Girls In Tech

Today’s Tech & Video Game industries, while still heavily male dominated, are seeing a growing female presence each year. In recognition of this, companies have now started assembling scholarship programs for women entering these fields. Just last year, Sony established the G.I.R.L. (Gamers In Real Life) Scholarship program, to positively impact the way females are depicted in video games and create and influence content to be appealing to women. The program also tries to raise awareness of the female gaming audience to the media in an effort to encourage the gaming industry to positively promote women throughout all facets of games, game production and into game management. Winners receive $10,000 towards tuition, as well as an internship at Sony Online Entertainment.

Other scholarships for girls include Vanguard’s Women in Technology scholarship program, Microsoft’s Graduate Women’s Scholarship program, and various scholarships from womengamers.com to name a few. There are now more technology and gaming scholarships for girls than ever before, with the number increasing each year. Interested in one of these scholarships or know other girls who might be? Check out the links provided below for these scholarships and others.

Microsoft Graduate Women’s Scholarship Program:
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/collaboration/awards/fellows-women.aspx

WomenGamers.com Scholarships:
http://www.womengamers.com/scholarships/

ESA’s Computer & Video Game scholarship program:
http://www.theesa.com/foundation/scholarship.asp

International Game Developers Association conference scholarships:
http://www.igda.org/scholarships/

Vanguard Women in Technology scholarship program:
http://www.sms.scholarshipamerica.org/vanguardwomenintechnology/

Tags: Alexandra Mokh, gaming, girls in tech, GIT, microsoft, scholarship, school, sony, tech, technology, video games, women, women in tech, women in technology
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Girls in Tech would like to congratulate the winner and Sony Online Entertainment for their G.I.R.L. Scholarship program for instilling encouragement for more women to get into the tech/gaming industry. They recently announced: Sylvia Liu of Milpitas, California, has been granted their 3rd annual $10,000 scholarship!

Since its inception, the scholarship program has been successful in encouraging students to pursue career paths in the creative and applied arts, ultimately resulting in the development of video games that are more enticing for women to play. Liu is an entertainment design student at Art Center College in Pasadena, California.  She has not only been awarded the $10,000  to be applied toward her tuition, but also the chance to take on a paid internship for up to 10 weeks at Sony Online Entertainment’s San Diego headquarters.  (Talk about hands-on experience!)

Says Liu, “I worked hard on my submission and am very proud of what I accomplished for this competition. This opportunity will help me a long way in my career so I can’t wait to get started!”  She was one of over 100 applicants who entered to win the scholarship and were asked to submit artwork for characters designed as if they would be included in some of the company’s new game titles.   An essay pertaining to their view of women in the gaming industry was also part of their submittals.  One of the former scholarship winners actually still works for Sony Online, following her internship at their Seattle office!  Thus, Sony Online has been staying involved in nurturing women in the tech field in a big way.  Kudos to all!

To learn more about the G.I.R.L. program, Follow G.I.R.L. on Twitter, or join G.I.R.L. on Facebook.

(Photo credit: Sony Online G.I.R.L.)

Tags: gaming, girls in tech, scholarship
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Applications are now being accepted for up to 7,000 scholarships to be awarded to women IT students in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. The deadline is February 1st, for the 2010 Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship.

Leading up to the event, finalists in Europe met up at the Google Engineering Centre in Zurich, Switzerland for a networking retreat.  The event featured technology talks and career advice as well as topics of discussion such as social networks, graph theory, and the broader challenges in the technology industry.

Last year, more than 200 computer science college students applied for the grant.  This included universities across Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa (EMEA).  Fifty-six finalists were chosen from 37 higher-learning institutes in 19 countries. Twenty-one of these top female university students won the prestigious awards, through this joint venture of Google and the Anita Borg Institute.

The scholarship is named after Anita Borg, who spent much of her adult life revolutionizing the way we think about technology and computing, and bringing it to being a more accessible career choice for women and minorities.

For more information or to see eligibility requirements, click on Google’s scholarship page at:  http://www.google.com/anitaborg-emea/.

Tags: Anita Borg, EMEA, scholarship
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The Web 2.0 Expo came through San Francisco last week and Girls in Tech made our debut splash as an official Media and Community Partner.

The atmosphere at Web 2.0 this year was sober, and it appeared that a majority of the 8,300 people in attendance were on scholarship — that is, they had the free expo hall pass that limited admittance to the keynotes and a handful of sponsored sessions. Girls in Tech was on scholarship as well and I was bowled over by quality of the free content. If you missed the conference, below is my Best of Web 2.0 “The Cheap Seats” report. Today I’ll highlight the top keynotes, and tomorrow I’ll cover the best sessions.

Best Keynotes:

#1 Designing for Big Data by Jeff Veen of Small Batch Inc.
Jeff Veen’s presentation stood out as the best of the sixteen(!) keynotes because he is a natural story teller and a master at using pictures to convey ideas. He used simple and vivid illustrations to show us that the presentation of data is far more important than exposing the hard numbers that lie beneath.

Take Away: Data is most powerful when users can easily access, understand and ingest it.

#2 A conversation with the founders of Threadless
Jake Nickell and Jeff Kalmikoff are the ultimate accidental entrepreneurs and they were delightfully candid and unbusiness-y as they discussed how they came to start Threadless, a highly successful community-centered online T-shirt store that has spawned an HBS case study on the use of crowdsourcing. Crowdsourcing is a term that refers to leveraging a community of users to build key components of a company’s service or product offering. If this doesn’t resonate with you, think Yelp!

Take Away: If you are a business wanting to leverage crowdsourcing, start by asking, “How are people using our products differently than we expected?”

#3 A conversation with Ellen Miller from The Sunlight Foundation
The Sunlight Foundation is committed to increasing transparency in government through the use of the internet to catalyze openness and accountability. Ellen Miller talked about the powerful impact of creating websites that the public can use to easily access and digest thousand-page bills that are more likely to bury information than provide insights into what our government is doing.

Take Away: Let’s all think about how Web 2.0 applications can be applied to make government more transparent and accountable — and let’s make Gov 2.0 a priority and a reality.

Check back tomorrow for my take on the “Best Sessions at Web 2.0: The Cheap Seats Report”

Tags: crowdsourcing, Ellen Miller, girls in tech, Gov 2.0, HBS case study, Jake Nickell, Jeff Kalmikoff, Jeff Vee, keynote, scholarship, Small Batch, The best of Web 2.0, The Sunlight Foundation, Threadless, Tina Tran, Tina Tran blog, web 2.0
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