ACM-W Connections – April 2018

Welcome from the ACM-W Chair 

I am writing this welcome message while attending the 2018 CRA-W Grad Cohort workshop in San Francisco, CA.  Those who have had the opportunity to attend a CRA-W mentoring workshop (grad cohort, early/mid-career workshops) know that these are amazing events that give women lots of good advice relevant for specific stages of their computing journey.  Pictured are the faculty attendees from Brazil, France, Greece, India and the United Kingdom that ACM-W sponsored to attend the workshop.  These women had the opportunity to observe the presentation sessions and interact with the 450+ student and mentor attendees during a variety of social and networking events.  I want to thank our partners at CRA-W for their gracious hospitality to our group.  We all look forward to seeing similar programs developed in many global locations.

Gender Gap Survey to Launch on May 1st

After a year of workshops and diligent work by the many volunteers on the Gender Gap project, one of the primary goals of the project – the Global Survey of Scientists and Engineers – will launch on May 1st.  Some background on the survey is available at https://icsugendergapinscience.org/work-packages/global-survey/.  On May 1st, this web page will be modified to include a link to the active survey.  Many ACM/ACM-W volunteers engaged with the project will be disseminating information about the survey, which will be available in seven languages.  Please take time to participate when it goes live and encourage others to do the same. The survey results will give us a much better understanding of the demographics and experiences of computing and other STEM professionals world-wide.

Best ACM-W Officer Contest Opens

ACM-W Student Chapters provide young women opportunities to develop leadership skills.  The Best ACM-W Officer Contest gives student chapters a chance to recognize the hard work and dedication of their impactful chapter leaders.  The winner of the award will be given the opportunity to attend an ACM Celebration or the Grace Hopper Celebration during the 2018-2019 academic year.  Nominations for the award are open until May 15th.  Check the ACM-W Chapter Facebook page for more information.

Other ACM-W News

This newsletter also includes the following from our project committees:

  • A report from the ACM Celebration in Letterkenny, Ireland.
  • Activity of the ACM-W Professional Chapter in Namibia is featured.
  • The ACM-W Student Chapter project makes a call for Facebook posting of chapter activity. One posting chapter will be selected to receive a $250 award.
  • The ACM-W Europe report highlights the Ukrainian Chapter’s participation in the Women Who Code celebration.

Thanks to those who volunteered!

I want to extend my personal thanks to the many who responded to my call for volunteers in the March Connections.  Your interest in engaging with ACM-W will enable a greater social media presence in the near future!

A Final Note

As the 2017-2018 academic year comes to a close, the activity in our Celebrations and Student Chapters project will slow.  However, there is still much to report about the many events that happened over the past several months and we will continue to bring reports on those activities to you in the coming months.  Planning for next year’s events has begun and we look forward to more opportunities to support, celebrate and advocate for women in computing next year.

Thanks for standing with us as we work to fulfill our mission.

Jodi Tims
ACM-W Chair

News from ACM-W Celebrations

The Department of Computing at Letterkenny Institute of Technology (Ireland)  in conjunction with the ACM-W LYIT Chapter organized a Celebration of Careers in Computing which was held on February 9-10, 2018. This event focused on providing information on the types of careers available and the skills or attributes that companies are seeking when carrying out interviews for these positions. The ACM-W chapter in LYIT felt that there was a need for an event focused on equipping women with the skills needed to apply for jobs and to inform them as to how to search for jobs in their specific area. The event drew close to 100 attendees for the main event.

This was a two day event with the first day focused on speakers from industry. Compére on the day was Ruth Lennon. Speakers were from Microsoft, Klarna, VMForensics, CyberriskAware, CloudRanger, Head of School of Science – Gertie Taggart and the past and present ACM-W Chapter Chairs. In the evening a careers fair was held where companies both took CVs and provided advice on how to improve applicants skills and improve the focus of their CVs for the particular companies. Companies from both north and south of the border were in attendance. Companies included: Ignite, Microsoft, AllState, Fujitsu, Klarna, Cloud Ranger, Gartan Tech, Intuity, Optum and Cyberrisk Aware.

