GirlsCoding.org empowers young women to embrace computer science

Chris sat down with Marta Martinez-Cámara and Miranda Kreković to learn how GirlsCoding.org is inspiring 9–16-year-old girls to learn about computer science. The site is successfully empowering young women to recognize computer science as a valid career choice through hands-on workshops, role models, and by smashing prevalent gender stereotypes. This is an episode that you’ll want to listen to with your daughter! Sponsors: Fastly https://www.fastly.com/?utm_source=changelog&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=changelog-sponsorship – Our bandwidth partner. Fastly powers fast, secure, and scalable digital experiences. Move beyond your content delivery network to their powerful edge cloud platform. Learn more at fastly.com https://www.fastly.com/?utm_source=changelog&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=changelog-sponsorship. Rollbar https://rollbar.com/changelog – We move fast and fix things because of Rollbar. Resolve errors in minutes. Deploy with confidence. Learn more at rollbar.com/changelog https://rollbar.com/changelog. Linode https://linode.com/changelog – Our cloud server of choice. Deploy a fast, efficient, native SSD cloud server for only $5/month. Get 4 months free using the code changelog2018. Start your server - head to linode.com/changelog https://linode.com/changelogAlgolia https://www.algolia.com/?utm_source=changelog&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=changelog-sponsorship – Our search partner. Algolia’s full suite search APIs enable teams to develop unique search and discovery experiences across all platforms and devices. We’re using Algolia to power our site search here at Changelog.com. Get started for free and learn more at algolia.com https://www.algolia.com/?utm_source=changelog&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=changelog-sponsorship. Featuring: Marta Martinez-Cámara – Website https://www.linkedin.com/in/marta-martinez-camara-84284bb4Miranda Kreković – Website https://www.linkedin.com/in/mirandakrekovicChris Benson – Website https://chrisbenson.com, GitHub https://github.com/chrisbenson, LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisbenson, X https://x.com/chrisbensonShow Notes: GirlsCoding.org http://girlscoding.orgGirlsCoding.org on Twitter https://twitter.com/Girls_Coding_GirlsCoding.org on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/girlscoding-orgGirlsCoding on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/allgirlscodingGirlsCoding.org at Applied Machine Learning Days https://youtu.be/OS_WGzUL_OYApplied Machine Learning Days https://www.appliedmldays.orgÉcole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne https://www.epfl.ch/en/homeUpcoming Events: Register for upcoming webinars here https://practicalai.fm/webinars!

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:21Speaker 00

  Welcome to Practical AI, a weekly podcast about making artificial intelligence, practical, productive and accessible to everyone. This is where conversations around AI, machine learning and data science happen. Join the community and slack with us around various topics of the show at change.com slash community, follow us on Twitter, we're at Practical AI FM. And now into the show.

• 0:47Chris Benson?

  Welcome to the Practical AI Podcast. This is Chris Benson, your co-host, as well as the Chief AI Strategist at Lockheed Martin, RMS APA Innovations. This week, you're going to hear one of a series of episodes recorded in late January 2019 at the Applied Machine Learning Days Conference in Lausanne, Switzerland. My co-host, Daniel Whitenack, was going to join me, but had to cancel for personal reasons shortly before the conference. Please forgive the noise of the conference in the background. I recorded right in the midst of the flurry of conference activities. Separately from the podcast, Daniel successfully managed the AI for Good track at Applied Machine Learning Days from America, and I was one of his speakers. Now, without further delay, I hope you enjoy the interview.

• 1:30Chris Benson?

  My guests today are Marta Martinez and Miranda Krikovich. They are the co-founders of girlscoding.org. I had the pleasure of meeting them a couple of evenings ago at a speaker's dinner. We were in line together and they had a fascinating story about what they have created. And so I am delighted to have you both on the podcast today. Thank you for coming on. Can you tell me a little bit about each of you and kind of how you got here?

• 1:58Speaker 02

  Sure. Well, also, thank you for making this podcast with us. I am Marta. I live in Lausanne, Switzerland, but I grew up in Spain. And I am a computer scientist. I finished my PhD a couple of years ago here in the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, EPFL, the short name. Now, I am also working as a data scientist in a startup. And together with Miranda and with more people, we are running girlscoding.org.

