Assess Your Knowledge and Awareness of Drone/UAS Standards and Best Practices As use cases for drones and other Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) become more prevalent in businesses of all sizes and industries, it’s more important than ever for service providers and other professionals to learn and understand best practices and guidelines for drone operations. To help, CompTIA’s Drone Advisory Council developed the following quiz to drive education and awareness of the (UAS) industry. The quiz complements the Drone Standards and Best Practices guide previously published by the Council and is intended to help users achieve a better understanding of the UAS industry and identify areas where they may need more help. (63 questions).
Take the Quiz: https://surveys.comptia.org/s3/Drone-Quiz-2021

Researchers from the College of Engineering at Villanova University are behind a blockchain project that will be launched into space Thursday night to test the viability and trustworthiness of the technology and its transactions in orbit.
Adjunct Professor of Engineering Hasshi Sudler is behind the project, and has been working on space-related projects since his time at the university as an undergrad. But the launch Thursday will be his — and the university’s — first time completing a trip to space.
Sudler is working with grad student Alejandro Gomez on the project. The pair will be testing a recent consensus protocol known as proof of authority, a means of confirming transactions on the blockchain through validator nodes that store data, securing the network. Villanova is working with Teachers in Space, a nonprofit that developed the Serenity educational CubeSat satellite that will launch on the Firefly Aerospace’s Alpha vehicle Thursday night from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
Continue reading: https://technical.ly/philly/2021/09/02/villanova-blockchain-space/

As the nation approaches the 20th anniversary of September 11, 2001, in commemoration of the sacrifices made by first responders on that day, Connecticut-based Aquiline Drones is offering its Flight to the Future drone training program free to all interested police officers and firefighters.
The hybrid online and in-person training program, which instructs its trainees in how to earn a Federal Aviation Administration Part 107 certification as well as gives instruction in setting up a drone-related business, normally costs $1,299.
Barry Alexander, Aquiline Drones’ founder and CEO, said the company is offering the complimentary program to first responders in recognition of all they have done for their fellow citizens from 9/11 through to the present day.
“We thought that they should be equipped with the best tools to help them do their jobs efficiently, but also to keep them out of harm’s way as much as possible,” he said. “This program is designed to provide them with a superlative skill set, but also to celebrate what first responders do for us as a society every day.”
The course teaches everything from Federal Aviation Administration regulations, to drone hardware and software, to cloud technology. Most of the instruction is conducted online, with a hands-on training component offered at the end of the remote instruction.
Most of the hands-on portion of the course is currently conducted at Aquiline’s headquarters in Connecticut, “but we are setting up training facilities across the country that will allow groupings of individuals within close proximity of the training to attend for a couple of days,” Alexander said.
Continue reading: https://dronelife.com/2021/09/02/drone-training-for-first-responders-aquiline-drones-flight-to-the-future-program/

It sounds kind of like 500 buzzing wasps moving at 100 miles an hour.
You’ll notice these small, quick racing drones, but they’re not as loud as people might think, said Vicki Felmlee, one of the organizers for Drones in the Desert, a drone racing competition.
Now in its fifth year, Drones in the Desert has a new home and if you haven’t had the chance to check out this competition yet, this is a good year to do so.
You can come and go as you please, be amazed at the technology and speed and even take in a night race.
Drones in the Desert is set for Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 4–5, at Colorado Mesa University’s track and field complex at Ninth Street and Orchard Avenue.
This spot means that for the first time, the race will take place over a grassy field instead in the dirt lot east of 32 Road that was provided by the Grand Junction Modeleers, one the groups that hosts Drones in the Desert.
“We were on dirt and it worked,” Felmlee said.
Continue reading: https://www.gjsentinel.com/accelerated-racing-drones-in-the-desert-gains-new-home-racing-recognition/article_d2a5e602-0b37-11ec-befe-b7e3000c41f7.html

