Founded in 2015 by Rob Moore and Matt Davies, DDD Perth aims to create opportunities for underrepresented minorities, juniors and first-time speakers, striving to influence the wider software industry, and encouraging such opportunities more broadly.
As the fifth year the conference has run, the She Codes team were lucky enough to spend the day celebrating women in tech, and sharing their mission to inspire and encourage over 100,000 females to enter tech careers by 2025. Following the recent rebrand, founder Kate Kirwin, was delighted to have the opportunity to discuss plans to expand across the East Coast.
“It’s great to get out and about and experience the demand from women themselves, and hear directly from them how what we’re doing has inspired them,” Kate tells us. “It’s a constant reminder that there are plenty of women across Australia who are passionate about tech, they just don’t know how to get into the industry, and that’s where we come in. Our mission to streamline the process from beginner to job ready, is really our main focus this year.”
With plenty of women role models filling the space, we heard from opening keynote speaker, Jennifer Marsman, the Principal Software Engineer of Microsoft’s “AI for Earth” group as she captivated the entire audience with a discussion on how the AI for Earth team, Microsoft Research, and AI for Earth grant recipients are using machine learning to enable precision agriculture, to predict outbreaks of disease, to detect poachers in real time, and to classify animals for conservation. You can see her full keynote here.
With further speakers and discussions throughout the day including She Codes mentor, Caitlin Bathgate, consummate software developer Michele Playfair, senior developer at Readify Inaie Ignacio and many more, it was great to see so many women in technical roles have the chance to shine.
If you’re on the East Coast this weekend, the She Codes team will be at DDD Melbourne at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre and are so excited to share with more women across Australia their mission. Alternatively, if you’re on the East Coast and looking to connect with founder, Kate Kirwin, on how you can assist in increasing the number of women in tech roles across Australia, get in touch via LinkedIn today.
