Girl Geek Academy offers grants to attend US conference
Girl Geek Academy is extending its impact into the U.S. market with a scholarship initiative aimed at increasing the number of minority groups working within the chaos engineering field.
Chaos engineering is the next wave of software development, aiming to improve upon the common everyday issues of software crashes, bugs and data leaks. Girl Geek Academy co-founder, Tammy Butow, was recently appointed Principal Site Reliability Engineer at Silicon Valley based startup, Gremlin, which is leading the growth in this space by building chaos engineering as a service.
On 28 September, Gremlin will host the world’s first Chaos Conference in San Francisco, with Girl Geek Academy determined to lay down the foundations of an inclusive chaos engineering industry at this early stage, before any issues can become entrenched.
Through a partnership with Cloud Native Foundation (CNCF), Ms Butow is offering five diversity and inclusion grants for anyone who is over 18 and identifies as an underrepresented minority working or studying in technology.
The grants are open to Australians and other internationals who can make the conference, providing each recipient with a full-access Chos Conference pass, $US2,000 to help offset the costs related to attending the conference, such as travel, lodging, food and child care, plus an invitation to a welcome dinner with the Gremlin team on the evening before the event.
Speaking on the initiative, Ms Butow said: “We are doing everything we can to make sure the first ever Chaos Conference is not only fun, inspiring, and informative, but also safe, diverse and inclusive.
“As an Australian myself, I would love to see some local representation at the event and fully encourage Australian women to apply. We’ve created the grant amount specifically to cover off flights and accommodation and make it possible. Silicon Valley is an amazing place to spend a few years of your career and it’s incredibly worthwhile to push yourself to the forefront and gain first-hand exposure to the market.”
Chris Aniszczyk, CTO at Cloud Native Foundation (CNCF) said: “As organizations build cloud native systems, we view chaos engineering as table stakes to truly build resilient cloud native software. Furthermore, diversity and inclusion are core values to CNCF and we are thrilled to support the first Chaos Conf as a community.”
Kolton Andrus, CEO at Gremlin said: “The generous grant offered by the CNCF will help us ensure that our first conference, and the chaos engineering community more broadly, is accessible to a wider set of people across various backgrounds and perspectives. We know that diverse teams make better decisions and generate better business results, and we will continue to support initiatives that promote diversity and inclusion.”
Applications for the Chaos Conference diversity and inclusion grants are open until 31 July. Click here for more details and to apply.
Girl Geek Academy was founded by five skilled female digital professionals who want to increase the number of women with successful STEM careers. The team work to see an increase of women in tech, women in games, women who make, female designers and female founders.
Its initiatives include coding and hackathons, 3D printing and wearables, game development, design, entrepreneurship and startups. Girl Geek Academy also works with teachers, schools, corporates and startups to increase the number of women with professional technical and entrepreneurial skills.
