ACM Celebration of Women in Computing: Women’s Marathon 2024
Kiel ACM-W Professional Chapter hosted the third Women’s Talk Marathon at Kiel University as their first ACM Celebration of Women in Computing, on March, 8th – the international women’s day. Kiel ACM-W Profesional Chapter Chair Pamela Fleischmann, Vice Chair Annika Huch and Executive Committee Member Ina Pfannschmidt helped with the organisation of the event. The Women’s Marathon was a huge success and an extraordinary event. The event included 49 talks of an all over duration of over 20 hours split in three tracks. Women scientists, researchers and students gave insights into their research, their work and their studies at the University. Many attendees of various ages listened to the talks (in person and online).
Before the official start at 08:30 a.m. there was an unofficial start with coffee, tea and French pastries for the early birds. The vice president for Digital Transformation, Equality and Diversity Prof. Dr. Catherine Cleophas opened the ACM Celebration of Women in Computing: Women’s Talk Marathon by addressing the audience with personal experiences about her career and how important it is for women to have other women as role models. Moreover she stressed how important it is not to give up and to believe that the next step on the ladder can be reached.
After the opening, the talks started with three parallel tracks. Talks from 15 institutes, three areas of university administration, and the university hospital gave a broad perspective from research over studies to technical and administrative processes. As a special guest, Marit Hansen – the State Data Protection Commissioner of Schleswig-Holstein – gave a talk about Feminist Data Protection. The audience learned about technical abuse by men, e.g., who has the passwords for the smart home, and the danger in saving the menstruation tracking apps, e.g. isn’t a woman always partially guilty in a car accident if her hormones indicate a special part in her cycle. During all these talks one could learn so much, the topic being both fascinating, and also irritating as the examples given were further used in discussions among the participants of the marathon for the rest of the day.
Parallel to the three tracks, there was a Café with snacks and beverages free for all where participants networked with visitors and speakers over a coffee and a snack.
During the discussions, one very impressive story was of a young researcher: she got her master’s degree in Computer Science roughly a year ago and afterwards she considered starting working at a bakery as a temporary help since she didn’t believe at all in her skills. With the joint effort of several people, she was not only convinced to leave the bakery but to start as a Phd student. At the marathon she gave a talk about her master’s thesis and was afterwards asked by a female senior researcher from a different area if she would like to collaborate. This impressively shows how important encouragement and networking are.
The last talk ended at 08:45 p.m. and even though it was a pretty long day the lecture hall was still nicely filled.
The marathon ended with a show from the Lighthouse Project with images and videos designed by the first semester students of Computer Science. A globe in the symbol of the Roman goddess Venus designed by two female first semester students was a worthy ending of an awesome day.
Most of the slides used during the day are available here.
‘After the marathon is before the marathon’, and we are looking forward to the 2025 edition with a lot of female speakers and a lot of new things to learn. Moreover, we hope that the (vague) plans of partner events at the University of Helsinki as well as the University of Lübeck will become reality.