Mia Shares about her ACM WomENcourage 2022 experience

My name is Mia Bjørndal, and I am a bachelor’s degree student in informatics at NTNU in Trondheim, Norway. I am in my third and last year of my bachelor’s degree.

The first time I was introduced to ACM Women was in January 2022. At the beginning, I thought it was really hard to understand exactly what ACM Women was. I am fully invested in the gender equality problem, and thought it was really cool, even though I didn’t understand the whole thing. When we were at the conference, I really understood that ACM WomENcourage is to celebrate women in Computer Science, and to encourage women to stay and continue their way in it. This is a really important theme and a really important celebration.

Under WomENcourage 2022 in Cyprus, I participated in the Hackathon. This was a new, but a very exciting event. We were supposed to make something, to connect art with science. The task was very wide, but this made it even better to work with, since you had the possibility to be creative. It was really intense to work with the project for 8 hours, since we wanted to get as far as possible. We had come far when the time was over, and it is really funny to see how long you can get on a project in just 8 hours.

Next year, WomENcourage 2023 will be in Trondheim, and I am really looking forward to celebrate Women in Computer Science in Trondheim, and to let more people know about it.