Day two of the event provided attendees an opportunity to increase their skills by attending the Hackathon or one of the workshops. The hackathon was organized by Microsoft. Workshops were selected in areas where the chapter members felt that they could gain the greatest advantage on their CVs. The workshops were: BlockChain, Serverless Architecture and CI/CD with Jenkins. Most of the speakers were former students. Andrea Cole and Lindsay Borthwick, current and former chapter chairs, worked tirelessly on the day. This event was funded by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), Microsoft and the Department of Computing, LYIT.

Upcoming Celebrations include:

If you would like information about how you could start your own local Celebration, please contact Wendy Powley (Celebrations Chair) at wendy@cs.queensu.ca.  Funding is available!

ACM-W Professional Chapters: Spotlight on Namibia

In celebration of International Women’s Day, the Namibia Women in Computing and NWIC ACM-W professional chapter organized two activities.

  • They collected cosmetics and feminine hygiene items for needy women and girls from the San communities in urban and rural areas. The San communities are one of Namibia’s marginalized communities.
  • They co-hosted the 3rd Annual Namibia Women in Computing Conference with an impressive lineup of sponsors and speakers. The Internet Society Namibia Chapter (ISOC) co-located a panel discussion on “Online Violence against Women”. The partnership between the Namibia Women in Computing and Internet Society Namibia Chapter brought panelists from the Office of the First Lady, Media (Africa One TV), Regulators (CRAN), the United Nations (Unicef) and Academia (Namibia University of Science and Technology) together.

The NWIC ACM-W professional chapter also collaborates with NWIC to organize events such as free coding workshops for women as well as hackathons.

For more information visit:  http://www.nust.na/?q=news/solidarity-women%E2%80%99s-dayStart an ACM Profession Chapter

For more information about how to start a professional chapter, check out the ACM website: https://www.acm.org/chapters/professionals/how-to-start-a-professional-acm-w-chapter

News from ACM-W Student Chapters

Welcome to our new chapters at SUNY Potsdam, IIT Ropar, UW-Platte, and Bennett University. Please join our Facebook page and keep us up to date on chapter activities!

Speaking of which, do you post about your chapter’s activities? If you do, thanks! And If not, we really want to know what you are up to. Your ideas may well inspire others chapters. To encourage more posts about chapter activities we are introducing a new incentive. Each month we’ll select a “best chapter activity” that has been posted to our Student Chapters Facebook page and award that chapter $250. The first award will be made May 15, so get your posts in. Refer to our web page for more details.

Do you have an amazing officer in your student chapter? Nominate her for the ACM-W best officer contest and she could win a free trip to the 2018 Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. See our contest poster for further details. To nominate her (or yourself) click on the following link: https://goo.gl/forms/o5lVASvwhPABrezc2.

News from ACM-W Europe

womENcourage 2018 – Oct 3-5, 2018, https://womencourage.acm.org/2018/

WomENcourage brings together women in the computing profession and related technical fields to exchange knowledge and experience and provide special support for women who are pursuing their academic degrees and starting their careers in computing. The first deadline for womENcourage 2018 is for Poster Abstracts on May 1, 2018. https://womencourage.acm.org/2018/index.php/call-for-participation/

Join womENcourage organizing team and contribute to the running of the conference! Volunteers are welcome. Please contact acmwe_volunteers@acm.org.

Minerva Informatics Equality Award, http://www.informatics-europe.org/awards/minerva-informatics-equality-award.html

The focus for the 2018 Award is “Recruiting and Supporting Female Students”.

The Award seeks to celebrate successful initiatives that have had a measurable impact on the recruitment and support of female students within the nominated Institution. Such initiatives can serve as exemplars of best practices within the community, with the potential to be widely adopted by other Institutions.

Celebration of Women Who Code Kyiv

Natalie Lytvyniuk, the ACM-W National Leader in Ukraine, with other members of ACM Ukrainian Chapter (http://ukraine.acm.org) participated in the 1-year Celebration of Women Who Code Kyiv (http://womenwhocode.com/kyiv), the global non-profit organization inspiring women to excel in technology careers that for 1 year long have its chapter in Kyiv.

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