Scan Magazine | Feature | Scandinavian Everyday Heroes
'The grid.'
Behold the geek girl revolution One of the youngest ever recipients of the Vinnova innovation project funding, now Director of UX at Lookback in San Francisco, Heidi Harman is also one of two brains behind GeekGirlMeetup. This unconference network created for and by women and girls, aims to highlight female role models in the tech, design and start-up industries. Seven years since its inception, the initiative has grown into a global movement. By Linnea Dunne | Photos: GeekGirlMeetup.com
“I’ve always been interested in technology and got a computer at an early age, as if that was the most natural thing in the world,” says Harman. She went on to study business design at Kaospilots in Denmark and entered the job market in the capacity of a technical project manager. In 2008, she founded RunAlong.se, for which she was awarded in excess of 1MSEK in funding from the Vinnova innovation project fund. She recalls attending technology-focused conferences where few attendees were women, and so the idea for what was to become GeekGirlMeetup was born. “We wanted to create a place where you’d just be Heidi and free to geek away, where it didn’t matter that you were a girl,” she says. 92 | Issue 83 | December 2015
structured programme. “We ask conference participants how they want to contribute, for instance what they can talk about. As it’s a participant-driven conference, some give talks and others help out with the site,” Harman explains. “It’s like a pot-luck conference, created by everyone collectively.”
Self-organised and participant-drivenInspired by TED.com, the celebrated conference and series of talks, Harman and fellow tech-enthusiast Andie Nordgren founded GirlGeekMeetup in 2008. “Based on the idea that anyone can talk about their geeky passion for 20 minutes, we remodelled the TED talks concept,” says Harman. “That way, everyone in the room is intellectually enriched, and we become each other’s role models. We consciously decided against the idea of flying in big role models, choosing instead to work locally. The stars are there if you just research it properly.” Every GeekGirlMeetup event is based on the unconference format, meaning that the informal exchange of information and ideas between participants is given more importance than a conventionally
The initiative started in Stockholm but has spread quickly. Today, GeekGirlMeetups take place all across the world, in places including Mexico, Oslo, Tunis, Copenhagen, Hong Kong, London and Singapore. “GeekGirlMeetup is 100 per cent self-organised, so as long as people work with the same motto of highlighting female role models within these specific sectors, they can go ahead and set up a branch,” says the co-founder. “This makes it easy for branches in other countries to get started. I still provide support via Skype as and when they need it, but tools like Slack and Facebook mean that control in the traditional sense isn’t really needed.” Harman continues: “I’m really proud of the people who are setting up and run-