Girls In Tech

The fifty-fifth session of the Commission on the Status of Women will take place at the United Nations Headquarters in New York from 22 February to 4 March 2011. Representatives from Member States, UN entities, and ECOSOC-accredited non-governmental organizations (NGOs) from all regions of the world will attend the session. There will be a number of activities, including interactive dialogues and panels, during the two-week session. I’m in particular excited about the track panel discussion on Wednesday 23^rd- it is one of the topic that is dearly to my heart. A group of leaders from all over the world will be in discussion over access and participation of women and girls to education, training, science and technology, including for the promotion of women’s equal access to full employment and decent work. Be sure to watch the live webcast this Wednesday, 23 February 2011, 10am-1pm; Or if you are nearby pls stop by the conference room #3, North Lawn building.

This year following highlights key focus areas of CSW 2011.

• Priority Theme: Access and participation of women and girls to education, training, science and technology, including for the promotion of women’s equal access to full employment and decent work
• Review Theme: The elimination of all forms of discrimination and violence against the girl child
• Emerging Issue: Gender equality and sustainable development

Panel 1 Track- Key policy initiatives and capacity-building on gender mainstreaming: focus on science and technology

Moderator: Ms. María Luz Melon, Vice-Chair of the Commission (Argentina)

Panelist:

Ms. Sesae Mpuchane, Professor, University of Botswana, Botswana(paper)

Ms. Hagit Messer, President, Open University, Israel(paper)

Ms. Londa Schiebinger, Professor, Stanford University, USA

Mr. Bunker Roy, Founder and Director, Barefoot College, India(paper)

Ms. Anne Miroux, Director, Technology and Trade Logistics Division, UNCTA(paper)

If you are interested in watching day 1 high level round table web live cast, watch now!

Tags: 24notion, CSW, economy, education, entrepreneurship, gender equality, Gender Initiative, Girls, girls in tech, ivo, Ivo Lukas, jobs, justice, Leadership, NGO, Science, technology, training, UN, united nations, UNwomen, Women in Education
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If you’re a gamer like myself, you’ve probably heard of the electronic entertainment expo, or E3. It’s one of the biggest conventions used to preview up-and-coming and recently released video games, accessories, attire, and much much more. I’ve had the opportunity to check out this convention for the past several years, and would like to share some of my thoughts on the highlights and changes that have occurred during this time.

After walking the halls of the convention for hours and hours, what really stood out is how much the entertainment industry has merged with the video game industry. Just 5-10 years ago Hollywood was on top of the world and gamers were more of an underground or basement crowd existing completely independently of each other. Now with the recessive economy, Hollywood is losing revenue while the gaming industry is maintaining it’s numbers. Once a power house, the movie market has now switched positions with the gaming industry. There’s a boost in game development and its takers, and entertainment is begging for a chance to play a part in anything gaming.

Take for example the highlight of the show: Nintendo’s 3DS. Nintendo truly outdid themselves with this new intriguing handheld console. As the name implies, the new features include two cameras on the back which allow for taking 3D pictures, and the ability to play games in 3D. However after the 30 minute wait to get a hands-on look at this new device, the majority of uses I saw were not gaming related, but entertainment. During the preview it wasn’t so much the games, but the movies that were highly stressed. “You can watch regular movies in 3D on the Nintendo 3DS!”, I was told. Now as amazing as I think it is to be able to watch movies on a game console, I started to wonder how it became as much or more about movies as gaming.

Looking around the halls there is more integration of entertainment and gaming than ever before. Most popular movies today are being turned into video games, as well as the other way around. There have been rumors about the online game World of Warcraft being turned into a movie. A game that is being played by a whopping 12 million people. Such a following would be a sure box office success.

This strange evolution from people watching movies or playing video games independently to a world where a movie or a game enhances the overall experience is amazing. In a short time these two very different industries found a way to combine their strengths and bring two audiences into the same circle. I believe this is a positive turn of events for gamers everywhere and I hope this trend continues, and the these two communities continue to grow in unison.

Tags: Alexandra Mokh, gaming, girl gamers, girlgamer, Girls, girls in tech, GIT, Los Angeles, tech, technology
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As the next generation of leaders prepares to take its place as the decision makers of tomorrow, well trained and educated engineers are becoming more and more in demand. Many industries rely on engineers to provide both expertise and a creative vision of the future. And In spite of the urgent need to develop our nation’s engineering talent, the fact remains that a large majority of engineers are men. Girls often feel discouraged from pursuing opportunities in engineering. We’d like to see that changed! So, we are encouraging you to participate in the National Engineers Week Foundation’s Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day – February 18th in cities around the U.S.  Women engineers and their male counterparts will mentor and reach as many as 1 million girls around the country with workshops, tours, on-line discussions and a host of hands-on activities at local businesses, universities and libraries.  All of these events deliver the message that a career in engineering is within the grasp of every young woman who is looking to play a role in addressing the issues her generation will face as it comes of age.

