Girl Geek Dinners Philadelphia: what we did in 2012/plans for 2013

[Nicole Kline]

2012 In Perspective

Hello, ladies! Now that 2012 has ended, we thought we’d send a little reminder of everything we did last year and where we’re going in 2013 (this also serves as a summary of sorts of what was discussed at our town hall meeting held in November). Please note: our major changes are at the end, including that we will now be charging a nominal fee to be a member of the Meetup group.

2012 - What we accomplished:

• Dinners: 4 dinner events
• Huge thank you to our speakers and hosts!
• Speakers: Jessica Ivins, Maggie Avener, Anita Andrews, Mel Ward
• Hosts: Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney PC, NextFab, Cipher Prime, Zivtech
• Others
• 2 Board Game Nights
• 2 Books & Brunches
• 2 Comic / Graphic Novel Nights
• 2 Craft Nights
• High T(ech)
• Sweet Swap
• handful of random get togethers (meet Code for America, Systers, turned 1 happy hour)

2013 - THE FUTURE -  ChaCha Changes

• Events
• Standard GGD Dinners will remain quarterly
• call for 2013 speakers / hosts being drafted
• ask if anyone has ideas/recommendations
• Next event - details coming soon!
• Social Events
• We’d like to throw it out there to any ladies who would like to organize events to let us know! There is small stuff you can help out with, like organizing happy hours and some of our smaller events. If anyone is interested, shoot us a message on Meetup!
• We want more happy hours, more craft nights and more fun! Let’s do it!
• Misc
• We will continue supporting/partnering with sister groups/events: Girl Develop It, Py*, Web Start Women, Tech Girlz, Women in Tech Summit, and any others we come across
• Hackathon
• targeting Feb/March
• speaker workshop?
• Content / Website
• Continue adding to GGD PHL website lady geek recaps of tech events in the area
• We need help with this! If you attend a tech event in the city and are willing to write a short review of it, let us know!
• Newsletter
• We’d like a volunteer to help aggregate cool and geeky stuff going on in the city into a bi-weekly newsletter for our group. If you’re interested in helping out, let us know!
• Stuff we’d like to accomplish in 2013
• Get some flyers/postcards/business cards made and advertise!

Major Changes:

THE BIG NEWS
Organization Change - Tristin Hightower will be stepping back as Co-Organizer, and Karissa Demi will be helping Nicole Kline as Co-Organizer of GGD!

Bio: Karissa is a Web Developer at Drexel University and in her spare time teaches Web Design at University of the Arts. She has a bachelors Degree in Digital Media and is currently working towards an M.S. in Technical Communication. She enjoys brewing beer, watching sci-fi, reading graphic novels, and playing with puppies.

NOW CHARGING FOR MEMBERSHIP
We will now be charging members $5 a year to be a part of the Meetup group in order to cover the costs of Meeup.com as well as buying swag and promotional items. We will be making this change in the next week. If you cannot afford the fee, no problem - we have many volunteer opportunities. We are looking for responsible people to handle some of our events, like board game night and comic book night, as well as someone to write our biweekly newsletter (see above for opportunities). If these sound appealing to you, please contact us and let us know and we’ll set you up right away. Other responsibilities, like writing up events and taking photos/video, will also waive the fee. We are working on an organizer kit to help people create events and make things run as smoothly as possible.

Thanks so much!

-Nicole & Karissa