Wrapping up Women in Computing Day 2018, in Virginia

On March 10th from 10–3PM, Next Century and partners hosted the 8th annual Women in Computing Day. The purpose of this event is to bootstrap the next generation of women engineers and to excite young ladies about all of the potential in computing. This was the first event held in the Virginia office, but it might be the best. Forty girls aged 9–13 attended the event. Twenty came all the way from Martinsville, VA — which is 4–5 hours south of the event. They woke up at 3 in the morning to attend the event and drove back the same night.

There were four different sessions: 5 Chairs, led by Sophie Kim, where girls talked about the different factors impacting the design of a chair; 3D visualizations, led by Clark Dorman, where girls got to play and interact with 3D glasses; Robots to the Rescue, lead by Jill Crisman, where girls got to play with Sphero robots to code them out of a maze; and Drawing with Code, led by Laura Braun, where girls learned how to draw a face and snowman using code. Many thanks to all the volunteers who donated their Saturday to support this great event. In particular, thanks to Karen Druffel and John McBeth who gave talks at the beginning and lunch, and Teresa Kidwell and Rob Davis who worked in the background to make the whole event seamless. And, last but not least, thanks to Romina Nally and Sophie Kim for helping to organize the event with me.

Here are some of the great things the parents wrote to me to say, “My 11-year-old enjoyed the activities even though it’s not in her wheelhouse. Thanks for engaging girls in these events and for having women leading the activities” and “The way you created small groups of 3 was excellent. [She] was able to meet new people and very much enjoyed that. Overall, she really enjoyed the sessions. The pizza eating was a big hit too!”

Check out this amazing video made by Peter Maleki show the highlights.

This event wouldn’t be possible without the hard working parents dedicating their Saturday’s to take these lovely young women to the event. Our deepest gratitude is extended to these parents who are raising the next generation of engineers.

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