No, it’s JetPack man. He will fly over Webit Festival 5000+ attendees! And not not by plane! He will just fly! Watch out because David Mayman, the creator of “The World’s First True Jetpack” and CEO of JetPack Aviation is coming to Webit.Festival’2017! And who knows - maybe will do a storm by landing on scene by his untraditional vehicle. Have you ever wanted to fly? Maybe as a child you’ve wanted to fly with a pair of wings, to see all the beauty that birds see from above and to feel the ultimate freedom of the sky? Then real adults life comes and you learn you can only fly by plane, or eventually parachute or something else of the kind. But David Mayman, one of our great speakers, didn’t settle and worked hard to make flying possible nowadays. “I've always dreamt of creating and flying a jetpack - to me this is the ultimate expression of flight - no wings, minimal airframe and very compact.”, he says. If you have recently heard of that vertically flying man in New York, London, and Monaco but you still don’t believe it, you can trust us, he’s real. “It really is like having a motorcycle or a bicycle in the air.” by his own words. Not only he proves flying is possible, but what’s more, he thinks he can teach you, even if you have never piloted a plane before. David is a professional pilot with a curious career path combining aviation, internet technologies and commerce but he have always found real passion in aircraft. He devoted 25 years of discovering the ultimate freedom feeling by creating “The World’s First True Jetpack” - light enough to be carried by a man and small enough to fit in a car. David have completed more than 400 test and a couple of real flights, armed only with his Jetpack on back. The most recent model ot JetPack, JB-9, could reach 10,000 feet (3,050 metres) and a highest speed of 102 km/h with duration of the flight for about 10 minutes, says JetPack Aviation. The company wants to raise £300,000 in order to invest in further research and development for its JB-10 JetPack and VTOL aircraft. And if today JetPack flying symbolises distant future, Mr Mayman says will work hard to create a commercial use JetPack so that one day JetPack could be a usual way of hanging around used by next generations. About Webit.Festival 2017: Webit.Festival is the European edition of the Webit Series of events, which will take place in Sofia, Bulgaria, from the 25th to the 27th of April, 2017. The festival consists of several parallel conferences and events, workshops, roundtables and exhibitions. The event is under the patronage of the Mayor of Sofia Mrs Yordanka Fandakova and the European Commission. The agenda includes Tech Summit, Marketing and Innovation Summit, Developers Summit and Smart Cities Summit. Separate area of the festival will be dedicated to startups from Bulgaria and other countries in the world. The agenda for the founders includes conference, meetings with investors, academy for startups and special stage for them to pitch their companies in front of a jury of investors, journalists and leaders of Fortune 500 companies. Webit.Festival is the most influential event on the tech and digital industry in the region. To buy your tickets for Webit.Festival 2017, click here. To apply for speaking, click here. To apply for partnership, click here. To apply for exhibiting, click here. To apply for our Founders Games, click here. To see the video gallery from Webit.Festival 2016, click here. To learn more about the events that are part of the festival, click here. To see pictures from our previous events, click here. For all this information and even more, visit our website www.webit.bg. Contact: Aniela Russeva

