Julia Bryant

Eighth grader Payton Carroll didnt just attend Technica because her older sister dragged her
along, she came because she wanted to hone in her tech skills and learn how to play with her
favorite video gamescode.
I play a few video games on the computer and one is pretty easy to code and I want to learn
how to mess around with it, Carroll said.
Carroll, who attends Elkridge Landing Middle School in Howard County, Maryland; was
accompanied by her older sister Perri Carroll, who is a University of Maryland Baltimore
Masters in Public Health student.
The two of them attended Technica, the University of Marylands first all-women hackathon held
at Ritchie Coliseum on Nov. 7-8. The event, like many other traditional hackathons, was held for
24 hours, featuring workshops and mentors who are both students and professionals in these
fields.
Its about creating an environment where people feel welcome and safe enough where they can
ask anything and get help from anyone, said Amritha Jayanti, sophomore computer engineering
major and Technicas founder. I think I is easy to get overwhelmed with how many men there
are at regular hackathons.
The event drew around 400 participants from high schools, colleges, and even middle schools
from around the country. Its simple; learn and create.
Jayanthi believes that a problem is that many women do not feel completely comfortable and
often feel as though they do not have enough coding experience to participate in larger co-ed
programs.
Perri Carroll agreed, saying that she has never done any coding but really enjoys the empowering
aspect of Technica and that an all-female hackathon is an incredibly important atmosphere.
While the event was all women, there were still some men who were there as sponsors and as
mentors, there to assist and help the participants with any problems they may face.
In addition to hacking, participants have the ability to learn new skills or refine the ones they
already have in workshops and demonstrations in multiple aspects from different coding
languages to different types of software.
Richard Higgins, a December 2014 graduate in computer science and neuroscience, led Android
workshops in addition to serving as one of the mentors.

I know that I felt intimidated when I didnt know how something was and I think it would be
even worse if I was already in a minority position in the field. I have even been scared by that
and I am pretty privileged, said Higgins.
Freshman computer science major Dani Otarola said that she chose compsci as a major because
she was interested in the classes, and for many of them she needed to be a part of the major to
take.
I thought [computer science] was a lot like magic. It may seem challenging but you are in
college to learn and it is amazing to get to see things transformed and completed in projects,
Otarola said. She worked on building an app for a non-profit something that was challenging
for her, as she had no previous experience, but said she was grateful for what she learned over
the weekend.
In addition to college students (and the occasional middle schooler) there were many high
schoolers who participated.
Young Chung, 17, who attends North County High School in Anne Arundel County, thought
Technica seemed like a cool program, so she decided to sign up.
If you have more women around you, you are able to relate more and you may feel more
confident in your computer science abilities, said Chung.
For junior electrical engineering major Osvaldo Ozzie Bianchi, one of the biggest obstacles for
women that Technica is working to get rid of is the lack of early exposure of STEM related
studies to girls.
Technica is a great space where you are able to help the future generations of hackers and
getting the ratio of male to female where it should be, said Bianchi.
Major League Hacking Deputy Commissioner Shy Ruparel said that he wants minority groups to
be able to explore and grow their technical skills and hacking abilities, but agrees that large
hackathons can be an intimidating environment.
We try to expose [minorities] to the hackathon culture in a way where they know that they are
going to be surrounded by people like them and take that experience and apply it to the existing
ones that arent minority focused, said Ruparel.
While many agreed that this was a great opportunity, others, like Brandi Adams, Assistant
Director of Communications of the Computer Science Department at UMD, looked to the future
and hopes that an all-women event will not be necessary in the coming years.
For right now as an attempt for people to get more women interested in hackathons in a much
less stress filled environment, I think that this is an extremely welcoming place for women to try
things out, said Adams.

With the gender gap becoming more apparent with the creation of all-women hackathons, many
elite co-ed hackathons from across the country are responding with new initiatives to reach a
more equal representation.
For our next hackathon, we are beginning a broad campaign to achieve equal representation in
tech talks and mentorship, giving all hackers a valuable network of successful and supportive
women in tech, said a representative from MHacks, the University of Michigans hackathon.
MHacks added that [Diverse perspectives] lead to better, more innovative solutions, whether it
be a product, a hack, or even just a conversation. The best way to learn is to get as many different
people with different experiences in the same roomand just let them do the rest.