Planning for this year’s Ada Lovelace Day is kicking off and I’m pleased to announce that this year it will be held on Tuesday 16 October 2012. As soon as we have more details about what we’re planning for the day we will let you know, but in the meantime please mark the date in your diary and spread the word! (And don’t forget to join our mailing list!)

FAQ

Why has the date changed?
The primary reason why the date has changed is simply that I had an insurmountable clash in my diary. The secondary reason is that the 7th October this year falls on a Sunday which is a bit of a rubbish day for events.

I had already begun planning for 7 October. What do I do now?
Keep going! Spreading events out a little bit will help give Ada Lovelace Day legs, and there’s no earthly reason why we have do to absolutely everything on the same day. Who knows, maybe soon it’ll be Ada Lovelace Week instead!

Why isn’t ALD on one of Ada’s important dates, like her birthday or deathday?
Ada may be the figurehead for this movement, but we’re focused on celebrating all women in STEM, not just Ada. Ada’s significant dates are also a bit too close to Christmas for comfort and we’d have problems getting venues for events as we’d be in competition with parties and other festive events.

Can’t the day just stay put?
Think of it like Easter, which wanders around all over the place and yet we still seem to cope.

What will the date be in 2013?
When I have a better idea what my diary is like in October 2013, I’ll be able to set a date. Check back in about a year’s time.

If you have any other questions, please fire away! But do bear in mind that Ada Lovelace Day is organised by me and a tiny group of volunteers who put their own time into the project. It only exists because people are kind enough to give up their evenings and weekends to make it happen.

This year’s Ada Lovelace Day has been a fantastic success, but it wouldn’t have happened without the hard work of a lot of people, so I have some heartfelt thanks to share:

Paolo Valdemarin and his team at Evectors worked hard to get the new website up and running. I look forward to working with them further over the next year to develop the site in some exciting directions!

Thanks to Helen Arney, Hannah Dee, Maggie Berry and BCSWomen for their invaluable support in organising Ada Lovelace Day Live!. Huge thanks to our speakers: Maggie Philbin, Helen Keen, Dr Sue Black, Sarah Pascoe, Gia Milinovich, Maggie Aderin-Pocock and special thanks to our compere for the evening, Kate Smurthwaite. It was a truly fabulous event!

And thanks to Hannah Dee, Karen Petrie and BCSWomen for putting on the Ada Lovelace Day Android Extravaganza.

Further thanks to the volunteers who have helped over the last year: Steph Troeth, Miles Taylor, Joel Mitchell, Owen Blacker, Jen Blacker, Saul Cozens, and everyone else in the working group who has contributed. ALD wouldn’t have been what it was without such a great group of volunteers.

And finally, thank you to everyone who came to the events, everyone who organised events around the world, and everyone who took part online.

Please do keep an eye @findingada on Twitter and on our blog as we continue to develop the site over the next few months.

Ada Lovelace Day has already begun in the island nation of Kiribati! One of the curious things about a ‘day’ is that due to various dateline shenanigans it’s Ada Lovelace Day somewhere around the world for a grand 50 hours. This means that you have plenty of time to get your tribute to a woman in science, technology, engineering or maths and add it to our collection.

If you don’t have your own blog or website, please do feel free to use the comments on this post as a place to add your tribute.

Let the celebrations begin!

Quick reminder before we get to the exciting bits: If you want to come to Ada Lovelace Day Live! or the Ada Lovelace Day Android Extravaganza, book now! Tickets are almost sold out, but we must close sales at noon on Wednesday even if there are still a few left.

Adafruit: 24 hours of Ada Lovelace Day and 10% off everything in the store
Adafruit celebrates Ada Lovelace Day for the second year in a row with special content and discounts! Limor “Ladyada” Fried, who was the first female engineer on the cover of WIRED magazine is publishing a post per-hour of a women in science/engineering for 24 hours on October 7th, 2011. This will be a day long celebration to help bringing women in technology to the fore!

Adafruit makes educational electronics and wants to help get more young women interested in technology, the discount code for the day will be ADA11, Adafruit is offering 10% off ALL their products for that day only. The Adafruit site will feature a female engineer, scientist or maker who Limor admires throughout the entire day!

Lovelace & Babbage hits the iPad
Ada Lovelace – the world’s first computer programmer – is about to get her own iPad app.

The app will be released on October 7th as part of Ada Lovelace Day, an international event celebrating the achievements of women in science, technology, engineering and maths.

Based on hit webcomic 2D Goggles (as featured in The Times, Economist, Wired and on the BBC), the app sees science heroes Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage fighting crime in a gadget-filled steampunk Victorian London. Their adventures are based on hundreds of real-life historical documents, many of which appear in the app as interactive footnotes and annotations.

Lovelace & Babbage will be available as a free download from the iTunes Store from October 7th 2011. In the meantime, you can see sneak previews via Agant and Sydney Padua.