aniela@webitcongress.com

Do you like playing games and winning? Founders games is about business though! Founders games is a unique chance for a startup to win 200 000 euro seed investment.  Webit Foundation receives thousands of applications for each Founders Games contest around the world at all Webit events in Europe, Asia, MIddle East… Startups apply and if approved at first and second stage, they receive the opportunity to exhibit for free at a Startup village and pitch on one of the stages at Webit Festival. Then after two days of live pitches the jury selects 5 among all pitching startups, that are around 200 normally. And these 5 go on the big stage and participate in the ceremony of Founders Games, where in front of our Final jury - a group of successful entrepreneurs, credible investors and inspiring business angels, they prove why their business is the one that should receive 200 000 euro seed investment. The stirring competition at Webit Festival 2016 was won by AdGuard, a software for any device, blocking annoying ads, online tracking and protecting computer from malware. Check out the other finalists here. At Webit Foundation we see great ideas appear every day. But we also know how hard it is to make someone believe and invest in your idea. We also believe that it’s not only about investment but it’s more about real business opportunities that enterprises may provide because they need you. They need to innovate through collaboration with startups and this is what we do for them. We are not a startup event - they are so many and we are not - we have never been such. As international media call us, Webit is - the most friendly for startups ENTERPRISE event! And we know it works - we have been called “crazy“ 7 years ago when we started to mix “white shirts” and T-shirt guys and girls that drink beer during the events. And yes, we were enough crazy to prove the case and now already it's a world well known mechanism for not only events but also for exchange of innovations. Your company is eligible if you’re active in the following disciplines: Advertising, Biotech, Digital Commerce, Digital Entertainment, eLearning, Fintech, Games, Hardware, Health, Infrastructure, Money, Non-Profit, Social & dating, Travel, Xaas, Energy Efficiency, Space, Mobility, IoE. If not among these maybe you tell us rising new category? Please share! The 5 major milestones defining the finalists and the winner are: Team capacity, Project Scalability, Business approach, Marketing approach, Uniqueness of the idea. If you get selected just book your stay in Sofia - digital capital of the new markets and it will be three days of fun in the city called among top 10 cities to live in Europe! Every year the Webit Global series of events gathers one of the largest global communities of people inspired by technology and driving digital transformation in business and in the society. Uniting speakers, attendees, exhibitors and participants, we create a platform for dialogue between policy makers, enterprise and entrepreneurs. Apply here and show us you’re the best! We bet you can! *** About Webit.Festival 2017: Webit.Festival is the European edition of the Webit Series of events, which will take place in Sofia, Bulgaria, 25-27 April, 2017. The festival consists of several parallel conferences and events, workshops, roundtables and exhibitions, startup village with selected from around the world startups.    The event is under the patronage of the Mayor of Sofia Mrs Yordanka Fandakova and supported by the European Commission. The agenda includes Tech Summit, Marketing and Innovation Summit, Developers Summit, Smart Cities Summit, New Economy Leader's Summit, Startup Village, Pitch stage and number of workshops and round table discussions, Night Urban Summit with 60 + meetups on different topics that will gather people to network by interest and explore Night Sofia! The agenda for the founders includes conferences, meetings with investors, academy for startups and special stage for them to pitch their companies in front of a jury of investors, journalists and leaders of Fortune 500 companies. Webit.Festival is the most influential event on the tech and digital industry in the region. For all this information and even more, visit our website www.webit.bg .

Digital health is among the topics at Webit Festival - it starts with the champion of new technology in medicine Dr Shafi Ahmed who will show how virtual and augmented reality can revolutionize surgical education and training.

One of the first confirmed speakers for Webit.Festival 2017 in Sofia is Dr Shafi Ahmed - pioneer in the use of virtual reality during surgeries. In fact, he is the first person in the world to live-stream an operation using Google Glass. If you want to hear more from him about this, you will see him on stage during Webit.Festival 2017 from 25-27 April in Sofia. Next year’s edition of the festival promises to bring more than 5000 attendees along with the top executives from world’s most renowned companies, investors, hottest startups and policy makers. Going back to Dr Ahmed, he is world known as one of the best general and colorectal surgeons, operating at The Royal London Hospital. In 2007, he was appointed as a Consultant General, Colorectal and Laparoscopic Surgeon at Barts and the London NHS trust. But the thing he is most popular for is the world’s first live-stream of an operation using Google Glass, which was watched live by 13000 students around the world. Dr Ahmed is also the founder of Medical Realities - an innovative group offering medical training products, specializing in virtual reality, augmented reality and serious games. By using consumer-level virtual reality devices such as the Oculus Rift, Medical Realities can reduce the cost of training, reach a wider audience and provide a completely safe learning environment for medical students. This is a whole new way of education for students, who can take the role of a surgeon and see through his eyes how is the surgery performed. This approach could make healthcare more equitable, making the training of surgeons worldwide a lot better. All you need is a virtual reality headset and you don’t have to travel abroad to train yourself, which is in fact a huge expense. “Surgery has always been learned through apprenticeship. Students must spend time in an operating theatre to get quality training from a mentor. While hospitals have got bigger and surgery has improved, the theatre space around the patient is still limited and it is difficult to provide everyone with a good view. VR lets every student learn from the best seat at the operating table”, says the doctor in one of his interviews. The next step is the development of devices which imitate the physical contact between the user and computer. There are companies developing various gloves or bodysuits which can replicate touch and feel. Dr Ahmed thinks that this devices could be ready for use in 3 to 5 years and they will be the next addition in this new way of education for surgeons. Of course, to know more about his thoughts on the subject, we will have to wait till April and his speech during Webit.Festival. About Webit.Festival 2017: Webit.Festival is the European edition of the Webit Series of events, which will take place in Sofia, Bulgaria, from the 25th to the 27th of April, 2017. The festival consists of several parallel conferences and events, workshops, roundtables and exhibitions. The event is under the patronage of the Mayor of Sofia Mrs Yordanka Fandakova and the European Commission. The agenda includes Tech Summit, Marketing and Innovation Summit, Developers Summit and Smart Cities Summit. Separate area of the festival will be dedicated to startups from Bulgaria and other countries in the world. The agenda for the founders includes conference, meetings with investors, academy for startups and special stage for them to pitch their companies in front of a jury of investors, journalists and leaders of Fortune 500 companies. Webit.Festival is the most influential event on the tech and digital industry in the region. To buy your tickets for Webit.Festival 2017, click here. To apply for speaking, click here. To apply for partnership, click here. To apply for exhibiting, click here. To apply for our Founders Games, click here. To see the video gallery from Webit.Festival 2016, click here. To learn more about the events that are part of the festival, click here. To see pictures from our previous events, click here. For all this information and even more, visit our website www.webit.bg. Contact: Aniela Russeva

