#ncwit

Booyah! Thank Goodness it’s Thursday because the Critical Role Foundation & eBay Live are bringing you a blast from the past!

You’re just days away from stepping into the freshest throwback ever—because the Critical Role Foundation is teaming up with eBay Live to bring you a nostalgic ’90s‑themed Daggerheart one‑shot, TGiT, streaming live AND auctioning off incredible items! You’ll have the chance to bid live on rare merch from Critical Role, cast memorabilia, signed art, and best of all, donate to a great cause! All of your wonderful donations and auction dollars will benefit NCWIT, The National Center for Women & Information Technology, CRF’s new charity partner.

So, dust off your MC Hammer pants, scrunchies, slap on a slap bracelet, and get set for a fantasy adventure filled with radical quests, radical gear, radically good vibes and some of your favorite 90’s celebrities!

The Briggety Break Down

What’s Happening?

Toss out the TV Guide because on Thursday, September 18, 2025 at 7pm PT CR & eBay Live are taking over your eBay Live, Beacon.tv, Twitch, & YouTube screens with some Critical Role cast members and special guest dabbling in fabled Daggerheart gameplay—but this time, with all the flair of the 1990s. Think grunge, y2k, neon, and most importantly CHARITY!

Funds will be raised via eBay Live auction and Tiltify to support NCWIT and the Critical Role Foundation’s emergency relief efforts.

What is eBay Live?

We are beyond excited to be partnering with the lovely folks at eBay Live, an interactive, real-time shopping platform where buyers and sellers connect through live-streamed events on eBay. While you enjoy the nostalgic gameplay LIVE, you’ll also be able to bid in real time on super cool items to support the cause and chat with one another at the same time! Also, SOME items will continue to be available to bid on through Sunday September 21st.

FYI: In order to enjoy the stream on eBay Live and bid on auction items, you will need to log in or register for an eBay account.

What is NCWIT?

NCWIT, The National Center for Women & Information Technology, equips its community of nearly 1,600 universities, companies, non-profits, and government organizations nationwide with resources for recruiting, retaining, and advancing women from K-12 and higher education through industry and entrepreneurial careers in computing and technology. If you want to know more about this wonderful organization, head over to ncwit.org.

How You Can Support:

WATCH THE STREAM!!: Tune in via eBay Live, Beacon.tv, Twitch, & YouTube at 7pm  PT on Thursday, September 18th.

Support via eBay Live auctions: You can bid live on Critical Role memorabilia—signed merch, art posters, and more—all of which will be auctioned exclusively on eBay live, with proceeds going to NCWIT. And, whoa baby, eBay Live will be contributing up to $10,000 in matching funds! As a note: SOME items will continue to be available to bid on through Sunday September 21st.

Donate via Tiltify: So you just want to support the cause? No problem! If you don’t happen to see the Critical Role item you’ve been pining for in this lot of auction items, WE GOTCHA DUDE! With charitable donations via Tiltify you’ll still be able to contribute to CRF’s newest partner, NCWIT. BUT WAIT…THERE’S MORE! The more money raised the more YOU can affect the game. Unlock messages from special guests, unleash a cataclysmic event, or provide aid to the players. So, if you wanna see it, GIVE GIVE GIVE—every cent counts! CHECK OUT ALL THE DONATION TIERS AND MILESTONES HERE.

The Cast

Run by our very own Mark Mercer, this Daggerheart one shot will include appearances by Ashley Johnson, Will Friedle, Danielle Fishel, Rider Strong, Jodie Sweetin, and Christine Lakin. They've also teased some special guests as well.

Madame President Ashley Johnson discusses charities Critters and the Critical Role Foundation continually support, as well as their newest nonprofit charity NCWIT.

CRF

my comp sci teacher: hey, you know november 5th is coming up soon

me: ...what?

teacher: yeah, the deadline for the ncwit aspirations in computing award application, you should fill it out i think you'd be a good candidate

02.07.18 -- 31/100 days of productivity

i had a pretty great day overall! only 1/2 a day of school and i found out that i won an award for women in tech! so i will be flying out to a luncheon (because nothing happens on this island) to receive my award soon and i am soooo excited (∩^o^)⊃━☆゜.*

Each month we spotlight a woman or girl in tech who inspires us. This month we are highlighting Maryam Alwan. She is a rising junior at Albemarle High School. Maryam is part of MESA (math, engineering, science academy) as well as the Computer Science Honor Society. She has been involved in STEM since middle school with programs such as Coder Dojo and mechatronics, a combined science and engineering class. Maryam placed in her division in the regional science fair for testing cell phone radiation, helped create a fake news detector in the SPARK! Hackathon, taught elementary schoolers about 3D-printing, and presented homemade electromagnets at the National Science Fair in D.C.

How do you work with technology today? Everyone works with technology on a daily basis, what with computers for schoolwork, phones for leisure, etc. Even if you've shunned electronics, you can't avoid technology. It's incorporated into everything we do, from turning on the lights to flushing the toilet. I currently work with it the most in my AP Computer Science Principles class, where we create apps with MIT's App Inventor and learn all about how the Internet and computers work, from the cloud and vast networks all the way down to the basic 1's and 0's and logic gates. Next year, in AP Computer Science A, I'm going to be working with JAVA.

