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What skills are needed in TECH? Inspiring insights from Carine Lucas and Cindy Smits teach us something during this double keynote. A subsequent Q&A round will ensure an animated interaction between you and our speakers!
Keynote: Why the Digital Industry needs "female" skills more than ever.
Carine Lucas, Senior Expert Digital of Agoria and Inspiring Fifty Belgium 2020 will give the first keynote. Many actions are rightly being taken to get more girls and women into STEM courses. But also in positions which do not necessarily require a STEM education, such as business analyst or project lead, we find fewer women in the Digital Industry. Women are not attracted to the sector because it is unfamiliar to them, but also because they think they lack the technical knowledge to take on such roles.
An analysis of the vacancies for such roles made by Agoria, however, mainly shows a need for other skills to be able to bridge the gap between technical and non-technical roles in an organisation. A basic knowledge of the technical aspects is sufficient for this.
Carine is happy to share the insights from this analysis and open the debate around the following questions:
What does it take to convince women with a non-STEM higher education that such jobs can also be very interesting and meaningful for them?
What is needed to give women with non-STEM higher education enough self-confidence to apply for such jobs?
What kind of education/training should be provided for these women?
Keynote: Why do girls prefer to ask questions to women?
Cindy Smits, Founder of Digital Wolves and nominated for ICT Woman of the Year in 2020, is adamant that women are still more than clearly in the minority in technical jobs.
Getting girls excited about technology is not something you do in the final years before they choose to study. That is far too late; we have to start breaking through the gender barriers from kindergarten onwards. That is the place where gender is not yet relevant and everyone is still equal. The older we get, the more we are pigeonholed.
In her keynote Cindy talks about the fact that girls are just as enthusiastic about IT and programming during their workshops in class as boys. Cindy zooms in on the question of why it is that girls hardly ever show up after school and why it is that when there are female coaches present, girls start asking their questions to them.
Who is Carine Lucas?
Carine Lucas is Senior Expert Digital at Agoriawhere she helps companies understand the potential of digital technology and provides advice on building a digital culture, integrating digital into innovation and finding the right partners. Before joining Agoria, Carine obtained a PhD in Computer Science and worked for 15 years as a consultant on research and innovation projects for companies, research and non-profit organisations in a wide range of sectors and domains. Carine is co-author of the book "99 Reasons Why Startups Fail - and the Strategies to Avoid it" and is a valued speaker including through TEDx. In 2020, she was elected one of the Inspiring Fifty Belgium.
Who is Cindy Smits?
Cindy Smits is entrepreneur and founder of Digitale Wolven. She was nominated in 2020 for ICT woman of the year and sparkles with commitment and passion for IT and education. Since 2006 she is active in IT where she first worked in administrative positions and later as a consultant in Business Intelligence. In 2014 Cindy founded the non-profit organization Digital Wolves. In the beginning she combined this with a job as ICT teacher at De Lift, a school for children with ASD. In the meantime, Digitale Wolven has grown and 7 full-time employees give workshops to 20.000 children annually, of which almost 50% are girls. Besides Digital Wolves, Cindy is also active as a lead coach at CoderDojo Belgium since 2013, sits in the core team of Coolest Projects Belgium and CoderDojo4Girlz. Furthermore, Cindy is ambassador for EU Code Week for Belgium.
