Tammy Butow

Looking back at 2012

Posted on December 30, 2012 by Tammy Butow

I absolutely loved 2012 and I hope you did too!

❤ We got engaged in June and it has been so amazing
❤ I turned 28 in Egypt and we then travelled to England, Switzerland, Austria, Germany and the Czech Republic
❤ Spoke at events around Australia for work… Perth, Sydney, Newcastle, Brisbane
❤ Got a promotion in November and I’m now a Senior Digital Strategist
❤ Young Patron for the Go Girl Go For IT event which I strongly support
❤ We organised heaps of fun and popular events for Girl Geek Dinners Melbourne
❤ Went snowboarding in Winter at Mt Buller
❤ Lots of fun and fitness… weights training, bike riding, skateboarding and hiking
❤ My Dad turned 60 and it was awesome to celebrate with him!
❤ My best friend had her second baby girl, Charlie
❤ I had a lot of fun speaking at Web Directions Code and volunteering at WDS

So what are my plans for 2013?

❤ Getting married in August… a Winter Wedding in the Yarra Valley!
❤ Working on exciting projects at work that I’m very passionate about
❤ We have an awesome full year plan of monthly events for GGDMelb
❤ Off to Thailand for Coops’ 30th (Koh Samui and Bangkok)
❤ A honeymoon somewhere beautiful..not sure where yet!
❤ Visiting family and friends in Sydney Australia Day Weekend
❤ Helping organise mexican theme cakes and cookies for Amy’s 21st birthday… yum!
❤ A super fun hens party with my lovely friends and family
❤ At the end of 2013 I will turn 29 and I want to be scuba diving in WA with my family

I’m so looking forward to New Years Eve, hope you are all doing something fun? I will be heading to a pool party in my party shirt!

2012 you were wonderful, thanks to everyone who made it so great… so excited for 2013!

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Newcastle is really fantastic…and so was last week!

Posted on October 22, 2012 by Tammy Butow

I arrived back in Melbourne on the weekend to beautiful bike riding / picnic weather Last week I went on a trip to Newcastle and Sydney to talk about the Internet and share my love of mobile apps and social media.

We had a great planning breakfast to figure out 2013 for Girl Geek Dinner Melbourne. Did you know we are currently working on our board structure? We will have 7 spots in 2013 and will meet quarterly. There will be 10 ggdmelb events from Feb 2013 to Nov 2013 which will all be awesome!

I can’t even begin to explain how awesome Web Directions South was. You really had to be there, so come next time ok?

I also spent time speaking at an event in Newcastle… I took this photo from the plane. Newcastle is such an amazing place and I was so amazed at the level of interest and knowledge of digital. It really sounds like there will be a lot more cool startups coming out of Newcastle!

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Adventures to Perth

Posted on October 15, 2012 by Tammy Butow

I love going away on holidays and travelling around Australia. My brother invited me to stay at his home in Perth over the weekend and I had such an awesome time!

We went and checked out a few fun places:

Fremantle Markets (so much good food)

East Perth (which is the picture above!)

Hillarys Boat Harbour

Trigg Beach

Northbridge

Thinking I will need to get back over there and do a three week camping trip from North WA to South WA… snorkelling and stopping off at beautiful spots along the way! So many amazing places to see in WA!

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Wonderful Wednesday: “It’s important for all of us to be constantly geeking out”

Posted on October 10, 2012 by Tammy Butow

Happy Wednesday! Here’s a bunch of things from the past few days I loved.

The Project De: Brief documentary is awesome and well worth watching… I wrote a post about it earlier this week: “It’s important for all of us to be constantly geeking out”

This photo of Julia Gillard that Kealey shared is something I loved this week!

Dr Bronwyn Hemsley got me wondering “Imagine if kids could run screening tests on their parents – what would be rejected? will intelligent workaholics be popular?”

I learnt about Bound Round this week, and it sounds awesome. They are currently looking for kids to join their board in Sydney (awesome opportunity for 7-12 year olds!). They create interactive travel apps that give kids a vote when planning holidays.

Metro Trains has kicked off a three-month trial of free wi-fi services at Melbourne’s Flinders Street Station – which is awesome! What I loved about this was the use of internet memes to celebrate (captured by Katie Williams).

The Designed To Move campaign is so important and I loved the video… did you know that kids of today are expected to live 5 years less than their parents? We all need to get active! The video features kids being asked what would you do if you had 5 years extra to live… their answers are amazing… “I probably would make a time machine… I would make a helicopter.. just one.. but I don’t have any wood”

How cool would it be if everyone knew about the code side of colour?

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If you have time to make it, you have time to make it wonderful

Posted on October 8, 2012 by Tammy Butow

Over the weekend I watched the Google Project Re: Brief documentary and it’s awesome. It’s 100 minutes long and you should totally check it out. They brought a number of great advertising pioneers out of retirement and worked with them to find out “can that idea become something more powerful”

So why did I love it?

