Last year, to celebrate the build-up to Ada Lovelace Day, we invited its founder, Suw Charman-Anderson to Leeds to share the story of how the movement came about.

This year, for ALD13, we were keen to do something practical and hands-on. When we were approached by Paul Conlon of Leeds’ Garforth Academy to host an event to promote ICT subject for girls, we jumped at the opportunity…

Here’s what we organised as part of the academy’s iWeek initiative, …

• Linda Broughton chaired a session where girls met women working in tech.  Paris Panda‘s Liz Worsley talked about her work in developing web and mobile apps for the music industry, and The Big Word’s Amy Thompson spoke about her job as an agile team leader.
• The University of Bradford’s Kaye Elling (also a Girl Geek and TEDxWomen alumni) hosted a workshop on games design.

Kaye introduced the workshop with an overview of her own work of careers in the games industry…

Each group of girls was tasked with creating a mission statement for a fictitious game, followed by a plot overview, character biographies and closing with a show & tell before groups voted on the best concept.

The girls had a blast brainstorming their ideas with Kaye’s coaching – and we did too, seeing their enthusiasm come through.

We’re hoping that some of the group were excited enough by their work to consider taking some related career options. We’ll certainly be looking to host more workshops in this vein.