Inspire Fest 2015

We are so excited to be attending Inspire Fest 2015 in Dublin

Inspirefest 2015 is a two day international event that connects professionals interested in the future of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics with new perspectives on innovation, leadership and success.

#STEM

These perspectives are shared by women who are leaders in their particular field, and by advocates of diversity in education, research, business and society.

We are so excited to hear these experts speak in their field of expertise as its not often a #STEM event is thrown.

The Speakers

We of course are excited to see all the speakers but for now we will give you a top 5

Ariel Waldman

FOUNDER , SPACEHACK.ORG

The Founder of Spacehack.org, a directory of ways to participate in space exploration, and the global instigator of Science Hack Day, an event that brings together scientists, technologists, designers and people with good ideas to see what they can create in one weekend

Ariel is currently an appointed National Academy of Sciences committee member of a congressionally-requested study on the future of human spaceflight, she also sits on the external council for NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts, a program that nurtures radical, sci-fi-esque ideas that could transform future NASA missions.

Her work with Science Hack Day has taken her to Colombia, China, Kenya, Madagascar and South Africa to help grow budding science enthusiast communities.

In 2013, Ariel received an honour from the White House for being a Champion of Change in citizen science.

Not going to lie, I’ve spent many hours on spacehack.org, looking through the skies and labeling star systems, for a woman like myself who knows little to nothing about space I’m amazed by what I can learn from Ariel Waldman,

Besides, she knows NASA.

Cindy Gallop

FOUNDER, IF WE RAN THE WORLD,

Cindy Gallop is a graduate of Somerville College, Oxford, whose background is brand building, marketing and advertising – she started up the US office of ad agency Bartle Bogle Hegarty in New York in 1998 and in 2003 was named Advertising Woman of the Year. She is the founder and CEO of https://www.IfWeRanTheWorld.com, co-action software launched in beta at TED 2010 and subsequently written up and taught as a Harvard Business School case study;

She is board advisor to a number of tech ventures, sits on the Women At NBCU Digital Advisory Board BusinessInsider named her one of 15 Most Important Marketing Strategy Thinkers Today, alongside Malcolm Gladwell and Seth Godin.

She has a reputation as a highly compelling and inspirational speaker at conferences and events around the world on a variety of topics.

I absolutely adore ifwerantheworld.com ,it was a truly amazing website where you could imagine yourself running the world and really ponder as to what you would do.

After that you could partake in an action to make it happen, sadly this site has lost its popularity over the years, but the idea is still a formidable one.

Kimberly Bryant

FOUNDER, BLACK GIRLS CODE

Kimberly Bryant found when learning about computer programming that there was a lack of exposure in her culture

‘While we shared similar aspirations and many good times, there’s much to be said for making any challenging journey with people of the same cultural background”.

Much has changed since her college days, but there’s still a lacking of African-American women in science, technology, engineering and math professions, an absence that cannot be explained by, say, a lack of interest in these fields. Lack of access and lack of exposure to STEM topics are the likelier culprits, according to Kimberly.

With Black Girls Code, she hopes to provide young and pre-teen girls of color opportunities to learn in-demand skills in technology and computer programming at a time when they are naturally thinking about what they want to be when they grow up. That, really, is the Black Girls Code mission: to introduce programming and technology to a new generation of coders, coders who will become builders of technological innovation and of their own futures.

Kimberley really found an area which she was passionate in, and had seen from experience the market desperately needed to have a facility to aid these young girls and help them see the possible opportunities if they decide to choose that particular field later in their lives to study.

Kara Swisher

CO-EXECUTIVE EDITOR, RE/CODE (GUEST CHAIR)

Kara Swisher is currently the co-CEO and co-owner of Revere Digital, with Walt Mossberg. It is a tech and media news company that publishes the Re/code site and also puts on a series of Code Conferences, which features prominent speakers from the digital industry.

Revere has minority investments from NBC News and Windsor Media.

Before Revere Swisher co-produced and co-hosted The Wall Street Journal’s “D: All Things Digital,” with Mossberg. It was the major high-tech conference with interviewees such as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and many other leading players in the tech and media industries. The gathering was considered one of the leading conferences focused on the convergence of tech and media industries.

She and Mossberg were also the co-executive editors of a tech and media Web site, AllThingsD.com.

Swisher worked in The Wall Street Journal’s San Francisco bureau. For many years, she wrote the column, “BoomTown,” which appeared on the front page of the Marketplace section and also on The Wall Street Journal Online at WSJ.com. Previously, Swisher covered breaking news about the Web’s major players and Internet policy issues and also wrote feature articles on technology for the paper. She has also written a weekly column for the Personal Journal on home issues called “Home Economics.”

Previously, Swisher worked as a reporter at the Washington Post and as an editor at the City Paper of Washington, D.C. She received her undergraduate degree from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and her graduate degree at Columbia University’s School of Journalism.

Swisher is also the author of “aol.com: How Steve Case Beat Bill Gates, Nailed the Netheads and Made Millions in the War for the Web,” published by Times Business Books in July 1998. The sequel, “There Must Be a Pony in Here Somewhere: The AOL Time Warner Debacle and the Quest for a Digital Future,” was published in the fall of 2003 by Crown Business Books.

She is a Marketing Prodigy in the line of journalism.

Lauren Boyle

EU DIGITAL GIRL OF THE YEAR 2014

Advocate for girls in STEM and developer of three websites at just ten years old, the remarkable Lauren Boyle was named EU Digital Girl of the Year 2014.

Lauren is the founder of Cool Kids Studio, an initiative that spans three websites she has built herself. The original Cool Kids Studio website teaches children aged three to 12 life skills with advice on what to do on a rainy day, how to deal with bullies, making friends and meditation. Within a few months of going live, the site had already received thousands of hits.

Boyle has since branched out with a sister site focused on healthy eating and a maker site with projects for kids to try. As a resource for kids developed by a kid, Boyle’s websites are as useful for parents and educators as they are for the target audience.

In November, she gave Ireland’s Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Enda Kenny a lesson in coding!

Though only the age of 10 Lauren has got some good experience under her belt, we hope we hear more from her in the future.

Mary Mulvihill

Though sadly she has since passed Mary was due to give a keynote at inspire fest As founder and the first chairperson of Women in Technology and Science (WITS), she played a vital role in highlighting the often-neglected role of women in the history of Irish science through the wonderful collections of biographies she edited: Lab Coats and Laceand Stars, Shells and Bluebells.

She will be sadly missed

A big thank you to Silicon Republic for not only supplying us with this information but also for hosting Inspire Fest 2015