Coder Girl Hack Day, a music and gaming showpiece in Dublin

18 Sep 2015

A new one-day hackathon is running in October, with gaming and music programming among the projects to be dealt with.

Coder Girl Hack Day is timed to celebrate International Day of the Girl and EU Code Week, with the artsy focus a slightly different take on hackathons elsewhere.

A way to get youngsters into programming, the event is run by a combination of CoderDojoGirls, Coding Grace and Girls Hack Ireland.

International Day of the Girl is a day when activist groups come together under the same goal to highlight, discuss and take action to advance rights and opportunities for girls everywhere.

Considering much of the future will be shaped by the evolution of modern technologies, learning how to code is becoming one of the most important tasks put in front of youngsters.

In a largely male-dominated environment, getting girls involved from a young age is a priority across the board.

And Ireland has form here. Last October, Lauren Boyle, then just nine years of age, was crowned EU Digital Girl of the Year.

Boyle’s Cool Kids Studio, an initiative she coded herself that now spans three websites, gained significant recognition, which culminated in her illustrious award.

She has since become quite the activist to encourage youngsters to get involved with coding, speaking at Inspirefest this summer on that very subject.

Coder Girl Hack Day will take place in DCU on October 10 between 10am and 4pm, with seven different events planned for the free event.

Programming music with Sonic Pi is already full, but projects like Fungus Games (creating storytelling games), LED light engineering, Python for parents and STEM workshops for adults are included.

Main image via Shutterstock

Women Invent is Silicon Republic’s campaign to champion the role of women in science, technology, engineering and maths. It has been running since March 2013, and is kindly supported by Intel, Eircom, Fidelity Investments, ESB, Accenture and CoderDojo.

Gordon Hunt
By Gordon Hunt

Gordon Hunt joined Silicon Republic in October 2014 as a journalist. He spends most of his time avoiding conversations about music, appreciating even the least creative pun and rueing the day he panicked when meeting Paul McGrath. His favourite thing on the internet is the ‘Random Article’ link on Wikipedia.

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