Girl Geek X (formerly known as Girl Geek Dinner) has been organizing dinners for the past 10 years all around the Bay Area. The dinners, hosted by a different company each time, provide a great opportunity for the community to network, learn more about new technology, and meet other Girl Geeks. Salesforce hosted its 5th Girl Geek X event on Wednesday, January 10 and embarked on a trail with 166 members of the Bay Area Girl Geek X at our Rincon Cafe in San Francisco, California. The night was filled with plenty of networking and learning opportunities ranging from live demos of Trailhead, Einstein, Heroku, and Quip, to inspirational Lightning talks by our Salesforce employees, and a few camping-inspired activities.
Being in a room filled with so much knowledge, motivation, and overall good vibes was empowering to me and the other attendees. There’s just something about being in a room full of people who share your passion and drive for technology; the energy in the room was refreshing!
We learned a lot from our 4 great lightning talk speakers:
- Brina Lee, the first female engineer at Instagram who now works on the Salesforce product Quip, gave a deep dive into Live Apps on a Platform with her colleague Lindsey Simon.
- Software Engineer Mary Ann Jawali made our worlds a little more colorful with a talk about how we perceive colors and the physics behind color theory.
- Sarah Mei, an Architect in the UX Engineering group at Salesforce, gave an intellectual talk, Treachery of Words, on the irony behind her job title as an architect and how she doesn’t actually build buildings.
- Lastly, Christina Amiry, Senior Director of Technical Program Management, celebrated her 7 years here at Salesforce and spoke about how not all career paths are straightforward and in fact can lead you through the unexpected.
We had a lot of fun with the details of this event. Since giving back is a top value at Salesforce, the custom wooden signage by our demo stations was handmade by the Products for Cambodia Club, a high school club whose mission is to create sustainable products to raise money for Krousar Thmey Organization in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
And the rustic theme continued with yummy snacks like trail mix that attendees mixed from scratch which included Codey the Bear Grahams, Fluffy Einstein Marshmallows, and Salesforce Blue M&M’s. Not only was everyone stuffed with Trailblazer-inspired snacks, but they left with plenty of fun swag and a little piece of the Salesforce tower: a hand stamped rose gold necklace with the coordinates of the Salesforce tower. It’s a new landmark in the city and now they will never be able to forget where it is!
If this sounds like a good time, join Girl Geek X’s mailing list to keep up with when and where the next dinner will be. Trust me, you’ll be inspired and proud to be part of this geeky group!
Follow us on Twitter and use #SalesforceWIT to engage about this event and others that focus on Women in Technology.
