Tech Week YQG is a week-long showcase of tech that promotes, accelerates and celebrates the tech community we have in Windsor-Essex and Chatham-Kent. This year’s 3rd annual Tech Week YQG featured twelve events in only five days at the end of October 2019.
I was fortunate to be able to attend six of the events Tech Week offered: Canada Learning Code Code Mobile’s HTML & CSS for Beginners, Virtual Reality with A-Frame, Moving the Dial in Tech and Beyond with keynote speaker Claudette McGowan, Generative Art Making with Processing, Tech Mobility Day and the 2019 Tech Awards. I was able to take something out of each of these events that I found very interesting.
When I was younger, I attended a camp at the University of Windsor: Web Design. I remember finding it very fascinating; however, I saw no value to it and I did not retain the content of what I learned. Attending the Canada Learning Code Code Mobile’s HTML & CSS for Beginners during Tech Week retaught me how to write code in HTML and taught me a different computer language I didn’t know existed: CSS. HTML is used for creating the content of a website whereas CSS is used for designing a website. Code is a set of instructions that tells a computer what to do.
The second event I attended was learning how to create WebVR using a source called A-frame that is based in HTML. Having attended the HTML course the previous day helped me to have a better grasp on creating WebVR. Virtual Reality is a computer-generated 3D environment that simulates a real experience. When I took Grade 12 Calculus and Vectors last year, I understood the concept of planes; however, it was a bit difficult to visualize 3-D in the terms of planes and how each (x,y,z) affected an object/image. Coding in 3-D space helped me to understand how changing the values for (x,y,z) affected an object/image.
Moving the Dial in Tech and Beyond was an event that highlighted the importance of connecting, inspiring and empowering women in Tech and Innovation and to promote women entrepreneurs who are creating a more diverse ecosystem in the tech community. Move the Dial’s mission is to increase the participation and leadership of all women in tech because it is so low. For example, only 6% of tech companies have a female CEO. The keynote speaker, Claudette McGowan said the first step to promoting women is that we have to promote women. This really stood out to me because it is such an easy step that can work towards changing that 6% into a significantly higher number.
The last coding workshop I attended was the Canada Learning Code Code Mobile’s Generative Art Making with Processing event. Processing is another coding language. It was created for artists and designers. I found this coding language was very different from HTML and CSS. In my opinion, it is one of the easier languages to learn, it’s intuitive (since you type in the name and then you use parentheses and input values inside).
Tech Mobility Day was a day dedicated to exploring the world of mobility. Miovision is a company that pitched their idea of how to improve mobility and livability in cities. This company is working towards making streets safer for citizens, reducing congestion and overall improving mobility. I also was able to experience the Virtual Reality Cave that is the largest publicly available VR Cave in Canada.
Overall, I have learned many things from attending events during Tech Week. I have learned that there are many different coding languages that can be used to do various things such as create websites or tell robots what to do. Our tech community is working hard to “Move the Dial” and to promote women in Tech.
