Review of SyncNorwich's First Birthday Party.

I always look forward to SyncNorwich events but yesterday’s event was a bit more special than normal. It was our 1^st Birthday, and we had such a great night planned. We were pleased to have around 50 people come to celebrate with us; they were treated to cake, balloons, music and 3 superb tech startup talks. 

My favourite talk last night had to be the two students from Norwich school who at only 17 have created a smartphone app that tells you when your food is going out of date called FoodSafe.  It was such an inspiring story and great to hear how their school has helped them run the company alongside their studies; the sponsored scan had to be the best idea to get the whole school involved! 

I love SyncNorwich because I get to meet an incredible number of amazing people who are doing things that I would love to do myself one day.  As someone just starting out in the industry, the group provides me with lots of role models to look up to and things to aspire to, last night was definitely no exception and it was great to see a selection of new faces in the audience too. 

Massive thanks also has to go to Karma Kafe for letting us use their space, and blowing up all the balloons for us, definitely saved us a job, as well as Cat Landin for baking the beautiful cake and Joseph Spear and Smart421 for bringing the Smartinis. 

That just leaves me to say I am so proud to be part of SyncNorwich, I think it is an amazing community and I hope it continues to grow in the future. If you’ve never been to an event before I really would urge you to sign up.

Next month is Agile August and we have talks from Aviva, Virgin Wines and Axon Active about their agile journeys. It’s being held at Virgin Money Lounge which is a great central location. You can RSVP to this event now by clicking here. We look forward to seeing you then! 

Here are some photos of the event in case you missed it:

My tech journey....

I've just finished reading Belinda Parmar's 'Little Miss Geek' book, and it got me thinking about exactly what it was that got me into the IT industry.

Firstly my Dad has always worked in IT, I've never really known what he does, even now we work in the same company and he's just one floor above me, I still am pretty clueless about what his job entails. But I am happy to admit that due to him working in IT perhaps, even though I didn't realise it, I was exposed to technology from a younger age.

I mean, my Dad had a mobile phone long before they were common, and I remember our first proper home computer made by Time. I also remember being allowed to spend a few minutes on said computer, registering my Ty cuddly toy collection for the first time on their website using our dial up connection. Being reminded though that no-one could ring us whilst I was doing it, 200 cuddly toys later I wonder how many phonecalls we missed :/

Trying to think back to when computers became a everyday occurence for me.. I have a vague recollection of various educational computer games back as far as primary school. I think we had just one computer in each classroom, and had a rota for being allowed to use it. That was until Year 6  (age 10-11) when we suddenly had a shocking 6 computers, and we all had our own logon details and personal areas. I'm sure today that many 10 year olds wouldn't even be able to perceive the idea of this being a new concept.

It was at this age that one of my local high schools also started doing masterclasses on a Saturday morning, these were intended to give us an insight to lessons at high school and they were offered for ICT, Maths, Science and Technology. I did all 4. It was these masterclasses that were my first introduction to Powerpoint, and I remember my amazement at creating presentations and including dancing cat animations.

I remember when we were looking round high schools, one in particular having a room full of colourful Apple Macs, and being completely amazed. I'd never seen an Apple Computer before..  

It was only once I started at High School that I was allowed a mobile phone of my very own. And pictured to the left is my first ever mobile phone. It didn't even have a camera...

I think it was at about this point in my life (2005) where the internet became the norm. I wasn't 13 until 2007 and I remember having to lie about my date of birth (everyone was) to join Bebo.

It was though Social Networking Sites that first sparked my love for web design and devlelopment. Firstly for those of you that remember Bebo, on your profile you had a skin (a background theme basically) and I remember one summer 'selling' my skin designs to other Bebo users in exchange for Bebo's currency of Lovehearts.

After Bebo died, I moved on to Facebook, and whilst I love Facebook, I always missed the ability to customize your page. So I started a blog on Tumblr. Tumblr uses HTML themes and this was my first experience of code. My desire to create themes made me learn how to write simple HTML, though I think is the cause of my love of inline styles as it was all self taught.

For GCSE I took Art Graphic Communication, which is basically a GCSE in Photoshop. This links back to my love of design, but this wasn't seen as for any gender in particular. At the time it was one of very few courses of its kind offered to students in the area, and it was the first year my school had offered it at GCSE. My class was a mix of both females and males. It was also a very sought after course that was seen as 'cool'. But underneath the glamorous image was web design.

I also had to take ICT for GCSE, it was compulsory at my school at that time. It was though mainly Microsoft Office skills, but we did also get to create websites, but using a tool called Mediator, which was literally drag and drop but it did I guess teach you the principles of designing a webpage and linking the buttons etc.

