MyData 2017 Presenter Gifts — supporting women in Mozambique

Organisers of events know the pickle: you have people coming to your event to contribute to the programme and you want to show them appreciation beyond mere words. How do you thank them? What do you give them? MyData 2017 organising team faced this issue, too, and here’s how we solved it.

The thank-you should not be irrelevant to the topic or unecological. Giving Finnish or Estonian design seemed only tangentially relevant and would quickly become prohibitively costly. We did not want to gift something that is stowed in the darkest corner of the closet and forgotten. Something meaningful and concrete, but not so concrete as to make our presenters exceed their baggage allowance on their way home. This is when we decided that a donation to a worthy cause would be appropriate and show our gratitude without the danger of annoying them every time one decides to clean their closets.

Our co-producer Sille found a group, Association for Computing Machinery ACM, which had their own division to support women in particular, ACM-W. Being acutely aware also of the fact that the gender balance among our presenters at the conference was not what it should have been, we found this group especially relevant.

“ACM-W supports, celebrates, and advocates internationally for the full engagement of women in all aspects of the computing field, providing a wide range of programs and services to ACM members and working in the larger community to advance the contributions of technical women.”

“Apart from dissemination, awareness raising and training activities, the Mozambican chapter of ACM-W will provide opportunities for students and practitioners to connect in their local area and use their network as leverage to progress in their careers. This is particularly valuable for women who study or work in developing countries such as Mozambique where institutions and organisations that do not have a group dedicated to their needs.”

Sonia Sousa, our contact person for the group said: “MyData 2017 sponsorship will enable an ACM-W chapter in Mozambique. We will use the donated money to pay for 4 ACM Memberships (a requirement to support the Mozambique ACM-W chapter). It also provides access to the ACM Digital Library for local students and practitioners to connect to ACM publications, including journals, conference proceedings, technical magazines, newsletters and books.”

We thank all of you at ACM-W for the wonderful work you do and of course each and every one of our presenters at MyData 2017. You rock!