by, for, and about women in science, technology, engineering, & math

You can now add comments to other users’ profiles that will be publicly displayed (kind of like Facebook’s “Wall”) — in addition to sending users private messages or networking/mentoring/menteeing requests.

Ada Lovelace Day is coming up next month — for those who don’t know, it’s a worldwide event where hundreds of bloggers each post about a woman in technology they admire.

I posted about a number of women last year on my personal blog; but this year, I’d like to feature some of the women of Stemming!

If you want to be one of them (and I know you do), just let me know; leave a comment here, or email me at clara@stemming.org answering a few of these questions:

1. What makes you a technical or scientific woman? (Don’t worry… there’s no wrong answer!)
2. How did you first get interested or involved in tech/science?
3. What do you like/dislike about it?
4. What do you do with your life when you’re not engaged in technical/scientific pursuits?
5. Do you have a website or blog we can link our users to?

On March 24, I’ll post them all here!

Of course, we hope you’ll also make your own Ada Lovelace Day posts about women you admire here on Stemming!

Welcome to stemming.org!

Stemming is designed to be an online space where girls and women interested in the STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) can connect to support each other, network, mentor, share information, and make friends.

You’re encouraged to join the site; you’ll be able to put as much or as little as you want in your profile. The site will suggest other users near you and/or who have similar interests who you might want to connect with; you can also search for other users on a variety of criteria. Once you’ve found people you want to connect with, you can add them as friends on the site and/or send them networking requests (which will share your email with them, so you can get in touch offsite) through the buttons on their profile.

The site also features a collaborative blog; once you’ve joined the site, you can post a new blog entry. All your blog entries will show up on your profile, in the master list of posts, and when posts are searched; an administrator will pick selected posts from the stemming community to promote to the front page. We hope to get some good discussions going in the blogs — share your experiences, give advice to a younger version of yourself, ask a question or take an informal poll, or really just post anything you find interesting. Anyone on the site can add a new blog post!

We also have an informal mentoring/networking system; we’re hoping to expand this in the future, but for now, when you view another user’s profile, if they’ve indicated that they’re interested in networking, being a mentor, or having a mentor, you’ll see links on their profile to “send a request” for one of these types of connections. This will send them an email with your contact information encouraging them to get in touch so that you can meet and connect offsite. You can browse users by tag, search users, or view the list of all users to find people you may want to talk to.

The about page has some more information about the site; you can also always get in touch with any questions, comments, or suggestions (I’d love to hear from you!).

And just to get everyone excited, here’s a great video from the Grace Hopper celebration of Women in Computing: