Girls become software developers at App Camp

The software industry knows it has a huge problem: There are not enough women.

Recently, Google voluntarily released its employee makeup and admitted, “We’re not where we want to be when it comes to diversity.” Overall, the company is 70 percent men and 30 percent women.

Seattle-based Omnigroup iOS developer Liz Marley knows the gender struggle all too well.

“The more women I know in tech, the easier it is for us to take it in shifts, ‘You can go fight the war today and I’ll help out tomorrow.’ We’ll support each other,” said Marley.

Google pledged $50 million to develop and distribute coding software to young girls. On a smaller but just as important level Marley is doing her own part to encourage girls to get into the tech industry.

“I don’t remember not being involved in tech. I would credit my dad, he was a computer science teacher when I was little and I don’t remember not having a computer in the house. I don’t remember my dad ever saying, ‘You can’t do that,’ or ‘That’s not for you,’ or ‘Go do some girl thing,'” said Marley.

Marley is hosting an App Camp for Girls in Seattle in August. The camp started in Portland last year as the brain child of Jean MacDonald, who is another female mover-and-shaker in the tech world.

Marley helped at the Portland camp and decided Seattle needed one too.

“These girls are so awesome and I want the software industry to have these girls be a part of it,” Marley said.

App Camp does what it sounds like: Marley and a group of female volunteers teach the middle school-aged girls how to develop a smart-phone app from the ground up.

“I think that’s part of what makes app camp work. We give these girls access to MacBook Pros running X-Code – the exact same tools that my coworkers and I use to build real software that’s shipping on the app store. These girls know that they are doing the real thing. This is not let’s pretend to be software developers for a week. It’s let’s use the real tools,” Marley said.

The week-long camp is a fast-paced introduction into the tech world for the girls, who Marley said otherwise might think it’s an industry for nerds.

“We put them in teams so that they can see software is about collaboration and communication and there’s so much more to it than staring at cryptic lines of code all day,” she said.

Then the real work gets underway.

“How to actually write some code, put some artwork into the app as backgrounds and buttons, do a little bit of testing to make sure the app is working properly, put together a presentation and then present to venture capitalists at the end of the week explaining to them how they’re going to make money off these apps,” Marley said.

Marley said one of the best parts of App Camp is watching the girls get excited about computer science. She said there’s a light bulb moment when they realize it’s not a boy’s club anymore.

Often, it’s not just the girls who are inspired.

“Any women out there that think it’s too late? You can learn this, too. We’ve had women come help out with app camp who didn’t know much about programing. After that week, they realized they could do this too, and I know one women who, one year later, is a successful iOS developer. It’s never too late for women to get involved in software development,” Marley said.

App Camp for Girls runs from Aug. 4-8. You can sign up your daughter at their website.