Coder Girl Hack Day
Coder Girl Hack Day Inspirefest ambition wall. Photo: Connor McKenna

Coder Girl Hack Day attendees offer ambitions ahead of Inspirefest 2016

12 Oct 2015

Ahead of Inspirefest 2016 next June, attendees at this month’s Coder Girl Hack Day offered their life’s ambitions by writing down what they want to be when they grow up.

The Coder Girl Hack Day initiative is timed to celebrate International Day of the Girl and EU Code Week and is run by a combination of CoderDojoGirls, Coding Grace and Girls Hack Ireland.

The one-day event focused on programming music and developing game apps and took place on 10 October at Dublin City University’s (DCU) Innovation Campus and also included the TOG Dublin hackerspace team running an awesome hardware hack.

For the 100-plus attendees who made it to the event, there were also talks from major female figures working in the games industry, including Jen Carey from Havok and Elaine Reynolds from Simteractive.

Of course, the parents who attended also got to develop their own coding skills as part of a ‘Python for Parents’ course as well as a science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) education workshop for both teachers and parents.

Siliconrepublic.com was also down there on the day and posed the question to those at the event: “What’s your ambition?”

In the end, the Inspirefest campaign saw a huge response from girls and adults alike offering their aspirations to the world, as has been so well documented on Twitter.

Also for one of those attending the event, there is cause for celebration, as Jacinta McFall was confirmed as the winner of a guardian-plus-child ticket for Inspirefest 2016.

 

 

 

 

Inspirefest is Silicon Republic’s international event connecting sci-tech professionals passionate about the future of STEM. Join us again from 30 June to 2 July 2016 for fresh perspectives on leadership, innovation and diversity.

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, Open Eir (formerly Eircom Wholesale), Fidelity Investments, Accenture and CoderDojo.

Colm Gorey
By Colm Gorey

Colm Gorey was a senior journalist with Silicon Republic. He joined in January 2014 and covered AI, IoT, science and anything that will get us to Mars quicker. When not trying to get his hands on the latest gaming release, he can be found lost in a sea of Wikipedia articles on obscure historic battles and countries that don't exist any more, or watching classic Simpsons episodes far too many times to count.

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