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The BCSWomen Android programming family fun day we held in Leeds a couple of weeks ago was a resounding success, and I’ve been spending my spare time between then and now turning the materials into a “Workshop in a box”. The idea is that anyone can take the workshop, and run it, with minimal effort; I’ve provided slides, a handout for attendees, a downloadable pack of assets (sounds and pictures that people can use in apps) and a detailed presenter’s guide which has running order, kit list, room requirements, and tips for making the day go smoothly. It also features lots of cute pictures ofRead More →

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I’m in Nottingham at the moment checking out the venue we’ve got booked for this year’s BCSWomen Lovelace Colloquium. The poster contest is still open to entries – deadline this coming Friday, 15th Feb, online abstract submission here. We’ve booked enough space to have about 50 posters, I think, and there’s an extra room we can book if we need. The poster space currently looks like this: It’s a lovely big room, very near the lecture theatre (where we’ll be having the talks). I couldn’t get a good photo of the lecture theatre as there was a lecture about to start (I think it’d freakRead More →

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On Saturday, I ran an Appinventor based “family fun day” in Leeds, the idea was to do a day’s workshop getting started with AppInventor, but to do it with mixed groups. I’d run a similar workshop for BCSWomen before, and I’d run one with schoolkids, but I’d never tried to do all together with kids and grownups in the same room. So we (BCSWomen) got together with BCS West Yorkshire, and decided to run it as a joint event. We booked the HEART centre in Headingley, and 70 people signed up (we actually had to close registrations as that was the max for the room).Read More →

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Yesterday I spoke at BCS Wolverhampton, presenting a similar talk to the ones I’ve done at BCS Birmingham and EMF camp; the title and the abstract were the same, but the slides have been gradually evolving each time I give the talk. Having presented to quite a few people (about 30?) at Birmingham, and to about 120 at EMF, I thought I had the talk nailed; it takes about 45-50 minutes with time for questions, and there are often a lot of questions. But last night’s performance suggested to me that maybe this confidence in my timing was misplaced; there were so many comments andRead More →

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This year I want to talk about “Aber Comp Sci Ladies”. I’ve long thought it would be nice to have a local group of women in computing- I have been active in the whole “girl geek” field for a long time, and I’m now in Aberystwyth, so obviously the idea of a local group is very appealing to me. So I was over the moon when an undergrad decided to start up a women in computing group in my department. The group is called Aberystwyth Computer Science Ladies, or ACS-ladies for short. The group has a facebook presence, and has had one social, and it’sRead More →

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On Tuesday I gave an invited talk to the BCS Birmingham Branch, as a joint event with BCSWomen, with the title “Where have all the women gone? Women in computing: what’s the problem, why should you be bothered, and what can we do about it?“. This was my first real branch talk – I’ve spoken to BCSWomen specific events lots of times, and I’ve spoken to all sorts of other conferences, but I’ve never done the “general computing audience” talk thing before, so I was actually a bit nervous to begin with. As you might be able to guess from the subtitle it was aRead More →

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One by Nicci Kerrison, last year’s winner, talking about what it was like to go back to the event and give a talk, and one by me talking about why I go to the Hopper and what I get out of it. It’s an excellent event and the posts are both good (if I do say so myself:-).

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On Thursday 12th April about 110 people descended on the University of Bath for the 5th BCSWomen Lovelace Colloquium. The Lovelace is one of the biggest events in the BCSWomen calendar and the aim of the day is to bring together women students of computing and related subjects from across the UK for a day of inspiring talks, networking, and careers advice. We also have a poster contest for students to talk about and display their own work. The day is run by a team of local organisers (this year headed up by John Power at Bath) and by BCSWomen volunteers (headed up by me).Read More →

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In: teaching, technocamps, Women in Computing
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On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of this week I was stuck in the Arts Centre with about 20 kids, some nice people called Sophie & Rain, a load of Lilypad Arduinos and a bunch of electronics components. The plan? 3 days of fun with soft circuits, for schoolkids, for Technocamps. Rain and Sophie put the program together, and it was brilliant – we went from basic circuits through programming, to serial vs parallel, to switches, right up to sensors using light dependent resistors to do things with LEDS. For the whole three days I can honestly say that all of the kids were entirely engagedRead More →

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The BCSWomen Lovelace Colloquium 2012 is coming up fast – it’s on April 12th 2012 and it’s at Bath. It’s going to be a great day with some great speakers and student posters; we’ve got about 40 poster presenters from across the UK and about 50 other people registered so far (including some recruiters and industry people looking for interns, so if you’re an undergrad looking for work it might be a good idea to come along). Registration is here – https://events.bcs.org/book/250/ – and the day is completely free for students and others involved in education (including lunch & social). If you’re interested in comingRead More →