Northern Virgnia Facilitator

Update: We have postponed the NoVA / DC Area She’s Geeky until some time in the Fall.

I would like to introduce everyone to Jean Russell. She has been a good friend and ally for several years since I met her at Recent Changes Camp in Portland Orgeon in 2006. She has an extensive background  in community facilitation. She has a wonderful presence and energy, she is experienced  with the method we use to create our agendas (open space technology) and she is also geeky (I met her at a wiki camp, she works for peopelbrowsr and has been coaching the guys building wagn for several years).

I didn’t expect to not be facilitating this conference – but two things happened. I had planned to be in DC for another event just prior to the April 18th event – it has been postponed (so my flight wasn’t covered).  I was invited to attend Social Web Foo Camp at O’Reilly’s campus in Sebastopol that weekend.  I am a geeky and my mission is to “save the world with user-centric technology” this conference is an opportunity to move this mission forward. I didn’t commit to attending until I knew Jean was able to make it.  I fully trust Jean to bring the She’s Geeky experience to Northern Virginia.

Amy Senger and Andrea Baker the two local women who are the primary NoVA organizers were all at sxsw and we got to talk for 45 min with Jean about the conference.  They support me in doing what I need to do for my geeky professional life and Jean will be a great facilitator.  We are doing weekly conference calls leading up to the event to plan everything.

At first we thought this event would be the “DC” version of She’s Geeky – Allyson Kapin and Shireen Mitchell highlighed that if it wasn’t on a metro line it would be unaccessalbe to some key communities so are working to bring the conference into a metro accessable space before the year is out – by having an event in NoVA first the women who attend that event will be more likely to make the effort to come into the city having experienced the She’s Geeky vibe out in NoVA.

I had an impassioned conversation with Kety Esquivel at SXSW – we have been friends since meeting via the Drupal community many years ago and she attended She’s Geeky NYC in December.  She insisted that She’s Geeky had to have me facilitate. I had to explain to her what I have known from the beginning.   That this event and community wasn’t about “me” and that over the next several years we would need to grow it into a sustaining organization that could produce and facilitate potentially dozens of events every year.  Maintaining the quality of energy and facilitation is also really important to me and I have been spending some time/energy thinking about how we could scale this aspect of the conference. I think this is a good first step in this direction.