With thanks to James Mackenzie Commercial Photography & The BCS Chartered Institute for IT for allowing me to use their photographs.
So.. this Wednesday (26th May) was the premier of the five BCS Chartered Institute for IT's 'Pioneers'' films - a glittering affair with plenty of popcorn at the Moving Picture Company's screening room in the heart of London's Soho. There to welcome the guests and talk a little more about the films were Elizabeth Sparrow, President of the BCS; Sean Coleman from Red Kingdom, the rather clever producers of the films; Ortis Deley from Channel Five's, The Gadget Show; and myself - blending nicely with the scenery in my peacock blue frock! The films went down really well - you can watch all of them at http://pioneers.bcs.org/ - but I think we all know you're going to vote for Turing ;)
The event was attended by the most glamorous (as glamorous as we generally get anyway) people from the world of IT. I met lots of bods I have been following on Twitter for a while - which was a bit weird if I'm totally honest, but in a very nice way.
Amongst the riff-raff were my good friend and colleague from BBC Click, LJ Rich, GirlyGeekdom Sarah and her fella Steve, Bletchley Park warriors & all round crazy-about-tech ladies Dr Sue Black & Kelsey Griffin (GO GO TEAM TURING!!), and of course Elizabeth Sparrow was there mingling, as was my sparring partner for the evening, Ortis Deley. Probably the most surprising connection of the night was with a guy I used to work with (kinda-it's-a-long-story-as-these-things-usually-are) on the Computer Channel, Dave Green. He was there with his gorgeous podcasting partner Leila Johnston and seemed to know an unnerving amount about me when he thrust the microphone at me through the clamour of the bar around us - which I learnt from listening to their podcasts afterwards is bit of a habit of his! (I highly recommend giving it a listen by the way if you like kooky-geeky-banter: http://shiftrunstop.co.uk/ ... they've even interviewed Maggie Philbin for goodness sakes!!)
In this photo you see the whole film production team (those who were there anyway) including the most excellent writer of the scripts, Andrew McCaldon (and if you look real close you'll notice the Glasshouse team and the rest of the BCS people hiding right behind the huge pop-up in the back, so it really is the whole team, honestly).
I say sparring partner about Ortis because during the press photographs afterwards it became obvious we both have a quite competitive nature...
Once the last official pictures of the night were in the can, with my lovely twitter ticket !!!winner!!! Corinne Svoboda and her super husband..
...and the wine and competitive banter began to flow...
... it wasn't long before Ortis and I decided to arm-wrestle for the votes of those gathered! I'm not going to tell you who won, but a look at the leader-board at http://pioneers.bcs.org/ might give you a clue ;)
One last note of thanks to everyone who helped throw such a great party that night... Get voting and get everyone you know to get voting too. We made these films to raise awareness about IT and the inspirational journeys people working in it can take. Thanks for watching... oh and...
