05 Sep Women in IT 2019
Women in IT 2019 – Another Successful Day
On the 15th of August we held our annual Women in IT day at Techtorium. Students, teachers, speakers and more came from across Auckland to be present and participate. Schools in attendance included Aorere College, Baradene College, Epsom Girls Grammar and more. The day’s speakers included Amber Taylor from ARA journeys and a team from MYOB including Shailan Patel and four participants in MYOB’s protégé program. Presentations were also given by our own in Jan and Danielle.
With this day we were aiming to present IT as a viable career path to students who may not have considered it or didn’t know how to enter the industry. We believe that anyone with the interest should be given the opportunity to pursue it. The IT industry can be a great working space for anyone. It was phenomenal seeing see so many turn out to engage and help make it a reality.
We were thrilled at the positive feedback we received from those in attendance. Guest speaker Amber Taylor, CEO of ARA journeys told us how she was inspired by the turn out. Likewise, Amber’s own presentation on ARA journeys and her own IT journey was a source of inspiration for us and those in attendance. It was great hearing how Amber and ARA are using augmented and virtual reality to create cultural educational experiences for users.
“MYOB was extremely proud to support Techtorium’s Women in Tech event given our ongoing commitment to challenging traditional gender roles, especially within the tech industry. Huge well done to their team for organising over 100 high school girls to gain greater insight into the industry, whilst also further developing key skills such as collaboration and critical thinking through the Spaghetti Marshmallow Challenge with the MYOB team.”
Shailan Patel, Education Manager, MYOB
MYOB also ran an engaging and inspiring presentation. They then built on it with the particularly exciting Spaghetti Marshmallow Challenge. The challenge was a definite highlight of the day as various spaghetti towers came together, or not as the case may be. It was very motivating hearing about their own IT journeys and how they each got to where they are now.
It was very encouraging to see how much the students engaged with the speakers. Amber as well as the team from MYOB have since told us how happy they were with the number of questions asked and their quality. We were hugely enthused to see the all the female students in attendance actively engaging with the speakers. The speakers themselves were all very happy with the interactions too, several telling us that that was their favourite part of the day.
We believe that these days serve an important purpose in presenting women and girls with a career option that they may not have considered for various reasons. As a vocational provider and the best in our field, we understand the need for diversity in the IT industry and feel these days play a role in building that. As happy as we are with the way that Women in IT was received, we can’t wait to run more events, building off successes to make them even better.
We hope that everyone enjoyed the day as much as we did, and we look forward to hosting another Women in IT event in 2020!
