This years Coding-Summer Camp 2019: moinworld Girls days

July 19, 2019

Summer Camp in cooperation with three of Hamburg’s tech companies

For the second year in a row we held our Summer-Coding Camp. Sixteen young girls spent three days developing their programming skills in three different companies, mostly without any prior experience in coding. The workshops took place this year at Google, XING SE and SHARE NOW. In addition, the junior coders were able to exchange ideas directly with the developers working there and gain insights into various IT professions.

Day 1 at XING SE

Our first day we were at Xing in the Spielbudenplatz room, with direct access to a beautiful roof terrace overlooking our Elphi (Elbphilharmonie).

XING Office

Margarita Esau, researcher from Uni Siegen with focus on IT-Security and Consumer Information Systems, gave the girls an introduction into Dialogue Flow and very soon they were working in groups on a speech-assistant at would assist in finding out if a fish is still fresh.

XING Office
XING Office

In the beginning the girls did not programme anything. Instead they worked with Post-its in classic IT manner.

XING Office
XING Office
XING Office

The individual approaches were then presented in a group round, which crystallised the vast differences between them.

After the lunch break, we continued with Peter Friese from Google, who showed the girls how to implement the dialogues they had built using programming techniques and what problems one will often encounter.

XING Office
XING Office
XING Office

In between, the girls had the chance to get to know Angela Kapdan, Project Owner at XING, to learn a little about the platform and how they can use Xing to their advantage.

XING Office
XING Office

Later, during the dialogue flow programming, there was absolute silence. Everyone worked in concentration on their own “Is my fish fresh?” speech-assistant.

XING Office

The concentration was briefly interrupted for a role model talk, where the girls got an insight into the career possibilities and the variety of departments at XING.

The programming continued, and in the end ambition came into play when some of the speech-assistants were introduced. The girls very clearly showed once again, that there is no one right solution to a problem, but several different ones. The challenge is finding the most elegant.

Day 2 at Google

On the second Day we continued at Google Headquarters in Hamburg. This is also where our introduction to App-Inventor, a block programming language developed by MIT, began. The workshop was led by our young programmers Hannah and Alexandra , and supported by Matthias Kim, as well as numerous Google employees.

The object was to write a few small apps, which you could then test on your mobile phone. Here for example a ‘Catch the Mole’ app was built, with a score counter and restart button.

Of course, the girls also got creative and used other pictures instead of the mole, or implemented other sounds for when the mole is caught. After lunch in Google’s canteen we had an office tour and we took the chance to revisit some places from last year.

Google Office
Google Office

Thanks to the snack bar we were never lacking in energy, so we continued to work hard.

Google Office
Google Office

In between programming there was a Role Model Talk, but it turned into more of a conversation where all the Google employees who were there to help answered questions. There were also two employees who were connected to us via video conference. The girls were able to gain an insight into a programmer’s daily work as well as into the decision process of why people wanted to study IT and asked a lot of questions. After another programming session we had to say goodbye and go home.

Day 3 at SHARE NOW

Our last day took place at Share Now in their office directly at the Elbe. This day, we continued to work with the App-Inventor and the girls worked individually on projects. We worked on different ideas, own creations as well as replicas of tutorials.

In between there was pizza with integrated role model talk about the development of apps at Share Now.

Share Now Office

And a short introduction to the concept of the company.

Share Now Office

When the sticker box was discovered, everything was over for some computers. Obviously, you have to be able to tell that they are programmers.

Share Now Office

At the end of the day, the girls were given the opportunity to present their apps to the Share Now team. From a calendar app, which organizes appointments with friends, to a plant watering reminder app, to a grade point average calculator, everything was there.

Share Now Office
Share Now Office

Apparently, the whole Share Now team took a break for our girls, because they all wanted to see the results of that day!

Share Now Office
Share Now Office

And just as soon as it had started, the coding camp was over. We had an action-packed three days during which the girls learned a lot more than they d previously imagined. The girls creativity and positivity was enormous and everyone in the team was absolutely thrilled. We are already thinking about the next year and hope to open up the IT industry for women bit by bit. #wearecoders #womeninstem

If you are interested in next year’s coding camp

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Sign up for the 2020 summer camp is already open here .

Some impressions from last year

Read the blogpost from last year here.

Google Office