all day would be something I would aim for at the next Barcamp
• Both Barcamp Cork and Barcamp Dublin had the main networking and congregation area backing on to one of the talking areas. Ideally this should be seperated from the talking area so the networking can occur in parallel with talks
• Good WIFI is hard to achieve but Evert Bopp has offered to help here.
• Sean Foley of Microsoft (Clare Dillon‘s boss) has offered to help with videoing future Barcamps.
• You need at least two full timers on the day, one to man the entrance desk (Elly Parker did trojan work in this area) and the other to generally police the event, making sure the schedule board gets filled properly, speakers are ready on time and people can find their way around.

I would like to make one proposal rather than having a seperate blog for each Barcamp (we had BarcampDublin and I see Barcamp Galway is live) why not create one Barcamp blog (barcamp.ie?) that all Barcamps can use. Then there is only feed to subscribe to and each Barcamp can leverage the expertise and community of the others?

Finally, Big shout out to Elly, Eoghan and Paul for helping put it all together.

Full details on the blog. Kick off is Saturday 21st of April at the Digital Hub, just off Thomas St on Crane Street.

If like me you thought The Digital Hub died along with Media Labs Europe then you should take a visit as I did today. The PDC HotHouse Program I am on finishes at the end of September so we are looking for new office space. The Digital Hub offers two kinds of office space to elegible companies (your company must do something related to Digital Media), the Digital Depot and The Digital Hub proper.

The Depot is associated with Enterprise Ireland so they need to endorse your project before you can take up office space there. The offices are housed in the old Guinness printworks beside the Window just off Thomas street. The outside is a 1950′s build but the inside is very Web 2.0 with pastel colours and lots of steel and glass. Office space comes at €55 per desk per week and that includes furniture, broadband (3mb link) and a VOIP phone. You also have access to meeting rooms at no extra charge.

If you want something more traditional (or don’t have an EI endorsement) you can go the The Digital Hub itself. They are currently renovating space in an old redbrick down towards St James Hospital. Space there is €75 per desk per month with similar broadband and VOIP facilities.

The Hub offers a range of other services to companies including a website and forum for companies in the hub to communicate and a CEO forum to allow exchange of ideas and to provide some social networking.

All in all I was very impressed and I hope to move into the Depot (EI willing!) in October.