aniela@webitcongress.com

Webit.INDIA took place in New Delhi on 29 September and was hosted by the Government of India. The Summit attracted some of the top market players and the drivers of the digital innovation, tech pioneers and investors.

Webit.APAC was opened by Gen V K Singh, Hon'ble Minister of External Affairs in the Government of India.

Along with the global enterprise leaders, founders and , India was represented by its top tier digital innovators and tech shapers. The Marketing Innovation stage of Webit hosted global and regional leaders including Ward Van Duffel, LEGO; Rohit Tripathi, SAP Mobile Services; Chris Steedman, M&C Saatchi Mobile; Norihisa Wada, EdulLab and Kyoto University; Vikas Gulati, Opera Mediaworks;H.E. Gen. V. K Singh, Minister of State for External Affairs; H.E. Manoj Sinha, Minister of State for Telecom and Railways; Shri. Mahendra Nath Pandey, Minister of State for Human Resource Development;

Kawaljit Singh Bedi, NDTV Group Convergence; Ms. Meenakshi Lekhi, Member of Parliament and National Spokesperson; Dr. Lovi Raj Gupta, Lovely Professional University; Col. Devinder Sehrawat, Member of Legislative Assembly, Delhi Government; Pankaj Khushani, Google; Graham McDonnell, The New York Times; Nikhil Rastogi, Citibank; Avinash Jhangiani, Omnicom Media Group India; Virginia Sharma, LinkedIn India; Karthik Nagarajan, GroupM; Neeraj Bhalla, Whirlpool of India; Aashish Chopra, ixigo.com; Meagen Eisenberg, MongoDB; Scot Keith, 123west; Sruthijith KK, Huffington Post India; Rajiv Verma, AppLift India; Ashok Madaravally, NASSCOM 10,000 Startups.

Artificial Intelligence empowering Brand/consumer relationship, Virtual Reality, the future of media, investing in startups and growing the startup ecosystem in the region were among the topics discussed at Webit.INDIA 2016 in New Delhi.

A special edition of Founders Games awarded 100 000 USD.

For more info and upcoming Webit events – please visit GlobalWebitSeries.com

Who are the drivers of the digital innovation in Southeast Asia? Webit.APAC took place in Singapore on 20 September.

The event was hosted by the Government of Singapore and attracted some of the top market players and the drivers of the digital innovation, tech pioneers and investors.

Webit.APAC was part of SWITCH (5000 + attendees), opened by the Deputy Prime Minister and Co-ordinating Minister for National Security of Singapore Teo Chee Hean.

