IBM FITT #Melbourne FREE Networking Event – Feb 23, 2010 #geekgirl

IBM FITT Melbourne FREE Networking Event – Feb 23

Hmmmmmm, senior female IBM executives…

   – Janet Matton – IBM Vice President Sales Operations And Executive
   – Nicole Crooks  – IBM Vice President, SO & Global Technology Services
   – Robyn Woodley – IBM Client Director BHP
   – Jane Chen  – IBM Executive IT Architect

The IBM panel will discuss matters related to their careers in the ICT industry, and the challenges and opportunities they see for business in 2010 and beyond.

After the presentations we will have question time for the audience to ask questions to the panel and then networking time and refreshments.

For more information, goto FITT website<>
(Females in Information Technology & Telecommunications)
 .
Date & Times:
Tuesday 23 February 2010
Arrive: 5.30pm
Finish: 7.30pm

Venue:
The Arts Centre
Level 8, 100 St Kilda Road, Melbourne

The Arts Centre is a couple of minutes walk from Flinders Street Station
Or take any tram (except tram no.1) along St Kilda Road and disembark at the
Arts Centre. Stop number 14.

Miss Cellania looks at 8 Truly Strange Christmas Customs

The holiday called Christmas is an amalgam of many winter holidays from around the world. The name is designated as a celebration of the birth of Jesus, although the date is not recorded in the Bible, and people at that time did not place particular important on birth dates. Scientists say the actual date was June 17th, 2BC because of the appearance of the star that beckoned the Magi. December 25th was set as the date for Christmas in the 4th century by Pope Julius I as an attempt to Christianize midwinter pagan holidays such as Solstice and Saturnalia. Customs such as bringing evergreens inside, eating fat-laden foods, and hanging lights are universal responses to the cold, dark winter season. Some of the stranger Christmas traditions are remnants of those older pagan holidays, and some have been changed over the centuries until their origins are hard to discern. Others were just made up to boost business!

1. Krampus

St. Nicholas, Father Christmas, or Santa Claus is the weirdest Christmas tradition ever, but he is so well known and so well documented that his origins are beyond the scope of this particular post. As a tool to encourage good behavior in children, Santa serves as the carrot, and Krampus is the stick. Krampus is the evil demon anti-Santa, or maybe his evil twin. Krampus Night is celebrated on December 5th, the eve of St. Nicholas Day in Austria and other parts of Europe. People dress as Krampus and roam the streets looking for someone to beat with a stick. Since it is also a night for drinking, the beatings probably don’t hurt much. (Image by Flickr user salendron.)

More from Miss Cellania

Enrol now: Video Journalism with Carmela Baranowska #Open channel #Melbourne

Starts January 7 | Enrolments close December 22

Cross-media skills are essential for journalists. This practical course gives you the knowledge you need to plan, shoot and edit stories as a single-person crew. You will be guided by Walkley Award-winning journalist and filmmaker Carmela Baranowska (Scenes From An Occupation, Taliban Country) and screen your story to a news producer. This course is suitable for print journalists or emerging documentary makers.

Open Channel Training | Under Video Journalism

Blog: throw another tofu-burger on the barbie will ya mate. #Geekgirl on behalf of #tcktcktck

Tcktcktck invited me to write a blog on climate change. I knew immediately what I wanted to pen about – animals!

Have you ever tried to get your head around what it actually takes to feed the planet!? It’s something I find difficult to come to terms with.

Even my little shopping village of Northcote, Melbourne, Australia opened a new butcher the other day. Another one! You’d think 4 existing butchers plus all the restaurants in the area would provide enough meat.

I’ve become more educated lately on the nature of food production, and films like Food Inc are a good start to understand the process from pasture to plate.  Although, I still don’t quite understand who is feeding, farming & processing the 60 billion animals we kill each year.

It’s horrific that most of this is inhumane and, to be quite frank, not producing animals that even taste good. I’m not a vegetarian (yet) but I have massively reduced my consumption of meat and although I try and stick to the MOOS principle (Meat Only on Sunday). I have a lot of reverence for what I eat, and I am conscious of what it takes to get my food on the table.

I know most people eat meat for the flavour and texture. And my smart vegie friends know a lot of tricks developed by Asian food producers who provide some meat-tasting alternatives. Unfortunately, most of this is soaked or prepared in soy sauce and as a Coeliac I can’t go there. But, there must be a huge potential in coming up with an alternative to meat, which tastes like meat, but ain’t. As much as the electric or hybrid cars are being driven (excuse the pun) by an industry that has to, perhaps rather than wants to. There’s a huge market in developing electric sheep, too.