• 2:32Speaker 03

  Thank you for inviting us. My name is Miranda. I come from Croatia. That's where I studied. And I finished my bachelor's and master's in computer science. And now I'm doing my PhD at the same university that Marta mentioned, EPFL. I'm in the fifth year, and I hope to graduate very soon. And that's where I met Marta. And about two and a half years ago, we started Girls Coding.

• 2:56Chris Benson?

  So could you share with me a little bit of both how the two of you met? Where did the passion come from for this? Why Girls Coding specifically? And what was your founder's story on how you got all this started and off the ground? What were those early days like?

• 3:13Speaker 02

  So we met because we were working together in the same lab. So yeah, we shared many hours and many coffees together. And here in Switzerland, the IT domain is really male-dominated. So we were teaching, and most of the class were guys. We were going to conferences. Most of the conferences, most of the people there were guys. It was difficult to find a woman. And also, when we were going to do internships in the industry, also, we were always the only woman in the team. So we were talking about all this.

• 3:55Speaker 02

  And one day, while we were having coffee, and then we said, okay, why, let's do something about it. Just don't complain about it. Let's do something about it. And then we started to think what we do and what can, could do, why there are not women in this domain. And then, based on our personal stories, we conclude that we could improve the situation by working with very young girls.

• 4:26Speaker 02

  Before they go to the university, because at the university, you already don't have girls there. So you have to go before that. And then, because we live this, we live, we know what it is to go in a very male-dominated domain. And we know the struggles that you can have about all when you are a teenager, that you are very sensitive to these things. We decided to start to work with young girls. And the first thing that we did was in Spain, and maybe Miranda can tell you more about this.

• 5:01Speaker 03

  Well, unfortunately, I was not able to participate at this first workshop, because I was doing my internship in Mountain View in Google at the same time. But we decided to do it there, and in a very small village where Marta comes from, because there she knew all the people and it was easy to organize it. Her parents, her sister helped with recruiting the girls. One of her best friends is a teacher, and she helped us to teach us how to work with little and young kids, because we don't have much experience. So Marta and a few of our colleagues went to Spain. And there was a small group of about 10 girls, I think, at the first workshop. But then we also thought, what else can we do more than just one workshop?

• 5:47Speaker 03

  And then we decided to record a small, short video for them. So I tried to give them a motivation speech to show them, to tell them where they can apply computer science, so that it's not just about coding and writing some weird letters and words, but it can be applicable to so many domains and whatever, even if they want to be designers, and they can still apply computer science to that. And that's what I recorded, and I spoke in English. I don't even speak Spanish. But when Marta showed it to the girls, it seems that it really resonated in them, because for them it was a big deal that someone from Switzerland spoke to them.

• 6:31Speaker 03

  And now she's in California, and that was like out of their world, because they come from a small village and they never went out of it, basically. And then when we noticed how huge impact this left on their lives, we hope, then we decided to go back to Spain again, but also to start it in Switzerland, because we both lived in Switzerland, so it was easier to. Start here as well.

• 6:56Speaker 02

  And then there is a second part of this story with the workshop in Spain. Because as Miranda said, we made a second workshop, like one year later there. And this time Miranda came there. So in the moment that they saw, because all the girls came, and also they brought their friends. So we end up with the double of kids. But when they saw Miranda, you know, they were like seeing a superstar.

• 7:25Speaker 02

  And they were super, super happy. They were even trying to speak with her in English, even using Google Translate of all kinds of means to communicate with her. They were writing everywhere, Miranda, I love you. They were taking selfies with her. I mean, for them it was like, and also we call, during the workshop, we called to another friend in Switzerland. And also for them was like, wow, talking with someone in Switzerland. And they were asking questions like, but how many languages do you speak? And of course, living in Switzerland, our friend speaks like three languages. Then they ask her, but when did you learn French and English? And she said, when I was 10. That was their age.

• 8:08Speaker 02

  So they were like, wow, that person speaks three languages with our age. So we also do coding exercises with them. But the part of meeting the people and meeting our stories and meeting people from all around the world is like incredible for them. And we are sure they will remember this always.

• 8:30Chris Benson?

