Women In Tech Demo Day in DC #WITDemoDay

This is a Capital One sponsored post.

This past weekend, I had the opportunity to attend the Women In Tech Demo Day in the Washington DC area. Women In Tech Demo Days are presented by Capital One in a partnership with AngelHack. In DC, they partnered with the nonprofit group, Black Girls Code.

What is Women In Tech Demo Day?

In DC, there were 12 teams of women and men who created apps, pitched them to a panel of judges in hopes of winning a $10,000 scholarship to General Assembly and $15,000 to the nonprofit, Black Girls Code.

They didn’t just create any app. The challenge was to:

Empower girls and women by building a technical solution (mobile app, web app, etc.) to support a local nonprofit (Black Girls Code in DC).

Some of the teams were formed on Saturday morning and some of the teams started a few weeks ago. Leticia Barr and I spent the afternoon mentoring the teams by listening to their pitches and helping them refine their message.

Photo taken by Leticia Barr of Tech Savvy Mama

Each team had 3 minutes to pitch their idea and demo the product. The judges had 2 minutes to ask questions. After all 12 teams finished pitching, the judges had to decide which team completed the challenge of empowering girls and women to go into the tech field.

Women In Tech Demo Day

Here is the post that I shared when we first got there. I was really excited about seeing what the teams had created.

During the lunch, 3 women who work in tech at Capital One spoke about their journey as women navigating the tech field. They all had very different stories and reasons for going into a tech field.

The Keynote Speaker was Kimberly Bryant, who is the founder of Black Girls Code. She started Black Girls Code after realizing that it wasn’t going to be any easier for her daughter to enter a tech career than it was for her.

“The next Steve Jobs will be a woman of color” @6gems Kimberly Bryant, founder of Black Girls Code. Keynote at #WITDemoDay #Sponsored by @capitalone

A photo posted by Michele McGraw (@scrappinmichele) on Aug 27, 2016 at 1:49pm PDT

The entire day was very inspiring. I left feeling very positive about the future of women in technology. With a group like the one below looking for ways to empower and encourage girls and young women to go into tech fields, I know that my girls will know that tech is an option.

Photo taken by Leticia Barr of Tech Savvy Mama

Women In Tech Demo Days in Dallas

If you live in the Dallas area, the Women In Tech Demo Days will be coming to the Dallas area on October 29, 2106. This is a great opportunity to get involved.

Tomorrow I will share the pitches and the winning pitch.

Disclosure: Capital One supported my attendance at Women In Tech Demo Day. All opinions are my own.