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We have IT too: Women show their geeky side in Bangalore

100 working women and students participate in women-only hackathon in the city.

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What happens when women coders and developers mingle with tech-savvy college girls?
There is exchange of ideas, brainstorming, designing and, as expected, coding; all eventually leading to the development of applications and software for women’s safety, healthcare and microfinance.

That’s exactly what happened when professionals from IBM, Cisco, Yahoo, Oracle, eBay, VMware and Google shared space with engineering students, pooling in all their experience and expertise in developing applications.

In its second-year now, the women-only hackathon saw 100 women participants, including 30 students.

“Last year, there were about 40-50 women. The idea is to get more women interested in coding and development of software,” said Lakshmi Rajesh, programme director, Anita Borg Institute, that organises the hackathon.

For Padmini, a third-year computer science student from Amrita School of Engineering, it is not just her first ever hackathon, but also her first real-time attempt at trying to develop a software.

“I am with the team that is working on developing solutions for the microfinance sector,” said Padmini, adding that the experience “will prove highly beneficial when I start my career.”

For engineer Nikita John, who works with a tech firm, participating in a hackathon means “knowledge sharing with industrious women”. John said by networking with other techies and students, “they get to know about technologies that others are working on, alongside having new learning experiences.”

According to IT architect Savita Thakur, the difference while working with a company and a hackathon is that one has access to all tools and resources in a company. “But here we need to think differently and come up with innovative solutions,” said Savita.

Shaila Srinivas, manager, development, at IT firm Allscripts, said since women are developing the application from scratch, the exposure it provides is tremendous.

Solutions for women’s safety
The hackathon witnessed women participating in projects titled Mifosx (for microfinance), Bachchao (an app focusing on women’s safety), and Clinical Reminders (a reminder system for health checkups and medicines).

As part of the Clinical Reminders project, women were working on developing a mobile and web-based application which when installed and fed with the health condition of users, will keep giving alerts on medications, immunizations and lab tests to be undertaken.

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