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Last week we held the 18th BCSWomen Lovelace Colloquium, in Glasgow. It was the biggest ever, with about 275 people in total (and about 170 posters). On one level, it was the same as previous years (a one-day conference, with a keynote and some speakers, and a poster session, with a pre-event social the night before to stop students from feeling alone). On another level, though, there’s something qualitatively different about an event of that size. One thing is certain: it’s definitely no longer “my” conference. I’m student chair and Safia Barikzai (of LSBU) is the chair, and there’s a whole team of people aroundRead More →

Much of the Aberystwyth Contingent: Rebecca, Begum, Praboda, Me, Edel, Danniela, Abby, Joanna, Jasmine, Grace, Savannah and Tamzin (missing: Amanda and Anita)

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On April 4th, we held the 17th BCSWomen Lovelace. I’ve been running or co-running this conference for longer than I’ve been running this blog… so it’s time for an event report. There’s a few missing in my event report sequence as I started this blog in 2009 (after the first Lovelace), I didn’t make it to #3 in Cardiff 2010 (I was working in France at the time), and it seems like 2021 Lovelace didn’t get an event report on this blog even though it definitely happened (online). A well-run conference involves more work in the run-up than anyone could possibly think, and the LovelaceRead More →

Cupcakes

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Gosh. Where to start. The 16th BCSWomen Lovelace happened a few weeks ago, and I was the event chair. Again. After retaking the reins and leading some events in lockdown, it was time to go face-to-face with the best women undergrads in computing in the UK. Again. Should I start on the day, with my brain waking me at 4, then getting me up at 5, for a stroll around a lake to clear my head before facing all the people? Or should I start three weeks earlier, when I took delivery of a badge machine to make a load of pronoun badges so weRead More →

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A couple of weeks ago I was interviewed by Brian Runciman of the BCS for the Gem of All Mechanisms podcast. We talk about gender, obviously, but also pinkification, tech, robots, male allies and more.

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I’ve published lots of writing – articles in journals and conference proceedings, mainly. Also quite a few magazine articles and one poem (aged 14, in the Skateboarding magazine RAD, but that’s a different story). Last week our book came out so now I can say I am a published author. It’s taken a while – over a year in total, with 6 authors collaborating online – but today I got the paper copies and so it feels a bit more real. The book aims to be a handbook and a practical guide – so if you are interested in diversity and more importantly interested inRead More →

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On April 17th, we held the 12th BCSWomen Lovelace Colloquium (The Lovelace) at the University of Salford. Regular readers of this blog will know that this is a conference for women undergraduate and taught MSc students studying computing and related subjects, and that I started the conference in 2008 handing it over to The Awesome Doctor Helen Miles in year 10; now she’s the conference chair and I’m the deputy. What this means in practice is that Helen and I have a very busy couple of weeks in the run up to the event – students don’t have funds to travel to conferences, generally, andRead More →

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The 11th BCSWomen Lovelace Colloquium was held just before Easter, at the University of Sheffield with support from Sheffield Hallam University. Regular followers of this blog will know that the day has a well-defined format, with student posters, speakers, a panel on computing careers, and a social at the end of the day. We also have a cake sponsor, so we also have too much cake. This was the first colloquium since I started the conference in 2008 where I wasn’t in some sense the conference chair. Cardiff, in 2010, was chaired by Miki Burgess (and I didn’t even make it to the event), butRead More →

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BCSWomen Chair Sarah Burnett has had a fab idea, which is to hold a series of webinars that talk about AI and how it is changing the world. In BCSWomen we do a lot of stuff about the women, and a lot of stuff to support women, but we also do a lot of stuff that is useful for tech people in general. The AI Accelerator falls into this category; the idea is that tech is changing and AI is driving that change, so we’re going to try and provide a background and overview of AI to help people get to grips with this. OnceRead More →

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The 10th BCSWomen Lovelace Colloquium was held on April 12th, at Aberystwyth University. Around 200 attendees enjoyed a day of inspiring talks, fascinating student posters, careers advice, employers fair, lots of networking and too much cake. Our headline sponsor this year was Google, who covered loads of the student travel and also sent a speaker along. As we pay for travel for all the poster contest finalists and as we were in Aberystwyth this year, we paid for 2 nights for everyone. This enabled us to have a social the night before, with Scott Logic providing a hackathon activity which got people talking and codingRead More →

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The BCSWomen Lovelace Colloquium was last week, in Sheffield. This is a collection of links to reports and so on. As usual I was the conference chair, and my official blog report is now on the BCSWomen site. SO pop over there and read that, then come back for the link roundup. The event hashtag saw a lot of traffic: https://twitter.com/hashtag/BCSLL16?src=hash A storify of the day has been put together by Sue Beckingham (@suebecks) https://storify.com/suebecks/the-bcswomen-lovelace-colloquium-bcsll16 Sheffield Hallam have created a nice youtube video which gives a good taste of the event https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lejx6zZiRa8&feature=youtu.be The photos (collected from three cameras, or rather, two cameras and a phone!)Read More →