Category Archives: Dinners

Scheduled Dinners

Location Change for Dinner #11

All registered attendees should have received an email with these same details.

The location for the June 23, 2011 dinner, hosted by Bing, has changed to:

City Center Building
555 110th Ave NE, 26th FL
Bellevue, WA 98004

Parking WILL BE VALIDATED. Please bring your ticket with you to the dinner. Be sure to bring a business card to enter in the gift card drawing!

Our agenda will be:
6-6:45 – networking game/dinner
6:45-7:30 – Bing Design team panel discussion
7:30-8pm – drawing for Bravern gfit card and wrap up

Dinner #11 on June 23, 2011

Hello again Geek Girls!

The Bing Design team has offered to host a design centric Geek Girl Dinner. For the first hour of our dinner, we will have an amazing panel composed of several key designers from Bing. They will discuss the latest innovations in design and the various career paths you can take in this discipline.

Not to mention, Bing is hosting our dinner in the café on the 23rd floor of Bravern 2 Bldg in Bellevue. Be prepared for some amazing views of Lake Washington! Side note: parking will be validated …

In the spirit of girl power, the Bing Design team will also be raffling off a $100 gift card to Bravern. You must be present to win!

The dinner is on June 23, and starts at 6 pm. Space is limited, so be sure to register at the Eventbrite page

Below are the biographies of our panelist. We look forward to seeing you again next month!

 

-Liz, Stevi, and Vanessa

 

Laura Kerr

UX DIRECTOR, Bing

Laura is a firm believer in the power of people and the strength of emotional design. She has over a decade of large-scale, consumer-facing services experience at Microsoft. She SKUs toward V1 problems, of which she still believes Search is one. At Bing, she is working toward an integrated approach that redefines a cultural balance between experience design and technology.

Laura is a Minnesota native but has been in Seattle long enough to truly appreciate the fog and rain and the quiet reflection it offers. She has an eclectic collection of higher degrees, has lived in Greece, Italy, and speaks several languages. She loves to swing dance, explore food culture, and play with her most awesome 2-yr old daughter, Chloe.

Mira Lane

Bing Design PM Lead – Studio Management, Prototyping, UX PM

Mira Lane has been leading User Experience innovation in Bing for the past 5 years. Her most recent accomplishments include the successful launch of Bing where her team was responsible for much of the visible innovations in the product from the homepage to results page. Her innovations have resulted in numerous patents for Microsoft spanning aggregation of categorized opinion data to different methods of previewing and displaying faceted search data. Upon returning from her second maternity leave, Mira has shifted her focus to design validation, prototyping and PM for horizontal user experience features.

Mira graduated from the University of Waterloo with degrees in Computer Science and Mathematics. She has worked as a developer at Quack.com in the silicon valley, which was acquired by AOL, and later at Nuance building speech-driven applications.

Outside of work Mira has a full plate as an artist, a mother of two, and outdoor enthusiast. Though her recent family additions have limited her to Rattlesnake Ledge, her outdoor pursuits have taken her from the mountaintop of Kilimanjaro, to Everest basecamp to backpacking around Asia.

Christina Koehn

User Experience Designer, Bing

Christina has been working professionally as a graphic designer since 2007 and is currently a User Experience Designer for Bing.com. Bing is Microsoft’s search engine and is changing the way that people think about search and finding information on the web.

Prior to this, Christina spent time working with the Microsoft Entertainment and Devices division on interface and information design for connected entertainment and for various print and web design agencies in the Seattle area. Her most recent projects at Bing include a redesign of the global visual language system, as well as many design iterations around html5, and the next generation of search.

Christina graduated from the University of Washington in 2007 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Visual Communication Design and a minor in Art History. When not working, Christina loves to stay active by running and training for half marathons, playing volleyball, doing yoga and volunteering as a dog runner at the Seattle Humane Society and also enjoys traveling and reading about design and technology.

Goldie Chaudhuri

Program Manager

Goldie Chaudhuri joined Bing in the last year and has worked on Windows 8 and the Bing iPad app. She recently joined Bing Design as one of their first Program Managers, working on cross-device cross-team projects. Prior to Bing, Goldie worked on various experimental prototypes like Seadragon and Pivot at Live Labs and Spatial Databases at SQL Server.

Goldie graduated with majors in Computer Engineering and Studio Art from Case Western Reserve University, a weird but awesome campus spread out through 80 of Cleveland’s museums and non-profits. She grew up in Jacksonville, Florida and now lives in Capitol Hill where in her spare time she likes printmaking, soldering glowing costumes, geeking out about food and Belgian beers, wandering farmers markets and folk festivals, travelling, doing yoga, and biking around when it’s sunny.

