Hello!

 I am very excited to be posting my first blog on bringITon. I am even more excited about the event our Women in Computing Science (WISC) group at Queen's is planning. To keep all of you intrigued about what the event is, I am going to first tell you about our WISC group. It is made up of enthusiastic women, including students, faculty and staff in our School of Computing. Our aim is to support and mentor women in the school as well as to encourage young women to discover the wonderful world of computing.

Now back to that event...WISC is in the midst of planning Canada's FIRST ACM-W Regional Celebration- ONCWIC (Ontario Celebration of Women in Computing) - to be held at the Radisson Hotel in Kingston,ON on October 22-23. The event is going to model the highly successful Grace Hopper Celebration (GHC) to provide another comparable option for many women unable to attend GHC. The conference will allow students to present their research, network and expose themselves to the variety of computing opportunities.

The event planning began January 2010 and we have 30 dedicated volunteers divided into 5 committees. I am on the program committee and what I was not expecting when I first decided to volunteer to help was that I am getting to know WISC members that I wouldn't have met otherwise.

Some of our talented members created an impressive website that you should all visit: http://sites.cs.queensu.ca/wisc/ONCWIC/ for more information. The web site has only been up for about a month and we have already had visitors from a variety of places in the US and Canada.

I really enjoy computing comics and have posted one below for all of you to enjoy.

From one struggling programmer to another,
Simrin :-)