Charlene Hunter, CEO and Founder of Coding Black Females interviews Julie Andrews and Jenna Griffin from BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT.   

Coding Black Females and BCS have recently partnered to private a BCS Membership Bursary to 50 members of Coding Black Females. This bursary will be for women at all levels of their career, and paired with a programme of mentoring and events, with opportunities to contribute to news articles and policy.  

To apply for the bursary, please head to http://bit.ly/CBFxBCS

#bcs #codingblackfemales #womenintech #blackwomenintech #blacktech

We're joined by RaGene Nomolos-Dixon a Senior Solutions Engineer at Netflix.

Join us for a discussion of Technical Crafts in Entertainment. He'll be sharing some insights about working at Netflix, exciting projects and how you could get into the field.

Definitely worth joining to be part of the conversation.

The event will be hosted by Chantelle Larmond, a Project Coordinator at Sony Playstation

We have 5 speakers
Eneni Abban: Robotics & AI Engineer - The Future of Gaming
Joy Ajayi: Gameplay Programmer - Through my lens
Liz Wright: Client Side Programmer at Mediatonic
Alexis Russell: Producer at Guerilla Games on Horizon Zero Dawn
Danielle Udogaranya - Bringing Culture to the Sims

Eneni Abban - The Future of Gaming
(insta: @thetechover | twitter: @the_techover)
Eneni Abban is a robotics and artificial intelligence engineer with a strong passion in all things nerd culture - gaming, anime, books and much more. An advocate for diversity and inclusion, she has created several groups within both the engineering and the gaming/anime space for people regardless of gender, race or sexual orientation to feel safe and meet other people with similar interests.

Joy Ajayi - Through my lens
Joy Ajayi is a gameplay programmer with experience in game engines such as Unity and Unreal engine 4.
She is currently pursuing her B.Eng. in Computer Engineering at Covenant University in Nigeria. She is also a Women in Games Ambassador and advocate for women in the gaming scene in Nigeria and Africa. She also volunteers at game industry events, and helped in the organising of the recently concluded Africacomicade Gamathon.

Liz Wright
Liz Wright is a Client Side Programmer at Mediatonic. During her four years in the industry, she was the lead programmer for the acclaimed puzzle detective game Murder by Numbers, and pioneered the development of a new cross project build system (earning her the title of Build Master at Mediatonic). Her achievements in these areas earned her a spot in MCV's 30 under 30 list in 2019. Liz now works with the Central Services team, and uses scalable core tech to support weird and wonderful games.

Alexis Russell
My gaming passion started at age 5 when my dad gave me an N64, and while I’ve played my entire life, I didn’t start seriously thinking about a gaming career until university. Over my last five years in the industry, I’ve been fortunate to work on some exciting projects, such as Bioshock: The Collection, God of War, Just Cause 4, and now the upcoming Horizon Forbidden West. Outside of games, I like to do a lot of hands-on crafts - cooking, origami, weaving - but not all of them well.

Danielle Udogaranya - Bringing Culture to the Sims
(@EbonixSims)
Danielle is a Content Creator, Twitch Partner, EA Game Changer and self-taught 3D artist. Since 2015, Danielle took it upon herself to learn 3D modelling so that she could create hairs, clothes and accessories so that she could feel represented in games that she frequented, such as The Sims 4. Sharing her content with others, who also didn’t feel represented, brought her a community who shared her concerns about the lack of content available to create characters that look like them. Dani has since developed a vast follow base and become an advocate for diversity and representation in gaming and has been featured on BBC Africa, BBC World News, The Guardian, Red Bull Gaming, Polygon, Eurogamer, Quirktastic, Dazed, TwoFiveSix and more for her afrocentric content. She advocate for gaming diversity and representation, and her goal is to enable POC to see themselves represented in every game, not just The Sims.

This episode we were joined by Janique-ka John, Co-Founder of Women In Tech Caribbean and Siobhan Baker from the Coding Black Females Leadership Team. We have a great conversation about the importance of tech communities for underrepresented groups, visibility through public speaking and bridging the gap between the Caribbean islands.

Janique-ka John is a Frontend Engineer at MEDIAGENIX, she is originally from St Vincent and is now based in Brussels. She does a lot of public speaking and is really passionate about connecting the Caribbean islands through technology, and getting more women into tech.

Siobhan Baker is a Software Engineer at 8th Light, and also a public speaker and mentor. She has been involved in community organisations for the last few years, being a person of influence, and creating a space for women in tech. 

