The Women Visionaries Who Defined the Future of Tech

Here at Vidcode, we love to see girls achieve amazing things with code. In the same spirit, we are dedicating this month to celebrating International Women’s Day and the incredible women who have disrupted the male-dominated tech world. 

What better way to honor women visionaries than by sharing fun facts about them? Without further ado, here are our top three ladies in tech:

Ada Lovelace

Anyone who is even remotely familiar with computer science or tech history has heard her name. This talented 19th century mathematician is the “mother” of computer programming as we know it. Ada Lovelace was the first computer programmer before computers even existed! Surprisingly enough, she was not as famous when she proposed the world’s first algorithm in her young teenage years. It wasn’t until the 1950s when her contributions to the field of computer science were recognized through a republication of her notes in Faster Than Thought: A Symposium on Digital Computing Machines. This incredible lady in tech was clearly way ahead of her time.

Hedy Lamarr

This hollywood star and beauty icon was breaking all the computer geek stereotypes as early as the 1930s! Hedy Lamarr was more widely known for her career in the entertainment industry, yet not too many people know about her side gig as an inventor. Lamarr was responsible for the invention of spread spectrum technology, which is essentially the basis for modern-day Wi-Fi and Bluetooth technology. 

Kimberly Bryant

This woman in tech is responsible for founding Black Girls Code, a not-for-profit organization that aims at introducing girls from underrepresented communities to the world of coding. Bryant worked for many years as an electrical engineer before she decided to tackle the diversity problem that the tech industry still faces today. As a matter of fact, black women comprise only 2% of the STEM workforce in the United States. Bryant’s inspiration for founding this wonderful organization? Her daughter. In Bryant’s own words, she “wanted to find a way to engage and interest my daughter in becoming a digital creative instead of just a consumer, and I did not find other programs that were targeted to girls like her from underrepresented communities." 

As these three women in tech prove, female scientists have been crucial in the development of computer science and the technologies that we enjoy today. At Vidcode, we are more than excited to see what the next generation of powerful technologists has to offer.

What woman in tech inspires you? Let us know in the comments below!
 

Happy International Women's Day!

We are loving all of the Woman’s Day Posts on social media today!
International Women’s day is a celebration of “ the social, economic, cultural and political  achievement of women,” according to the official website of the International Women's day campaign. 

All over instagram, twitter, facebook, and the internet, people worldwide are showing their support for this important day. 
 
We decided to celebrate this day by learning about some amazing women in tech!

First, is a woman that is a popular household name, model Karlie Kloss. Her side hobbies include learning to code,sponsoring a scholarship for girls to learn to code, and encouraging interest in coding among girls.

"Call me a nerd but I love coding, the language of computers. Understanding coding is a superpower. I met some tech entrepreneurs and they are billionaires through learning this stuff. I'm so competitive with myself and I am fascinated by the language of technology so I decided to be part of the conversation,” Kloss said in a December interview with British Vogue. 

Anyone who is using their celebrity status as a platform to support something we too at vidcode are insanely passionate about (after all, our product is built around it!), is a women’s day hero in our book.  

A name every women in tech should know is Grace Hopper, the original woman in code. A Naval Admiral, Hopper was the third person ever, and first woman, to program the first computers for the Navy,  called the Mark 1. Later, Hopper developed the first compiler for computer programming, which is a set of programs that transforms code into computer language, making it usable in program creation. 

She also popularized the idea of a common coding language for computers, which lead to one of the first advanced coding languages. There is a great documentary about her called “The Queen of Code.”

CyFi is a 15 year old female hacker that is disrupting the web security industry. When she was 10, CyFi hacked into an online farming game, manually altering the clock so her crops had more time to grow, pointing out a major security flaw in the games model. 

Shortly after, CyFi co-created r00tz Asylum, which is a “nonprofit dedicated to teaching kids around the world how to love being white-hat hackers. A white-hat hacker is someone who enjoys thinking of innovative new ways to make, break and use anything to create a better world.”

R00tz Asylum runs DEFCON KIDS, the junior version of DEFCON, a conference that is the largest and longest running hacking conference. It is attended by members of organizations that deal with governmental and private cybersecurity, as well as hackers. 

At DEFCON 20 in 2012, CyFi  was recognized by the head of the National Security Agency, Keith Alexander. 

“CyFi”  is a pseudonym to mask this hackers true identity. Sounds like a superhero to us. 

Who are your favorite women in tech?

Karlie Kloss + code!

"It's not as hard as I expected," says Kloss.  "Being able to speak and read this language is like a superpower."