Ada Lovelace Day to be sponsored by ARM again

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ARM logoWe’re very excited to announce that Ada Lovelace Day will once again be sponsored by ARM! Not only that, but they have agreed to be the official ambassador to Ada Lovelace Day for the semiconductor industry on a long term basis.

As one of our major sponsors, ARM are supporting the development and delivery of a new educational resource pack for use in schools worldwide (about which more soon!). They will also be helping us to inspire girls and young women to engage in STEM subjects through another project that we’ll announce later in the year. We will be working closely with ARM to help us to spread the word about women in STEM and inspire the next generation of female scientists, technologists, engineers and mathematicians.

“Ada Lovelace Day provides an excellent opportunity to inform and encourage women and girls to pursue and explore careers in STEM subjects,” said Jenny Duvalier, executive vice president, people, ARM. ”Our partnership will raise awareness that a career in engineering is an exciting and well-rewarded option for women as well as help elevate the profile this inspiring organisation and celebration globally. We are positive that this long-term partnership will provide engagement for women to kick-start their careers and become successful engineers of the future. Being headquartered in Cambridge where Ada’s seminal work on the Difference Engine took place, adds an additional resonance to our partnership.”

“I’m thrilled to have ARM as a key partner in Ada Lovelace Day, supporting our rapidly expanding efforts to inspire and support women in STEM around the world,” said Suw Charman-Anderson, founder, Ada Lovelace Day. “We look forward to collaborating with ARM to develop educational resources that will inspire the next generation of girls to consider science, technology, engineering or maths as a future career.”

ARM is the world’s leading supplier of semiconductor intellectual property. They design and develop energy efficient processors and technologies for a range of different applications and they very generously supported Ada Lovelace Day Live! 2014. We are pleased to welcome them back!

Conway Hall confirmed as venue for ALD Live! 2015

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I’m pleased to say that the venue for this year’s Ada Lovelace Day Live! event has now been confirmed! We will be holding our annual science cabaret at Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, London on the evening of 13 October.

Conway Hall is owned by Conway Hall Ethical Society and was first opened in 1929. The name was chosen in honour of Moncure Daniel Conway (1832 – 1907), anti-slavery advocate, out-spoken supporter of free thought and biographer of Thomas Paine.

The Hall now hosts a wide variety of lectures, classes, performances, community and social events. It is renowned as a hub for free speech and independent thought.

Conway Hall has a fantastic track record of hosting not just free speech, humanist and political events, but also tech events and, as such, their remit fits in very well with the work we’re doing here at Ada Lovelace Day.

“We are incredibly proud to be in a position to be one of the many splendid sponsors of this year’s Ada Lovelace Day,” said Dr. Jim Walsh, Chief Executive Officer of Conway Hall. “As a charity with a long pedigree of rational thought and supporting intellectual human endeavour, Conway Hall Ethical Society naturally aligns to many of the same principles of Ada Lovelace Day. However, as the day itself will no doubt make clear, there is much work to be done to make the future just as interesting!”

Conway Hall has a capacity of 400, and has recently been refurbished, so we are really looking forward to seeing you at this historic venue!

Talks and Debates 1

 

Foyer 3

It’s still very early in the year for us, so we’ve a lot to organise and will be back in due course with more details of speakers and tickets.

We also still have some sponsorship packages for the event available, so if you’d like to support women in STEM by sponsoring one of the most exciting, enjoyable and educational events in the STEM calendar, please take a look at our prospectus and get in touch!

Rear Admiral Grace Hopper

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This is a fantastic short film from ESPN about Rear Admiral Grace Hopper, who wrote the first compiler and popularised the word ‘bug’ in reference to a computer glitch after finding a moth in the relays of the Harvard Mark 1.

