I’m the programme chair for the BCSWomen Lovelace Colloquium, a one-day conference for women students of computing. We’re coming up to the deadline for undergrads to enter the poster contest, so this blog is by way of a plug for the event. Hopefully it’ll help you, dear reader, to encourage any undergraduate or taught masters women students you happen to know.
- It’s the only event for women computing undergrads in the UK, with speakers from industry, careers advice, recruiters, and networking opportunities. A unique event.
- The centrepiece of the day is a poster contest for women students, with real prizes (as an example – the best poster on a general computing topic, from a student in their first or second year, will win £300, thanks to sponsorship from ThoughtWorks).
- To enter the poster contest, all we ask for is a 250 word abstract. Anyone can write 250 words! Final year students can do a poster on their project; students from lower years can do a poster on any computing topic that interests them.
- Google sponsorship means we’re able to re-fund the travel costs of all poster contest finalists; this means that the best 40 abstracts win a completely free trip to Bath (and they’ll get to put “Google travel bursary winner” on their CV).
- Loads of companies are interested in the event – paying for travel, sponsoring prizes, coming along, even just sending stuff to go in the goodie bags (everyone loves a free pen). If you’re looking for a job – there will be people at the colloquium looking for employees. Women undergrads are a sought-after group.
- Students get to talk to women studying similar subjects in different places; this is actually very rare for undergraduates. It’s really interesting to see what other universities offer for final year projects, for example.
- There’s a free lunch.
- The speaker lineup (which I will be able to confirm very soon) is looking brilliant. A fascinating range of women, doing really interesting stuff.
- If you don’t get in the poster contest, or don’t want to enter, you can come along anyway. It’s still free (including lunch), but we’re not able to refund your train fare.
The poster contest entries close on 29/2, and you can find the form here: http://bit.ly/bath_lovelace. If you’re near a university computer science department do consider printing a couple of posters http://bit.ly/bath_lovelace_poster and sticking them where the undergrads can see them.
These are always fantastic events! The program is selected to be interesting and useful, and the networking is great. Meeting other researchers can be really helpful as well as being fun, and picking the brains of the more experienced BCSWomen who attend lets you learn all sorts of things. If you are finding some aspects of life as a researcher difficult, ask around to find someone who has been there and done that.
If you will be attending, bring your business cards if you have them, or print up a sheet of “labels” with your details so that you can hand them to people to people to make it easier to keep in touch. (Yes, using your smartphone Bump app is also a good idea, but not everyone will have it.)