Ada Lovelace Day, 2010

So it is Ada Lovelace Day again. This blog is fast turning into the place where I post my annual Ada Lovelace article, I really must do something about that.

Last year I wrote a rather long post about one person who had really inspired me Prof. Barbara Smith. This year I am going to cheat and blog about a lot of the Women in Tech, who have taught me important lessons in the last years and try to recount why they are all superstars of technology.

The people I would like to introduce you to are BCSWomen. BCSWomen is officially: 'the BCS Specialist Group that provides networking opportunities for all BCS professional women working in IT around the world. The Group's main objective is to provide support for female IT professionals, as well as mentoring and encouraging girls/women to enter IT as a career.' In reality it is this and so much more, it is the group of people who help each other with technical queries, congratulate each other when it goes well and help each other out when it is not going quite so well. Many of these people I have never met in real life, yet I still feel honoured to think of them as friends.

BCSWomen also organises networking sessions and training, so that no women in computing has to feel too isolated through being a minority. We also try to encourage more women in to IT by organising the Lovelace Colloquium. This one day, UK-wide event for women students of computing has talks from industry and academia, a poster contest for students original work, a careers advice panel session and an evening social. It is free to attend and travel money is available for poster contest entrants

I have to add a disclaimer here that I am the current chair of the group, so bias about it's success. However, I really do believe that this thriving community is vital to women in computing. So I would like publicly to say thank you to the committee who are all fantastic technologist, they all give up their time to help other female technologists. Thank you: Cornelia, Liz, Lucy, Sue, Hannah, Sarah, Louise, Jo, Fran, Tina, Anne, Margaret, Maggie, Miki, Rachel, Jill, Beth, Marie-Anne, Lilly, Julie-Ann, Edewede and Reena.