That's only part of what happens every other month with Colorado Women In Technology, or CWIT, a newly formed support group of professional women in technical fields who want to communicate with their peers.

"A co-worker, Karen German, and I were bemoaning that women in high-tech companies feel isolated because there are so few of them," says CWIT Founder Athena West, product developer at Boulder's E-mail Publishing Inc. "We wanted to explore building support groups, networking, friendships and finding out what women are up to in their companies."

West had attended a similar group in Boston. "It was a great resource -- there were terrific role models of women who kept up with technology. I wanted to reproduce that here."

She adds, "There are lots of other women's groups around, but their issues are different than WIT's. The problems they're trying to solve are different, and the women are there for purposes other than connecting with technical peers."

West and a core group of women held a planning meeting last November to gauge interest. "I immediately felt like it was a high-powered group of women who were serious about what they were doing," notes Shirley Sostre, a cyber-attorney who attended the session.

Before the first "official" meeting, the core group rallied to make it a go. Aleece Raw and Jackie Buzas got their Denver employer, CCG Online, to donate a Web page for disseminating information; Sostre, whose practice specializes in Internet law, volunteered to speak about copyright and issues related to the Internet; and West put together an e-mail mailing list, which now boasts more than 80 subscribers.

With virtually no advertising other than word-of-mouth, 22 women surrounded that table at The Walnut Brewery, ripe for contact with technical women and eager to network.

Members range from programmers, Web designers, technical writers and journalists, engineers, consultants, attorneys, educational researchers and technicians. With a common goal of "learning, supporting each other, finding jobs, starting businesses and connecting with women who have technical backgrounds, it was interesting to see the combination of aggressive marketing and networking with fun and friendship. That's unusual in male groups," Sostre says.

"It helped me because I'm relatively new to town, and I'm not integrated into the professional society here," Sostre adds. "I've already lined up breakfast meetings, gotten client leads and made great friends as a result of the first meeting."

Women in the group felt a comfort level that they can't get in mixed professional groups, where competition often outweighs the group's goals.

"It's difficult to network with technical guys because invariably they think you are trying to hit on them, or they try to twist your networking into some kind of pickup. Also, guys tend to think that women don't know techie stuff, so they are condescending about my knowledge," contends Reyna Meenk, technical engineer for Web Services at Association of Operating Room Nurses in Denver.

Sostre concurs. "CWIT offers a more secure environment, where everyone plays by the same rules."

Members also believe that CWIT is a good forum from which to hire and support other womens' businesses without intimidation. "I'd like to be able to contact, for example, a Perl programmer if I have a project that needs one, and know that she'll produce good work for me without capitalizing on my lack of knowledge about that programming language," Meenk says.

Ronnie Wynne, an instructional designer in Boulder, thinks the key to CWIT's growth is "to give attention to inclusiveness; that is, gaining representation from women using technology in a variety of businesses and disciplines."

West agrees, pointing out that CWIT can solve problems for women in technical fields in these ways:

Overcoming the isolation of being outnumbered in a high-tech company.

Acquiring role models.

Becoming a support group in subtle ways to uplift women without the pressure of men heralding their achievements.

Supporting women-owned businesses and women's technical careers.

Sharing job leads in a non-competitive environment.

Future topics may include presentations about women's equity funds, the direction of telecommunications in Colorado, trends in Web development, customer service and job issues related to the technical field.

"The only problem is, we have to find a space for dinner that could accommodate up to 50 people, especially so we could have a chance to mingle," West says.

She adds, "It's very encouraging to me what happens in a community of women, how everyone jumps in to help. An amusing aside to that is for the dinner meeting, we had one check for all 22 people and everyone just put in what they thought was their part -- and we had enough to cover it with tip. I told the guys I work with about this, and they were floored. They said they'd never seen that happen at their meetings; they usually come up short."