Dinner #10 on May 18, 2011

Happy Spring Geek Girls!

Facebook will be hosting our next Girl Geek Dinner in May! Our community will have the opportunity to check out their new digs in downtown Seattle, enjoy some deelish appetizers, and listen to a panel discussion about “Life as a Facebook Engineer.” The panel will consist of the following women from the engineering ranks at Facebook:

Amy Platt, Software Engineer
Jocelyn Goldfein, Director, Engineering
Kari Lee, Manager, Engineering
Raylene Yung, Software Engineer

There are a limited number of registration seats available (due to size of location), so please register at the Eventbrite site as soon as you can!

If you decide you cannot make it, please email us to cancel your registration so your other fellow girl geeks can attend.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Stevi, Liz, and Vanessa

Speakers and Topics for Dinner #9

Here are the bios of our speakers and their topics for our upcoming dinner on 1/13, sponsored by Microsoft Windows Server and Cloud division.

Shannon Loftis
Studio Manager, Good Science Studio
Shannon Loftis has been has been making games since 1995 and is currently the Studio Head of Good Science Studio. Good Science has led the way in innovating for Microsoft’s Kinect on Xbox 360, starting with its first published game, “Kinect Adventures,” which introduced the world to controller-free gaming on Kinect this holiday.

Prior to this, Shannon spent two years in the United Kingdom establishing Microsoft’s European-based game publishing subsidiary. Her most recent games include “Fable II” and “Banjo Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts,” in addition to her contributions to more than 30 games since joining Microsoft.

Shannon graduated from Duke University in 1987 with degrees in Computer Science and Math. Prior to joining Microsoft, she was a management consultant at Booz Allen & Hamilton Inc. When not working, Shannon loves to spend time with her husband and two sons, aged 7 and 9, either travelling, running, or flying.

Speaking topic: Disruptive Creation: Breaking Down Barriers to make Kinect

Kinect’s main goal from the start is to break down barriers between people and technology. Many rules and norms had to be discarded in the process of bringing this technology to market. Shannon will discuss the changes to approach, success factors, lessons learned, and what to do in order to have a creative technical career, based on her experiences building games for Xbox360 and for Kinect.

Erin Chapple
Group Program Manager, Windows Server
As part of the Server and Cloud Division, Erin Chapple’s team is responsible for driving the Management Experience and Automation Platform for Windows Server. Common across these deliverables is the goal of providing our customers rich, cost effective solutions to manage their environment. Erin joined Microsoft in 1998 and has held several roles focused on delivering solutions for IT. Erin holds a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Waterloo. In 2005 she completed a Master’s in Applied Behavioral Science from the Leadership Institute of Seattle. In 2007 she was recognized by her Alma Matter with a UW 50th Anniversary Alumni Award for her work supporting women in technology. In this same year her peers at Microsoft presented her with the Outstanding Mentor for Women Award. Most recently, Erin was recognized as one of ten “Microsoft Woman Worth Watching” on Mary-Jo Foley’s ZDNet Blog.

Speaking topic: Why Every Women Needs Her Own Board of Directors
One of the strongest means of support for your career advancement and overall job satisfaction are women. Yet we often find excuses as to why not to invest in building these relationships even though the pay-off is huge. As a founding member of the Server and Tools Business (STB) Women’s Leadership Council, Erin will talk about her experience developing her own Board of Directors and the impact a strong women’s community has had personally and professionally across the women in STB.

Event: Seattle Girl Geek Dinner #9

Date: Thursday, January 13, 2011 from 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM (PT)

Location:
116 Bellevue Square
Bellevue, WA 98004

Reserve your seat at Eventbrite!

Dinner #9 on January 13, 2011

Happy Holidays Ladies!

The Microsoft Windows Server and Cloud division has decided to sponsor SGG dinner #9! The dinner will be held at the new Microsoft Store in Bellevue Square. Shannon Loftis, Partner Studio Manager of the Microsoft Gaming Studios will talking to us about Microsoft Kinect! I will be sending out her bio and more information on her talk closer to the date.

We will have great food, an amazing speaker, and a Kinect tournament. So, come ready to learn and play!

Also, please bring a business card, as we will be raffling a Kinect!!

Please park in the Nordstrom parking lot area for easy access to the Microsoft Store in Bellevue Square.

Space is limited, so please sign up at Eventbrite.

Have a safe and wonderful holiday season! See you in 2011.

