On Tuesday 9th October 2018, the University’s Information Services team are running an edit-a-thon to celebrate Ada Lovelace Day 2018 which is an international celebration day of the achievements of women in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM).
This year the event will have a particular focus on Contemporary Women in STEM and #ALD2018 is to be hosted at King’s Buildings with a evening networking event in the social space at the Joseph Black building (wine and nibbles supplied by the Royal Society of Chemistry).
Talks, activities and networking
There will be a range of guest speakers in the morning followed by fun STEM activities in the afternoon. Full Wikipedia editing training will be given at 2-3pm. Thereafter the afternoon’s edit-a-thon will focus on improving the quality of Wikipedia articles related to Contemporary Women in STEM! This year we will also be hosting a Women in STEM data hackathon.
Following on from last year’s panel discussion, to close the day there will be a more informal discussion and networking event. Five guest speakers from a variety of career stages have been invited to say a few words to promote discussion including Dr. Jenni Garden, Christina Miller Research Fellow at the School of Chemistry and Professor Lesley Yellowlees.
Book your place now
All four bookable sessions (short talks & activities, HPC Carpentry, Wikipedia editing/hackathon and evening discussion/networking) will be free and open to all.
You can book to attend one, two, three or all four sessions.
Programme
1. 11am-2:30pm: Short talks & STEM activities
1a. 11am-12:00pm: Short talks
Chaired by Anne-Marie Scott (Information Services).
Venue: Murchison House (Room G.07)
Invited speakers:
Housekeeping and Welcome – Anne-Marie Scott, Deputy Director or Learning, Teaching & Web
10 minute talks
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- Women in High Performance Computing (HPC) – Athina Frantzana
- Women in STEM Society- Charlie Simms and Yvonne Anderson
- Wellcomm Kings – Rosie and Izzy
Ada Lovelace Day – Melissa Highton, Assistant Principal for Online Learning.
10 min talks continued
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- Introduction to the Gender and Equality Images Internship – Francesca Vavotici
- Knitting Ada – Find out about how Madeleine Shepherd hacked her knitting machine to create a portrait of Ada Lovelace in yarn.
- University of Edinburgh Physics Society – Olivia Jackson
The morning session will close with elevator pitches for the drop-in activities in the afternoon.
1b. 12pm-2:30pm: STEM activities
Chaired by Stewart Cromar and James Slack (Information Services).
Venue(s): Murchison House (Room G.07)
1c. 12pm-2:30pm: DIY Film School
Venue: Murchison House (Room G.07)
- Liam Duffy and Stephen Donnelly (Information Services)
- Introductory talk on DIY Film School and then practising & recording of the below activities
1d. 12pm-2:30pm: STEM stories
Venue: Murchison House (Room G.07)
- Edinburgh University Women in STEM Society Committee members: Yvonne Anderson, Charlie Simms, Sarah Aitkin, Lyndsey Scott, Serene Messai
- Aim: To allow students to share and discuss their experiences at university, particularly women in STEM.
- All participants are given postcards on which they can write a good or bad experience they have had during university to do with equality and diversity.We will have a whiteboard split into good and bad and will get people to put their postcard on the side that applies to them.
- Outcome: Bringing up subjects such as unconscious bias and making people aware that sexism is a current problem within stem subjects. Focusing on positive stories but also ways of addressing the negative ones.
1e. 12pm-2:30pm: Cake decorating
Venue: Murchison House (Room G.07)
- Edinburgh University Women in STEM Society Committee: Yvonne Anderson, Charlie Simms, Sarah Aitkin, Lyndsey Scott, Serene Messai
- Audience given cupcake and bio about a famous women in STEM and decorate their cake to represent her. The aim is simply to educate people on the important female figures within STEM.
Book here to attend the short talks and activities (via MyEd).
Book here to attend the short talks and activities (via Eventbrite).
2. 12:30pm-5:30pm: HPC Carpentry
HPC Carpentry: a hands-on introduction to Supercomputing
Venue: JCMB (Room 3211)
- David Henty, Weronika Filinger, Clair Barrass, Andy Turner
- N.B. Needs to be pre-registered
- Edinburgh University hosts the UK national supercomputer, ARCHER, and many other machines available to Edinburgh researchers. This hands-on session will explain what High Performance Computing (HPC )is, what a supercomputer is, how to use it and what you can get out of it. We have run similar workshops previously under the “Women in HPC” initiative in UK and abroad and are keen to repeat the workshop for a local audience.
Book here to attend the HPC Carpentry session (via ARCHER website).
3. 2:30pm-5:30pm: Wikipedia editing/hackathon
3a. Contemporary Women in STEM editathon
Chaired by Ewan McAndrew and Stephanie ‘Charlie’ Farley.
Venue: Murchison House (Room G.07)
- Create pages on contemporary Women in STEM figures crowdsourced from suggestions from circulating this Googleform.
- Wikipedia training from 2pm-2.45pm
- Creating new pages from 2.45pm-5pm.
- Publishing new pages 5pm-5.30pm.
- Potentially personal/research websites as sources of information
- Sources for open-access images? Approach repositories
- Identify if there are books we need to buy into library ahead of time. e.g. Last year Chemistry was their lives proved very helpful
- Use review articles for sources of bio information.
- Short activities can have big results e.g. training to add an image, an info box (5-10 mins), citation (5-10) or data (5-10 mins)
3b. 2:30pm-5:30pm: Women in STEM data hackathon
Venue: Murchison House (Room G.07)
- Data on Women in STEM can be provided in an editable table – participants fill in blank columns with missing verifiable information.
- E.g. Place of study, field of work, notable achievements…
- At the end of the Wikipedia and Wikidata workshops we will tweet out the newly created pages and new data visualisations (maps, timelines etc.)
Book here to attend the Wikipedia editing/hackathon (via MyEd).
Book here to attend the Wikipedia editing/hackathon (via Eventbrite).
4. 5:45pm-7.30pm: Evening discussion & networking event
Chaired by Dr. Michael Seery, Director of Teaching at the School of Chemistry.
Venue: Social area at the School of Chemistry in Joseph Black building.
- Following on from last year’s panel discussion, this will be a more informal discussion and networking event. Five guest speakers from a variety of career stages have been invited to say a few words to promote discussion inc. Women in STEM Society Committee members, Dr Rachel Barrie, Professor Eva Hevia, Dr. Jenni Garden and Professor Lesley Yellowlees.
- Wine and nibbles provided by the Royal Society of Chemistry.
Book here to attend the evening event (via MyEd).
Book here to attend the evening event (via Eventbrite).
Image credits
Creative Commons Attribution licenced (CC BY) ‘tickets‘ icon designed by Maxim Kulikov on the Noun Project. Original icon remixed by Stewart Lamb Cromar.