During hurricanes, flash flooding, and other disasters, it can be extremely dangerous to send in first responders, even though people may badly need help.
Rescuers already use drones in some cases, but most require individual pilots to fly the unmanned aircraft by remote control. That limits how quickly rescuers can view an entire affected area, and it can delay aid from reaching victims.
Autonomous drones could cover more ground faster, especially if they could identify people in need, and notify rescue teams.
My team and I at the University of Dayton Vision Lab have been designing these autonomous systems of the future to eventually help spot people who might be trapped by debris. Our multi-sensor technology mimics the behavior of human rescuers to look deeply at wide areas and quickly choose specific regions to focus on, examine more closely, and determine if anyone needs help.
The deep learning technology that we use mimics the structure and behavior of a human brain in processing the images captured by the 2-dimensional and 3D sensors embedded in the drones. It is able to process large amounts of data simultaneously to make decisions in real time.
Continue reading: https://www.fastcompany.com/90671042/hurricane-ida-search-and-rescue-drones

A s the United States emerges from the pandemic, many state and local government agencies are struggling to hire and retain workers. Not only have many retirement-age employees decided to accelerate their plans to retire, but agencies face stiff competition for workers from the private sector. As a result, for a number of key positions, especially those in IT, many government agencies are receiving fewer qualified applicants than the number of jobs available. To address this challenge, government agencies should start making use of AI tools to improve how they acquire and retain workers. A growing number of tools make use of AI to help organizations recruit and hire talent more effectively. First, AI can help candidates and employers find one another. Job boards like ZipRecruiter and LinkedIn use recommendation algorithms to suggest candidates and job openings, and services like Textkernel can parse resumes with natural language processing to build semantic search engines that allow recruiters to search for concepts like “IT security” rather than specific keywords or job titles. For example, the U.S. Departments of Labor, Defense and Veterans Affairs worked with the private sector on an AI challenge to help employers hire veterans who have valuable skills but whose profiles might not show up on a typical search based on their previous job titles. Agencies can also use applicant tracking systems, such as those offered by Oracle, SAP and Workday, to help recruiters and hiring managers be more efficient by digitizing the hiring process. These systems can help manage job postings, sort and rank candidates, and automate many routine tasks such as scheduling interviews. Some even offer chatbots, providing job seekers with immediate feedback on the status of their application or answering questions about the employer or position. The result is that hiring managers can move faster, increasing their productivity, making offers to qualified candidates sooner and obtaining higher acceptance rates.
Continue reading: https://www.govtech.com/opinion/the-case-for-artificial-intelligence-in-recruiting-it-talent

The logistics industry is seeing a big opportunity in the future use of drones within their operations. While some companies are targeting last-mile deliveries from businesses to consumers, others are looking towards the often overlooked middle-mile logistics. 
Middle-mile logistics refers to deliveries that occur from business to business such as seaports to a distribution center or distribution centers to stores. 
According to an analysis in a 2020 white paper from Levitate Capital, the value proposition for using drones within logistics chains will have to weigh the speed and availability drones can offer with the cost savings of traditional route density and batched deliveries. While last-mile delivery drones are competing with courier delivery services that will have an advantage in cost savings, middle-mile deliveries will be competing with semi-trucks and intermodal freight networks. 
“Whereas last-mile delivery drones compete with courier-owned delivery vans and crowdsourced delivery models, middle-mile drones will compete with semi-trucks and intermodal freight networks,” Dario Constantine, a senior associate at Levitate Capital focused on drone technology companies, writes in “The Future of the Drone Economy.”  
The report states that the cost of logistics is dependent on the amount of freight moved at one time. The lowest cost options in this chain are ships and trains and as freight in transferred along its journey, the cost increases as the vehicle that carries it gets smaller. 
Continue reading: https://www.aviationtoday.com/2021/09/01/drone-companies-see-opportunities-b2b-middle-mile-logistics/