  So Miranda, were you expecting to be such a role model for these girls? I mean, both of you, but you know, as Marta has just talked about this story. What was it like? Were you expecting to kind of step into that role model, you know, persona and do that? And I'm just kind of curious what it was like in the very beginning and whether or not you were anticipating going then? Or whether that was just kind of, whoa, look what's happening to me?

• 8:56Speaker 03

  No, it was a very big surprise to me. So our first idea of these workshops was really to initiate them to coding, to teach them a bit of like how to write algorithms, how to write a code, to show them that they can implement something which has some results. But then after this first workshop, when we saw how big impact we left just by being role models and by telling our stories, we completely switched, basically. And now more than one half of our workshop is just about power talks and presentations and telling us our stories or telling the stories about computer science or about some famous computer scientists. So what they did in their childhood and how they became who they are.

• 9:40Speaker 03

  And now, basically, a smaller part of the workshop is pure coding. So it really became about inspiration and about being role models. And then one of our first presentations, it was called "Our Daily Job", and then we would put one big photo of us here at the university and then we would ask them questions like, "Do we work with robots? Do we have robots in our offices?" And then they would all answer and participate. And then we would say, "Okay, maybe..." Or, for example, "Do we have toys?" And then there is one of our colleagues who is working with Legos. And when we asked, "Do we have toys?", they're all, "No, you're serious. You do a lot of math." We do math, but we also play with Legos. And then we showed them photos of Legos. Or, for example, "What is math for you?"

• 10:25Speaker 03

  And for them, math is just pure numbers and calculations. And then we show them a photo of an image or some colors. No, this is also math. If you want to do some operation, if you want to apply some Instagram filters on your image, that's a math. And then they are like, "Wow!", they are mind-blown.

• 10:46Chris Benson?

  So Marta, I would like to ask you, kind of going almost back to when you're first having these girls in and you're getting to know them and stuff, what is their perspective? I really would like to gain some insight into, I say this, I have a dual motive. Separate from our conversation, I have a six-year-old daughter and she has her friends and stuff and compared to the boys, you know, out there who, as we're seeing at a conference like this, or any conference in technology, the men far outnumber the women and hopefully that will change as the years go by. When they're still very young, what is it that may keep them, you know, in their, in their thinking away from going into these fascinating technology fields? Why do you think the boys are doing it and yet the girls, for whatever reason, don't?

• 11:31Chris Benson?

  Do you have any insight into that?

• 11:33Speaker 02

  Well, that's a really difficult question, but at least we, we had like some experiences that can give us some clues, I think. For example, once we did a workshop in Iben, event that was open to the public and there were several workshops, right? And one of them was also about building video games for kids. This workshop, you know, was all the advertisement was in black colors, dark colors. It was about building cars and a dinosaur park and things like this. And what happened is this workshop only had boys that went to it.

• 12:16Speaker 02

  And I think it was because of the image it projected. But our workshops, you know, it's like we have this image that is more like colorful and more friendly and then that attracts girls just to see that, you know?

• 12:30Chris Benson?

  So it sounds almost like even these kind of intangibles in the marketing itself of an event, the color selection and what you choose to represent from the imagery, all those things that maybe most of us aren't thinking about all the time can have an influence on that audience that they attract. If it tends to be boy-oriented things, you know, that, that boys are more likely to gravitate toward, you, you end up with a, a group of boys doing it. So, so maybe as people are organizing these things going forward, should they be thinking about what will draw girls in? And do you have any suggestions for them based on y'all's experience, both of y'all, on what might work there?

• 13:06Speaker 03

  Well, exactly what Marta said, I I agree that when they advertise coding workshops for kids, they usually use dark colors. For no reason, girls don't come. I mean, not for the reason that they don't like coding, they just don't know what coding is, and then they're not attracted by such advertisements. But what we are surprised and what we really like after each workshop, how we notice that girls, when they arrive, they're neutral about coding, they don't know much about it, they don't know what it's used for, or they just don't know much. But at the end of the workshop, they're always positively oriented towards the idea of studying computer science and...

