by Jaim Zuber, Jean Weiss, Marie Gottschalk, and Rebecca Schatz | at MinneBar 10 | 11:15 – 12:05 in Calhoun | View Schedule
Minnesota’s tech community is awesome, but not very diverse. Wouldn’t it be cool if there were more women in tech? How many African American, Hmong or Latino developers do you know? How can we fix these digital divides?
Part of the answer is starting young, and making sure that girls and kids of color have the opportunity and encouragement to learn to code. You can help. Come learn what it’s like to volunteer helping young people to code.
This session highlights the Technovation Challenge and the Northside Code Clubs, two initiatives from the local nonprofit, Code Savvy. We’ll also include a quick update of local CoderDojos (including CoderDojoTC) plus other opportunities that combine kids and code.
• Technovation[MN] enables young women to dream up, design, code and pitch original mobile apps – a unique blend of technical and entrepreneurial challenges. This year there are 30+ teams are now gearing up to present their apps at the gala Appapalooza in the Minneapolis Convention Center on May 3. Learn how you can help Technovation[MN] and other initiatives encouraging girls and young women to code.
• The Northside Code Clubs are places for kids and teens to learn to code in a free, fun, open-ended environment, out of school at several partner sites in North Minneapolis. The program is now expanding to other targeted communities. The young coders explore Scratch, AppInventor and Web languages as well as electronics and robots. Most importantly, they enjoy becoming creators – not just users – of modern technology.
Join us to inspire a diverse, new code-savvy generation!
Jaim is an iOS Developer/Consultant and Fractional Technology Leader. You can find his written thoughts preserved at his blog.
Jaim is back in the indie life after recently leaving a job as a Director of Software Engineering at a Digital Bank.
He likes baseball, BBQ, and making noise with a modest array of instruments… sometimes in public.
Board Member of Code Savvy and Technovation[MN]. After a long career in technology, I am now following my passion for improving diversity in the technology community. Code Savvy is a not-for-profit inspiring kids and teens to become code-savvy, that is, to understand the kind of creative thinking that goes into coding, and to try out programming computers and devices. Through Technovation[MN], a program of Code Savvy, we are "enabling women to transform the world one mobile app at a time".
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Founder of Code Savvy a nonprofit organization inspiring a kids and teens to explore computer programming and creative problem solving. Code Savvy initiatives include CoderDojo Twin Cities, TechnovationMN, Get With the Program and the Northside Code Clubs. Tweeting @CodeSavvyOrg @rebeccaschatz
