As explained on the original Girl Geek Dinner Site, “the Girl Geek Dinners were founded on the 16th August 2005 as a result of one girl geek who got annoyed and frustrated about being one of the only females attending technical events. She was tired of being assumed to be marketing, tired of constantly having to prove herself and decided that she just wanted a change and to be treated just the same as any other geek out there, gender and age aside.  After all to be geeky is to be intelligent, have passion for a subject and to know that subject in depth. It’s not at all about being better than others, or about gender, race, religion or anything else. Those things just detract from the real fun stuff, the technology, the innovation and the spread of new ideas.

So what did this geeky girl do to change the world of geeks and girl geeks everywhere… well she got in touch with a few well known bloggers, posted online about her idea of getting geeks to educate one another over dinner and then arranged the first girl geek dinner event with a little help from her friends. The first event had 35 people at it all from London and the surrounding area, shortly after people started to hear about the events and companies started sponsoring them to cover the food and drinks cost.

Then they started popping up in other UK cities as she trained others up in how to run the events, spreading the formula for them… so they then started popping up in Europe… and shortly after that over in Canada… Now they are starting to pop up in New Zealand and Australia. Who knows where will be next…”

The Brussels Girl Geek Dinner already exists and is a wonderful initiative by Clo Willaerts…Table607 can be considered a “sub-section” of this event, as it brings together “EU Girl Geeks”, i.e. women that combine a geekiness that is both linked to techie stuff and to the EU bubble. The first events were organised by Catherine De Vulder (kattebel) and Laurence (europasionaria) in 2009, and since then, the circle of EU Girl Geeks hasn’t stopped growing. Caroline (linotherhino) did the geeky “I made a site in one night” thing. The name “Table 607″ was chosen after the 3rd edition, which took place at table 607 of Cook & Book in Brussels. The discretion and disciplined approach of the participants led the waiter to say “Oh! You’re the famous table 607″ when we went to pay the bill…that’s what you get when you are hit by girl power!