“The Girl Day vision is to broaden the way girls and young women look at engineering and help them to see that it touches our lives in ways we might not even be aware of,” said Leslie Collins, executive director, National Engineers Week Foundation. They want to make sure to deliver the message that “making more women engineers needs to be one of this nation’s most important engineering projects.”

Some of the events happening in various locales include:

• Siemens Industry, Inc. in West Chicago , IL will hold its annual ‘Introduce a Girl to Engineering event’ for girls in 5th through 11th grade, hosted by women engineers. Girls who attend will complete several experiments associated with different engineering disciplines. Other highlights will include a short video about engineering and a factory tour.

• The New York City Transit Museum will present a program recognizing the key role that women engineers play throughout the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s (MTA) agencies. Attendees will hear first-hand from representatives of various programs about their goals, ambitions, and experiences in the MTA workforce. Panelists include a Design Manager with NYC Transit Capital Program Management – Signals and Systems Program and a Design Manager, NYC Transit Capital Program Management – Stations Program.

• In Kihei , Hawaii , Maui Economic Development Board’s (MEDB) Women In Technology Project will host Maui ’s 10th annual ‘Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day’ event. Middle school girls will be given an opportunity for a half-day of job-shadowing with an engineer and fun, hands-on engineering-based activities. The event is free and open to 7th & 8th grade girls. The WIT Project is also expanding its outreach by arranging presentations by local engineers at Maui County middle schools.

• The Redding, California members of the Society of Women Engineers will host a Girl Day event where approximately 50 young women will learn about science and engineering. Hands on workshops will include: Best Bounce, Spaghetti Egg Drop, Electromagnetism, and Kinetic Energy.

For more information on the Foundation’s week of events, and Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day, visit their website at:   www.eweek.org.

Tags: Christine Oneto, Girls, mentoring, Women in Engineering
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It has been found that adolescent girls are uniquely capable of raising the standard of living in developing countries. Girls are the most likely agents of change, as they have so much potential, but are too often invisible to the world & the media. That’s why the Nike Foundation, along with intellectual and financial contributions from the NoVo Foundation created The Girl Effect.
With partners like the United Nations Foundation and the International Center for Research on Women, they are working to bring these girls’ stories to light and raise money and awareness to help change their futures through education.

Why girls? Because when adolescent girls in the developing world have a chance, they can be a strong, powerful force of change for themselves, their families, their communities, their countries, and even the world.

Now here are some statistics that may surprise you:
For example: Did you know that an extra year of primary school raises a girl’s lifetime wages by 10-20% & an extra year of secondary school, by 15-25%?
And that one-fourth of the population in Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, and Sub-Saharan Africa are girls?
If you’d like to help give these girls a chance by joining the Girl Effect movement, you can do so:
Either on their Facebook page:
http://www.facebook.com/girleffect#/girleffect?v=info
or their website:
http://www.girleffect.org/.

For more statistics, see their factsheet at: http://www.girleffect.org/downloads/TheGirlEffect_FactSheet.pdf

Tags: change, commuity, developing world, Girls, Global, women
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TechCrunch50, quite notably the best tech start-up showcase in Silicon Valley, and quite possibly the world (well, don’t quote me on that), but based on the attendance and social media buzz in and around the event, I think that’s a good bet.

So far the products, companies that have been launched include: StorySomething, Sealtale, ToonsTunes, Clasemovil, iMo, Clicker, Spawn, ToyBots, Udorse, rackup, SeatGeek, and 5to1 (we’ll, of course be adding more later this afternoon). You can watch the presentations live at the following link:

Also, we’d like to thank TechCrunch for inviting Girls in Tech to participate in the conference. We are selling cupcakes in the lunch table area for $3. A portion of the profits will be donated to Girls, Inc. – Picture the world through the eyes of a Girls Inc. girl. She belongs to a community that empowers her to pursue the biggest dreams she can dream. She is uplifted by the strength of a national organization that is committed to inspiring the leaders of tomorrow.

