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 Thank you so much for coming along to last night's Building a Confident Personal Brand event which we co-hosted with Microsoft - there was a fantastic turnout (150 of you!) and we only heard good feedback afterwards so I think you all enjoyed yourselves!
Photos and slides from the event can be found downloaded by clicking here.
I would like to pass on our thanks to Salma Shah, founder of Beyond, a people development and assessment consultancy, whose presentation helped us to define our personal brand and build confidence in ourselves. She shared tips and hints on how to take deliberate control of our behaviour, thoughts and emotions that all combine to make up our brand and she showed us how this has a huge impact on our self-confidence and our reputation, both in and outside of work. A copy of Salma's presentation can be found here and you can reach her on salma.shah@beyondonline.org or 0845 602 3012.
Thank you also goes to Eileen Brown, Manager of the Pro-Evangelist Team at Microsoft, who shared her valuable advice about managing your online brand across the vast range of social networking websites that we use on a day to day basis. A copy of Eileen's slides can be downloaded by clicking here and her blog can be found here.
Thank you goes to our Microsoft panellists - Jane Lewis, Premier Field Engineer, Nickie Smith, UK Marketing Director, and Philippa Snare, Marketing Director - who participated in the Q&A with Eileen and Salma and answered a range of questions about brand and confidence in the workplace.
We would also like to thank Rachael Fenne and Caroline Buckingham from Microsoft for their help and input in bringing last night's event together and for Microsoft's ongoing support of womenintechnology. If you would like to find out more about working for Microsoft, you can search for open roles here or email ukjobs@microsoft.com
This was the third networking event that we’ve held with Microsoft but it was the first event that we’ve held outside of London and judging from the number of attendees, there’s a big demand for networking opportunities in the Reading area so we’ll be doing our best to start building up a Thames Valley network for women working in IT.
Final thanks go to everyone who attended and who continue to support womenintechnology.co.uk. We would very much like to hear your feedback from last night so please email us with your thoughts. What did you enjoy? What could we improve on? What topics would you like to see us cover at future events? etc. Thanks so much.
If you are interested in finding out more about our upcoming training courses, please go to http://www.womenintechnology.co.uk/upcoming-training-courses
Salma is running "Coach Yourself to the Top" as an evening course on Wednesday 13th May: http://www.womenintechnology.co.uk/coach-yourself-to-the-top but there are only a maximum of 14 places on each course so if you would like to attend, please sign up as soon as you can.
More information about W-Tech can be found here. W-Tech is a free one day recruitment fair, career development and networking event for women in IT that we’re hosting with the British Computer Society on Wednesday 24th June in central London. The event is running all day and will feature 30 different career development and technical workshops followed by an evening networking event where we’ll hear from a panel of amazing women in IT who will share their top tips for achieving success in the technology profession. We had over 1,000 people signed up for this event that was snowed off in February so it’s promising to be a fantastic day. If any of your firms might be interested in being a sponsor, please get in touch with me as we have a few exhibitor stands left.
As we mentioned, MentorSET, who run a mentoring scheme to help women working in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, are currently looking for more mentors to be paired up with female technologists. Becoming a mentor is a great way to improve your managerial skills, gain contacts and obtain a different perspective on the IT industry. If you’d like to find out more please look at the MentorSET website: www.mentorset.org.uk or contact Jan West on jan.west@mentorset.org.uk
If you fancy running (jogging or walking) for a good cause, please consider running the British 10k London Run on Sunday 12th July for Camfed, the campaign for female education in Africa. We’ve had womenintechnology members running for them the last couple of years and it would be great to see that continue. So if you fancy getting fit, or fitter, and running through the streets of London in support of Camfed, please email info@camfed.org
And finally, for any HR or recruitment contacts, we have an employer breakfast briefing running on Tuesday 28th April 2009 from 8.30am to 10am about "Returning from Maternity Leave and Sex Discrimination". Jennifer Bartlett, from Kingsley Napley solicitors, will discuss the issues about returning to work after maternity leave including tricky issues relating to employees on or returning from maternity leave and redundancy including selection, consultation and rights to alternative roles. Jennifer will also talk through recent legislative changes, government guidelines and employees' rights. More information can be found here.
If you would like to find out anything further about womenintechnology's recruitment services, either from a job seeker's or an employer's point of view, please click here. If you have any questions at all, please don't hesitate to contact me on mberry@womenin.co.uk
So thank you again for coming along last night and I look forward to seeing you at another womenintechnology event in the future and hopefully at W-Tech in June!
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