I loved ICT, it was something that had always just really clicked with me, and I wanted to take it for A Level, my Dad's career advice was 'Don't go into IT' and my Mum I remember also advising against it. As a 16 year old teenage girl though, I of course did the exact opposite of what my parents suggested, and took Applied ICT as one of my four choices for A Level. At A Level Applied ICT still really was just aimed at Microsoft Office and Adobe products. But we did get to use Microsoft Project too, and using Dreamweaver was definitely more challenging than using Mediator. We also used Macros in Excel, and whilst it wasn't required that we used Visual Basic, for me the choice to use it was a no brainer, and taught myself how to add lots of wizzy features to my spreadsheet.

When it came to applying for University I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do, and having studied Spanish, Geography, Maths and Applied ICT at A Level, I wasn't exactly following a standard route into any degree course in particular. My two all time favourite subjects had always been ICT and Spanish so I decided to find a course that combined the two.. This is, though you might not believe it, possible. I got offers from Liverpool, Lancaster, Swansea and Chester to study Computing with Spanish. Liverpool was my first choice and I did get the grades required to join the course.

However in the meantime, Aviva were offering a Trainee Oracle Database Administrator position back home in Norwich. Straight out I could see the benefit for both my finances and my career of following this sort of path instead of university. I was very pleased to be offered a place in August last year. I then deferred my Uni place for a year so I had a backup plan, and started at Aviva in September.

I've had an interesting 9 months there, and have definitely come to realise a few things:

I don't actually like databases very much, I crave the instant gratification you get with web development.

I also would like to see a project right through from cradle to grave, something which is simply not possible in a large organization.

This is why I have made the choice to take up a Junior Web Developer Position at Liftshare in Norwich. I hope that I will enjoy this role and I'll make sure I keep you all updated.

I have to say that I feel like SyncNorwich played a big part in my development over the last 9 months, they run monthly meetups which get together all of Norwich's tech and startup community. I've met loads of amazing people with really inspiring stories who have given me so much confidence to do what I love. I wish I had been part of a group like this when I was at school.

But to conclude, in Belinda's book it mentions a lot about how girls don't feel like it's okay to be a girl in IT. Personally I went to a school where this was completely not the case, in fact in my ICT class at A Level there were 10 girls and 2 boys. I guess I've been lucky in that respect, but also if someone was to tell me I couldn't do something, it would just make me even more determined to do it.

Unfortunately this doesn't seem to be the norm, and that's why I'm organizing SyncDevelopHER as part of SyncNorwich to help encourage more girls to get into IT, by showing them all the cool jobs that are out there in the IT industry, and letting them meet tech professionals who can give them advice and mentor them.

Our first event is in October and you can find details and sign up here.

In the meantime if you want to attend some tech meetups check out SyncNorwich's 1st Birthday party next week. There's free cake and beer!

Also if you're really really techie then there's Norfolk Developers, who also run monthly meetups. 

And here's some pictures of me and my first encounter with a computer..

Review by a mobile novice: MobDevCon 3rd July 2013.

I wasn’t convinced when I first heard about MobDevCon, as someone who had never done any mobile development- was it really worth spending not only my hard earned cash on but also a precious day of holiday? Thankfully I decided it was and booked a Super Early Bird ticket in about March for a bargain price of £50. As the event got closer I kept thinking that maybe I had made a mistake and I’d feel completely out of place and wouldn’t understand anything. I was wrong.

The keynote Neil Garner who spoke about Near Field Communication, something I’d never really known much about, started the day off brilliantly. He gave a high level view of the possibilities that this new technology offers us. The talk was engaging and left me wishing I wasn’t an ‘iPhone addict’ that didn’t have the technology in my device.


My favourite speaker of the whole day however had to be Ruth John, personally having never felt capable of creating a mobile app, Ruth opened up all sorts of opportunities in my mind, and I felt genuinely inspired. I think it’s great that web technologies are starting to evolve into mobile technologies. It definitely opens the door to a lot of web developers to try their hand at something different.

I chose to only attend the talks and to avoid the workshops but still felt a bit daunted by the titles of some of the talks, worried that they’d be at a really advanced level and it would go straight over my head. I can completely assure you they didn’t; I think they were at a suitable level for the majority of people. There were some more technical talks but each speaker seemed to take into account that there were both novices and hardened professionals in the room.

Lastly the venue, for me the venue was amazing, avoiding the hassle of the city and spending the day at such a marvellous centre of innovation made a lovely change to normal. The free parking was definitely a bonus too. I can’t wait for next year.

Okay so I'm finally giving in...

I'm Vickie, and this is my new blog. Here's a little bit of info about me:

I live and work in Norwich UK, and am proud to be one of the 17% of employees in the IT industry who is a female! As of next week, I'm starting a new job as a Junior Web Developer at a small company in Norwich, so I thought this was an ideal time to start writing a blog.

Aside from my day to day job I also help organize SyncNorwich and am the founder of SyncDevelopHER. I also regularly attend Norfolk Developers and also SyncIpswich.

I love learning and will make the most of any opportunity given to me.

I hope you enjoy reading the posts about my development and life as a female in the IT industry.

Vickie