Last Thursday, over 100 people gathered at Symantec’s Mountain View Headquarters for the documentary screening of CODEGIRL, a film that follows teams of girls from all around the world as they compete to win $10,000 to complete and release their mobile app. Directed by award-winning filmmaker, Lesley Chilcott, whose films include An Inconvenient Truth and Waiting for Superman, this film’s backdrop is the Technovation Challenge– an international mobile app competition for girls in middle and high school that tasks them to solve an issue in their community by creating an app. The concept of the Technovation Challenge is to empower girls within technology and entrepreneurship. The film takes you from rural Moldova to urban Brazil and to the suburbs of Massachusetts as the girls find mentors, learn to code, and develop their business plan.
The film followed diverse contestants as they journeyed through the Technovation Challenge.
Women are immensely underrepresented in technology and entrepreneurship. Between 10 – 20% of tech-related jobs at technology companies are held by women and only one-third of entrepreneurs are female. And in the mobile app market, which is expected to be valued at $77 Billion by 2017, less than 20% of these developers are female. The Technovation Challenge aims to help change that. Dr. Anuranjita Tewary, founder of the Technovation Challenge, was first exposed to entrepreneurship at Startup Weekend in 2009 and was inspired to create a program for girls centered on technology and entrepreneurship. “Entrepreneurship is so amazing; if I had been exposed to it as a high school student I might have viewed my life differently,” said Tewary when remembering back to the inspiring experience at Startup Weekend. Since 2010, nearly 5,000 girls from 60 countries have submitted to Technovation.
The screening of CODEGIRL at the Symantec Headquarters was an event to be remembered! After the showing of the film, one of the featured teams in the documentary, the Puppy Sized Elephants, two girls based out of Cupertino, California did a Q&A about their experience with the Technovation Challenge. They shared how they learned to code from free online platforms and described the process of making their app, My Cash Count. The event was as inspiring as the documentary and we hope that others are motivated to pursue or encourage girls in tech!
The Puppy Sized Elephants, one of the teams featured in the documentary, did a Q&A after the showing of the film.
Symantec employees, their families, and local nonprofits joined for the viewing of the CODEGIRL documentary.
Attendees had a lot of fun enjoying the red carpet themed photo booth!
Watch the OFFICIAL TRAILER of CODEGIRL.