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).
It’s a little over a month until Ada Lovelace Day 2018 so do pop it in your calendar now and we’ll announce further details about the University’s plans on our Ada Lovelace Day website shortly.
This year the event will have a particular focus on Contemporary Women in STEM and #ALD2018 is to be hosted at the JCMB building (subject to room confirmation) with a evening networking event in the social space at the Joseph Black building (wine and nibbles supplied by the Royal Society of Chemistry).
There will be a range of guest speakers in the morning followed by fun STEM activities in the afternoon (see below for details). 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 inc. Dr. Jenni Garden, Christina Miller Research Fellow at the School of Chemistry and Professor Lesley Yellowlees.
All three events (morning, afternoon and evening) will be free and open to all so taking part in Ada Lovelace Day is as as easy as 1,2,3.
You can book to attend one session, two sessions or all three and booking will open very soon. Watch this space.
Who is your STEM heroine?
A regular activity for Ada Lovelace Day (ALD) at the University of Edinburgh is the Wikipedia editing event or editathon. This year the focus is contemporary women in STEM who do not currently have Wikipedia pages.
Nominate your contemporary STEM heroine for consideration at the Wikipedia editathon Tuesday 9th October. This should only take 5-10 minutes and it will really help us to create new role models for young and old alike on the world’s go-to source for information, Wikipedia.
Submit your STEM heroine nomination (Google Form)
Please note the deadline for submissions is now Monday 8th October.
Assistant Principal Melissa Highton welcoming attendees to Ada Lovelace Day 2017
Draft Programme
Morning session 11am-12:30pm: Talks
Morning of short talks chaired by Anne-Marie Scott.
Confirmed room: Teaching Studio G.07 at Murchison House.
Tea and coffee will be served at 11am.
Talks will commence at 11.15am.
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- Housekeeping and welcome from Anne-Marie Scott, Deputy Director or Learning, Teaching & Web Services.
- Women in High Performance Computing (HPC) – Athina Frantzana
- Introduction to the Gender and Equality Images Internship – Francesca Vavotici. This 10-minute talk will explore the role of the Gender and Equality Images Intern and will offer an overview of the Library and University collections. With such wealth of fascinating materials available, the talk will provide insight into the research process and share some of the highlights so far.
- Women in STEM Society – Charlie and Yvonne.
- Wellcomm Kings – Rosie and Izzy
- 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.
(Pic from Ada Lovelace Day 2016 at the University of Edinburgh – own work CC-BY-SA).
Activities 12:30pm-5:30pm: Activities
Chaired by Stewart Cromar and James Slack (Information Services)
Confirmed rooms:
- 3211 – Teaching Studio Capacity: 24 for the HPC Carpentry workshop.
- Teaching Studio G.07 at Murchison House for all other activities.
12:30pm-5:30pm: HPC Carpentry: a hands-on introduction to Supercomputing (3211 – JCMB Building)
- David Henty, Weronika Filinger, Clair Barrass
- 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.
12:30pm-1:30pm: DIY Film School (Teaching Studio G.07 at Murchison House).
- Liam Duffy and Stephen Donnelly (Information Services)
- Introductory talk on DIY Film School and then practising & recording of the below activities
12:30pm-2:30pm: STEM stories (Teaching Studio G.07 at Murchison House).
- 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.
12:30pm-2:30pm: Cake decorating (Teaching Studio G.07 at Murchison House).
- 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.
Women in Red Wikipedia editing. Photo by Dr Alexander Chow. CC-BY-SA
Contemporary Women in STEM editathon 2:30pm-5:30pm
Chaired by Ewan McAndrew and Stephanie ‘Charlie’ Farley.
Confirmed room: Teaching Studio G.07 at Murchison House.
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- Create pages on contemporary Women in STEM figures crowdsourced from suggestions from circulating this Googleform.
- Wikipedia training from 2:30pm-3.30pm
- Creating new pages from 3.30pm-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)
- Create pages on contemporary Women in STEM figures crowdsourced from suggestions from circulating this Googleform.
Women in STEM data hackathon 3:30pm-5:30pm
Teaching Studio G.07 at Murchison House.
- 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.)
Ada Lovelace
Alfred Edward Chalon [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Evening discussion & networking event 5.45pm-7.30pm
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. Dr. Jenni Garden, Christina Miller Research Fellow at the School of Chemistry and Professor Lesley Yellowlees.
Wine and nibbles provided by the Royal Society of Chemistry,
Previous Women in STEM editathons
Review the Wikipedia articles improved and created at previous ALD editathons:
Ada Lovelace Day 2017 short film
In celebration of International Women’s Day (#IWD2018) watch footage from Ada Lovelace Day 2017 at the University of Edinburgh. Via Media Hopper Create you can watch and download a Creative Commons licenced (CC BY-SA) full HD version for sharing/repurposing/remixing!
- Ada Lovelace Day 2017 (short film)