Guest Blog post by Donna Edwards, General Manager of Organisational Development, Ignia
On Thursday 29th September, Ignia proudly hosted our first ever Tech Girls are Superheroes showcase where we celebrated all 12 teams who submitted apps from WA this year.
Originally an event for WA had not been planned, but with such a fantastic response to the competition, Ignia wanted to make sure all the girls had a chance to demonstrate their apps and celebrate what a great job they had done.
With a sold out event and 50 attendees, 5 of the teams set up displays to demonstrate their applications.
The ‘We Serve‘ team from Penrhos College went above and beyond with their display going pink themed with posters, streamers and lollies. Their app promotes community service activities for students to participate in.
With another 3 teams from Penhros in attendance and setting up fantastic displays, the teachers and mentors in attendance were clearly very proud of what the girls had been able to achieve throughout the past year.
Also presenting their apps (from Penrhos College) were:
Team ‘Tutor4U’
Team ‘Pin Point My Pet‘ and
Team ‘eDiary‘
Tech girl Superhero Michelle Sandford (aka ICT Angel) and I formally introduced the evening and gave some background on the Tech Girls Are Superheroes program and the accolades that Jenine has been receiving for the brilliant job she is doing!
Quote from Michelle “This is the largest number of entrants from WA that we have ever seen, and we were extremely impressed by how much they had achieved on their first attempt, especially as many of them were only 13 years of age. There was a wide range of apps and I was delighted by everything they had created. There is clearly a large range of talent in WA and we were excited to see what was entered into this years competition“
Michelle announced the Finalists around the country with a special shout out to the WA State runners up teams ‘Pin Point My Pet’ and ‘We Serve’ both from Penrhos College. She presented the certificates to all the WA teams that participated.
With much excitement and surprise, Michelle then announced that the National Winners for 2016 were ‘Vocabulary Voyagers’ from St Mary’s Anglican Girls School!
Kira and Delaney, the creators of Vocabulary Voyagers were completely shocked and excited and had some very proud parents to watch! Teale was travelling in Europe so missed out in the celebration unfortunately. Kira and Delaney then did a presentation to the group which included their app pitch video.
After a few happy snaps, attendees then broke away to spend more time with all of the teams and the demos. There was plenty of chatting, demonstrating, questions and of course food and drinks!
It was a fabulous event and a huge congratulations to all the teams that entered the competition, and of course our very own Vocabulary Voyagers who will now be off to San Francisco with sponsorship from Technology One to showcase their app to the world!
A massive thank you to Ignia for hosting this event.