Socials

Siobhan Baker @sohbaker

Janique-ka-John @janiquekajohn

Women In Tech Caribbean @WomenCaribbean

Isabel is a Software Engineer from Portugal, currently based in London, UK. She is passionate about contributing to Open Source and helping people feel less intimidated by it. She was a Google Summer of Code (GSoC) student and this year she is a GSoC mentor and admin with AnitaB.org Open Source. She is also one of the Community Leaders for AnitaB.org London chapter.

LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/isabelcmdcosta

Twitter: https://twitter.com/isabelcmdcosta

Isabel shares some really useful insights about contributing to Open Source including tips on how to get started and how to get involved.

Here are some really handy resources she mentions during the talk:

Google Summer of Code: https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com/

24 Pull Requests: https://24pullrequests.com/

Hacktoberfest: https://hacktoberfest.digitalocean.com/

Outreachy: https://www.outreachy.org/

Open Food Facts organization: https://github.com/openfoodfacts

Open Data Kit organization: https://github.com/getodk

Hire me (the first project she contributed to): https://github.com/fvcproductions/hire-me

AnitaB.org Open Source on GitHub: https://github.com/anitab-org

Overcoming blockers about contributing to Open Source: https://isabelcosta.github.io/posts/overcoming-blockers-about-contributing-to-open-source/

Looking for a new job or thinking about a career change? Then give cybersecurity a serious consideration. According to Cybersecurity Ventures, there will be up to 3.5 million job openings by 2021. And as remote working is becoming the norm, companies are looking to implement tighter security controls to protect these new operating models.

In this online webinar, you will learn more malware, a software intentionally designed to cause damage to a computer, server, client, or computer network. You will learn the wide variety of types of malware that exist, such as Trojan horses, logic bombs, ransomware, spyware and many more. The workshop will also touch upon ways you can protect against malware.

Leading this event will be Stephanie Itimi, founder of Seidea. Seidea is an award-winning global movement to diversify the Cybersecurity industry that began in 2018. Seidea are on a mission to upskill 1 million Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) women for careers in cybersecurity by 2040. Visit them at www.seidea.org, @seideasi on Twitter and Instagram. You can also listen to the Seipod to find out more about cybersecurity.

We had a fantastic evening of Lightning Talks on 15th July.

Details of all the speakers can be found here: https://codingblackfemales.com/talks

Technology Deep Dive
* Amina Adewusi | A journey through Scala
* Danni Youziel | Auth0 and The Invalid Token

Learning in a Pandemic
* Olivia Campbell | Head in the clouds whilst getting certified
* Shaquilla Johnson | Detoxing from Dopamine
* Temi Olukoko | Completing 100 days of code in quarantine
* Yasmin Ali | Learning during a pandemic

A tech journey
* Omotola Shogunle | Against all odds: My tech story
* Sandra Edmund | From U’s at A-level to Being a Master’s Student
* Tessy Mosindi | Black unicorn - occupying spaces against the odds
* Naomi Robinson | Geography Graduate working in tech

We had a fantastic evening of Lightning Talks on 8th July. 

Details of all the speakers can be found here: https://codingblackfemales.com/talks

Health and Wellbeing
* Diane Laidlaw | Self Care Wednesdays
* Faith Ruto MBA | Personal Resilience during a pandemic and beyond

A Tech Journey
* Audrey Limery | Break Boundaries in the Tech Industry
* Talja Parkinson | Leadership In Tech
* Nkechi Adeboye | Tech, Changes, Creativity and Curiosity
* Isabel Costa | My journey to contributing to Open Source

Learning in a Pandemic
* Rhianna Stuart | Learning in a pandemic with a baby

* Ibi-ilate Braide | Might and Mind

Maya is an amazing Coding Black Female! She has been a women-only Personal Trainer for the past 5 years, specialising in Pre and Post Natal women. On top of this she runs the Tried It Podcast (@trieditpodcast), and runs Boss Your Body Events all whilst learning to code.

She's been featured in the Metro in the article Strong Women: Body Standards are dictated by white people, and is set on creating a safe space for women of colour to train and feel good about their bodies.  Definitely get in contact with her if you're looking for a personal trainer.

We have a really interesting and insightful discussion about personal training and her learning to code to build her business! Enjoy listening.

You can find Maya on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/mayasaffronhan or http://whatsmayadoing.com
Metro: https://metro.co.uk/2020/06/24/strong-women-body-standards-white-people-12894920/
Tried It Podcast - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/trieditpodcast
Tried It Podcast: https://linktr.ee/trieditpodcast