Cellular technology is driving innovation across diverse industries, and now enterprises are on the brink of new realities. In this blog post, we’ll discover new industry trends and find out how drones are being used to completely change the way we tackle challenges and make business operations more efficient. It’s about much more than the present, we’ll look at what the future could bring once drones are powered by 5G. Currently, drones are reliant on Wi-Fi, and are effective for certain needs in ports, mines, agriculture, airports, utilities, and inshore and offshore drilling. But once drones make the move to 5G, we’ll see them reach their potential for improved efficiencies, visibility, and safety. One thing’s for sure, there’s so much more to come.
Today I sat with Pooja Jetley, Enterprise Marketing Director at Ericsson, to talk about drones in industry and why we are seeing more and more of them being used by businesses across various sectors/industries. Below is a transcript of our conversation
Natasha: Hi Pooja. So good to have a chance to talk to you about industry trends. Can you tell me how industry needs, and pain points are being addressed by cellular these days?
Pooja: Businesses across multiple industries, from manufacturing to mines to ports, are embracing digital transformation but working at a frantic pace to keep up with emerging customer demands and survive in the face of their future realities. No matter what industry, this high-paced digital transformation will only be realized with high-quality cellular connectivity that enables a countless number of capabilities; getting the business operations up to par, if not ahead, when compared to the competition. Greater safety, scalability and high performance are just a few of the things that cellular connectivity brings. And these use cases delivered by cellular, are literally transforming operations toward efficiencies we would not have imagined only a few years ago.
Continue reading: https://www.ericsson.com/en/blog/2021/9/future-of-drones-in-industry-environments

In 2013, while working in the Bahamas, I observed what is now called a drone. As a security practitioner, my ‘paranoia propeller’ on my tin hat really started spinning. Later that year, I asked my wife to purchase a DJI Phantom FC40 drone with a Wi-Fi-enabled camera that worked with an iPhone 5. Like most men, when I received my new gift, I tore into it like the kid from "A Christmas Story" opening his Red Ryder BB gun.
Who needs instructions, I thought? However, I needed the instructions, and soon found a quick start guide, which instructed me to toggle the switches back and forth and listen for tones and lights. While I did that, I needed to rotate the drone on a vertical and horizontal axis. Once the ceremonial process was complete, the light on the drone turned green and the propellors pulled the machine into the air. The first thing I did was to push this thing as high as possible and within seconds I no longer could distinguish the drone from the clouds. Throttling back, I brought the drone to about 20-feet and pushed it forward horizontally.
Soon, I realized how hard it was to control the drone because it really does not have specificity to its directional travel, and there is the real possibility that turning left could be straight and vice versa. Within minutes, I no longer could see or hear the drone, and was startled by my wife who said, “You did not lose the $800 drone, did you?”
With my fingers off the controller, I walked toward the last sighting of my drone, hoping to hear the reverberation of the propellers. Nothing, and it became apparent that I lost this device. After searching for 10 minutes, I was losing all hope, when suddenly and faintly I heard the “buzz” of the propellors, which then became louder. I was excited but then upset, as the drone flew over me and headed back towards my house. Running frantically after the device, I wondered, did someone hack it? Why is it doing this? On the precipice of a heart attack, I watched the drone stop, hover and slowly descend to exactly where I previously launched it. That’s when I knew that this was not an IKEA build and that I would need to read the instructions fully.
Continue reading: https://www.securityinfowatch.com/perimeter-security/robotics/unmanned-aerial-vehicles-drones/article/21236703/the-status-of-drone-technology-in-security

A non-fungible token (NFT) is a unique identifier that can cryptographically assign and prove ownership of digital goods. 
As NFTs for digital artwork have sold for millions — sometimes tens of millions — of dollars, to say they're popular could be an undersell. In the first half of 2021, NFT sales hit $2.5 billion. 
However, once you understand how NFTs work, you'll see there are additional use cases for this technology.
What is an NFT?
NFT stands for "non-fungible token." At a basic level, an NFT is a digital asset that links ownership to unique physical or digital items, such as works of art, real estate, music, or videos. 
NFTs can be considered modern-day collectibles. They're bought and sold online, and represent a digital proof of ownership of any given item. NFTs are securely recorded on a blockchain — the same technology behind cryptocurrencies — which ensures the asset is one-of-a-kind. The technology can also make it difficult to alter or counterfeit NFTs.
To really get a handle on NFTs, it's helpful to get familiar with the economic concept of fungibility.
Continue reading: https://www.businessinsider.com/nft-meaning