Southeast Asia was represented by some of its top founders, largest enterprises and investors. The Marketing Innovation stage of Webit hosted global and regional leaders including Jason Jercinovic, Havas Worldwide; Maya Hari, Twitter; Ward Van Duffel, LEGO; Rohit Tripathi, SAP Mobile Services; Caspar Schlickum, Wunderman APAC; Joe Nguyent, Asia Pacific comScore, Inc.; Justin Lee, HubSpot in SEA; Roger Graham, Hootsuite; Chris Steedman, M&C Saatchi Mobile; Christer Eriksson and Mark Tipper, R/GA; Norihisa Wada, EdulLab and Kyoto University; Rahul Asthana, Kimberly-Clark; Arshan Saha, Xaxis; Guillaume Sachet, MediaCorp; James Rothwell, Netflix; Mark Val, PlayFab; Nicolas Chaussin, Aviva Asia; Justin Peyton, DigitasLBi; Jon Hook, Phunware; Ganesh Kashyap, Mondelez International; Celina Chew, Chairman of Bayer (China); David Nicol, Retail & Mobile Payments, IBM; Zoe Lawrencel, TNS; Vikas Gulati, Opera Mediaworks; Arnaud Bonzom, 500 Startups and many more.

Artificial Intelligence empowering Brand/consumer relationship, Virtual Reality, the future of media, investing in startups and growing the startup ecosystem in the region were among the topics discussed at Webit.APAC 2016 in Singapore.

For more info and upcoming Webit events – please visit GlobalWebitSeries.com

WEBIT.INDIA is under the patronage of the Government of India, The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and The Ministry of External Affairs, and is coming to New Delhi on the 29th of September. Webit.India is a special invitations only event on digital transformation, digital marketing, media and convergence, produced by Webit.Foundation. The challenges of the new complex digital world are driving the business and societal transformation in fast pace. Artificial Intelligence empowered brand-consumer relationships, the future of media empowered by virtual reality, brand and company transformation, collaboration with the startup world and investment in new media startups, along with digital marketing and advertising are among the topics which shall be challenged by global experts and thought leaders during the one day Webit.India Summit at the JW Marriott Hotel. Webit.INDIA will be broadcasted live on NDTV Prime, official partner of the event. The event in New Delhi (Webit.India) brings together a selected group of the major digital and tech experts from Singapore, SouthEast Asia and rest of the world. Special guest of honour is H.E. Gen. V. K Singh, Minister of State for External Affairs. A number of policy makers will deliver welcome addresses on stage. Here are some of them: - H.E. Dr. Ravi Shankar Prasad, Union Minister, Ministry of Information technology - Ms. Meenakshi Lekhi - Member of Parliament and National Spokesperson - Mr. Manoj Sinha - Minister of State for Telecom and Railways - Dr. Mahesh Sharma - Minister of State for Culture and Tourism. Speakers include top executives from Google, LEGO, LinkedIn, DigitasLBi, Omnicom, Citibank, The New York Times, MongoDB, GroupM, Whirlpool, Huffington Post, NASSCOM among the many others as well as CEOs and Founders of India's most innovative companies. You may apply for invitation online at http://www.webit.org/india/tickets.php The The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and the The Ministry of External Affairs of India are the main partners of the event. Some of the others include Mark Up, Yes Bank, Startup Grind, Springboard, Startups Club, One Internet, LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY, NDTV Prime, Mojarto, Techportal.in, Businessworld.in, Youthkiawaaz.com and Digital Vidya. More about the Global Webit Series WSJ calls Webit the "startup friendly enterprise event", Forbes names Webit among the events that change the perception of the city and the region Webit forum is held. Venture Beat calls Webit - the smarter version of SXSW. The largest event is the Global Webit Congress with over 12000 attendees from 110 countries. The other Webit events include: Webit.Festival in Sofia - heavily endorsed by EC, where the Digital Single Market of Europe was announced by Vice President Ansip, Webit.EMEA in Istanbul, Webit.MENA in Dubai and in 2016 Webit.APAC in Singapore and Webit.INDIA in New Delhi. Webit stands for one of the largest global communities of people fascinated by technology and fostering the digital transformation in the business and the society.

