Once upon a bright Saturday morning, there was a little girl who was the first to wake up. Whilst her parents and her sister were still fast asleep, the little girl wandered round the house looking for something to do - for she was very, very bored.
In the corner of her bedroom, nestled in a pile of Barbies and ballet clothes, was her old computer. The little girl decided to satisfy a long standing curiosity and open it up to see what was inside. Whilst everyone was still sleeping peacefully, she set to work with a screwdriver and begun to dismantle it.
She unscrewed the case, pulling back the side to reveal some rather dusty looking green and gold boards surrounded by a tangled mess of wires and cables. There were wide flat grey ones, some of them came as an attached pair. There were also some smaller ones, connecting the fan, which she recognized from school. After a quick play with a battery and the fan, getting it to start again after detaching it (which made her feel very clever indeed), she set about yanking out the boards for a closer look.
There were so many tiny little parts - and she thought some of them looked so cute. They were all different colours and all connected by gold lines running over it. The icing on the cake was when she was able to identify some of them as chips from the adverts and visualisations of computer chips she that had seen on the TV when the grown ups were talking about the millennium bug.
Two decades later and the little girl is now a professional software engineer (if you had not already guessed, the little girl was little me). I took a very winding path with many detours to get here, mostly because I was always put off by the image of the industry, but when it finally came down to it, I thought back to dismantling that old machine and how excited I was by it. After I was done (and had received a stern talk from my parents for the mess I had made) - I went on to play with software (I was making databases for the fictional school in the novel I was writing) and I was easily one of the best in my IT classes.
I did not take it further at GCSE, because I thought that powerpoint and excel for two more years sounded dull (at my school I am sad to say it was just that). I didn’t even consider it at A -level because I didn’t know that it was an option. When I was not enjoying my first course (languages) at uni, it was a friend that told me about Computer Science and Programming. Memories of my tinkering came back and I made the switch.
At #define South, I will be bringing along lots of old computers (kindly donated by the wonderful team at Optimum Packaging) for all who attend to take apart. That’s right - they are old and unused so it doesn’t matter how broken they get, I want to pass on this experience to the younger generation and allow them to learn, just as I did, what the guts of technology look like.
Tickets to #define South are free, just visit definesouth.eventbrite.co.uk to book yours today. If you have any questions about the workshop, my twitter is @EmmaAshley - see you next Saturday :D xxx