The speaker was Lesley Allger from BAE Systems. She spoke about her various roles during her ~30 years that she’s worked with BAE Systems. From “shop floor” engineer to team management to head of her own team. She spoke of key mile stones which effected her time with the company and how she has learnt to manage geeks (and manage her own shiny lust!).

At the end of her talk she mentioned some of the company stats which illustrated how few women go from engineer to “executive engineer” (a broad term used for a specialist or project manager, I believe).

The discussion that followed the talk was broken up by diner – burgers, chicken, stuffed mushrooms, corncobs and veggie kebabs. Al of the food I had was lovely (definitely worth going there again!).

After food was consumed and drinks were had we continued discussing how to change the perception that women were only there to fill quotas. My personal opinion on this is that I think it really does revolve around getting into schools at an early point (say around Year 4 – Year 6 [8-11year olds]) and educating kids about what interesting things they could do – not just girls do art/beauty treatments/teaching and boys do science/tech/building. Doing workshops and activities that get kids involved could well be a good foot in the door to getting more women interested in the future.

I would like to add many thanks to BAE Systems for sponsoring the event and *squishes* to Ruby_Gem for organising a great night out!

Hope to see some of you tonight at Manchester GeekUp!

My gallery.

Tomorrow (Saturday 2nd of May) is the final day of the photographic exhibition At This Space. I hope you all get chance to drop by and I really hope that you enjoy it.

This is Nick Harris, a GeekUp regular.

Newly fixed pinhole camera cap for my Canon bodies. Just in time for Pinhole Photography Day - this coming Sunday.

Kian took me up Rivington - ended up getting a dent in the driver’s door on the car that day! But also went up Rivington for the first time (nevermind living here for 3 years nearly!)

This is my friend Jenna. She’s somewhat shy around cameras..

Walnut has turned rather photogenic lately - not like she hasn’t been all along - just more so recently!

The rest of the gallery.

Right I’d better go get ready for We Will Rock You!(be warned there be music!).

All this is a face lift that’s been on the cards for a while - the exhibition opening Monday was just a kick up the butt to get it done!

Now I just need to sort my gallery theme/solution.

Also done some general rejigging of the categories and pages - also all my linked pages now resolve(even if there’s nothing in one of the files!)!

If you want to come to the private viewing - drop me a line and I’ll see what I can do!

Here’s a sneak preview of my series “Why photography?”

April 7th 2009 (spring cleaning!)

April 5th 2009 (ice cream at Fredrick’s post first real drive!)

April 10th 2009 (shot after dark in the garden)

All in all its been a busy few days. The next few days I’ve got a few shoots going on for ‘Why Photography?’. Anymore volunteers for it would be great! Especially if you’re not too far from Manchester!

April 1st 2009 (if you look carefully you can see me!)

March 25th 2009 (outside the exhibition venue!)

March 28th 2009 (Cookie at my birthday party)

March 31st 2009 (Hannah is a poser atm!)

This is Walnut - she’s growing up too quickly! She’s about 10 months old.

March 16th 2009

March 17th 2009

Today I have been sat in the office trying to get prints done for a print sale fund raiser for my exhibition next month. If anyone would like a card with this on the front then let me know. Also if there are any others on the site you’d like then drop me a line.

I’m currently scanning negatives from my last few shoots today. I’m quite happy atm. Also writing about the photographic books I’ve been reading recently.

Also if you fancy dropping by, tonight there is cake and games.