Girl Geek Scotland is a volunteer group, started over 10 years ago, with the goal to create a network & community to support women working and studying in the technical, creative and related sectors in Scotland.
We run a range of educational and networking experiences – from hackathons to personal development workshops and industry expert panels. Topics have spanned from CyberSecurity & Blockchain to learning skills for leadership.
Our events are social and friendly, and provide opportunity for networking, hearing from peers about challenges they have dealt with, and sometimes simply letting off steam! They’re a safe space for people to talk and provide an environment not always available to those working in male dominated sectors.
Girl Geek Scotland stemmed from Girl Geek Dinners founded in 2005 in London – an organisation now with over 50 networks across the world.
The tech community in Scotland is full of opportunities – we want to ensure that women have an equal advantage and can thrive within the sector. Turning that on its head, there is proven evidence that a diverse workforce produces better results – more creative thinking, better productivity and improved profitability.
By bringing a community together through our events, we encourage, inspire and support individuals and businesses to identify challenges. Together we aim to make positive changes that break down barriers, tackle skills shortages, recruitment challenges and retention issues.
We bring in experts from our partner businesses and beyond to share their knowledge and experiences, and by showcasing these experts, we give our community role models and positions to aspire to.
As well as working with individuals, we actively engage with our partner businesses – working with them as Diversity Advisors to help them drive change from within – improving the culture, developing their own programmes and being supportive of the different needs of individuals to give all a level playing field.
Through our partnership project, we ask companies both to support us financially and to align with our goals by signing up to our Declaration of Support for Women in Technology and agreeing to:
• Share Best Practice
• Profile Women
• Train Women
• Be a Visible Ally
We’re at the start of an exciting phase for Girl Geek Scotland with a new leadership team driving us forward.
To ensure we are delivering what our community needs, we’ve just completed a series of listening events with our volunteers, our partners and our attendees – looking to understand more about what their current needs are so we can best meet them.
The results aligned with our thoughts on our next set of events including developing skills to move into senior roles, supporting women returners and enabling the opportunity to develop strong, meaningful networks of both role models and peers.
Recruitment & retainment was also a clear challenge for both those seeking new roles and those seeking to recruit them. We have recently endorsed a study, initiated by Edinburgh based businesses Purpose HR and Administrate, to ask women about their experiences in this area, and will use the results (once available) to help shape future workshops.
The opportunities we create for our volunteers are just as important – to develop new skills, be able to give back to the community and gain experiences outwith their normal working environment.
Please follow us on twitter @GirlGeekScot to keep up to date with our events, and others in our local tech community.
We are always happy to hear from organisations who would like to come on board as partners, or have other opportunities they think we could work on together. Please get in touch by email at hello@girlgeekscotland.com
None of our good work would happen without our dedicated volunteers, if you are interested in getting involved, please get in touch by email.
http://www.girlgeekscotland.com
@girlgeekscot
https://www.facebook.com/girlgeekscot