California: San Francisco Bay Area

Our 2020 award event originally scheduled for Saturday March 21st was cancelled due to the coronavirus.

Gift bags trophies and certificates were mailed out in early September.

In lieu of a virtual award ceremony our lead sponsor Apple hosted a 6 week workshop for all of the awardees (see the image above and details below).

We are currently planning for a virtual award ceremony this award season. It will likely take place in April or May, 2021.

We hope to return to in person events in 2022 (see the other image above).

Apple AiC Summer 2020 Workshop

This summer, Apple invited NCWIT Aspirations in Computing Bay Area & Austin high school award winners, honorable mentions, and rising stars to a 6 week (virtual) technical workshop.

Each week had one to two 90 minute sessions with lessons on technical topics or Women@Apple panels. Outside of those sessions, students worked together on a group project and had access to a Slack channel where they could talk to each other and the instructors.

The lessons focused on technical skills that are valuable for future internships or college classes. The group project and Slack channel helped students make connections with other high school women, genderqueer, and nonbinary students interested in computer science and engineering, and the panels gave insight into what it’s like to work in the tech industry. The workshop ended with a farewell celebration where students met with Apple senior leadership, celebrated their accomplishments, and made plans to keep in touch!

“It was really fun to work in groups and I feel like I made lifelong connections.”

Workshop topics

Women@Apple panels
Git and GitHub
Code reviews
Resume writing
Technical interview practice
Technical presentations
Terminal and Command Line
Group projects
Unit tests
Programming project architecture

“I appreciated that we were able to decide how much work we wanted to put in; I ended up getting pretty invested in the project, but it was neat that there was no pressure.”