NCWIE: Canadian WISE Groups

Barb and I presented our talk yesterday to around 40 delegates of the National Conference on Women in Engineering, held in London, Ontario. I'm extremely happy with how well it turned out. We started with a video slide show I made (complete with dramatic music to open, followed by dance music to keep the crowd's interest). We made sure to bring the audience into the discussion many times, and kept their interest by throwing in more fun videos to soften the dullness of the more technical details. We received amazing feedback from multiple people!

But the one thing I'm the happiest about is a new wiki I set up thanks to the suggestions of our audience. We had so much great discussion that could have lasted an entire day on its own. It would be a shame to cut that off without finding a way to continue sharing ideas.

The wiki is called Canadian WISE Groups and, I'm hoping, will be a space that WISE groups from all across our nation can list their contact info and share ideas on how they run their clubs.

There have been similar initiatives that I have heard about recently, but none so far have seemed to include both scientists and engineers, or they haven't covered the whole country.

If you know about a group that supports women in science and/or engineering, please consider requesting a membership to the wiki and adding it. There is also a list of links to organizations that support women, and it's not restricted to Canadian initiatives. If you find that your organization is not there, definitely feel free to join the wiki and add it! This site can only grow and be useful if you help build it.