• 13:49Speaker 02

  And also, we are always surprised by the talent that they have. So I think also we hear around like this idea that girls or women, they don't do computer science because like they are not so good at it. Like, this is not true, absolutely not true. I mean, we see the girls, how talented they are, how creative. They are zero afraid of coding, zero afraid, like in fact, they are, they love challenge. They always complain when it was too easy, then they complain. But they never complain when it's like challenging, because they really like it. They really like to be challenged, because they know they can. They can do it, they can do everything they want.

• 14:33Speaker 02

  And yeah, they trust themselves a lot. Do you have something to say as well, Miranda?

• 14:38Speaker 03

  Yes, so it's not that they don't like computer science and that's why they don't come to such workshops. They just don't know what it is and what it can be and how much they can do it very well. And at the first workshop, we asked them, what do they believe? Why did we invite only girls and not boys? And they were super brave and and they were saying, oh, I know, I know. It's because boys, they don't know how to behave themselves. It's nicer to work with us. Or or they were saying, yeah, we learn much faster than boys. They were very brave and very courageous.

• 15:13Chris Benson?

  So I wanted to turn toward the workshops themselves and kind of what you cover and both from a topic standpoint and how you draw in the girls that are coming into the program to get them comfortable with coding. What's this journey that you take these little girls on? Could you describe that?

• 15:31Speaker 03

  So now it's been almost two and a half years that we've been doing these workshops. So they converge something towards the following structure. At the beginning, we play unplugged games. So they don't sit behind computers at the beginning. We just sit on the floor and we want to show them what are algorithms and how they should talk to computers. So there is one of us mentors who represents a robot and we tell them that robots are very stupid. So the robots only know how to follow very simple and very well-defined instructions. And then the game is to create a sandwich, to make a sandwich of Nutella and two pieces of bread.

• 16:11Speaker 03

  And then girls in round, they have to tell very, very precise instructions to the robot how to make a Nutella sandwich. And that's usually very funny because robots, of course, exaggerates and if they are not precise and if they just say, "Take some Nutella," the robot puts hand in a bottle of Nutella and gets very dirty. And they have lots of fun, so they laugh a lot. But through laughing, they really learn and they, later they remember when they write the code that they really need to be precise with a computer and tell everything in order step by step. So after that, then we have power talks and these are short presentations given by our mentors where they talk either about their experience, what they do in their lives, or

• 16:56Speaker 03

  as I mentioned earlier, about some famous scientists to inspire girls, especially about lady scientists from the past. What did they do? How did they arrive to that and such things? So we have multiple power talks during one-day events. So every one hour, we have a 15-minute break where we give a power talk and they can ask any question they want. And usually they are very curious and they have very smart questions.

• 17:22Speaker 02

  And then after that, we really, then we start with the workshop, with the content itself. So then it depends on the event, but we have several contents. Two days ago, it was about machine learning. Another one was about Instagram filters. And the third one was about chatbots. So the girls at the age of 12 and 15, they wrote their own chatbots and we were very proud of them.

• 17:47Chris Benson?

  That's pretty amazing. I love that they're getting into these topics at such an early age and able to do that. I know that as you're talking and listening to that, I come from a family mostly of women and they code. And so I grew up never realizing that outside of our family, that often girls didn't code as much as the guys did. So as we've seen, once upon a time, I don't know that I realized that we needed this. And as I've gotten out there in the world, you know, on my own and realized, oh my gosh, everyone I'm meeting is male. And, you know, and it's all males doing this work and stuff. It's wonderful to see this. In the field of machine learning, as you're introducing these young ladies to this topic, you know, how do they take to it? What are their thoughts on it? Is they have that first impression of it?

• 18:32Chris Benson?

  And where are you encouraging them to go with it?

• 18:34Speaker 02

  Well, we explain the machine learning, telling them there are algorithms or there is their code. That is not machine learning is when you tell distractions. There are another problems where you cannot write the instructions because the problem is too complex. Then the computer needs to learn on its own. And then we put a lot of examples about applications that they use machine learning. Fun applications, interactive that they can use. So they get a feeling of it. And also we have a particular workshop that shows them how to build a reinforcement learning algorithm with M and M's, with a very simple game.

• 19:15Speaker 02

  So they understand it, they go through it, they can do it. So they are not scared of it at all because they get it how it goes. So they just, I think they just want to do more with that. They just want to keep learning.