As Copenhagen (COP15) rapidly approaches I would think that food production especially animal production would have to be high on the agenda. But, if ordinary folks like me can’t persuade the masses to re-think what they eat, what about politician turned good guy Al Gore, musician Moby or even PETA pet Pamela Anderson?

Australia needs to take part on a moral and uber-logistical stand on this issue. We can no longer farm or export meat in an inhumane fashion. Even if we do get our farming processes to the point it is compassionate, we need to become sustainable: that means all of us need to reduce our consumption of animals! “Throw another tofu burger on the barbie will ya mate”, might have to become our new national saying!

So, consume less & be informed more!

My personal top ten
1) stop live animal exports (join the Humane Chain)
2) make choices that respect animals; don’t eat them – or at least buy free-range, organic etc
3) moderate your meat consumption
4) support organisations that are compassionate re: ‘farming’  like Campaign for a Universal Declaration on Animal Welfare (UDAW)
5) support organisations that also protect our marine life like Greenpeace and Sea Shepherd
6) keep having a go at growing your own food and find out what and when to plant
7) read labels when buying food and insist that labels reflect ingredients like palm oil
(de-forestation is destroying the natural habitats of Orangutans)
8)become a volunteer join local organisations that protect animals and wildlife (Wildlife Victoria)
9) keep informed of campaigns and if need be, write or tweet our Australian politicians

10) On Dec 12, 2009 join the world for a global day of Action

With much love & respect, RosieX

Help Sea Shepherd raise funds for Waltzing Matilda #Fremantle #Western Australia

Perth Operation Waltzing Matilda Benefit
Fremantle, Western Australia

Wed, 2 Dec, 2009 6:45 PM – 11:45 PM

The evening will be entertaining and provide information on Sea Shepherd’s forthcoming Antarctic Whale Defense Campaign. The MC for the evening will be the Hon. Ian Campbell who is a member of the Sea Shepherd Advisory Board. Special guests include Brad Pettit, the new Mayor of Fremantle, Senator Rachel Siewart, Greens Spokesperson for Whaling, along with current Sea Shepherd crew. There will also be a silent auction and various raffles! Music for the night will be provided by Aiden Varro.

The primary purpose of this event is to raise much needed funds for Operation Waltzing Matilda – Sea Shepherd’s 6th Whale Defense Campaign which is being launched from Fremantle on Monday 7th December. This year, Sea Shepherd’s flagship Steve Irwin, will be accompanied to the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary by the Ady Gil. The Ady Gil is a futuristic trimaran which recently set the world powerboat record for circumnavigation. Due to its speed capabilities (up to 50 knots) Captain Paul Watson (Sea Shepherd President and Founder) intends to use the Ady Gil to intercept and physically block the harpoon ships from illegally slaughtering whales.

The Japanese whaling fleet will be targeting 935 Piked (Minke) whales and another 50 Fin whales, and has threatened to add Humpback Whales* to their quota as well. Sea Shepherd will once again attempt to block the whaling fleet’s efforts to kill these innocent animals and in doing so negate their illicit profits from the so called lethal research.

* Sources suggest Humpback Whales are not being targeted but all whales are beautiful and deserve defending!

Wed, 2 Dec, 2009 6:45 PM – 11:45 PM
Location: Fremantle Town Hall, William Street, Fremantle, Western Australia
Fees: $20 per person, tickets available at the door
Contact: jeff@seashepherd.org
http://my.seashepherd.org/

The 2009 Entheogenesis Australis Mini Symposium at the University of Melbourne on Sat 14th Nov

The symposium will feature an array of interesting speakers including the notorious Bear (Owsley) Stanley: considered by many as one of the underground legends of the sixties counterculture, Bear Stanley was the best acid chemist of his generation, turning on heads from the Haight Ashbury, to the Beatles and beyond. Bear was a minor participant in the Acid Tests of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters. He was the first underground cook to produce high-purity LSD in the 1960s, when it was legal, including the famous White Lightning and Monterey Purple. Nowadays Stanley denies his heroic status, and spends time in Far North Queensland working on sculptures, and writing essays on various subjects. He is renowned for his contribution to sound engineering, particularly working with live gig iconoclasts, the Grateful Dead, and perfecting the idea of on-stage monitors and high quality PAs. A tireless archivist, he kept a ‘diary’ of his front-of-house mixes, including hundreds of Grateful Dead performances, and has seen the release of a number of albums from his “sonic journal” tapes of PA mixes. [www.thebear.org]

Rak Razam authour of a great new book Aya who is presenting ’Planetary Icaro: Using examples from ayahuasca culture, Razam outlines the boom in plant-based entheogenic sacraments that connect to the Divine’.
More info at http://www.bluelight.ru/vb/showthread.php?p=7724544

Melbourne based Polyester will also be running a bookstore of drug related literature and DVD’s and will be offering a 10% discount for all attendees.