Liz, Stevi and Vanessa

Date: Thursday, January 13th
Time: 6 pm – 8 pm
Location: Microsoft Store, 116 Bellevue Square, Bellevue, WA
Guest Speaker: Shannon Loftis, Partner Studio Manager of the Microsoft Gaming Studios
Registration: Eventbrite

Dinner #8 on August 18

Happy summer, everybody! We’re excited to announce that Mantis Technology Group, Inc. will be sponsoring a barbeque-style dinner at Marymoor Park in Redmond on August 18. Hamburgers, hot dogs, and veggie burgers will all be available.

Space is limited for this event, so be sure to sign up via Eventbrite!

Date: Wednesday, August 18th
Time: 5:30 pm – 8:00 pm
Location: Marymoor Park, 6046 W Lake Sammamish Parkway NE, Redmond, WA
Guest Speaker: TBD.

Parking details will be sent the day of the event.

Liz, Stevi, and Vanessa

Cloud Storage FUD (Failure, Uncertainty, and Durability)

The topic for tonight’s Seattle Girl Geek Dinner has been announced, it will be Cloud Storage FUD (Failure, Uncertainty, and Durability). Our speaker will be Alyssa Henry, General Manager of Amazon Simple Storage (S3). Her overview:

Failure and uncertainty play a key role when engineering a general purpose online storage system to be durable, available, scalable, and cost effective. I’ll share some of the uncertainty we’ve encountered and the impact of that uncertainty on the design of the system. I’ll also cover some of the hardware and network failures we’ve encountered, others that we anticipate occurring, and how we’ve engineered Amazon S3 to be resilient to them.

Parking information:

There are two types of paid parking: short-term for up to 2 hours and longer-term for up to 10hours. Some of the 2-hour parking will also be signed for Residential Parking.

In the Cascade neighborhood where there are many older buildings, some streets will be signed for RPZ parking. Residents with RPZ permits may park for free on the designated streets and are not subject to the two-hour time limit.

Event Location

Van Vorst Conference Center (building has a yellow V in front, and is in the center of the courtyard).

PLEASE ENTER THROUGH THE RIGHT SIDE of the conference center.

Address: 426 Terry Avenue North, Seattle 98109

And don’t forget, our generous hosts, Amazon.com, will be giving away a Kindle, so please bring your business cards!

Seattle Girl Geek Dinner #7 — June 24th

Happy Spring,  ladies!

Amazon has graciously offered to sponsor the next Seattle Girl Geek Dinner. More information will be coming soon about the speaker and topic.

Hope to see you all there!

Liz, Stevi, and Vanessa

Date:  Thursday, June 24th

Time:  6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.

Location:   Amazon Headquarters – 426 Terry Avenue North, Seattle, WA 98109 (Van Vorst)

Speaker:  Alyssa Henry – Director, SW Development, S3

Title of Presentation/talk:  Coming soon!

Be sure to sign up on the Eventbrite page to reserve your spot! We usually fill up quickly!


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Seattle Girl Geek Dinner is December 3rd at UWashington

The University of Washington has graciously offered to sponsor our next dinner event! Our speakers and topics will be the following:

Yoky Matsuoka

Bio: http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/yoky/bios/

Topic: Understanding human movements

Neurobotics is a new field that lies at the intersection of Robotics and Neuroscience.  In Neurobotics, robotic models and environments are used to understand the neuromuscular control and biomechanics of human limbs.

In parallel, robotic systems are developed to augment, replace and rehabilitate damaged sensorimotor functions.  In this talk, a girl geek will talk about using a robotic tool to understand human level dexterity.

Magda Balazinska

Bio: http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/magda/

Topic: handling humongous amounts of sensor-originating scientific data.

Our dinner will be held in located in the Paul G. Allen Center for Computer Science & Engineering.  Directions to campus (and the building) may be found here:  http://www.cs.washington.edu/news/maps.html

Date: December 3rd, 2009

Time: 6pm-8pm

Location: University of Washington, Paul G. Allen Center for Computer Science & Engineering. The dinner will be in the atrium.

Sign up at our EventBrite event page!

We look forward to seeing you there!

Liz and Stevi

SGGD No. 5 announced for Sept 17

We know it’s been a while, but we’re very excited to announce Seattle Girl Geek Dinner #5.

Microsoft’s Corporate Research Development will be hosting us on September 17, 2009 at the Microsoft WestCommons in Redmond.

Find all the details and sign up on our Eventbrite page. This event will fill up fast!

Can’t wait to see you on September 17!