• 19:32Speaker 03

  And what is amazing about the kids nowadays, they all have smartphones, they all, they're all on computers online all the time, so they can really see the application of what we are doing there. And we can motivate them, we ask them, who is using Snapchat? And everyone raises up their hands. And then we tell them, okay, so we are going to teach you how to detect faces, or you know, there's a problem in computer science, it's not done by magic. And then they're all, wow, this is computer science. So it also makes it easier for us to motivate them and to inspire them. I believed in what it used to be when I was growing up and I couldn't see all these examples and we didn't have smartphones, so I learned coding, but I didn't really know where I'm going to apply it. So for me, it was actually the other way around.

• 20:17Speaker 02

  And I think also an important fact as well is that with AI can be applied to all the fields, like art, uh, transportation, health, so they see also how you really can use computer science to solve many kind of problems. It's not just computer science, it's like you can like many things and use computer science to to improve these things. So I I think also that's very, very important and very powerful for them.

• 20:46Chris Benson?

  So as you're doing these workshops, uh, what specific languages, what tools and frameworks are you applying? And it sounds like most of the young ladies that are that are entering the your program are seeing it for the first time, are relatively new to computer science in general. You know, there's so many languages, there are so many different tools out there. What have you chosen to use in this process? And why have you made the uh selections that you have?

• 21:12Speaker 02

  From twelve to fifteen, we use Python, because I think it's more like one of the most human coding languages, let's say, very intuitive to use. And the tool that we use our collaboratory, Google Notebooks. It's a notebook and also they are online, so they don't need to install anything. It's already there on the cloud, they just need an email address and that's it. So it's very easy for us. We don't need to spend time setting up computers and everything. Everything is open source, no licenses, nothing. And for when we work from nine to twelve year olds, we use Scratch with blogs.

• 21:52Speaker 02

  Again, it's coming from the MIT, from our universities, open source, everything is online, we don't need to install anything. So it's just easy. So we just ask them to bring their laptop because now everyone has a laptop at home. So they bring their laptops and also an advantage of that is they go home and they can keep working on that. They don't need extra like robots or things, they can keep using it. And this is also very important for us. And that's why we made this decision of keeping it as simple as possible for them.

• 22:27Chris Benson?

  It's funny that you mentioned that, obviously, all of us in the machine learning world are into Python. That seems to be one of the, you know, if not the main language, certainly one of the top languages for the field. But you mentioned Scratch as well, and you probably, the listeners can't see it, but I smiled in a big way when you said that. My six-year-old daughter, Athene, and I spend a lot of time on Scratch these days. And she's starting to program robots and we have some drones at the house and all that. And she just lights up. It's something very accessible to her. So I certainly understand. That must be a thrill when they do that. I know my daughter loves it.

• 23:00Speaker 03

  So when we organized an event at a big conference that was open to public, there we accepted both boys and girls. And then we could see immediately when the girls open Scratch, then there is a main character, which is a cat. So girls change this cat to a princess or a unicorn. And boys, they change it to a dinosaur or a car, which is all fine. And that's why Scratch is also great, as long as they do their if then algorithm. And the cat says the number or whatever we tell them to do. That's great that they can be creative and that they can adapt to what they like and at the same time learn a lot.

• 23:37Chris Benson?

  So as a young lady comes through the program, these workshops that you're doing, obviously you get to the end of the workshop. How do you set them up for the next step? Because obviously you've now gotten them excited about the topic and they've just had a great success through the workshop. So they're about to go out back into the world and out of your care at that moment. What do you do? What do you tell them? How do you direct them on where to go next?

• 24:01Speaker 02

  Well, also, this is something quite tough to do. So we decided that we are not a coding academy or coding school because then in that case, we would work with boys and girls, right? We just want to motivate them and be role models for them. So once they come to one WhatsApp, if they like it, they learn what is computer science, they learn what is coding, they learn they can do it. It's not magic, everyone can do it. Then our job somehow is done. Now, what we see and talking with parents is like there is a big lack of computer science education for kids around.

