We regularly host tech events and meet-ups at HQ and most recently had the privilege of welcoming an audience with the London Geekettes — a community of women dedicated to helping aspiring and established female tech innovators.
In this post, we’ve invited the Geekettes to tell us a bit more about their mission and of course the event we hosted. Over to you, guys.
London Geekettes @ Smarkets
Before we tell you all about the Geekettes, let us just set the scene…
It’s a balmy evening and the sun is setting in St Katharine Docks. We’re at the Smarkets office in central London with a view of Tower Bridge, but glancing out over London’s only marina, it feels a lot like we’re in the south of France!
A group has assembled, armed with delicious canapes and charged glasses (provided by Smarkets) to participate in an evening of discussions based around the theme of ‘technical beginnings’, which took about a month for us to set up.
So who are the Geekettes anyway?
We’re a global network of women in technology, dedicated to helping aspiring and established female innovators. With hubs across the world, we can host a huge variety of events from networking to hackathons and even mentorship programs.
We believe that the more women are involved in tech design, leadership, and innovation, the more successful and diverse companies and products will be in the future. The London Geekettes recently re-launched after taking a short break, with new ambassadors to continue organising events for and about women in technology, helping them get the best out of their careers.
This mission is really important, especially at a time when there is a shortage of tech talent in an industry that is heavily skewed towards men. As Geekettes, we all have careers in technology and are doing our best to champion this career path for other women.
The evening with Smarkets was a fantastic opportunity to host a roundtable moderated by the Geekettes, with a panel of amazing ladies from Smarkets, Google and Microsoft discussing their own technology beginnings. Each had a distinctly different background and brought their own unique perspective to the session, which included how they discovered their career in technology, learning opportunities and lots of hands-on advice for our audience members. They voiced their passion for technology as well as their experiences as a woman, in what is usually a male-dominated workplace.
The main takeaway from this event was that diversity is necessary for the all-round growth of the industry. The lack of women in technology not only creates a more difficult environment for women, but it also harms the development of companies and products through a lack of diverse ideas and creativity.
Despite these being mainly women in technology issues to date, it turns out that they’re also general industry issues, and we’re glad to have the opportunity of including everyone in the conversation.
Lastly, we organise these events to share ideas, thinking and best-practice in a relaxed environment where we can bring the network together. We would like to thank Smarkets, our panelists and the audience members for making this an amazing event!