What drives your interest in technology? Most people tend to accept things the way they are, but I’ve always had a keen interest in how things work-- especially regarding computing. My brain was teeming with questions like: How is it possible to transmit data so quickly and efficiently worldwide? What ties hardware and software together? I took AP Computer Science Principles to find the answers to these questions, and also to develop applications and code on my own. I’ve had influence from my parents, who have PhD's in engineering and science, but this desire for understanding has been around for as long as I can remember. This curiosity was especially piqued during middle school through my combined science and engineering "mechatronics" class, where we did things like 3D-printing and laser cutting, as well as worked with VR and even redesigned VR headsets. It was so cool that I could design something on a computer and have it result in a tangible, physical product. Another "epiphany" moment was when I researched and presented a testimony about renewable technologies to Dominion Power, which resulted in the installation of solar panels on the roofs of the schools throughout our county. It was then that I realized that it was possible for me, at my age, to create and make an impact with technologies.

What do you remember about your first coding experience? When I was younger, I went to Coder Dojo camps over the summer, where we primarily worked with block-based coding in Scratch. I remember not understanding why it was considered coding at the time, because it just seemed like we were making games and cartoons move. I had this idea in my head that coding was like what was portrayed in the movies, with hackers typing random symbols in (like on hackertyper.com). This year, though, I realized that it was simply an abstraction of more advanced programming languages, just like App Inventor is, and this background has actually helped me a lot.

Why is it important to get more girls and women interested in technology? Women and girls are vastly underrepresented in STEM and technology, as from a young age we are conditioned to believe that it's a field geared for males. But that shouldn't be the case-- it's not an issue of capability or intelligence, but rather one of social constructs. For example, I have a lot of friends who are very interested in computer science, but have dropped out of the class because every other person was a male, and having no friends or fellow girls there intimidated them. If we get more women and girls interested in technology as a career from a young age by showing them that it's possible and by providing female technological role models, then their participation will increase as a result. This, in turn, would promote more creative ideas and innovation, as it is proven that diversity fosters this.

Reminder! If you missed the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) “Overview for AspireIT Partner Organization” webinar, never fear! There’s another chance to find out everything you need to make sure your library can participate during the 2018 summer round:We’re holding a second webinar on Friday, February 16 at 1:00 (ET). Join us via Zoom for a Q&A session with more information on being an AspireIT Partner organization.

Each month we spotlight a woman or girl in tech who inspires us. This month we are highlighting Samhita Pendyal. She is an 11th grader at Deep Run High School in Richmond, Virginia. She has recently been recognized as a 2017 Virginia Winner for NCWIT Award for Aspirations in Computing. She has done poster sessions and flash talks related to her interests in cancer research and healthcare information security. She’s been a Bio-Med Tech-Girls participant and a Girls’ Geek Day mentor. She also enjoys ice skating, competing at the interstate level and she participates in the Piano Guild at the national level. 

How do you work with technology today? Currently, I code Java and Python and absolutely love it! I am also currently taking classes related to technology and have participated in Hackathons and other coding events and will continue to do so in the future. At my school, I am a part of the Robotics team, and am both on the Build and Chairman’s team where one of our main focuses is to get more girls into technology. I also volunteer at Girls’ Geek Days, in order to help girls in elementary school realize their love for technology by teaching them precursors to programming, such as Scratch.  

What drives your interest in technology? There are two main aspects of technology that drive my interest: the creativity behind problem solving and the fact that technology always changes. The creativity that is behind solving a problem in technology makes you use your brain and makes it so that no two ideas are exactly alike – each one has its own idiosyncrasies. It makes it so that there are an infinite number of possibilities, which I think shows the number of directions that technology can go. The next aspect of technology that drives my interest is that it’s always changing. This makes it so that the problem that you were trying to solve today might not be the problem you’re trying to solve next week and I think that’s pretty cool. It allows you to approach the problem from every angle and try new things.  

What do you remember about your first coding experience? I was one of two girls in my AP Computer Science Principles class in 9th grade and remember worrying that I would be the only person in my class who didn’t understand control flow or how to program. However, when we started learning Python and how to structure our code, I realized that I was worrying for nothing – once you got the flow, everything came naturally and that it was okay to make mistakes and have my compiler return errors. I realized that that was the only way I was going to learn. After my first lesson, I realized that coding wasn’t actually that bad and that it was like a sport – you had to keep practicing to get better at it.

Why is it important to get more girls and women interested in technology? It’s important to get more girls and women interested in technology because we not only need more women in technology, we also just need more people. Also, by having more women in technology, this will encourage more products tailored toward women, as women know how other women think. Having more women in technology will also allow more girls to join technology because they will see it as more than just a male-dominated field.

What most excites you about the future of technology? The most exciting thing about the future of technology is its placement and integration into the medical field. We’ve already made many advancements in medicine because of technology and I can’t wait to see where we’re going to go next, as that’s the career that I want to go into. Also, computerized medicine is becoming much more prominent, as before computers were just used for record keeping, but they are now being integrated into the actual process of diagnosing diseases.  This could led to us to helping even more people than we help now and making it much easier to get the diagnosis.