• Webit enables business opportunities at global scale and ignites further the growth of the local ecosystems, inspires and empowers them and creates a platform for dialogue between policy makers, enterprise and entrepreneurs.
• Webit is hosting global and regional enterprise Fortune 500 leaders, world renown scientists, hottest startups, founders and top policy makers.
• See more from the latest Webit.Festival event for Europe here: www.webit.bg

Webit enables business opportunities at global scale and ignites further the growth of the local ecosystems, inspires and empowers them and creates a platform for dialogue between policy makers, enterprise and entrepreneurs.

• Webit is hosting global and regional enterprise Fortune 500 leaders, world renown scientists, hottest startups, founders and top policy makers.
• See more from the latest Webit.Festival event for Europe here: www.webit.bg

Webit is hosting global and regional enterprise Fortune 500 leaders, world renown scientists, hottest startups, founders and top policy makers.

• See more from the latest Webit.Festival event for Europe here: www.webit.bg

  You may see the full video from the Webit's Founders Games ceremony here.   The entrepreneurial ecosystem of Central and Eastern Europe is picking up traction and the region is awaiting its billion euro company soon! The winner of the Founders Games Challenge has already over 12 million users from 140 countries and growing. The New Markets Startup Oscars Ceremony was held on the second day of Webit.Festival Europe in Sofia, the digital capital of the new markets. 1438 startups from 60 countries have applied. There were 3 rounds of valuation and finally 65 of them were invited to join the festival and provided free expo booths and opportunity to pitch in front of 20 investors and global enterprise leaders. For 2 days the jury selected 5 out of 65 to present at the ceremony. See video from the live streaming of the Award Ceremony here The 5 selected finalists were: Biowatch (FinTech biometric company from Switzerland), Clikem (Advertising white label URL shortening & monetization platform from Israel), BuddyGuard (a German home security system packed in a single and beautiful device),  Broshura.bg (Bulgarian based online brochure service with over 10 M monthly users in Europe) , AdGuard (Russian startup for security/privacy protection and ad blocker) . As the names of the finalist were kept secret to the very last moment, one of the selected finalists BuddyGuard has left to catch a flight and missed its opportunity to win this record award. It was replaced by the next on the list - Playground Energy. Finally the Founders Games Trophy and cash award in seed investment of 200 000 EUR was granted to AdGuard - a Russian startup with 12 million users in 140 countries, $1.5M annual revenue with 50-75% annual growth. AdGuard is a software tool to protect users from web security/privacy threats including malware, js tracking and scam/untrusted web-pages and blocking online ads. The majority of the 65 selected startups were in post seed stage with 200 000 to 2 million EUR investment made already and growth potential. There was also a special pre seed section of the Challenge too. The € 200'000 award was raised only by Bulgarian investors and successful entrepreneurs to prove that Bulgarian ecosystem is not only supporting its own growth but also the growth of European startups. The 4 investors include the founder of Telerik Vassil Terziev, who made the biggest exit in CEE with Telerik, which was acquired by Progress for 264 million, Ivo Evgeniev (owner of Rosslyn Capital), Lyubomir Minchev (founder of largest SEE system integrator Telelink) and Plamen Russev, investor, philanthropist and Chairman of Webit.Foundation.       About Webit.Festival Europe Webit.Festival Europe welcomed over 4300 attendees from 74 countries. Among the speakers were the President of Bulgaria, Mr. Rossen Plevneliev, the President of the European Committee of the Regions Marku Markulla, the founders of BlockChain, Hyperloop, Presidents and top executives from MasterCard, Google, IBM Cloud, Cisco, innovators, entrepreneurs, top European policy makers and investors. Among the speakers were also scientists including Prof. Moran Cerf, a business and neuroscience professor recently names among the the top 40 professors in the world under 40. Cars producing water as an exhaust product, ceiling cover products from the Carbon in the air, a crystal memory which is practically forever and can record up to 360 TB information were only part of the future tech presented at the festival. "Europe is becoming second tier player not only to America, but to China and India" said Plamen Russev, investor and Chairman of Webit.Foundation. "Central and Eastern Europe has the potential to help the continent make a jump. We have to prove that Digital Europe can jump" said also the Chairman. See the official opening keynotes here. More information: Elina Georgieva pr@webitcongress.com more pictures: The 4 Bulgarian investors and the winner The Founders Games host - Evan Luthra (a self made tech millionare and an Instagram star), and the 4 Bulgarians who raised the 200000 EUR award (left to right) Plamen Russev, Bulgarian investor and Chairman of Webit.Foundation, Vassil Terziev, founder of Telerik, Ivo Evgeniev, Bulgarian Investor, Rosslyn Capital, Angel Kelchev, Endeavor Org. The President of Bulgaria, Mr. Rossen Plevneliev and Plamen Russev, investor and Chairman of Webit.Foundation     The Mayor of Sofia, Mrs. Yordanka Fandakova Over 4300 attendees from 74 countries attended Webit.Festival Europe. This is the Blue Hall of the Festival Evan Luthra, the Host of the Founders Games Starup Challenge and the Webit's Pitch Stage Webit's Jazz Networking Area Part of Webit's venue - Tech Park Sofia  

