A Bit of Inspiration

“Tanya Lett - Queen and knight in shining armour of the data center, knowledge holder of all things server and network, cooler of machines, holder of the gavel, and technical project manager extraordinaire. You are a role model to all around you. I bestow upon you, this sharp shiny sward in acknowledgement of your fearlessness, hard work, leader-ing, and spreading of cheer.” - @thephoebes​

Tumblr is hosting the first annual @pixiehacks hackathon for high school girls today! 60 girls from NYC are spending the day at Tumblr building apps. Web apps, mobile apps, games, and more! And the whole event was conceived of, planned, and is run by high school girls.

We’re starting the day off with some workshops, led by Tumblr engineers, including an “Introductory” workshop on HTML/CSS and an “Intermediate” workshop on using the Tumblr API.

That may bear reiterating—especially for those of us closer to my age than theirs. 60 high school girls just willingly gave up a summer Saturday to write code all day with strangers. More than 30 of them decided to attend a workshop on how to use the Tumblr programming API’s in their own apps. The rest wanted to attend a workshop on HTML/CSS with professional engineers.