Conference Land

I have had a bit of a break from blogging here because I have had the amazing ability to speak at and attend several conferences in Austin these past few weeks.

I was really privileged to be the keynote speaker at the 15th Annual Emerging Scholarship in Women's and Gender Studies Conference at UT. I spoke about the ways that the video game industry create barriers to entry for women and girls and the ways that the video game industry is perceived by academia as being a male centered domain affects the quality of research done on games. Although I do see some real progress being made with the introduction of games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero and the Nintendo Wii system.

I also attended the Gender and Technology Conference at UT and the Texas Girls Collaborative Project Kick-Off Conference. Both of these events were wonderful and they reminded me of why I do this work. The Texas Girls Collaborative Project was created to help universities, instructors, and organizations that work to help girls succeed in Science Technology Engineering and Math (STEM) come together and create even more successful programs. It has long been a problem that we are losing too many girls from these areas and I am happy to be a part of such a necessary project.