STEAM | Geek Life: Augmenting Reality

Did you know International Women’s Day is celebrated on March 8th? Booking.com is all over International Women’s Day this year. In fact, they’ve chosen to celebrate barrier-breaking women in the technology industry throughout the month of March, instead of merely the one day. Details on how you can WIN a $500 Booking.com credit by learning to code in HTML & CSS are found below!

#BookingFEMpowers Booking.com kicked off their celebration on the evening of March 1st with a panel on Women in Tech.

The #BookingFEMpowers panel was a night filled with experiencing the life of four fantastic role-models that are making waves in the tech industry.

Where did they begin? What are they doing now? And how do they see the future shaped by women in the tech industry?

Panelist Huda Idrees, CEO & Founder of Dot Health was emphatic that girls are already interested in science. We just need to get out of their way.

She’s absolutely onto something with that thought.

Check out Booking.com’s article on research revealing gender bias in the tech industry is not just limited to IT and engineering. “Driving change and achieving gender diversity starts at the top and we must encourage more positive role models for women across all functions in the tech industry. We know the majority of women see compelling benefits to working in technology, and we must collaborate as a sector to encourage non-tech professional women to enter the tech industry, and better support them to achieve their fullest potential,” said Gillian Tans, CEO of Booking.com. What Idrees and Booking.com both suggest is that the world already has a fair share of women wanting to work in the STEM / STEAM / STREAM fields, but we now need to carve inroads to make those desired placements equally accessible to all genders. Have you ever been asked the question, "If you could have dinner with any one person, who would it be and why?" If your answer is any of these fab women that made up the #BookingFEMpowers panelists, you would be off to a stellar start on your research to finding a career in tech that fits your needs.

Or even just to learn how to be fierce full-stop.

In no particular order: Huda Idrees Unapologetic, no-holds, will tell you how it is, brilliant coder that is the vision behind Dot Health (A secure way to access your personal Canadian health data.) You are likely familiar with her earlier Startup career that includes building Wattpad, and Wealthsimple. She has a true wealth of knowledge for building successful startups and will leave you inspired to tackle the world head-on.

Dr. Helen Papagiannis Author of Augmented Human, How Technology is Shaping the New Reality. For over twelve years she has studied augmented reality, beginning in 2005 at York University. Augmenting our reality to the very fine point of seamless digital integration is equal parts exciting, astounding, breathtaking and frightening. Dr. Papagiannis has watched it grow from infancy to its pre-teen years and has a book that will explain it all, and how it will shape our future.

If you’re familiar with my recent writings, you may already know that AR is something that highly intrigues me.

I’m eager to read Augmented Human and will likely have a review of the book for you in the next month or so, stay tuned!

[easyazon_image align="center" cart="n" cloak="y" height="500" identifier="1491928328" locale="CA" localize="y" nw="y" nf="y" src="http://www.geeklife.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/51LEfmc9MlL.jpg" tag="geewitsty-20" width="333"] Ioana Popa-Gaskins Strategy Manager at Booking.com, in charge of optimizing performance for the top New York City properties. A forward-thinking advocate of technological advancement, especially in conjunction with long-term environmental sustainability. She knows how to brand, and brand hard. We should all be thanking her for using that epic skill to publicly bolster the fact that we need more women in the tech industry.

Watch her interview with WhatSheSaid Talk on Ways to Get More #WomenInSTEM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soTg8ilmAT8

Download the March 4th What She Said podcast on iTunes for the full interview. Melissa Sariffodeen CEO and Co-founder of Canada Learning Code, an organization that is providing women and youth the critical skills, confidence and opportunities they need to become passionate builders of technology.

She began learning code from a young age and is all kinds of fierce in her #lifegoal to give everyone a chance to learn this skill too.

I laughed out loud when she mentioned playing Neopets as a teen during the #BookingFEMpower panel, I thought I was the only one to remember that addictive game.

Sariffodeen is effectively guiding everyone to discover their adventure in coding.

While students of the Ladies Learning Code program won’t leave as absolute experts from one class of HTML, CSS, PHP and more, they will leave with the stepping stones to become those experts.

Sometimes all you need is a bit of guidance on where to start and spending your nights with Ladies Learning Code is that first stone to step on. Learn How to Code in HTML/CSS – AND WIN with Booking.com Booking.com has teamed up with Ladies Learning Code for two nights of coding fun, with an epic grand prize available to those who participate.

