We’ve had a ball this August. Not only has the weather been genuinely amazing, but we’ve also been able to get about 80 girls up and down the country coding over the Summer.
We’d like to say a huge thank you to all of the Big Stemettes who have got stuck in this Summer – on our ‘Digital Literacy’ tour with UK Youth & Microsoft and at our big ‘Stemettes Hack the Barbican’ event. Also a huge thanks to our sponsors for each of these events.
We’ve moved! New website
It’s now stemettes.org
More and more people want to join in and help out on the project, so we’ve had to upgrade our website a bit. There’s now much more information about what we’re doing and how everyone can get involved. Give it a try and give us your feedback!
August happenings
Microsoft, HackTheBarbican, the Observer
We went on tour with Microsoft & UK Youth – visiting Glasgow, Bristol, Birmingham, Manchester and London – throughout August. On each day we ran an ‘Intro to Coding’ session introducing youth to HTML and the wonders of the Web.
Amidst the tour, we also ran the first-ever hackathon for girls at the Barbican Centre in London, as part of the HackTheBarbican event. A huge round of applause for our hackathon mentors who taught 60 girls Scratch, App Inventor and Python over the two days.
Many thanks to our judges Carolyn Smithson (O2/Telefonica), Chloe Watts (ChloeDigital), Cassandra Harris (Freeformers) and Selina Pavan (Investment Bank Technology) who came along to judge our Demo Day. Huge thanks to our sponsors O2 Think Big, Starbucks and Somewhereto_ who helped make the hack happen and covered all of the costs…and donated 75 laptops for us to use!
We were featured on a double-page spread in the Observer on Sunday 18th – check it out on their website.
September events
WoInCo & Campus Party
On 5th September Head Stemette Anne-Marie will be on the stage at Campus Party Europe, as part of a ‘Women in Tech’ panel. The winners from the Hack at the Barbican will be joining her in the audience too. If you’d like to come along, we’ve got 20% off tickets for the day.
Then on 25th September, we’ll be at the next WoInCo (Women in Computing) event joining Professor Alison Wolf and other lovely ladies to talk about social change and technology. Again, we’ve got a discount code – use code ‘STEM8’ to book your tickets for free.
October/November plans
Next Panel, Oxford Hack and our Exhibition
We’ve confirmed our next panel event will be on Saturday 12th October as part of the Ada Lovelace Day celebrations. Bank of America Merrill Lynch will be hosting us and has invited a school from Luton and a school from Preston to join us. Save your seat now.
Keep your eyes peeled for full updates and details in the next couple of weeks. The team will spend most of September knuckling down and planning like crazy to bring you an excellent experience.
We’re aiming to have a hack in Oxford at the beginning of the half-term and then the Stemettes Exhibition/Stemettes Show on Friday.