• 24:44Speaker 02

  So yeah, the parents, they write to us like a bit desperately where I can take my son, my daughter now, how they can keep learning. So what we tell them is that, okay, you can always stay in touch with us and also you have all these resources on the internet, exercises and so on. But still, we see that there is a bit lack of education in coding nowadays. And it's a huge problem and we don't have the capacity to solve it. It's like we are just a bit frustrated when we see that. But it's moving, it's just will take some time, I think.

• 25:21Chris Benson?

  You mentioned capacity. So am I correct in thinking this is kind of a side project for you guys personally? You know, it's something that you do because you love it. And what is your capacity? How many people do you? Is it just the two of you? Do you have more people involved? It sounded like in the workshops that you may have some other people. How many people are involved and how far are you able to touch and kind of where are you going? What do you think your story of your own future in this endeavor is going to be?

• 25:46Speaker 03

  Well, it started only with Martin and me. But then as soon as we talked about our idea to our colleagues in the lab, already two or three people just jumped in and they wanted to help. At the first workshop, we were about maybe four or five. And also here in Switzerland, it's a particular problem with languages. So most of our colleagues are foreigners and they don't speak French perfectly. And but then girls are also just amazing this. At the age of 10, they speak three or four languages. So that was not a problem, but it was nice to have mentors who spoke and speak also multiple languages so that we can adapt during the workshop. And so more and more mentors were joining us, talking to their friends and to their colleagues. Then we created a website, we put a form.

• 26:31Speaker 03

  If you want to help and volunteer, sign up here. We kept receiving emails. Each time we we organize a workshop at such bigger events, such as Applied Machine Learning Days, we meet people, oh, I saw you're involved in girls coding. I want to help, how can I help? Tell me what to do. So we just, we didn't go there and said, okay, we need people. Suddenly just happened and all these friends and colleagues and friends of friends of friends were writing to us and joined. So at the last event, we were about 30 mentors only at the event and we had about 30 girls and 30 mentors. But in total, we are more than 50, I think, if we count all the mentors who ever participated at the workshop.

• 27:13Speaker 03

  And also what was nice, once we organized a workshop in Logitech for the daughters of the employees. And then as soon as we decided to do that, the only female engineer at Logitech here in Switzerland, she wrote to us and she said that she really wants to help and to be involved. And and then all her colleagues also wanted to help. So it's very, very rewarding for us to to hear that we leave such impact, not only on girls, but also on our colleagues who want to help.

• 27:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, not only mentors, we also have like organizations supporting us. We have a foundation, Hubertour Foundation, that they help us with the branding. And now we have a super cool branding, thanks to them. Also, we have companies, about all tech companies sponsoring events and asking us how we can help because they know the problem, they have this problem. So yeah, as Miranda said, it's it's just to see all, suddenly all these people jumping out and saying how, how we can help, we need to do something about this because this is what is happening. It would be nice if this changed. At some point, so.

• 28:23Chris Benson?

  So with with all the success that you guys are having, could you ever envision taking it to the kind of a next level and and making it kind of the centerpiece of your career? Do you think it'll always be this amazing thing you're doing on the side? Are you going to keep it just this voluntary thing where people can opt in and help out? Is that kind of the future of it or?

• 28:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, for the moment, we are trying to make it like sustainable and it's growing organically, so we have to deal with the growth. This is like a startup, you know? And so we want to find a way of making it move forward, growing, put more people together, and somehow handle it on the side. We don't, yeah, for the moment, I think we also, we are engineers, right? And we like to do engineering as well. So if we make this our centerpiece of our careers, then I think we will miss this technical side, no?

• 29:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, and this is a nonprofit organization, and I think that all of us who are involved in it, we like this spirit of volunteering and doing this because it makes us feel good and we believe that we are doing something good for the future.

• 29:35Chris Benson?

  So at this point, obviously, you're growing fast. You have some great sponsors, it sounds like, along the way that are helping you. What needs do you still have? Are there things that if there's somebody out there, either as an individual or as a company, that's listening and they said, I'd like to help them? What kind of things are still in need, if anything?

• 29:54Speaker 02

  Well, we need more hands to the activities of like sustaining the the organization, admin, staff, recruiting, how to reach PR activities, organization of the staff. There is an event, we have to organize all the mentors, we have to organize, synchronize with our partners to organize the events. We also need to work on our content and develop developing teaching content.