In a mere two evenings (6 hours total), learn to build a website like this one!

Find out how easy it is to make a site that will stand out with HTML & CSS code alone.

The #BookingFEMpowers: A Ladies Learning Code Beginner Workshop is designed to be hands-on experience for beginners.

During the session, attendees will learn the following:

Basic techniques and concepts that are translatable to other programming languages The building blocks of how HTML and CSS work together to create richer online experiences How to create a rich website with images, video, and a CSS-defined layout How to create a beautiful multi-page website What resources are available if attendees would like to continue learning at home

This workshop costs $65 (fees/taxes incl.) and will be run over the course of two evenings:

Wednesday, March 21st from 6 p.m. – 9 p.m.

Wednesday, March 28th from 6 p.m. – 9 p.m. Here’s a tip on how to build websites with HTML & CSS. HTML – HyperText Markup Language is what is used to build ALL the websites. It doesn’t matter if your site is built on secondary languages like PHP or Javascript (like WordPress sites are,) the foundation of every websites is based on HTML.

If you were to copy this code into Notepad, and save it as “hello.html” (make sure notepad saves it as .html and not as .html.txt.)

Hello World! Hey World, I’m here to tackle-hug you! Get ready!

You’ve made your very first HTML document.

In other words, you’ve made your very first webpage. Way to go YOU!

- this tells your browser that this document is a webpage. You’ll always introduce your webpage files with this tag.

- this is the brain of your webpage. It will tell your browser what supporting documents your webpage will need to succeed.

- If your browser has multiple tabs open, this is the bit of text you’ll see in the tab itself.

- The body of your webpage is where all the information you want to show the world is stored. Anything you see in your webpage browser is introduced to your browser within the BODY tag.

- this tag stands for paragraph and is thus used to share text.

To see this new creation in your browser, open your preferred internet browser (Chrome, Firefox, IE, etc.) and then press CTRL+O / Cmd+O on your keyboard to open a file. Search your computer for wherever you saved your HTML file, and then click on open when you find it.

Tada! There’s your webpage. #HighFive

Go an extra step by creating a new

tag underneath the tackle-hug line and create any sentence you want to see underneath. GO NUTS.

CSS – Cascade Styling Sheets is what is used to style HTML to make it look pretty. You would use CSS to make the text “Hey World, I’m here to tackle-hug you! Get ready!” look bold, or underlined, coloured green, or be a large enough font to take over the entire screen.

That tip above? Took you maybe 15 minutes to put together at most.

Imagine what you could learn with Ladies Learning Code and Booking.com in 6 hours! With Booking.com, It’s a WIN-WIN Situation Booking.com is giving away a $500 Booking.com travel credit, along with a professional mentoring session with a female tech leader at Booking.com to one lucky attendee of these classes.

The travel credit can be used at over 1.5 million properties available on Booking.com in over 229 countries and territories worldwide—including unique accommodations like boat houses, yurts, igloos and tree houses.

It’s a #LifeGoal of mine to sleep in a tree house someday!

Here’s what you need to do to win:

Register for the Ladies Learning Code classes. Using the hashtag #BookingFEMpowers on Twitter or Instagram, share an image of the woman in your life that influences you the most, and be sure to tell @Bookingcom

If you need an example, here’s how my mom influenced my world of loving code & technology.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BfyTFGTnjKW How this Geek with Style is Getting Involved It has been a #LifeGoal for longer than I care to admit to help out as a class mentor for a Ladies Learning Code event.

Will I see YOU on March 21st and 28th??

But also, how does $40 off your next Booking.com reservation sound?

Use this Booking.com $40 coupon code link to get started on your next travel adventure!

Once you’ve completed your stay that was reserved through booking.com, your credit card will be refunded with a $40 credit.

As one of the largest digital travel companies, Booking.com has a mission to empower people to experience the world. With the widest variety and more unique places to stay than any other travel company, travellers can find their perfect accommodation whenever and wherever they want on Booking.com.

Disclaimer: This post was sponsored by Booking.com in a partnership with Geek with Style to provide you the most up to date facts, helping you make better-informed decisions. All opinions in this article are my own.

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Technology. Collectibles. Travel.

Technology. Collectibles. Travel.