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!

Robogals!

Robogals is a not-for-profit organization which aims to increase the number of girls undertaking science, engineering and technology courses at university. It has already been super successful in Melbourne and the UK. UQ has the opportunity to start up a chapter too! Robogals is run by university students like us who promote robotics to school girls. So, we'll have to opportunity to go round to schools, play with LEGO and just have some fun!

To start us off, there is a Robogals Bootcamp which will take place in the upcoming holidays (29 Sep - 1 Oct, 2009). We'll get an all-expenses paid trip to Melbourne, and get to hang out with other geek girls from all over Australia.

Please put in application so we can get the UQ chapter of Robogals up and running! Make sure to put in an application asap. If you know anyone else who might be interested, please pass this on (this is open to anyone studying at any level - undergrad or postgrad, and any discipline).

Here's the link to the application form.
www.robogals.org.au/application_form.html

For more information check out their website
www.robogals.org.au/index.html

More info on the Bootcamp?
www.robogals.org.au/bootcamp.html

Our Women, Our State Awards 2009

http://www.women.qld.gov.au/awards/

The deadline for submissions to this year's awards has been extended until this Friday, get your entries in!

2009 report on why girls still dont choose ICT

http://insight.eun.org/ww/en/pub/insight/misc/specialreports/eun_white_paper_women_it.htm

really interesting report on the current skills shortage in Europe, and the attitudes of school girls in the 'pre' university years. It seems that the same reasons for not choosing ICT careers and study still apply (as we have known for some time) - lack of positive female role models, and lack of understanding of the types of ICT jobs and careers available.

A huge skills shortage is upon us, so the lack of females is negative in two main ways, they are an untapped resource that the industry needs, and women are also missing out on great career opportunities. This report shows the importance of informational resources such as Tech girls are chic :)

Tech girls book available on ThinkGeek.com!

The tech girls book is now available on ThinkGeek.com! Very exciting, the guys there are uber supportive of us Aussie gals, and gals in tech all over the world! So if you have any contacts in the US, feel free to promote it to them! xxx

An ode to a coder girl

Thought you might find enjoy this vid..well done to the creators!

Tech girls profile on Spy Journal

I was recently profiled by local Brisbane company SpyJournal so I thought you might like a read...Thanks Tim and Amanda!

Jenine's geek girl blogger profile

While you are there, you should check out the other geek girl blogs, very interesting reading!

Geek Girl Dinner # 6 an insight into the legal side of IT

Thursday evening the 2nd of July was our 6th Brisbane Geek Girl Dinner. Kay Lam-Beattie, our resident legal IT expert who runs her own business IdeaLaw answered the many legal questions from our Geek Girls. UQ Law Professor Kim Weatherall also helped out with all the many questions....the discussion went well into the night which was a sign of the interest in the many legal challenges that we all face every day as technology professionals, and as everyday users in the online world.

It was a great night of catching up and stimulating conversation, and it was nice to see lots of new faces! Thanks also to the Hutch Bistro for the great food and service! And thanks Tim from SpyJournal for the great pics! Here are just a couple of the pics you can see the rest on Flickr.

National ICT Careers Week 2009

Its that time of year again with the National ICT Career Week nearly upon us. It is held during the week of the 27th July to the 1st of August. Check out the website for information on events all over Australia.

Awards and scholarships - apply now!

Just a quick note about 2 scholarship and award programs which are now available.

The WIT award is Qld based and covers a range of ages and categories:
http://www.wit.org.au/default.asp?PageID=103

and the Grace Hopper scholarship is to get you to the US for the annual Grace Hopper Conference (I have never been but I hear it is incredible!
http://www.gracehopper.org/2009/participate/student-scholarships/

apply and reflect on your great achievements!
Jenine xxx

Geek Girl Dinner # 5 a huge success - go girl gamers!

On the 30th of April we hosted our 5th Brisbane GGD at the Microsoft offices in the city. Was so much fun to play games against other tech girls, and about 50 people attended. Huge thanks to Bronwen for doing most of the organising this time around (so little time at the moment with writing up my PhD) and to everyone who helped to make the night a success. Bronwen has a great blog post here which thanks everyone that needs to be, and gives a great recap of the night.

A few pics of me and Anitza, us tech girls from the book playing our hearts out! :)

Not tech, but music related, my other love....

http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/story/0,28383,25387052-10388,00.html

a great story, go Ruby - talks about how she was bullied in school, and how she now has the best revenge through her success. I was bullied in school also, not to the physical extent of Ruby, but I still remember it to this day (wish I could forget!) But like Ruby, I believe success is the way to show them all! Go girls, be a fab success in whatever you do, be happy, and dont let bullies rule your life!

Nikki - the geek girl blogger

Check out our tech girl Nikki's great profile on Spy Journal. Tim, keep up your great work of supporting women in IT, we need more guys like you! :)



http://www.spyjournal.biz/geek_girls/NikkiCurtiss

Happy Ada Lovelace Day

I am so very honoured to be part of today celebrating the incredible achievements of Ada Lovelace, who is widely regarded as the first woman programmer (see http://www.agnesscott.edu/lriddle/WOMEN/love.htm). Ada is a fantastic 'tech girl' role model who paved the way for where we are today.

So that means today is also about celebrating women who now study or work in technology careers, women who are innovative, intelligent and chic!

Working in IT (or any similar names) is a great career for women, and one that I feel very lucky to be part of. So I would like to say Happy Ada Day to all of the fabulous women out there who challenge technology and the stereotypes every day to pave the way for the next generation of women!

There are just so many women who inspire me everyday so I send a huge hug out to you all :)

Enjoy, enjoy, enjoy! :) and most of all, be proud!
Jenine

For other bloggers who pledged to blog on this day, see http://ada.pint.org.uk/