All-girl hack night, a group for women in tech, will be holding their first meetup of 2017 on Wednesday, January 25th.

The monthly hangouts are comprised of a handful of “lightning” talks, quick ten minute presentations on a variety of topics, followed by a more in-depth “big” talk running about thirty minutes. The talks are followed up with time to eat, drink, and network with other like-minded women. The group has been running for about two and a half years now.

“When I came to my first all-girl hack night, it was a completely different scene; there were all of these women in the room contributing in different ways.”

“I think the biggest thing for me is, every time I go to events, there’s only two or three women that are there and they never really talk,” organizer Maeghan Smulders told MTLinTECH. “They don’t engage. They’re there with the one friend that brought them and that’s it. And when I came to my first all-girl hack night, it was a completely different scene; there were all of these women in the room contributing in different ways. Whether they were sharing full projects they were working on, opening up about questions they had that they would have been, I guess, embarrassed to share in a bigger group.”

While the issue of women in technology and the desire for increased diversity in the industry has gained more traction over the past few years, Smulders still thinks there’s a ways to go to continue improving on the support systems available to women.

“There’s been more opportunities for women than ever before in the past. What I think is different is that [we need] environments to keep people growing. So for example, I’m sure you’ve seen all the research on women executives in tech. I think there’s women there, but that path to leadership is still not as strong. I’ve been doing a lot of research, specifically on how we can get more women in tech to be greater leaders and take on greater initiatives. And the biggest influence to help with this is having really strong network groups.”

The event will take place at the Intel/PasswordBox office at Suite 610, 4200 St. Laurent and begins at 6:30pm.

If readers are interested in giving either a lightning or big talk, please reach out through the meetup group here.