You can also watch her interview with David Letterman:

Girls Get Digital at The Curiosity Hub

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Guest post by Jacqueline Currie, The Curiosity Hub

Curiosity hub

I organised an event in Brighton, UK on Saturday 11th October called ‘Girls Get Digital! (Celebrating Ada Lovelace Day)’. The event was sponsored by American Express and equipment and activities provided by my not-for-profit company Curiosity Hub. We also had a number of volunteers helping out (including 6 American Express employees). We had over 55 girls attend in total, aged from 6 to 12, with their parents. We ran 5 one-hour sessions (with 8-16 girls in each) with Lego robotics (WeDo and Mindstorms EV3), creating a computer game with Scratch, website development with HTML and stop-motion animation with SAM animation.

At the start of each workshop I gave a short introduction to Ada Lovelace Day, STEAM in everyday life and pictures of women in computing careers. You can see some photos from the event here. I also gave a short talk about Ada Lovelace at Codebar Brighton on the 14th October – Codebar encourages diversity in tech through free mentoring and 1:1 coding workshops for adults.

I asked parents to fill out an online survey after the Saturday event; there are some great quotes from the survey and from other emails I received:

What were the best things about this event?

My daughter: “That you got to make new friends as your partners” Me: That it made STEAM careers seem like a viable choice for girls – not unusual, just presented as an option.

Wonderful helpful staff… so enthusiastic and informative.

Well planned event, enthusiastic and friendly helpers, great way to increase girls’ confidence in a traditionally male orientated domain!

Friendly helpful staff. Great learning atmosphere.

Gives girls the opportunity to try things in a stress-free environment.

Providing a supportive environment in which children can learn, try new things and expand their horizons.

Many volunteers available to help every child. Very well organised. Educational as well as fun.

Children allowed to independently design, create and enjoy the animation for themselves, without adult direction or parental involvement. Great to see my daughter in action.

The way this opened my daughter’s eyes on what is possible using the computer.

Location, day and time, friendly and lots of help, only girls of similar age.

Other comments

It has been great to see my daughter grow in confidence, as her ability is high, but she allows herself to sit back, so this has been really good for her.

Thanks, this was a really good opportunity. I think there was something different about the buzz of the all girls event too (although would be v happy to attend a mixed event).

Perfect in every way! Thank you so much xx (especially as my daughter has additional needs and she still thrived in this environment!).

Cleo had an amazing time- thank you!

Keep on doing what you are doing and well done!

We thoroughly enjoyed the workshop.

Thank you. We appreciate the free taster session and really enjoyed it.

Keep up the good work! It was great that the day’s events were free!

Just a quick thanks for the session – Ella loved it and learned a lot (without realising it) – so thanks for putting on the workshop for free.

Maddie and her friends very much enjoyed experimenting with the Mindstorm robots.

Thank you so much for organising this event. Hannah really loved it, and she got loads out of it.

I love that Ada Lovelace Day really helps in promoting the idea that women working in STEAM should not seem weird or unusual, but recognises that it is currently uncommon, and so celebrates women’s achievements and focuses on practical events to help reverse that.

Oxford University Wikipedia edit-a-thon

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Guest post from Sarah Wilkin and Elizabeth McCarthy, University of Oxford

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To launch the award-winning Engage: Social Media Michaelmas series hosted at the University of Oxford and celebrate this year’s Ada Lovelace Day (14th October), the Educational Enhancement team worked in partnership with staff from the Bodleian Libraries and Wikimedia UK to lead a wikipedia editathon. In line with the occasion, the day centred on enhancing online coverage of female contributions to science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

The afternoon began with a fascinating talk by Professor Ursula Martin about the history and work of Ada Lovelace and then continued with an engaging training session with three enthusiastic Wikimedia trainers. The event was well attended by staff and students from multiple departments across the University who all worked hard to enhance several articles on female scientists. Energy levels were maintained high by a delicious Ada themed cake which further contributed to what was an enjoyable and thoroughly productive afternoon of editing!

The Bodleian Libraries are planning a display of Ada Lovelace material as well as a number of related events for 2015, including an academic symposium and events exploring Ada’s contributions to music, mathematics, computing, popular culture and more.

ALD14 cake