Words matter. These are the best Megan Smith Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
The things you’re passionate about and interested in, get experience with them by going deep on projects. I would encourage science projects, plays. Pursue science, math, writing, history – the 21st century demands a lot of cross-disciplinary thinking.
You’ve got Americans who are making Amazon and Facebook and Twitter. That level of American needs to run future government.
It’s much easier to fail when you’re in the pilot, early stage, when it’s less expensive and you’re exploring than when you’re way out the door and you’ve spent all this money. Industry is smart: structured to have skunkworks and pilot phases.
We need to have making, including computer science, shop, etc. as part of the core curriculum from the beginning, not just an optional afterschool thing. Things like First Robotics and all of those great programs need to become mainstream.
Talent is everywhere. Not all talent has access.
It’s so interesting that when somebody’s pregnant, we are obsessed with knowing the gender of the child so we can figure out what we need to buy that child, what the present would be. Like we’re pre-programming the kid before they were born.
Take everything you know. Take your whole selves. Be inclusive. Be open. Make history in the infinite ways that your heart takes you.
Code is just a list of instructions. There are countries that are teaching it as part of the core curriculum. Having some experience in those early years is very important.
For those of you who are underrepresented in technology, know that you’ve always been here. Look in photos and see yourself reflecting back.
I was lucky that science fair was mandatory at my high school in inner-city Buffalo.
Thinking through how to make sure we’re bringing incredible toys and experiences and that to our girls and our boys at some point is really important for this country for the world in general.
Innovation comes out of great human ingenuity and very personal passions.
Across our great nation, we’ve begun to see an acceleration of the power of data to deliver value.
I went to an inner-city school in Buffalo. We had no money. But our teachers believed in hands-on active learning – there was a mandatory science fair, which was critical.
Net neutrality is such an important principle for the Web and for the Internet. It’s how the Internet’s operated for all this time.
We culturally decided, as the personal computer came in, that it was for the boys.
It’s very difficult to solve a lot of problems from the top down.
There are several places in Vietnam where they’re teaching computer science from second grade in class, so they don’t have a gender divide because everybody is expected to program.
I’ve been working on the lost history of technical women.
The most important thing is, we really want to make sure the American people are able to get to any Web site they’d like to get to.
I actually think that working in the federal government, or state or local, is one of the most significant things that a technical person can do.
The mandate for the CTO’s office is to unleash the power of technology, data, and innovation on behalf of the nation. The CTO’s office is really trying to bring best practices, possibilities, pilots, and policy advising.
There are hundreds of historic and current examples of women and minorities doing groundbreaking work in technology, but so many of these stories are not well known, and in some cases, the stories have been all but lost.
Second graders learn to read: that’s a perfect time to make them code.
I have been able to attend many technology conferences around the world over the years, including some of the largest, like Google I/O, Microsoft’s Developer Conference, Apple’s WorldWide Developers Conference, Oracle World, Le Web, and more.
I think it’s so important in preschool and in kindergarten and elementary school that we’re not biasing ourselves.
In the early IBM team, that was a racially diverse team, a gender-diverse team.
Science class is traditionally taught as science history class – you learn all these facts that someone else discovered, which you need to know, but that’s not really an inspiring way to learn science.
We are the only country with an operating rover on Mars. We are an amazing country on tech.
There are 2 to 3 million women programmers in the world. We need to see them more.
What was so special about the Mac, we all know, was the graphical computer interface.
I have a good eye for great projects, talent, and entrepreneurs.
The more people we can attract to science and technology – men, women, everybody – the more economic opportunity we have as a nation.
To me, there’s so much talent in the world that’s locked out for the wrong reasons, whether it’s innovators at the highest end where we need to change the regulation systems, or whether it’s the talented people who work here who the bureaucracy’s holding back, or the amazing American people.
Founded in 1994 by the Anita Borg Institute and growing every year, the Grace Hopper Celebration is bringing needed network connections, skill building, and visibility for women computer scientists who work at all levels of our industry.