What are the Benefits of Blockchain Technology?
Blockchain technology is set to revolutionize the world of online transactions. It is a decentralized, secure, digital ledger that's used to record the history of transactions. It's not controlled by any government or central organization, making it ideal for use in places where corruption is rampant.
It provides an open platform where all parties are aware of each transaction and no one can change the ledger without everyone else knowing
The Best Reasons Why You Should Use Blockchain Technology
Blockchain technology is the new kid on the block, and it brings with it a great deal of confusion. However, blockchain can be understood by looking at how it's similar to the internet in both its potential and its current limitations. Blockchain networks offer a way to make transactions or store information without needing a central authority to validate those transactions or information.
Continue reading: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-blockchain-future-benefits-technology-vincent-rey-vicente-md/?trk=articles_directory

As more and more of our lives are spent online and the physical world grows ever more digital, the very notion of identity is changing dramatically. Authentication of who we are and how we are represented online has become paramount to both individuals and organizations. People want power over their identities and control over how and with whom their information is shared. Organizations face heightened security threats, alongside demands to compete in the digital economy, optimize workflows and improve customer and employee experiences. Constant retooling and uncertainty around identity only slows broader strategic innovations.
Identity and access management (IAM) has become a core building block for managing and authenticating digital identities. However, organizations face challenges with the design and security of IAM processes, prompting them to consider new technologies. Distributed ledger technologies (DLT), frequently referred to as blockchain, are different from existing IAM architectures as they are inherently decentralized. DLT enables shared recordkeeping, where transactions, authentications and interactions are recorded across and verified by a network rather than a single central authority.
With the surge in cybercrimes, threats, fraud and asset breaches, organizations play a crucial role in safeguarding sensitive data, securing IT and operational infrastructure (OT), and protecting peoples' identities. Many enterprise IAM leaders and IT professionals are questioning the relevant benefits and risks of DLT and consensus technologies:
Continue reading: https://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/tip/Blockchain-for-identity-management-Implications-to-consider

Make blockchain a part of your digital transformation in the right way. 
Blockchain technology is a revolutionary decentralized, distributed ledger system that records the transactions made via digital assets. Since the technology became mainstream, blockchain has shown the tech world its potential to transform industries like healthcare, manufacturing, and logistics. Businesses are keen to adopt this technology and leverage their business. But until organizations pick the right kind of blockchain, the work will not be perfect. Depending on the operating model, there are two types of blockchain businesses can opt for, public blockchain and private blockchain.
What is Public Blockchain?
A public blockchain has an open network and all the information is available in the public domain. As this blockchain is not bound by any rules and permissions, any party can view and write data on the blockchain, making the data is accessible to all. Public blockchains are also decentralized and immutable. Once an entry is made on the blockchain, it cannot be altered or deleted after the entries are validated. 
Continue reading: https://www.analyticsinsight.net/public-vs-private-blockchain-what-does-your-business-need/

New ethical and moral questions continue to emerge as we expand how we use artificial intelligence in business and government. This is undoubtedly a good thing. Developing new technologies without incorporating ethics, morals or values would be careless at best, catastrophic at worst. 
This is also a gray area. For years, I’ve used “ethical AI” as a catchall phrase for the standards and practices that principled organizations should build into their data science programs. But what exactly is ethical? What is moral? According to whom? 
Ethics are principles of right and wrong, usually recognized by certain institutions, that shape individuals’ behavior. Morals are shared social or cultural beliefs that dictate what is right or wrong for individuals or groups. You don’t need to be moral to be ethical, and vice versa, though the two terms are often used interchangeably.
This quandary leads to the needful shift in framework, one that focuses on “responsible AI” to better capture these nuanced and evolving ideas.   
Continue reading: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2021/09/01/six-essential-elements-of-a-responsible-ai-model/?sh=ce60abd56cf4