WEBIT.FEST'16 is about to ring the bell and welcome thousands of attendees from 65 countries in Sofia. The conference agenda takes place in the newly opened venue of Sofia Tech Park. But, even with the new facilities, we faced challenges to accommodate all the attendees, so we had to build and increase the capacity up to 5000 people! The conference AGENDA requires ticket for the festival, but there are also number of meetups and cultural events open for everyone to join and experience the festival. You need no registration for the event to be part of the digital&tech Sofia scene during the URBAN Summit on April 18th, 19th and 20th. All topics and locations of the meetup night could be found below.  You can invite your friends and colleagues to join and even you could apply to be the host of the meetup! Upload all your pictures or videos online with #webit   April 18th: Meetup: Art & Tech Meetup: Fintech Meetup: The Art of App Engagement Meetup: Social Tech Meetup: Mobile Geeks Meetup: CyBeer Meetup: Bitcoin Meetup: Wearable Tech Meetup: Music & Tech Meetup: Social Innovation with EU Meetup: Artificial Intelligence April 19th: Meetup: Live Today! Meetup: Marketing for Startups Meetup: Intl. Entrepreneurs in Sofia Meetup: Digital Entertainment Meetup: Think BIG DATA Meetup: Digital Travel Meetup: Gamification Meetup: Smart Urban Transportation Meetup: Big Data - BIG DECISIONS Meetup: eSports April 20th: Meetup: Start Ups - Start Downs Meetup: Culinary & Tech Meetup: Digital health Meetup: Scalable Realtime DataApps Meetup: Neuroscience and Life Meetup: Hacking the Body Meetup: Robotics Cocktail Meetup: Are we alone in Universe? Meetup: Digital Education Meetup: IoT Cocktail

The startup friendly Enterprise event* Webit.Festival Europe just got friendlier!

Here is another BIG € 200'000 reason for the startups to apply for Webit's Founders Games, get a free expo stand, 2 free festival tickets and win € 200'000 seed investment!

Not a startup? Great! Webit is the only enterprise event to join and to explore great business opportunities with 75% C-level executives among the attendees as well as to have a walk among the exhibiting top European startups, get inspired, take advantage from collaborating with innovators or explore talent acquisition opportunities! If you still do not have your ticket - book today! Already registered - see you in Sofia! More about the € 200'000 A group of prominent successful entrepreneurs, investors and business angels have just joined me and together we announce a € 200'000 seed investment for the winner of Webit's Founders Games Challenge. Please share with your network of entrepreneurs that If they are not among the 930+ startups who have already applied - they have 5 days to do it! For all who have applied and were selected for exhibitors and to pitch in front of the jury -  good luck! Their Founders Games just got € 200'000 more challenging and exciting! :) See you in Sofia on 19-20 April @ Webit.Festival Europe! Warm regards!  

