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Posted by Lisa McCracken, on behalf of the Technical Programs Editorial Board

Thanks to everyone who has been a loyal reader of this blog over the last two years.
September 15 marked the beginning of Hispanic Heritage Month and the start of our third year celebrating the Hispanic community through events and community outreach initiatives.
Michel Benard, University Relations Manager

Last week we held our fifth Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) Faculty Summit in London, bringing together 94 of EMEA’s foremost computer science academics from 65 universities representing 25 countries, together with more than 60 Googlers.

Posted by Kabita Komal and Amy Yeung, University Programs Team
This past July, our Engineering University Programs team had the pleasure of hosting a unique new organization known as Girls Who Code (GWC) in the Google New York office. GWC is an organization working to educate, inspire and equip 13- to 17-year old girls with the skills and resources to pursue opportunities in technology and engineering. With the help of educators, engineers, and entrepreneurs, GWC has developed a new model for computer science (CS) education, pairing learning and mentorship led by the industry’s top female developers and entrepreneurs. GWC’s day at Google was part of an eight-week program for 20 high-school-age girls intended to teach them how to build websites and mobile apps, and even start their own companies.

 On the day of the event, GWC attendees joined members of the Google Women in Engineering (GWE) group along with several people from the University Programs team for an office tour, lunch in one of the cafes, a Q&A session with GWE career panelists, networking, and a discussion of the many technical career opportunities at Google. The Q&A session in particular highlighted the possibilities enabled by a career in technology. It also revealed that many of the GWE participants pursued CS or engineering because they enjoyed the experience of building something and seeing tangible results--Amy Schendel (Software Engineer) was influenced by her experience building a robot in her high school robotics club; Adriana Alltari (Systems Administrator, Corporate Engineering) was inspired by building a computer. The career panel was then broken down into smaller networking sessions and the conversations really came alive. Some of the girls inquired about opportunities at Google while in High School and the Computer Science Summer Institute (CSSI) program was mentioned.

GWC’s visit to Google showed that there are driven young women who aspire to pursue CS and engineering, and how access to a network of mentors can strengthen their interest and align them for success. On August 30, 2012, Girls Who Code wrapped up their inaugural eight-week program with a graduation ceremony and demo presentation that showcased the valuable technical experience the girls gained in addition to their personal growth.

The evening commenced with speeches from key individuals such as Beth Comstock, Chief Marketing Officer of General Electric, and the founder of GWC, Reshma Saujani. These speeches had the common thread of excitement over the program exceeding all expectations and enthusiasm surrounding the program’s growth potential. One of the girls spoke directly to the success of the program explaining that prior to her GWC experience, she had no interest in or knowledge about CS. Upon graduating, she announced her desire to study CS in hopes of being part of the next generation of tech professionals.

Demo presentations were next on the evening’s schedule. GWC participants were broken into groups of 2-3 and created projects that not only exemplified their newly acquired working knowledge of CS, but expressed their creativity. For example, two girls created the app “Mood Food,” in which users can find restaurants around them that satisfy a specific food craving. They explained that though this app is similar to Yelp.com, they believe their version is more user-friendly.

Today, just 3.6% of Fortune 500 companies are led by women, and less than 10% of venture capital-backed companies have female founders. Several technology companies, Google included, have joined the movement to close this gender gap, and GWC is testament to what can be accomplished through education, support, and access to the right resources. We look forward to seeing what the future holds for the GWC graduates and hope to see the program expand to encourage and empower more women as they pursue careers in technology.

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Posted by Dan Russell, Uber Tech Lead, Search Quality & User Happiness

If you missed Power Searching with Google a few months ago or were unable to complete the course the first time around, now’s your chance to sign up again for our free online course that aims to empower our users with the tools
Posted by Peter Norvig, Director of Research

On July 26th, Google's 2012 Faculty Summit hosted computer science professors from around the world for a chance to talk and hear about some of the work done by Google and by our faculty partners. One of the sessions was a panel on Online Education.
Posted by Andrea Held, University Relations

In the last 10 years, we’ve seen a major transition from stand-alone applications that run on desktop computers to applications running in the cloud.
Posted by Craig Rubens, People Operations Communications team

Now that Google I/O has concluded, the parachutes have been repacked, hundreds of pounds of snacks have all been eaten and the Moscone Center has fewer robots prowling its hallways.
Google I/O, our annual developer conference, begins in just two days, and this year, we’re bringing you more than 130 technical sessions, 20 code labs and 155 Sandbox partners.
Posted by Jim Keller, Software Engineer

Next week, Google will join the Internet speed community at the Velocity 2012 conference in Santa Clara, California. This will be our fifth year at the O’Reilly Velocity Web Performance and Operations Conference.
Researchers at Google have enormous potential to impact the experience of Google users, which means it’s of enormous importance for us to conduct Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research.
Today, we're opening up registration for Google Code Jam 2012. This year thousands of students, professional programmers and freelance code wizards will pit their ingenuity against a new set of algorithmic challenges concocted by our tireless team of red-eyed, LED-illuminated problem writers.
Last month, in honor of Black History Month, Google offices in five cities in North America hosted events celebrating black professionals in our community. Across the country, we opened our doors to over 400 guests consisting of engineers, entrepreneurs, technologists, students and professors.
Cross-posted on the Google Research Blog

At the 25th Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS) conference in Granada, Spain last December, we engaged in dialogue with a diverse population of neuroscientists, cognitive scientists, statistical learning theorists, and machine learning researchers.
As we mentioned in a previous post, Googlers traveled to Boston this month to participate in the Usenix LISA '11 conference. Nearly 1,300 IT professionals attended this year’s conference to discuss cutting edge system administration techniques and technologies.
We participate in the sysadmin community in many ways. Many Googlers are involved in their local Unix users’ groups and give presentations at conferences. One conference we participate heavily in is the USENIX Large Installation System Administration (LISA) conference.
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