Tags: Girls, girls in tech, Inc., TechCrunch50
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Last night at The Biz Tech Day cocktail party, I ran into a friend, Tim Ferriss, who was telling me about why he supports RoomToRead. Knowing about the organization, but not really investigating and researching how it works, the history of the organization or learning about the inspiration behind why CEO, John Wood launched the organization – I was floored. The impact that this organization has made around literacy of school children since 2000 is unbelievable – The sad truth is that there are 76 million primary school children that are not enrolled in school, 80% of these children live in rural areas of developing countries, there are 774 million adults around the world who cannot read or write, 64% of these people are women – this is why I am committed to helping RoomToRead, through Girls in Tech, SmittenWithMittens and my personal capital and voice.

Since their inception in 2000, Room to Read has impacted the lives of over 3.1 million children in the developing world by:

• Constructing 765 schools
• Establishing over 7,160 libraries
• Publishing 333 new local language children’s titles representing over 2.8 million books
• Donating over 2.8 million English language children’s books
• Funding 7,132 long-term girls’ scholarships
• Establishing 179 computer and language labs

Here is a little more information surrounding the organization. You should help Room to Read too!

They partner with local communities throughout the developing world to provide quality educational opportunities by establishing libraries, creating local language children’s literature, constructing schools, and providing education to girls. They seek to intervene early in the lives of children in the belief that education empowers people to improve socioeconomic conditions for their families, communities, countries and future generations. Through the opportunities that only education can provide, they strive to break the cycle of poverty, one child at a time.

Tags: Adriana Gascoigne, children, Girls, girls in tech, Literacy, non profits, Room to Read, Social Good
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In reading about and viewing videos of Wolfram Alpha and reading about the life of the inventor, Stephen Wolfram, I am excited for him and his invention. I am excited that children will now have a plethora of history, data, and projections at their fingertips. Yet, at the same time it strikes a sour chord of lost opportunities. How do we, as a community of experienced women and mothers with similar experiences, make sure our girls—in particular—are given the opportunity of genius?

I think back to when I was a three-year old girl in the early 70’s without internet, encyclopedias or rocket scientists as parents, my commentary about molecular structures was, unintentionally, dismissed. I remember just knowing that things were made of smaller particles. I had no name for them, but I recall telling my mother on repeated occasions that things were made of “dots on top of dots” until one could see them, and that water had less dots than the furniture and that the air had even less. I did this until one day my mother, tired of my dot theory, exclaimed, “This is a chair! It is wood! This is water! This is air! There are no dots.” The sad reality is that it was not until middle school that I learned of atoms and molecules—lost time and lost learning.

By age sixteen, the 80’s hadn’t progressed much further for girls being seen as inventors. After being symbolically chosen to present at a Science Symposium, my teachers disqualified my thesis that students’ test scores could increase if they listened to classical music while testing. I assumed that they would less likely be distracted and they would become calm and focus better. The teachers claimed if students’ scores improved that I could never prove if students were performing better on the account of music—though the point was to participate in scientific reasoning and possibly spark further research—something the boys were encouraged to do. I never presented; but, ironically years later, UC Irvine researchers discovered that students may actually perform better if they were exposed to, you got it, classical music while learning—coining the term the Mozart Effect.

Fast forward to the late 90’s: What if the processing time of learning could be reduced tremendously (by up to 90%) by tapping into emotional experiences? I conceptualized a learning technique that was the equivalent of the Suez and Panama canals for learning. I mentioned my thoughts in educational circuits. Yet, again, I was met with the same disbelief and discouragement, because I was “just a mom.” So, I set out to get my teaching credential and master’s in education to prove my theory. After seven years of case studies in every grade-level, every economic level, and figuring out how to monetize my concept, I went to funders and pitched. Divorced housewife, mother of three, never worked except as a teacher—dismissed…“Go see Oprah. Maybe she’ll help you.” Well, I hadn’t really thought Oprah had an office in Menlo Park and if I were a man? All things being fair, I guess I would have been told to go see Dr. Phil. But anyway, needless to say, my experiences have allowed me to have an open ear and help develop my students’ theories on life.

For now, it is just wonderful to be in the bosom of women who think, who create, and who believe that their minds and bodies are worthy of attention. But, how do we as the GIT community of women take stake in hearing the voices of our girls when they speak of things that have yet to be created, like the Wolfram Alpha? How do we create a guaranteed platform that will, successfully, develop their genius?

Tags: Girls, GIT, Mozart Effect, supporting, UC Irvine, Wolfram Alpha
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