HackerNest Toronto November Tech Social featuring Women in Technology

This month, we feature women in technology, held here, and at Tech Socials across multiple HackerNest cities. What we'll do:

kung-fu-kick gender stereotypes in the face and push for a 50:50 male-female ratio at an open tech event! encourage further inclusion of women in STEM (Science, Tech, Engineering, Math) industries. help local groups and organizations get more face-time and funding to run community-building events.

We have 3 short talks from 3 very successful, influential, notable speakers (bios and topics coming soon):

Leila Boujnane (http://twitter.com/leilaboujnane) - TinEye (http://tineye.com)
Talk: "Stop working for the man"

http://photos4.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/4/7/7/e/event_306678302.jpeg

Bio: Leila Boujnane is CEO of TinEye (http://tineye.com) - large scale image search using image recognition. She leads the team that built and released the world’s first reverse image search engine (TinEye) and launched the world’s first cloud based image recognition APIs. Changed the world of image search.

She is a startup founder with a decade of software development and technology experience. She is a supporter of Canada’s startup community and a search innovation leader who has received the Canadian Advanced Technology Alliance award for innovation and leadership. Leila has been featured in numerous publications including the Globe and Mail, Fast Company, The New York Times, The Guardian for her work in image search.

When not working, you can find her leading and organizing hardware and software hackathons across North America. Her hackathon series "HackDays" have helped bring together thousands of developers in North America. Leila is currently working on a number of maker and non-profit projects to make the world suck a little less.

Leila is a novice ultra runner and a terrible photographer.

Valerie Fox (https://twitter.com/vfox10) - Ryerson / DMZ (http://digitalmediazone.ryerson.ca/)
Talk: "We did it on purpose: having a purpose and getting it done"

http://photos3.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/4/7/f/6/event_306678422.jpeg

Bio stolen from Wikipedia: Valerie is an executive director, creative director, and professional coach. She is known for her work at IBM Canada (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Canada), as well as for developing and co-founding the Ryerson Digital Media Zone (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryerson_Digital_Media_Zone) (DMZ), a multidisciplinary workspace, business incubator and startup accelerator for digital media businesses. She is principally responsible for making industry and institutional connections, and for bringing partnerships and collaboration to the DMZ. She holds multiple patents, including one for the concept of the “Universal Shopping Cart” and four patents for the “Synchronized Multi-Tablet Internet/TV System.

Valerie received the Outstanding Achievement award for her role on the IBM Executive Design Consultancy Board, as well as an Award of Excellence for the Sydney Olympics website design. In 2012, Valerie received the prestigious Canadian Women in Technology (CanWIT) Sara Kirke (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sara_Kirke) Award for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, provided by the Canadian Advanced Technology Alliance (CATA Alliance).

Pearl Chen (http://twitter.com/pearlchen) - Karma Laboratory (http://karma-laboratory.com/)
Talk: "Programming = lonely? No. Programming = social!"

http://photos3.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/4/8/5/0/event_306678512.jpeg

Bio: Pearl is a technologist and educator.

With over 9 years of professional experience in web technologies, Pearl has a body of work that includes Facebook campaigns for Google Chrome and microsites for Nike. Pearl also tackles more unusual jobs such as modifying the guts of Nintendo Wii controllers and dynamically creating origami objects from SMS messages.

Pearl was most recently the Senior Manager Research & Technology at the Canadian Film Centre's Media Lab and is currently a lead front end web developer on the beta.telus.com redesign project at TELUS. On the side, Pearl works independently as an educator teaching web development, Android, and electronics -- while also building tools for other educators.

Alongside contributing to open source educational resources hosted on Github, Pearl is a published author and contributed the NFC and Open Accessory API chapters to Professional Android Sensor Programming published by Wrox.

Pearl enjoys building tools for other educators and her goal is to raise the bar for technology education by using collaborative platforms to help construct open source curriculums, and by creating engaging and effective educational user experiences.

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Join the club!

We'd like partners and sponsors that encourage and support the proliferation and success of women in technology. Join us as a...

Collaborating Partner if you are an advocacy, support, or interest group/organization that would like to co-produce this event with us and push even more community events.

Sponsor if you would like to endorse this special Tech Social to get high visibility and engagement with a ridiculously smart, passionate, enthusiastic tech crowd in a friendly, social environment that everybody loves.

Email: info@hackernest.com

Rough lineup (pretty much always in development)

8:00pm: folks arrive, grab drinks, socialize 9:00pm: quick intro, thank sponsors, quick announcements Short talks 9:20pm: back to chatting with interesting people and new friends 11:30pm: go home exhausted from great conversations

Sponsors:

Sponsors (http://hackernest.com/sponsor_info/) make this growing movement possible, so we treasure and build deep, long-term relationships with the companies that endorse us. We're always looking for new friends (sponsorship@hackernest.com)!

Kaboom Technologies (http://kaboomtech.com/): web and mobile development experts - always hiring talented talent!

http://photos1.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/6/5/6/0/event_216025952.jpeg (http://kaboomtech.com/)

GuruLink (http://gurulink.ca/): devastatingly effective recruiters that will do absolute wonders for your tech team

http://photos2.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/8/d/a/6/event_202836262.jpeg

car2go (http://car2go.com/): the easy way to get from A to B in a snazzy ride while saving money AND the environment

http://photos1.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/a/f/d/4/event_287325012.jpeg (http://car2go.com/)

OANDA (http://oanda.com/): providing Forex trading and currency information to everyone

http://photos4.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/8/8/f/6/event_202835062.jpeg (http://oanda.com/)

Community Partners:

PyCon Canada (http://pycon.ca): an initiative to strengthen the Canadian Python community

http://photos4.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/6/d/b/c/event_308788092.jpeg (https://2013.pycon.ca/en/)

Girls Raising (http://girlsraising.com/): member-only curated network resource for female entrepreneurs

http://photos1.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/b/2/4/0/event_308805632.jpeg (http://girlsraising.com/)

Venue:

Extreme Startups + Burroughes are teaming up to host us this month!

Extreme Startups (http://www.extremestartups.com/): Canada's premier startup accelerator

http://photos1.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/9/0/b/c/event_298177052.jpeg (http://www.extremestartups.com/)

Burroughes (http://www.theburroughes.com/): event space for Toronto's tastemakers and influencers

http://photos2.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/2/2/e/4/event_308888932.jpeg (http://www.theburroughes.com/)

Wanna show off your office? We're always looking for big open spaces with 200+ (standing room) capacity that are easily accessible.

We love hardcore nerdcore.
Tech folks, tech events, tech love.

About Us:

HackerNest (http://hackernest.com/) is a nonprofit community movement focused on building supportive Silicon Valley like tech communities in every city - strengthening local tech ecosystems globally through unpretentious social events and hackathons (http://hackernest.com/construct/). We’re nurturing cohesive communities (http://hackernest.com/cities/) today to empower them with more relevant and accessible peer-based tech education tomorrow. How? We do this by cramming lots of smart, accomplished people into a room with free beer. Our relaxed, down-to-earth Tech Socials (http://hackernest.com/cities/) became Canada’s largest tech meetups in year 1 (now we're in multiple cities). Our membership - diverse and highly technical. Developers, designers, engineers, social media/business folk, entrepreneurs, investors, etc. gather regularly to socialize, talk tech, maybe hear a speaker, and meet future co-founders, employees, funders, and friends. Strict no-douchebag policy (http://hackernest.com/faqs/for-attendees/).