Google offers travel grants for female computer developers

Google has done something decidedly not-evil (despite recent major missteps), and put together a travel grants program for several computer science conferences aimed at encouraging women entering fields under the T umbrella in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math).

As part of Google’s ongoing commitment to encourage women to excel in computing and technology, we are pleased to offer Women in Tech Conference and Travel Grants for female computer scientists.

To encourage attendance at technical conferences, we are offering the winners:

  • Free registration for the conference
  • Up to 1000 EUR towards travel and accommodation costs (to be paid after the conference)

To be eligible for a conference grant, the candidate must:

  • Be a female working in or studying Computer Science, Computer Engineering or a technical field related to the conference subject
  • Have a strong academic background with demonstrated leadership ability
  • Attend the core day(s) of the main conference

How To Apply

To apply, by the indicated deadline, please submit this form by the indicated deadline.
You may apply for multiple conferences.

Eligible Conferences 2013 (ongoing, more conferences will be added throughout the year)

Winners and claim process

All applicants will be notified of the outcome of their application by email, approximately 3-4 weeks prior to the event. If you are selected, you will receive additional information on how to register for the conference and how to receive your travel grant.

For any questions, please reach out to [email protected].

This is how you fix the gender disparity between men and women in technology: you help women who might otherwise not be able to travel or who might think these conferences are not for them because of a lack of women representation in the field, get to the conferences to begin with. This puts those women in a position to be seen, so other women know that it’s not a gender-specific job. And they get a chance to talk with people inside the industry, too — which encourages them to recognize women programmers when they see them.

Lower the barriers that have developed naturally that keep women from being seen at such conferences and drives the lack of women interested in the field — when you don’t see anyone shaped like you in a field, you come to believe it’s not for you. It’s why Surly Amy was, until the JREF president made it clear by his actions that feminists were unwelcome at TAM, offering travel grants to women to attend — to improve gender ratios and give these women a chance to discover that the movement was indeed for them. (A shame how that all turned out, by the by.)

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Google offers travel grants for female computer developers
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3 thoughts on “Google offers travel grants for female computer developers

  1. 1

    You’re aware that the “recent major missteps” link is to a news story generated by people who glanced at a ~40 page legal motion, scanned it quickly being a non-lawyer, and then utterly failed basic reading comprehension, yes?

    The news story is presented as “Google says in legal filing that GMail users have no expectation of privacy” when an accurate presentation would be “Google says that people sending email to GMail users can’t be shocked that Google’s servers scan the incoming email.” As near as I can tell, the lawsuit is about people who send email to GMail users not liking the idea that Google sells ads to GMail users based on the content of the email these people sent to the GMail users. I guess I can sort of see how if I sent an email to some friends offering to sell them widgets and one of my gmail-using friends then bought widgets from an ad that was shown next to that email message instead of from me, I’d be a bit put out. So I guess I can see where this might end up in court, even if I think Google’s on pretty solid legal ground.

    The phrase that’s been pulled out that has everyone freaking out is actually pulled from a spot where Google is quoting the established case law, so it’s not even that Google’s lawyers were being particularly tone deaf in crafting a phrase.

    In short, nothing to see here, move along. There are things worth getting mad at Google for, but they’re elsewhere.

  2. 2

    The misstep is not in their scripts scanning email to provide targeted advertising. The missteps are stating outright “you have no reasonable expectation of privacy”. There ARE, in fact, reasonable expectations with regard to privacy with a service like this. Like, that not just anyone can get into the server and read everything in everyone’s mail. Like, that a breach of the servers would not result in full disclosure of unencrypted emails. You have to be careful what you say, when the terms and conditions contradict the statement directly.

  3. 3

    Who is the “you” in the outright statement “you have no reasonable expectation of privacy”?

    Because that’s where I see a failure of reading comprehension in some of the people reporting this story.

    Also, the phrase “no reasonable expectation of privacy” comes, as I said, from a sentence where Google is quoting established case law. I can see the argument that the phrasing looks bad but it isn’t as though the lawyers really had the option to rewrite the opinion they were quoting to make something harder to lift out of context.

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