• 30:27Speaker 02

  So we have, yeah, a lot of things that people can help if someone is motivated.

• 30:33Chris Benson?

  So I guess going forward, what countries do you expect to be operating in? As a quick question, and then I'll have a follow up for you after that.

• 30:41Speaker 02

  Well, for the moment, you know, Switzerland is a tiny country, but it's a challenging one.

• 30:47Speaker 02

  So our first goal is going to the German part of Switzerland. We did one workshop in Bern, but now we want to do more there. And it's a big challenge because it's a completely different language. It's German, not French. So this is our goal for this year, I would say. And now and then we have propositions on doing workshops in Spain, in Italy, in Croatia. But now the priority and the easiest thing for us, because of location, is doing it in the German part of Switzerland and probably in another countries in Europe.

• 31:26Speaker 03

  So what happens is that most of our mentors are PhD students or colleagues from computer science. And then once after they finish their studies here in Switzerland, they go back home or they go somewhere else. And then they tell us, "Oh, but now I want to organize this workshop on my own and you have all the content and you have all the experience. And I participated at your workshop, so I believe now that I'm capable of doing something on my own, but maybe I'll still need a bit of support. Can we do it together?" We say, "Yes, of course." So now we have friends in France and Italy and back in Croatia. They are writing to me and they say, "This is amazing. I want to do it, but I need a bit of push. Can you help?" And I say, "Of course."

• 32:09Speaker 03

  So that's amazing. That went beyond what we expected when we just started.

• 32:14Chris Benson?

  You segued right into what my next question was going to be. And that is, as people out there, maybe beyond your own organization, you know, working in Switzerland, but out there in the world, because we have people all over the world that are going to be listening to this, and they want to do something similar. You know, do you have any recommendations on how they can get started and make that impact? Maybe some lessons learned from your own struggle to do that?

• 32:37Speaker 02

  Well, I will give... Same advice for every startup, right? A general advice, start small. Start doing something simple, as we did. Like, we went to a place where we knew everyone there. So we had, we knew people, we knew people, teachers. We knew people that they can, gave us the space, were to do the workshop. We just did it with ten girls. It was just three hours workshop. The contents were quite simple. We, we, we just wanted to introduce them a bit to coding, not to teach them to do an amazing algorithm. So, yeah, and that is already quite a lot of work

• 33:21Speaker 02

  and a lot of things to learn because we are engineers. We are not used to deal with kids, right? So just to see the, to do the first interaction with the kids. So it's quite an experience. So, yeah, they try to do something simple and interact with the kids in a very simple way. That will be our, our advice.

• 33:43Speaker 03

  And the motto that I had made in my mind when we started was if we change the mind of at least one girl to study computer science, then we have already achieved a lot.

• 33:53Chris Benson?

  So finishing up here, I guess I'm gonna ask, there's a lot of parents out there. There are mothers and fathers of daughters that are out there. And do you have any advice for them on how they can help their daughters get into computer science and machine learning specifically? If they have an interest in that? If they don't necessarily have a girlscoding.org near them, that they can take advantage of the workshops? What would you recommend for those parents to give a shot to help their daughters go down this path?

• 34:24Speaker 03

  Well, it's not just about computer science. It's really the way of thinking. And I think that all the parents should encourage all of their kids equally, just to be open-minded and to be brave. I believe that on average, girls are less brave than boys to try out new things. And also, maybe they are more often told what to do and to follow the rules and to obey and to be nice and polite. But I think they should just raise them equal and really encourage them to be brave and to go out there. And even if they are the only girl in the class, not to be scared and just to do what interests them and to follow their dream.

• 35:00Speaker 02

  I think here we can use Miranda's personal story to illustrate this and what your parents did with you. Maybe you can tell the story yourself?

• 35:12Speaker 03

  Well, I started coding very early when I was about nine years old because both of my parents are engineers and I have an older brother who also studied computer science and math. So I followed them and they were teaching me and I really enjoyed it and I liked it. Up to the age of 12, 14, when I went to my high school. And there it was a mathematical high school and I was the only girl in the class going to coding lessons. And at that point, I was insecure and I was telling myself, "Oh, but maybe this is really not for me just because I was the only girl. I was good in it." But I thought, "No, it's what... There must be a reason why I'm the only girl. So maybe it's really not for me." And I almost dropped. But luckily, to the fact that my parents are engineers, they were telling me what they just said.

