London

Featured Speaker(s)

Finding that there were not enough women to talk to at academic conferences, led computer science academic Dr Sue Black to setting up the British Computer Society's BCSWomen online network in 2001. In 2003 the network gave rise to a meeting at Bletchley Park and on to the discovery that as well as being the home of the code breakers, Bletchley Park was the home of the world's first programmable digital computer Colossus. Sue then discovered that more than 5,000 women had worked at Bletchley Park during the war, most of them in their teens and twenties. Dr Black and BCSWomen ran an oral history project celebrating the contributions of the women that worked at Bletchley Park called "The Women of Station X". At the launch of this project Dr Black discovered that Bletchley Park was "teetering on a financial knife edge" and resolved to help them gain awareness, recognition and funding. Sue leveraged Twitter and other social media to do so, and this fed into a successful movement to save Bletchley Park, to inspire generations to come by highlighting its foundational role in the history of computing.

In this talk Sue will discuss her background, education and career and her enthusiasm for the things that she cares about. She'll highlight how a focus on diversity can lead to transformational, unexpected outcomes. She'll talk about how she's become one of the most influential UK technologists on Twitter, and above all she hopes to leave you inspired to follow your own passion.