The Girls Are Coming - Future Female Is A New Network For Geek Girls
Future Female is a new Finnish network for likeminded women who work, use or are interested in technology, business and all-things-digital. For me that reads geek girls loud and clear. It's great to see geek girl networks popping up in the Nordic and Baltic scenes. Especially given how many talented ladies there is out there.
Sometime ago Annikki Laine asked me whether I knew any meet-ups or networks for women that operated abroad that she could have a chat with, because she was thinking of setting up one in Finland. Yesterday I got an email from Annikki telling me they were up and running. Annikki and two other ladies, namely Krista Järvinen and Hanna Manninen, had founded Future Female . Annikki also told me that Future Female is borrowing from SIME, TEDex, ArcticStartup, GeekGirl in Sweden, FIPnetwork in the Netherlands and The Next Woman in search for an ideal mix for the Finnish scene.
Future Female is planning to organize meet-ups, workshops, keynotes, and create community for women who are interested in web 2.0 (Annikki apologized using the term and so do I), where they can found mentors, peers, couches and other women who want to not just chit chat, but also make stuff. Examples of possible get-togethers that Annikki gave me include a weekend codecamp, iPad apps workshop or a gathering around how-to-commerzialize-a-product and other similar events.
The three ladies wanted to emphasize that it's not only for those fluent in tech, but also for UX designers, Art Directors, Copy Writers, Communication professionals, PR peeps and those working in digital marketing and interaction design. The spirit of FF is very startup like, but its open to anyone who is interested in tinkering with cool concepts and projects, whether to set up a business or just to make a cool product. To emphasize the point Annikki herself is not an entrepreneur, but working for Fruugo, a Finnish e-commerce 'startup'.
I'm excited to see such a network being set up in Finland and I believe there's a big demand for it. These more than a few talented young ladies kicking mens ass in the Finnish tech scene and there's room for more. I hope FF will visit the wonderful Geek Girls in Sweden and Geek Girls will come to visit Finland. We need you both!
If you got interested, you can join the network and go see more for yourself. The first Future Female event takes place on Wednesday 6th October 2010 at 6pm at Café Bar Lounge Soffa in Helsinki. You can read more here.
It's cool to see geek girl unite as there's clearly space for new services and point of view. Kaboodle, Polyvore and other services have shown that one can build services that are targeted for women and they can become hugely popular. Finland needs its own BlogLovin :)
With girls, even more than with boys, it's about rolemodels & who we grow up looking at, people who do things.
Without going any deeper into the girls & tech discussion, here are some ladies I would have loved to have known existed when I was a kid:
- Flickr & Hunch founder Caterina Fake,
twitter.com/caterina
- Founder of Net-a-porter, Natalie Massenet
- Foundr of Pownce etc., Leah Culver
twitter.com/leahculver
- Slideshare co-founder Rashmi Singa, twitter.com/rashmi
- Polyvore CEO, Sukhinder Singh
twitter.com/sukhindersingh
- Freckle founder, UX Designer Amy Hoy
twitter.com/amyhoy
These were some product people, in addition there's a whole lot of great impact makers who deserve their own list. Also, would love to see FF developing into something like this: http://girldevelopit.com/ or http://www.meetup.com/sfruby/calendar/13358016/