It’s awesome seeing cool, current, available technology used in fun ways
It’s amazing to see what some of the most famous faces from advertising think about the new digital tools we have available

It was so amazing to here Paula Green, one of the pioneers of women in advertising explain that she believes it’s very important to focus on the idea and not get distracted by technology. It’s not about saying let’s make a native iphone app… it’s about saying what’s our great idea.

What are some key points that can be used in the future?

“If we were obsessed as much today with content and ideas as we are with technology we would begin to make some progress” Keith Reinhard
Use a great idea from the past and modernise it
There’s so many different ways you can use technology that’s already available to us (web, mobile, video, podcasts, google maps, google earth etc.)
It’s important for all of us to be constantly geeking out

As Andy Berndt (VP Google Creative Labs) says “If you have time to make it, you have time to make it wonderful”

I wonder what great ideas from the past and cool current technologies we can mashup to create something wonderful……..

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Our DIY Web Workshop on CSS was awesome!

Posted on September 28, 2012 by Tammy Butow

Great to see over 30 women come along to our DIY Web Workshop on CSS.

We don’t currently have any further DIY Web Workshops planned as we will need volunteers to help organise these. If you are interested and can commit 4 hours a month we want to hear from you! Please come along to our Planning Workshop.

Resources/Homework for Learning CSS

It takes a while to learn CSS, and a lot of practice! Here are some great resources to help you learn.

We would love for everyone to support the learning journey of all community members, so please use the hashtag #DIYWebWorkshop to keep us up to date on how you are going!

Hope to see you soon and thanks for coming to our DIY Web Workshop! Want to see more photos? Check them out here!

Tammy

Posted in DIY Web Workshop, events, girl geek dinners melbourne, learning | Tagged CSS | 2 Comments

How about we go to the carnival and learn CSS?

Posted on September 13, 2012 by Tammy Butow

On Sep 26 there will be 45 women (hopefully more, invite your friends!) coming along to a DIY Web Workshop I’ve organised on CSS…so that’s awesome… and I’m super excited! I’ve been thinking heaps about fun ways to learn and spend time with friends!

Carnival DIY Web Workshop: CSS

So I’m thinking lets do something a bit different and very fun! Let’s have a CSS carnival. There will be carnival food (pizza slices, popcorn, fairy floss and more) and we will learn by playing carnival-style CSS games! There will be awesome decorations, fun music and lots of cool activities.

Will you be coming to the CSS Carnival? Did I mention it’s free? Hope to see you there! You can register here: Girl Geek Dinners Melbourne

Posted in events, girl geek dinners melbourne, learning | 1 Comment

Learning HTML with Girl Geek Dinners Melbourne

Posted on July 25, 2012 by Tammy Butow

We had a great time last night at our HTML workshop! It was so fantastic to have a group of around 15 women interested in learning more about HTML and helping others learn too! Everyone was from different backgrounds, but interestingly most of us have blogs!

We have started a blog roll over at our Yammer group ! If you want to join in, just head over there.

The slides we used were created and shared by Pamela Fox, they are available over at Teaching Materials – HTML/CSS

Big thanks to Di Macdonald from SitePoint for presenting and teaching everyone about HTML. She also gave away some awesome books for tricky bonus questions to our quiz. Lots of fun! Massive thanks as always to Inspire9, they rule and we love heading there for our monthly meetup! If you are looking for a coworking space check it out for sure.

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Snowboarding adventures to Mt Buller

Posted on July 22, 2012 by Tammy Butow

I moved to Melbourne 3.5 years ago. One of the reasons was that I wanted to be closer to the snow. I lived by the beach for a while and learnt how to surf which was awesome fun. I’ve also been skateboarding for most of my life. Snowboarding seemed like something that would be fun to try! We spent the weekend up at Mt Buller trying out a few of the different runs. It’s always nice to get out of the city and go climb a mountain. Super amazing weather too! Hoping to get back to the snow again this winter. I’ve only been snowboarding 4 times in my life – so really looking forward to going a few more times before we head over to Austria!

Next year we are going snowboarding in Austria. We will be staying at Kaprun and snowboarding Kitzsteinhorn which has snow all year round. That will be an amazing trip! Working hard to get super fit – doing lots of squats, sit-ups and bike riding.

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So many adventures planned this week!

Posted on July 16, 2012 by Tammy Butow

Over the weekend we went and stayed out at the Yarra Valley, so pretty there! I think we did around 3 hours of sewing bunting for our engagement party. We also went to the snow to check out wedding venues which was lots of fun!

A while ago we bought tickets to London for November/December this year. We just got around to deciding which countries we would visit! Heading to UK, Egypt, Switzerland, Liebenstein, Austria and Czech Republic. Looking forward to snorkelling, desert, alps, snowboarding and castles! Got any must see sights or great places to eat to recommend?

We will also head over to Thailand for Coops’ 30th next May. A group of us booked places to stay in Bangkok and Koh Samui. So many good holidays coming up! Not sure where to go for the honeymoon yet, thinking of going to the USA for two months at the end of next year <3

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