Artificial Intelligence (AI) ranks as one of the fastest-growing professions, with practitioners highly sought after in 2021, according to LinkedIn. In addition to having proficiency in C++, Python, or Java and an aptitude for math, the strongest AI/ML professionals and teams are well-rounded in their general business knowledge and ability to communicate.
Organization-wide adoption of AI/ML technologies is the next phase of digital transformation, so a powerful team of programmers, developers, and data scientists is critical to improving AI literacy from the top down. It is important for technology leaders to communicate that AI/ML is meant to enhance the organization’s teams, not replace jobs.
4 non-technical skills AI jobs require
Savvy AI/ML professionals and new hires alike can strengthen these four non-technical skills to drive career success and business growth:
Continue reading: https://enterprisersproject.com/article/2021/9/artificial-intelligence-ai-jobs-4-hot-skills

Every interaction adds to the customer experience, either positively or negatively. Sometimes your customer just wants help quickly. In those instances, artificial intelligence (AI)-powered bots offer effectiveness and efficiency. But sometimes those customers need to interact with a real person. Regardless, they want to feel valued. And while AI might not be able to express empathy (yet), the right AI solution can facilitate your contact center’s delivery of empathetic experiences no matter how your customer wants to engage.
AI lets you personalize experiences at scale by making sense of massive amounts of data. With it, you can anticipate and predict your customers’ needs. AI applications span the entire customer journey. This allows you to understand conversations across engagement channels and empower your agents with efficient workflows. AI interprets, predicts and recommends the next-best option based on your customer’s preferences and your business goals. It works in the background to automate decisions about when to reach out, when to move interactions to a bot and when to route them to an agent.
AI runs throughout the customer and employee journey — connecting interactions with insights that help employees engage with empathy. It personalizes and orchestrates real-time experiences that establish trust — and optimizing outcomes with predictive analytics and machine learning ensures customer loyalty.
Continue reading:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/genesyscontactcentercloud/2021/09/01/anticipate-and-predict-individual-customers-needs-with-artificial-intelligence/?sh=454687213beb

The eager and rapid adoption of artificial intelligence (A.I.) by financial institutions (F.I.s) may surprise those outside this otherwise cautious industry. However, the industry consensus is clear that intelligent technologies such as A.I. are major factors in the race to differentiate and establish market share. For example, a survey conducted last year by the World Economic Forum found that 85% of F.I.s had implemented A.I. somehow, and 77% of all respondents anticipated A.I. to possess high or very high overall importance to their businesses within two years.
Compliance departments at F.I.s are poised to benefit from integrating A.I. into their anti-money laundering (AML) programs. Unfortunately, previously adequate, legacy rules-based AML systems have become antiquated. They lack the sophistication needed to recognize nuances of rapidly evolving criminal patterns and keep up with new products and consumer behavior. The result is high false positive and low detection rates that sap an F.I.’s resources by requiring the need to secure more costly, experienced compliance staff. The high false positive and low detection rates stemming from rules-based monitoring are why chief compliance officers (CCOs) at F.I.s are turning to intelligent technologies such as A.I. to manipulate data more effectively across their AML programs. But, how can they do so responsibly?
Continue reading: https://www.finextra.com/blogposting/20830/responsible-artificial-intelligence-for-anti-money-laundering-how-to-address-bias

Why is Women in Technology an important issue for you and your company?
This is such an important issue and is near and dear to my heart. The technology industry is often considered to be male-dominated and we want to create an environment where women and others feel they belong, can grow, and most importantly, thrive.
At N-able, we are focused on diversity, equality, and belonging and are continually listening and learning from our people. We've recently launched our new women's community of interest called WONDER - which stands for Women of N-able Defining Equality and Respect. I, along with our CEO, John Pagliuca, are co-executive sponsors of the group because we firmly believe in supporting and empowering the women across our company and women in tech.
How do you think we can get more women into technology?
First, we need to listen to and engage with women. As an industry, we need to encourage more women to move into the IT sector. If we proactively listen to women and truly understand what drives them, what motivates them, and what they find to be challenging within our industry, we can create inclusive environments where women feel they can develop and grow their careers. The most important thing is to create the right environment. If we don't do that, it won't just be a challenge to get them into the technology industry—it will be a challenge to retain them.
What do you think should be done to enable more women to rise through to the more senior roles in the IT sector?
My advice to women pursuing leadership roles would be the following:

• Take risks and don't be afraid to give something new a try. If you're interested, go for it and apply for the role. You're worthy, you're qualified, you're more than enough.
• Find a mentor willing to coach you and give you "the good, the bad, and the ugly." Having someone willing to be honest with you and tell you the things you're amazing at, and the things you need to work on in order to achieve your career aspirations is invaluable. A mentor can help your career tremendously.

