Thursday, October 17th, our New York City chapter held a successful Tech Education Panel event at the Academy for Software Engineering (AFSE) for 400 people. We had six very influential panelists within the technology education industry including: Reshma Saujani, Founder of Girls Who Code and Deputy Public Advocate; Evan Korth, Founder of Hack NY, Founder of AFSE, and NYU Computer Science Professor; Eugene Lee, Senior Policy Advisor for Economic Development for the NYC Mayor's Office; Anna Lindow, Regional Director at General Assembly; Michael Preston, Senior Director of Digital Learning at the Dept. of Education; and Leigh Ann Delyser, Computer Science Curriculum Coordinator at AFSE.
The event was moderated by Sloane Barbour, Regional Director of Jobspring Partners and Member of Young Executive Board at Camp Interactive, who added his own expertise to the discussion.
The evening kicked off with a networking session coupled with complementary food and drinks. After networking was finished, the event was kicked off with a pre-panel presentation by Mike Denton, Executive Director at Camp Interactive. Denton gave a short presentation on the current state of tech education in NYC and why our panel discussion was so important for the tech education community in New York.
Once the panel discussion began, the six panelists discussed what steps are being taken to close the STEM skills gap, as well as how public and private institutions are uniquely addressing this problem. There was discussion around how to utilize early education to change the ratio of men to women studying computer science and how to encourage more young women to go into technology, as well as how business and tech leaders can recruit and educate junior level engineers and provide career advancement and professional development opportunities internally to increase engineer retention rates; along with recent events in New York City technology communities.
Throughout the event, audience members blew up Twitter with great quotes, insights and questions surrounding the importance of learning to code and the lack of code education availability in NYC. Then at the end of the panel discussion, audience members were eager to ask the panelists various questions including those on how people can aid the NYC tech education community.
All in all, the evening was a huge success. We'd like to give a quick shoutout to our continued sponsors who made this event a success: Jobspring Partners, Workbridge Associates, Buncee, Microsoft and LeadDog Marketing.
Stay tuned for our next event in NYC and join our official meetup group!