Plamen Russev  Chairman, Webit Foundation | Global Webit Series

Women Who Code is a global non-profit organization dedicated to inspiring women to excel in technology careers by creating a global, connected community of women in technology.  WWC was founded in 2011 and has since grown to 50,000 members spanning 20 countries. Women Who Code creates an avenue for women in tech by hosting free meetups around the world, and showcases the amazing careers that it can provide-especially to young girls. Sheree Atcheson is UK Expansion Director of WomenWhoCode.  Here is the recent talk that we had with her, sharing thoughts on what it is to be a girl in tech and what it takes to change the stereotypes:   WEBIT: Speaking the facts, is it the IT world man's territory or not anymore? What transformation have you witnessed for the years as director of Women Who Code? Sheree: As the UK expansion director of women who code, I've witnessed the change in shift from when I started this outreach 3-4 years ago. I don't believe IT is a mans territory - it is anyone's territory who wishes to take it and make it into something. In the past years, I have worked with local governments, worldwide companies and huge businesses who have all been interested in ensuring there is no "gender specific territory" in this industry. The existence of these people is exactly the kind of shift we need.   WEBIT: What could be done to motivate more girls to get interested in technology? Sheree: The age old question. It's a very difficult and detailed problem to try and combat gender stereotypes which have been instilled in parents, teachers and the toy industry. When the majority of toys (from newborn onwards) are targeting girls with pink frilly princess themed toys and boys with blue trucks/engineering toys then we have a lot of work to ensure that those stereotypes do not stop either gender from believing they can and can't do certain things. Thankfully due to goldieblox, Lego and Lottie dolls, we're working to prevent the issue in its very first form. As for getting girls interested in GCSE and A LEVEL engineering modules, we need to ensure they are always given the opportunity and that teachers are well informed. More often than not, careers teachers are not aware of how vast and lucrative the tech industry is, and if they are not aware, there is a trickle down effect which means the parents don't know and therefore they steer their children elsewhere.   WEBIT: What are the biggest changes we can foresee in terms of female and male engagement in the IT sphere? Sheree: We have already seen big shifts, with organisations like women who code growing to over 50,000 members. This kind of change is no coincidence and it's happening because people are interested in making a change. We host weekly and monthly events all over the world, for free, and we're able to do this because of the large number of people wanting to help change this industry for the better.   WEBIT: Have you ever been discriminated or underestimated as female engineer? Sheree: I was a software engineer for approx 3 years. Now I am a product analyst for market data feed handler technology. I have been very lucky to have not experienced some of the horror stories I have heard of from other women. I have had inappropriate comments made about my appearance and how that somehow is why I have been relatively successful - those kinds of comments directly undermine the hours and hours of work I have put into my outreach career (whether or not that's the original aim for the comment is irrelevant, it's not acceptable).   WEBIT: Chicago was the first city to make computer science a core subject, required for graduation. Do we need to close the gap between male and female coders early in school? Sheree: Yes. 100% yes. As I said above, these issues stem from a very young age. The quicker we can work with children to highlight the benefits of the tech industry, the better. We at Women Who Code actively work with schools all over the world to showcase local role models to young girls so they don't fall into the "you can't be what you can't see" mentality. They will be able to see what they can accomplish, if this is the career they're interested in.   WEBIT: GitHub is one of the largest open-source software communities in the world. A recent research (based on approximately 3m pull requests) found that code written by women was approved at a higher rate (78.6%) than code written by men (74.6%). “Women’s acceptance rates dominate over men’s for every programming language in the top 10, to various degrees,” the researchers found, but only if the gender was not disclosed. Possible explanation: May be women just need to work very hard to prove their skills in female-unfriendly environment? Sheree: It's very hard to pin point to definitive reasoning for this, but from the statistics, it can show that the quality of the women's code is better. I believe the quality of a coder cannot be broken down into "women vs men" (not all men are good coders and neither are all women), but needs to be looked at on a case by case basis.   WEBIT: Sarah Lacy, the founder of Pando wrote an article describing disturbing issues on why the VC’s hesitation to fund women start at home. Responding, Sarah Nadav, who is entrepreneur, economist and journalist published a screenshot of conversation she had with a manager of a major VC: ​ What is your advice to young girls, who will face discrimination or arrogant behaviour? Sheree: There are arrogant people in every walk of life and you will 100% come across them. My advice is to always be aware of someone like this and never let them devalue your work or opinions. Also be cautious of yourself, never become that arrogant person and always try to remember how much hard work you had to put into your career to get it where it is now - you're the leader now and it's your turn to help the next generation be as awesome as you are.   You can meet Sheree at WEBIT.FEST'16 and listed to her talk on the stage of the Dev Summit.  Tickets prices increase with 30% from April 1st, so hurry up and book your access to the festival.