Continue reading: https://www.computing.co.uk/sponsored/4036485/industry-blog-women-tech-kathleen-pai-able

Picture a scientist. Who do you see? Ann McGregor ՚84 broke out in tears when listening to women scientists tell their stories in the 2020 documentary, “Picture a Scientist.” We’ll get back to why in a minute but first, let’s talk about McGregor’s accomplishments.
Ann McGregor ’84, at her home in Dunedin, Florida, was born in Florida, moved to West Virginia when she was five years old, and later in her childhood lived in Wisconsin.
She earned her Bachelor of Special Studies (B.S.S.) in computer science and biology from Cornell College. One Course At A Time, where Cornell students take one class per 18-day block and only that one class, was still relatively new at Cornell but McGregor felt from the student’s perspective her professors took full advantage of the block plan, allowing students to dive deep and stay focused on their studies
Block plan pace like the real world
“One Course At A Time is a lot more like real work-life,” McGregor says. “You are going to have intense periods of time where you are focused on one thing and that made me better at working in technology and eased the transition from college to a career. It helped me focus, taught me how to plan, and how to deliver results on time.”
The block plan drew McGregor to Cornell from the beginning. What sealed the deal for her was comparing the University of Wisconsin-Madison with its large number of students to Cornell’s block plan and small community and she knew what was right for her. Her visit to campus confirmed her desire to attend Cornell and the William Fletcher King Scholarship put a Cornell education on an equal financial footing with a large public university.
Continue reading: https://news.cornellcollege.edu/2021/08/women-stem-computer-science/

TOKYO — If Anna Matsumoto had listened to her teachers, she would have kept her inquisitive mind to herself — asking questions, they told her, interrupted class. And when, at age 15, she had to choose a course of study in her Japanese high school, she would have avoided science, a track that her male teachers said was difficult for girls.
Instead, Ms. Matsumoto plans to become an engineer. Japan could use a lot more young women like her.
Despite its tech-savvy image and economic heft, the country is a digital laggard, with a traditional paperbound office culture where fax machines and personal seals known as hanko remain common. The pandemic has reinforced the urgent need to modernize, accelerating a digital transformation effort promoted by Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, including the opening on Wednesday of a new Digital Agency intended to improve the government’s notoriously balky online services.
To narrow the gap, Japan must address a severe shortage of technology workers and engineering students, a deficit made worse by the near absence of women. In the university programs that produce workers in these fields, Japan has some of the lowest percentages of women in the developed world, according to UNESCO data. It also has among the smallest shares of women doing research in science and technology.
Continue reading: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/01/business/japan-tech-workers-women.html

Earlier this year, Red Hat conducted research with YouGov, which found that almost 1 in 20 people in the UK have taken up some form of computer programming since the first lockdown. Of those new coders, one quarter were women. That might not seem like a lot, but if we compare it to the fact that currently only 14% of programmers and software developers in the UK are women, it points to what may be a promising development towards redressing the gender imbalance in technology. What’s more, 71% of those women were learning to code with new employment opportunities in mind (compared to 66% of the men).
The results of our study suggest that there is a growing appetite among women for both coding and technical jobs where they can use these skills. This reasonably coincides with the fact that the demand for technical jobs and proficiencies has skyrocketed since the onset of the pandemic. 
We’ve also known as far back as the early 20th Century that women make fantastic software developers (it’s a little known fact that a group of six women programmed the first computers during WW2). However, experience tells me that competence and capability aren’t always sufficient to get you where you want without the confidence and self-belief to back it up.
Continue reading: https://www.idgconnect.com/article/3630390/inclusivity-leads-to-diversity-how-men-can-be-better-allies-for-women-in-tech.html