• 35:57Speaker 03

  So, "No, you like it, you're good in it. Just stick to it and study later what you want to." So I went to a computer science university and I enjoyed it and I loved it and now I'm doing my PhD. But if at that moment I didn't have parents who told me that I would drop, who knows what I would study?

• 36:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, in my case, I don't have such a great story with computer science. My parents are not engineers, but my dad is a truck driver. And when I was little, also I wanted to be a truck driver, of course, like he was. And I really knew everything about the truck. I loved to go with him. I was doing everything. And yet, people were telling me, "But you cannot be a truck driver, you're a girl." And, you know, I was just crying, like, I didn't understand anything, but why I can't do everything? But my dad was there saying, "Don't worry, if there are not girls' truck drivers, you will be the first one. Like, don't be afraid, just you will be the first one."

• 37:00Speaker 02

  So I think this also helped me a lot into going into a very male-dominated field. I was not scared at all going there. Thanks also to the support of my parents as well when I was a kid. So I really believe this kind of support that we had and I believe many of our colleagues, female colleagues, had is super critical.

• 37:24Chris Benson?

  So those are both actually great personal stories. Even the truck driving story is fantastic because whether it be computer science and machine learning, or whether it be truck driving, you're still talking about sexism that is inherent in the way we think about these fields. And the fact that both of you are lucky enough to have parents that encouraged you past that point where so many other young ladies might give up because they don't have the benefit of parents saying, "No, no, you can do this. This is amazing." So it was really great from my perspective to hear two stories of success in getting past those obstacles there. Very inspirational from my perspective. So I guess as we finish up here, as people out there want to reach out to you and make

• 38:07Chris Benson?

  contact, how would you like people to do that? Could you each let us know how listeners can reach out to you?

• 38:13Speaker 02

  So yeah, I think the best thing would be if they send us an email. So our emails are [email protected] and [email protected].

• 38:25Chris Benson?

  And just in case, just to make sure spelling is good, we will include those in the show notes so that people can make sure they get the spelling right. And I hope people will go to girlscoding.org and take a look at the website program. And thank you so much for coming on to the show and sharing your experience and sharing this fantastic program that you guys have put together and been so successful with and affecting the lives of so many young ladies. I know this will probably be one of the first or maybe only shows that my six-year-old daughter will ever want to listen to over the next couple of years. I think when she's older, she might go, "Wow, because we're really working on these things." But normally, she's like, "Dad, you're talking about boring stuff." And I keep saying, "No, this is great. This is great. This is girl stuff, too."

• 39:09Chris Benson?

  So I'm going to try to inspire her by letting her listen to this episode with you guys first and see if we can extend to beyond just doing scratch right now and keep it going. She doesn't have to. She can do whatever she wants for a career, but I want her as a father to have every opportunity to do whatever she wants without the sexist filter that we tend to put on in society. So thank you so much for coming on the show.

• 39:32Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 39:33Speaker 03

  Thank you, and good luck with your daughter.

• 39:35Chris Benson?

  Thank you.

• 39:38Speaker 00

  All right. Thank you for tuning into this episode of Practical AI. If you enjoyed the show, do us a favor, go on iTunes and give us a rating, go in your podcast app and favorite it. If you are on Twitter or a social network, share a link with a friend, whatever you gotta do, share the show with a friend if you enjoyed it. And bandwidth for changelog is provided by Fastly, learn more at fastly.com. And we catch our airs before our users do here at changelog because of Rollbar. Check them out at rollbar.com/changelog. And we're hosted on Linode Cloud servers. Head to linode.com/changelog, check them out, support this show. This episode is hosted by Daniel Whitenack and Chris Benson. Editing is done by Tim Smith. The music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. And you can find more shows just like this at changelog.com. When

• 40:20Speaker 00

  you go there, pop in your email address, get our weekly email keeping you up to date with the news and podcasts for developers in your inbox every single week. Thanks for tuning in. We'll see you next week.