Girlsday 2015 at Devhouse Spindle
Written by Roelinda Klip on 1st June 2015
More girls in tech jobs
On April 23, 2015 the national event Girlsday took place. In the Netherlands over 300 companies opened their doors to over 8,500 schoolgirls. Girls between the ages of 10 and 15 could participate in interesting activities organized especially for them on Girlsday. This day is initialized by VHTO, the Dutch national organization that stimulates the participation of girls and women in the world of science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
Through various efforts of VHTO, government, education and business, more and more girls are choosing science courses in secondary education. The number of female students entering science and technical studies has increased significantly over the past few years.
Girlsday in pictures
When VHTO asked us to join Girlsday, we were excited to participate. Every year we get visits from schools and tell students about our work. We think it’s very useful to do this, to give them a sneak peek on working life and to arouse curiosity. On Girlsday, developers Bob, René and Allard were happy to show the girls the ins and outs of programming. Below you’ll find a photo journal of the day.
Early in the morning, Bob welcomed the girls and gave them an introduction about our company.
Then the girls got a tour through the office, including the server room.
After the tour, the students were divided into three groups to work on different cases. The first group, guided by René, started with the Raspberry Pi. The girls worked on installing the raspbian operating system on the Raspberry Pi and running Python scripts on it.
Allard showed the second group how to code a simple server to change the color of our special office lights (made by artist Han Koning).
The group guided by Bob had to install and configure a voip telephone and setup a complicated dial plan with which they could control the color of the office lights.
At twelve o’clock it was time for our daily standup. Everybody, including the girls, told about what they had done in the morning and what their plans were for the rest of the day. After a (somewhat giggly) standup we had lunch and played some table tennis and football.
At the end of the break, the three cases were brought together: the telephone number was called, a menu was heard and the person calling had to press 1 (red) or 2 (blue). When pressing 1, the office lights became red, after pressing 2, the office lights became blue. It worked!
A great initiative of VHTO
All in all it was a nice day and the activities combined with walking around the office gave the girls a little insight into the world of developers. Next year we would be happy to participate again, for us Girlsday has proved to be a great initiative for young girls to become acquainted with beta, technics and IT.
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