On Wednesday January 29th I attended my first YEG Girl Geek Dinner.

YEG Girl Geek dinners are (from their facebook page):

Edmonton Girl Geek Dinners. A monthly-ish series of dinners we hold throughout the year to highlight amazing geeky women and to broaden the geek community.

For women geeks seeking community in Edmonton I would recommend checking out these events. The atmosphere was really warm and inviting. There was also a really fun aura about it, for example everyone was asked to make a name tag decorated with their choice of unicorn, cat, and a variety of other stickers to express oneself.

The dinner took place at LUX Steakhouse, where we had fish, asparagus and a bean salad. The organizers also paid specific attention to dietary concerns, and I enjoyed that the chef would explain the dishes before serving them.

Aside from meeting and chatting with a bunch of interesting strangers and adding to my list of television shows to watch, I was very happy to see Nicole Papadopoulos speak at the event. Nicole is an ex-ballerina and voice over artist who has contributed to video games such as Dragon Age II.

She spoke about the voice over industry and the five sectors where most people find work: ads, games and animation, trailers, promo, and narration. She also spoke about what kind of voices are required for these sectors. For example she talked about the male dominated genre of trailers, where most actors aspire to sound like Don LaFontaine.

However the most shocking thing I took away from Nicole’s speech was the methodology behind her recording at Bioware. She spoke of how she was given a brief description of her character, followed by lines appearing that she was then asked to recite. She was given little to no prep time, and in this session did several different characters. She mentioned that one of the only ways to prepare was to simply make sure your acting skills are sharp. That’s intimidating! However it was really awesome to hear about the variety of small parts she was asked to do, ranging from a seasoned prostitute to a freedom fighter.

So this includes my brief summary/review of my first YEG Girl Geek dinner. I found the experience of this dinner very rewarding, thank you YEG Girl Geek for putting on such a great event!