Kate Ho.com

I was very flattered to be asked to be included in Computing Weekly’s “Female Tech Entrepreneurs” feature: especially since there were so many great role models on there.

You can see my entry at:

http://www.computerweekly.com/galleries/240255-13/Kate-Ho-Great-female-technology-entrepreneurs.htm

What a difference a few months make! In the space of two months, I’ve managed to fit in submitting my PhD thesis, a week’s holiday in the Caledonia Pine Forest and starting up Interface3 – my latest venture!

If you’re on my facebook network, you’ll know that I finally submitted my thesis back at the start of November 2009. The title is “Understanding Requirements work in E-Science Projects” (the abstract is available here). I am still waiting to hear on the viva date, and if things go well, it should be soon. I have to say, that the last few weeks months were manic. Things were being pulled together and throughout this time my supervisors – Stuart Anderson and Mark Hartswood – and my officemates – Massimo Felici, Jenny Ure and Conrad Hughes – were all fantastic.

Much to the relief of my friends (some of who had started to send me messages checking to see if I was still alive), I printed and binded the thesis on 2nd Nov after an all night session of work.

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I just saw this and thought it was awesome. I wish I was launching a web app (but I’m not), so if you are, and you’re student, get on board.

Hi everyone,

Bela Hamid, Thomas Drapier, Jessica Williamson and I have been working very hard lately and now we’re ready to launch StartupCafe:

“We aim to be a fun and humorous place to go to for local startup news. We’ll be offering you an alternative commentary of tech, startup and social media news; along with announcements of jobs, events and competitions (all with a dose of silliness). As if that’s not enough, we’ll also be showcasing local startups and giving them a place to shout out their successes.”

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[NOTICE: If you are interested in attending something like this in Edinburgh - please leave a comment so we can gauge interest]

Thanks to Hermoine Way from TechFluff.tv, along with Jonathan Sarno and Alex Cone from CodeFab, I had the pleasure of getting a scholarship to the iPhone Bootcamp in London this weekend.

The iPhone Bootcamp is a well established training course over in the States, and this is their first venture across the pond. The goal is simple: to turn complete beginners to iPhone developers in 24 hours. What this really translates to is a crash course from 10-6pm everyday for 3 days. Of course, most people stay beyond 6pm …

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So unless you’ve been under a rock lately (or not in the Tech scene in Edinburgh), you will know that the Social Innovation Camp is rolling into town.

I’ve submitted two ideas of my own: GiveKnitting.org and Girls in Tech.

But I’ve been keeping an eye on the other entries, and wanted to talk about my favorite ones:

PoliticalPromise.org

Their tagline is: “No one keeps track of political promises. Someone should.” – what more is there to say? As the submission points out, we need accountability from politicians and more of it. You only have to look at the scandal from MP’s expenses to be able to see how much we need political accountability. This is even more important as we head towards the next general election. We need parties to fulfill their promises; not just provide us with hollow election rhetoric which is discarded as soon as they get into power.

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I was driving into Edinburgh today and spotted someone training for the Moonwalk – the lady was the first person this year I saw training for the walk, and prompted me to write this post.

For people that have never heard of the Moonwalk, here’s the basic idea: take 10,000 men and women, get them to walk a full marathon (26.2 miles) or the half marathon (13.1 miles) in a brightly decorated bra to raise money for breast cancer. If you haven’t seen it, I suggest you venture out in town on 20th June 2009 (unfortunately the official route cannot be publicised for Health and Safety reasons – but it starts at Inverleith Park – well worth heading along to see!).

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‘ve just got back from the Lovelace Colloquium held at Leeds University organised by Hannah Dee. The colloquium is an event for all computing students within the UK and included a series of talks from Gillain Arnold (IBM), Cornelia Boldyreff (Lincoln University), Julie Greensmith a.k.a. Dr Thrill (Nottingham), Eileen Brown (Microsoft) and Karen Groenink (Google). Finally it was topped off with a panel session which included Vicky Greaves from Google (who initially told Hannah about the Edinburgh University Hoppers, and asked me to help out). I also got a chance to (finally) meet both Christine Burns (Just Plain Sense) and Maggie Smith (womenintechnology.co.uk) – two people that I’ve heard a lot about but yet meet. It was also great to see Allan Pollard – the current President of the BCS to be present for the entire day.

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