It’s been 6 months since the project kicked off and boy has a lot happened! Not only have we had a serious heatwave, with UK temperatures reaching their highest for 7 years and accompanying thunderstorms but we’ve also welcomed a few new arrivals (congrats Kate!) to the team.
In addition to Sonia Meggie (Inspirational Stemette), Lydia Monnington & Fahran Wallace (Hackathon Stemettes) Jacquelyn Guderley & Sophie Drouet (Blogging Stemettes), Michelle Brook (Policy Stemette) and Debbie Jelenke (Event Stemette) we welcome Marily Nika (Uni Stemette) who will be working on our links with Universities.
Here’s the lowdown on everything…
Up next – Summer Hack time!
We’ve been planning a girls’ hackathon since the very beginning – we’re now 22 days away from the first Stemettes girl’s hackathon. Taking place on Saturday, August 17th & Sunday, August 18th at London’s Barbican Centre, we’ve been given a load of laptops by O2 and some foodie support by Starbucks to help up to 70 girls create their own mobile apps, games and other coding stuff.
In July…
…we kept ourselves busy. We started the month by running our second pilot ‘Mobile App in a Day’ school workshop with Accenture. 15 girls from a school in Potters Bar spent the day creating their mobile apps for a natural disaster. Some won prizes for the apps they created and everyone was treated to a tour of Accenture’s world-class Innovation Centre.
Then, we spent 2 days at the Big Bang Fair London, where we ran two panels and had a stand to vote for our upcoming video series and also some fake blood (!) from Inorganic Chemist Stemette Francesca Stokes. We had a ball!
The week after we spent a day in the Hackney sun at Digital Summer Camp, where we saw Prince Andrew and met some more school children wanting to come along to the hackathon and also vote for our video series.
That evening, Head Stemette Anne-Marie jumped on a plane to Berlin. She had been invited by the Berlin Geekettes to keynote at a conference for Berlin women in technology. She shared some of her experiences as a woman in STEM (particularly technology) and asked the ‘geek girls’ in the audience to get involved in organisations like the Stemettes and encourage girls to join in the STEM fun. Phew!
Coming up – Microsoft IT Youth Hubs Digital Literacy UK tour
Not in London over the Summer? Don’t worry. We’ll be at the one-day Microsoft IT Youth Hubs Digital Literacy Skills days throughout August. They are all free to attend and will be in Glasgow on August 6th, Bristol on August 9th, Birmingham on August 15th, Manchester on August 20th and London on 22nd August.
WoInCo: From Employee to Entrepreneur event – Monday 29th July
Our friends at ‘Women in Computing’ are running an event next Monday for women wanting to make a start in the Tech Startup world. Hear from Stemettes like Jenny Griffiths, who started the multi-award-winning SnapFashion app, Tina Mashalaahi who founded the KweekWeek events platform, and Chloe Watts who founded the fashion digital agency ChloeDigital.
Inner Stemette video series: Will.i.am or Alicia Keys?
We’re working in collaboration with the cool gang at Nupe Magazine on an ‘Inner Stemette’ video series. We’ll be producing 12 4-minute interviews with wonderful Stemettes – trying to find out who they are inside – what they do for fun, what they enjoy in their jobs and how they’d describe themself…as a dance move!
Given their support for STEM, we’ve been asking young Stemettes who they’d rather see front this video series: Will.i.am or Alicia Keys?? Stay tuned to see who won the vote!
Thanks,
Head Stemette