The gender gap in tech starts pretty early. Look at computer science students: Roughly 4 out of 5 bachelor’s degrees in that field go to men. That’s why the nonprofit Girls Who Code aims to get girls interested at a young age — as early as third grade.
Since the organization was founded in 2012, hundreds of thousands of girls have gone through its clubs and summer immersion programs. When COVID-19 canceled in-person classes, they moved totally online. That actually allowed Girls Who Code to grow, and enrollment went up 200%.
I spoke with Tarika Barrett, who took over as CEO this year. She said they had to design their new model with the hardest-to-reach girls in mind. The following is an edited transcript of our conversation.
Tarika Barrett: We knew our girls were driving to fast-food parking lots to get Wi-Fi, so we thought about Wi-Fi, we thought about hardware, we thought about living circumstances. Often, our girls couldn’t even turn their cameras on because they were sharing the computer with other siblings. And we tried to bring best practices in digital learning, so shorter days, live and asynchronous instruction, small-group work, office hours and project-based learning because we knew that we’d have to do that for our students, and that we were doing the kinds of outreach and really being responsive to the needs of our community.
Continue reading: https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-tech/the-mission-to-get-girls-coding-doesnt-take-a-covid-break/

The Workplace Gender Equality Agency’s (WGEA) latest national gender pay gap figures saw the pay gap increase for women over the last six months to 14.2%. This means Equal Pay Day 2021 is today, August 31, marking the 61 extra days from the end of last financial year that women, on average, must work to earn the same annual pay as men.
Disconcertingly, that’s two days more than 2020 and 2019, when the figure was 59 days.
The national gender pay gap widened by 0.8%, up from 13.4% last year, with men on average earning $261.50 a week more than women. The increase was largely driven by higher growth in men’s full-time wages, especially in the construction industry.
As part of Equal Pay Day, the Victorian government released a new report – Equal pay matters: Achieving gender pay equality in small-to-medium enterprises – which outlines research carried out by the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission. It contains 10 recommendations to address barriers to gender pay equality in smaller organizations.
Continue reading: https://www.startupdaily.net/2021/08/3-women-in-stem-have-their-say-on-the-gender-pay-gap-diversity-and-inclusion-on-equal-pay-day/

Africans are often poorly mentioned in the media, but there’s so much more to Africans than the negative stereotype often put forward.
They have consistently contributed to the growth and development of society, and to celebrate the International Day for People of African Descent, here are 10 Africans doing the continent proud in tech.
Chinedu Echeruo 
Chinedu Echeruo is a Nigerian-born serial entrepreneur who came to the limelight in 2013 following Apple’s $1b acquisition of his travel app, HopStop. 
After struggling with finding directions while moving around in the US, Echeruo built HopStop, an app that offered real-time directions when using the bus, train, hiking, or biking. The hugely popular service was present in over 600 US cities until Apple shut it down.
Continue reading: https://techpoint.africa/2021/08/31/10-african-tech-experts/

1. Kindly brief us about the company, its specialization, and the services that your company offers.
Aleada aims to educate and advise its clients to incorporate the important concept of privacy into all aspects of its business. This creates a culture of personal data protection that will build consumer trust, comply with privacy laws, and create a stronger competitive advantage in the market.
We want our clients to understand the value of using their data in responsible ways, not just to achieve compliance with privacy laws, but also to demonstrate to consumers and customers they can be trusted to protect personal data.
2. Give a brief overview of your background and your role in the company.
Aleada Partner and Co-Founder responsible for leading a variety of advisory projects in privacy compliance and information security governance. Alya also serves as an external Privacy Lead and Data Protection Officer role for global organizations. I also manage company finance and supporting operations, human resources; performance management, and business development.
I’ve always had an interest in technology, learning to code at age 8. I have a Master’s of Science in Decision and Information Science from the University of Florida. I started my career in external and internal technology auditing, risk management, and project management. I transitioned into privacy and information security consulting about 7 years ago.
Continue reading: https://www.analyticsinsight.net/alya-j-franklin-the-fearless-leader-making-strong-grounds-for-women/