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In 2015, an IEEE sponsored conference is going to have an ex-playboy centrefold as their guest star. Yes, you read that right. The committee of ICIP – coincidentally, almost entirely made up of guys – think it’s a good idea to have Lena do the prizegiving. Who’s Lena? In a nutshell: Back in 1973, some people wanted a test image One of them had bought some porn to work (wat?) So they said (hur hur) let’s scan that (wat?) And then released it to the “vision community” who’ve been using it ever since… (If you want to find out more about the background to Lena,Read More →

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I started this blog for Ada Lovelace Day in 2009 so this is my 5th ALD post. The idea is to write about a women in science that you admire, and this year, I’ve chosen Cate Huston. When I met her in April (she spoke at the BCSWomen Lovelace Colloquium) she was a Google Engineer who’s talk I missed, but I knew it got super feedback from our attending students, and we had a chat, and that was nice. Since then we’ve tweeted and emailed and met at conferences, and I’ve grown to respect her opinion hugely on matters from software testing to corporate culture. She’sRead More →

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Last Thursday I went to London for the Computer Weekly women in IT awards. I was invited to speak at the event, as well as being shortlisted. I chose to talk about the undergraduate experience: the BCSWomen Lovelace Colloquium for women undergrads, why I set it up, and what it’s actually like for undergraduate women in UK universities right now. The culture of uni in general has got a lot more laddish in recent years, and social media doesn’t help that at all. I also drew heavily on the excellent book “Unlocking the clubhouse“, which came out over a decade ago, and which covers aRead More →

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The last couple of weeks have been a bit mental for me, particularly on the women in tech front… Normally this time of year I’d be blogging about the London Hopper. I went this year, and I was the MC again (introducing speakers, keeping everyone to time, being sarcastic). But I’ve not blogged about it as since then things have been fairly busy – if you want to read about the Hopper, check out Bedour Alshaigy’s post on Computer Weekly. Bedour won the poster contest last year so came to give the prize talk this year, and it was great. That evening was the KarenRead More →

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This post is a collection of all the blogs, photos and articles I’ve found about the BCSWomen Lovelace Colloquium 2014. If I’ve missed anything – leave a comment or drop me an email and I’ll add it. Photos! The photos from the day are now available on Flickr. Check them out, Silvia took some great pictures. Students have been blogging about the day Michelle Brown from De Montfort wrote on her own blog but also had a guest post on Computer Weekly Charlotte Godley from Hull Uni (also a prizewinner) wrote a post on her own site and on Computer Weekly Polina Stoyanova from GreenwichRead More →

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For International Women’s Day, the Athena Swan team at Aberystwyth put on a series of events over the course of the preceding week. I was off to London for a conference so helped organise an event on the Monday before jetsetting off to The Smoke (if you can call travelling via Arriva Trains Wales “jetsetting”). Thanks to all the speakers, to my co-organiser Carina Fearnley (who did most of the hard organisational work) and to Computer Science in Aberystwyth for sponsoring the evening (paying for amplification and tech setup). We had about 70 people there, I think, and there were a few more watching onRead More →

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Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging, where people write posts about women scientists who’ve inspired them. This is my fifth ALD post and it marks a departure in theme for me: all of my previous posts have been about computer scientists, and about people I’ve met. To start with I blogged about Sue Black, then Julie Greensmith, then Sarah Winmill, and last year ACS ladies, Aber Comp Sci’s group for women students. This year I’ve chosen to blog about a botanist who I’ve never met. (Indeed, I haven’t even read any of her original papers…). But I think that she’s a goodRead More →

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Last week I went to London for the Hopper, and for the Karen Spärk Jones Lecture. The London Hopper Colloquium is an annual event for postgrad and post-doc women in computing. The Hopper is one of my favourite events in the women in computing calendar1: indeed I got involved in the whole women in computing/BCSWomen thing as a result of attending the Hopper back in 2006 (I was a postdoc then, and I won the poster prize – events are always more fun if you walk out with a prize, but I think I’d have enjoyed it anyway:-). I go back most years and haveRead More →

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A week or so back I went to check out the venue for next year’s BCSWomen Lovelace Colloquium, and to have a chat with the local organisers (James Anderson and Yota Dimitriadi). It was lovely to catch up with James (Yota wasn’t able to make it) and it was also really positive to discuss things like venue, lineup, and that kind of stuff. It makes it feel so much more concrete when you can picture the space. So I thought I’d do a blog post so you, dear reader, can picture the space too. I did a post-doc once on a project joint with Reading,Read More →

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The sixth BCSWomen Lovelace Colloquium was held at the University of Nottingham, on the 4th April 2013. I can hardly believe that we’re already on number 6! The day featured talks from industry and from academia, a panel session on careers, a poster session of student work, a social, and of course lots of time for networking. The audience filing in at the start of the day The talks We had more talks than usual this year, as the original schedule featured a 1h keynote, but our speaker had to pull out due to family reasons. So Joolz & Gillian stepped in at short noticeRead More →