Want to win an Anita Borg Scholarship?

Dr. Anita Borg devoted her life to revolutionising the way we think about technology and dismantling the barriers that keep women and minorities from entering the computing and technology fields. In honour of Anita's vision, we established the Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship in 2004, awarding scholarships to women who share her passion for technology. Once again, Google is proud to announce the Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship in Australia and New Zealand.



Scholarships will be awarded based on the strength of candidates’ academic background and demonstrated leadership. A group of female undergraduate and graduate student finalists will be chosen from the applicant pool. Each scholar recipient will receive a $5,000 AUD scholarship towards the following academic year. In addition all finalists and scholarship recipients will be invited to an expenses-paid networking retreat to be held at Google’s Sydney Engineering centre.

Who can apply?

Applicants must satisfy all of the following criteria to be eligible:

• Be a female student at an Australian or New Zealand university who has completed one or more years of a Bachelors degree with at least one year of study remaining, whether as part of a Bachelors or postgraduate degree.
• Be enrolled in full-time undergraduate or postgraduate study at an university or equivalent tertiary institution (please see FAQ for details) in Australia or New Zealand for the following year.
• Be studying Computer Science, Software Engineering, Informatics, or a closely related technical field.

Citizens, permanent residents, and international students are eligible to apply. Past applicants and finalists are also encouraged to re-apply. If you have any questions, please email anitaborgscholarsanz@google.com.



For further information on this scholarship and how to apply, check out www.google.com.au/anitaborg .

Deadline to apply: July 31st, 2011.



Thank you for your support and good luck to applicants!

Girl Geek Dinner at Google: Pink Optional

This is a guest post by Kellie Scott, Geek Girl Dinner Organiser, Sydney.



Last week, we held our quarterly Girl Geek Dinner at Google. These dinners were first started in London in 2005 by the original Girl Geek, Sarah Blow. As a software engineer, Sarah was sick of everyone at tech events assuming that she wasn’t an engineer; after brainstorming on the train home one night, Girl Geek Dinners was born. These dinners are an opportunity for women who are passionate about tech to meet each other, hear about new ideas and generally to geek out together.

Aside from everyone receiving a “I'm a woman in tech. That doesn't mean everything has to be pink” sticker, which was a big hit, we enjoyed a tasty sit-down dinner with drinks, fun icebreaker games and as always, interesting talks. The event held together by the brilliant MC skills of Amaya “that goth chick that works at Google” Booker.

The keynote speaker was Mary Gardiner talking about her work for newly-founded non-profit organisation The Ada Initiative which supports women in open technology and culture. Mary’s talk engaged the audience with some surprising statistics about the participation of women in open source communities and she discussed why it is important to increase the proportion of women in open technology and culture, before focusing on the Ada Initiative’s plans for addressing the problem. For more information, and to find out how getting women involved can change the culture of the open source community, check out her talk on the Ada Initiative website.



After dinner, we moved into our lightning talks section - talks of (roughly) five minutes each, on a variety of topics. The first talk by Kirsti Rawstron discussed gender streaming and the way it is affected by course costs. Googler Alice Boxhall followed, with a general introduction to website accessibility. Alice demonstrated a couple of websites through ChromeVox to show how hard it can be for a blind person to navigate the web. To wrap up, Googler Katie Bell spoke about the National Computer Science Summer School, and Girls Programming Network, demonstrating that it does pay to get girls into programming from a younger age. All of the talks are available here.

Girl Geek Dinner continues to grow here in Australia with other groups in Adelaide, Brisbane, Canberra, Melbourne, and Perth. Our next Girl Geek Dinner will be held on Thursday 8th September. For more information please sign up here and follow us on Twitter here: @GGDSydney.

Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship for Women in Technology

Dr. Anita Borg devoted her adult life to revolutionising the way we think about technology and dismantling barriers that keep women and minorities from entering computing and technology fields. Anita's technical expertise and fearless vision inspires and motivates women to become leaders in creating technology.

At Google, we believe that the wave of information and communications on the web is changing lives for the better and creates fantastic options for students choosing careers in technology. We want to continue Anita's vision for women and we're excited to announce the 2010 Google Australia and New Zealand Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship. Through the scholarship, we aim to encourage women to excel in computing and technology and become active role models and leaders.

We're looking for women with a strong academic background who have demonstrated leadership. Each scholar recipient will receive a $5,000 scholarship towards the 2011 academic year. In addition all finalists and scholarship recipients will be invited to an expenses-paid networking retreat to be held at Google’s Sydney Engineering centre in September.

The scholarship is open for women students at an Australian or New Zealand university who have completed one or more years of a Bachelors degree with at least one year of study remaining, whether as part of a Bachelors or postgraduate degree. We're looking for women studying Computer Science, Software Engineering, Informatics, or a closely related technical field, who have maintained an excellent academic record. See full information and apply here.

Good luck!

Posted by Isa Notermans, People Programs Specialist