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

Are you a woman? Are you a Geek? She’s Geeky is for you! Join us for an UNConference of amazing people, amazing discussions, great presentations.

She’s Geeky 10 – The 5th Bay Area Event January 27-29, 2012 Computer History Museum, 1401 N Shoreline Blvd., Mountain View, CA 94043 www.shesgeeky.org Follow us on Twitter.

Women attending She’s Geeky events find inspiration and gain self confidence to pursue or continue on STEM career paths because they are given the opportunity to present their work, often for the first time, discuss critical issues and build peer networks for support.

We have hosted 10 successful events in the last five years around the country, inclusive of women of all ages who self-identify as geeks. We attract women from a broad spectrum of technological specialties, professions, industries, levels of expertise, and across generations.

Instead of a pre-planned agenda, the agenda is created live the day of the event by all the geek women who attend. Join us!

Register today: http://shesgeeky10-eorg.eventbrite.com/

Interested in sponsoring this event? Contact Kas@shesgeeky.org.

I’m not a STEM woman. I’m a creative writer. When I see numbers with a bunch of symbols as in any mathematical field from statistics to calculus, I freeze up. In high school chemistry I had far more interest in my amazingly good looking Hindi lab partner than in balancing equations. You get the idea.

Fortunately, I have brought into the world a well-balanced, 14 year old with equally stellar achievement in science, math and creative writing — a true hybrid of my husband and me.

She seeks a future in astrophysics or aeronautics, and to that end she is attending Physics and Engineering Camp for Girls at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. The St. Olaf Rube Goldberg Machine team has been national champions, going up against major universities like Syracuse and Michigan. St. Olaf has a world class math and engineering department — very unusual for a small, Lutheran, liberal arts college.

There are many camps and programs for middle school girls interested in STEM fields, but not as many for high school girls.

Another source of great fortune is that St. Olaf is just 140 miles up the road from our home.

The camp runs this year from July 11-16. It would be a great opportunity for a high school girl interested in physics or engineering for next year.

We seek: the last bit of funding for Caitlyn to go. My writing practice has fallen off dramatically in the six months since we signed Caitlyn up for the camp. She has earned two small scholarships — one from our local Society of Women in Engineering and one from our local Kiwanis. She has some money directly from the college.

We need: just $300 more. Normally, I would consider the cost of tuition for this camp more than reasonable for a sleep away camp.

Between my husband’s illness this winter and spring and my own business falling off with many projects on indefinite hold, we literally do not have $300.

If there is another Society of Women in Engineering or really any group or individual out there who, in the next few days, would give a need based scholarship directly to the college for a very high achieving rising high school freshman to make it possible for her to attend this camp, I believe your investment would be most worthwhile.

Providing scholarships to this camp for similar girls interested in STEM fields at this world class college would also be a solid investment in nurturing future women in STEM.

Thank you!

email me here for more information:

lakewriter51340@gmail.com

For more about the camp:

http://www.stolaf.edu/camps/science/index.html

DARPA – The “agency of wonder” is now headed by a woman. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/13/science/13prof.html?hpw

• She’s Geeky unconference is coming up in the Bay Area!
• Also in the Bay Area, a competition for teams of high school girls programming Android and iPhone applications
• In Boston, the LibrePlanet Conference 2010 is coming up in March — RSVP now to reserve a spot!
• Check out Engineer Your Life — a website aimed at high school girls and promoting careers in engineering
• This story about research showing girls may be less interested in computer science if it’s associated with a “geeky” environment has been being passed around a lot this week. What do you think? Is this a legitimate explanation? Personally, I’ve always found geeky environments to be a plus — but then, I’m already a programmer, so my personal experience says more about how women do go into technology than why they don’t.
• Under the Microscope profiles several women who are playing important roles in the United Nations’ Climate Change Conference
• This diagram of the many species of geeks is kind of cool, but it’s also depressing how sexism in geek culture shows up even in such a playful context — one of the types of geek is “IT guy” (of course, there’s no “IT gal”), and all of the “geek heroes” are men, while several of the “geek obsessions” are women (taking their place among “stuff” like aliens, robots, and movies).
• Mark Shuttleworth is stepping down as CEO of Canonical — current COO Jane Silber will take his place
• Gawker posts a guide to the new Facebook privacy settings and an update on the old privacy settings you can no longer use
• Is Alice in Wonderland really a complex allegory about then-new types of mathematics?
• The Free Press Action Fund posts a map of where your representatives stand on Net Neutrality, and how to contact them about it
• And, it’s almost the weekend. Periodic Table of Beer!

Thanks to my twitter feed for sharing several of these links!

As always, please share your links of interest in the comments or in a blog post of your own!