Technology Takes You Anywhere 2010

This year's TTYA event in July was a huge success!
With over 400 girls attending from around 15 schools from all over Brisbane, we had a great time. The girls got to try out creating some Flash animations, did some programming with Alice, and got to hear from a bunch of role models in the industry, just to name a few things.

Check out the blog posts of some of our presenters to find out more:
Reading Room Blog

Soul Solutions Blogs
General info about the event and navigating the surface table
Technical info about their awesome surface table

Looking forward to next year's event already!
Jenine :)



If you would like to see the evaluation reports of events from previous years, click here.

Happy International Womens Day 2010!

To all of your fabulous gals out there, I hope you are celebrating your achievements today. You deserve it!

I was fortunate to be invited to present at the Public Trustee in the Brisbane CBD for their IWD morning tea. I was alongside some inspiring women:

Linda Lavarch - Research Fellow at the Australian Centre for Philanthropy and Nonprofit Studies and former Attorney General and Minister for Justice
Kerrin Benson - CEO Multicultural Development Association
Alana Pelly - Cancer Survivor - Queensland Cancer Council

About 80 attended, and all received a free copy of the Tech girls book. There was a big line of people for autographs, so much fun :) I was treated to lunch at customs house on the river, and received the biggest bunch of flowers ever! Very special day :)

Grace Hopper Conference 2010 Call for participation

If you want to be inspired by thousands of creative and intelligent technical women, then consider attending the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women Conference.The call for participation for the 2010 Grace Hopper Celebration is now available at

http://gracehopper.org/2010/participate/call-for-participation/.

Congrats Tech Girl Anitza!

Huge congrats to Anitza Geneve, one of our tech girls, who was a finalist this week in the Office for Women's (Qld) Our Women, Our State Awards in the postgraduate category. She was up against some tough competition, and she came away as highly commended. Details can be found here about the categories, finalists and award winners.

Update on Tech girls event - Central Coast NSW

A great article about the Tech girls event in September posted on the youth connections website. Reposted here. See original site for pics.

Thomson thinks pink in IT
Updated: 09-10-2009
“Girls should not be missing out,” said Federal member for Dobell Craig Thomson when opening this year’s Tech Girls. Centrally positioned between Sydney and Newcastle, Thomson believes Central Coast youth and especially girls need to identify the versatility of a job in the Information Technology industry as an alternative to commuting, “you can work from home or work remotely, it’s a really great attraction.”

Held at Mingara Recreation Club, Tech Girls is a Youthconnections.com.au event which speaks out against the male-labelled industry, inspiring high school girls to consider Information Technology and science-based subjects at school and a future career in IT.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, males make up 85% of all people currently employed in the IT industry. Youthconnections.com.au chair person and IT business owner, Dave Abrahams says more women need to dare to challenge the geek stereotype, “It is a cool sector but most people see it as a geek sector.”

Tech Girls has run annually for the past four years and since its inception Youthconnections.com.au statistics show a rise of 13% in female students selecting VET IT subjects compared to a 26% decrease for boys during the same time period.

This year 150 girls from 12 Central Coast schools attended, joined by eight key women speakers who ranged from a Software Engineer for Google to an Organisational Change Manager at Commonwealth Bank. These women and several IT businesses represented diversity and change in Information Technology, which was part of the event’s focus. Griffith University researcher and co-author of Tech Girls are chic (not just geek), Jenine Beekhuyzen gave a presentation about investigating the technologies people use to download music and said she loves working in IT, “I get to travel lots, I get paid well and I work in my pyjamas most of the time.”

Tech girl Bronwen talks about her experiences working in the IT industry....

Have a listen, and learn about the new Bachelor of Information Systems at Griffith starting in 2010. A great combination of technology and business skills.

Tech Girls 2009 - Central Coast of NSW

On the 22nd of September I was invited to be the keynote speaker for the 4th annual Tech Girls event on the Central Coast of NSW. The event is run by YouthConnections, who did a fabulous job!

It was a really great event, and Tech Girl Lauren presented too. Look forward to next year!