Location: The Basement Theatre – the Spot building – The University of Melbourne.
Building number 110 on the corner of Berkeley & Pelham Street. See a map at page two of the below link;
http://www.entheo.net/Parkville.pdf

Date: Saturday 14 November
Time: 10:30am – 6pm
MC: Martin Williams
Tickets: Available at the door, so pleases be on time.
Cost $75
Concession $50

Nancy White in Digital Habits. Stewarding Technology for Communities. Monday 16th Nov, Melbourne

Technology has changed what it means to “be together” for teams, groups and networks. We can now connect and interact across time and space, co-create and share our creations across the globe. This also means we face a dizzying array of tools and platforms which seem to morph and change daily. We all seem to use the tools in different ways, creating gaps and friction in our groups. What’s a person to do? Consider technology stewardship, the practice of scanning for, choosing, implementing and supporting useful practices using technology in a community. Nancy White will share a few frameworks and stories, then we’ll open the conversation.

• What is community technology stewardship?
• What inherent tensions does a steward work with in a community?
• How can we explore a community’s activity orientations as a way of making decisions around technology?

Agenda

6:00-6:30 Networking with other thinking collaborators (over drinks and nibbles).
6:30-7:15 Nancy White: Digital Habitats
7:15-8:00 Informal conversation amongst the group to explore the ideas and concepts.

Venue

RMIT Graduate School of Business, 300 Queen Street. Melbourne
Lecture room 158.1.2B (Ground level – just behind reception).
Ample metered street parking nearby in Queen Street (between La Trobe and Little Lonsdale).

RSVP: by email to melbournekmlf@gmail.com

About Nancy White

Founder of Full Circle Associates, Nancy helps organisations connect through online and offline strategies. Nancy is an online interaction designer, facilitator and coach for distributed communities of practice, online learning, distributed teams and online communities. She has a special interest in the NGO/NPO sector. Nancy blogs as well as teaches, presents and writes on online facilitation and interaction, social architecture and social media. She is co-author with Etienne Wenger and John Smith of Digital Habitats: stewarding technology for communities.

Nancy confesses to online interaction, learning and chocolate addictions. She lives in Seattle with her husband and two grown sons.

More information about available workshops via KMLF – Melbourne Knowledge Management Leadership Forum go here.

Women in Games, Sydney event

AIE Sydney will be hosting a Women In Games event in November for High School girls in grades 10, 11 and 12 to find out more about the games industry. Female guest speakers from the industry will be invited to the event to talk about what the industry is like for women and why it is important for more girls to get into games. There will be networking opportunities throughout the evening and will be extremely beneficial to girls wanting to  pursue a career in the games industry.

Thursday 19th November 2009
6pm till 8pm
Level 2, Wentworth Park Grandstand
Wattle Street, Ultimo, NSW, 2007

More info: sydney@aie.edu.au

Website: women in games

Academy of Interactive Entertainment

Entheogenesis Australis is just around the bend

6-9 November 2009
Swanpool, Victoria
http://www.entheo.net/

Bear Owsley will be speaking:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owsley_Stanley

The Entheogenesis Australis 2009 Conference aims to address the issues relating to drug use/misuse from social, cultural and
historical/traditional perspectives. EGA speakers will draw on the backgrounds of physiology, biology, pharmacology, psychology,
neuroscience, anthropology, botany and more to provide a more realistic context to the role drugs and altered states play in the modern world.

If you’ve ever asked yourself “has the ‘War on Drugs’ created more problems than it tried to solve?” or “is MDMA really a more dangerous drug than alcohol?” – then EGA is for you.

Entheogenesis Australis is a collection of thinkers from all walks of life, we come together to share knowledge about sacred plants, chemical alchemy and states of consciousness.

Melbourne afternoon hack for the ladies

Afternoon Hack, the sequel

Bring your laptop, and something you want to create, debug, work on or learn about. Enjoy some communal hacking with women in the same room as you — not just the same IRC channel.

Beginners are welcome – if you want to know how to set your machine up to develop software on it, or how to configure it for some particular project, we will try and help you figure it out.

All women are welcome. Men may attend as the guest of a female attendee.

14th Nov 2009 starts 1pm finishes 5pm

Location: ThoughtWorks, Level 15, 303 Collins St, Melbourne

Note: you won’t be able to get to Level 15 without an escort. So please RSVP via Facebook or Brianna to get a contact mobile phone number, so you can call when you arrive and be let in. Alternatively, arrive on time (on the dot! ).