Ok, my videos aren't up yet, since I made a couple promises about uploading others, but I'm now active on Channel8. I uploaded the first video yesterday (Clint interviewing our University of Iowa MSP) and today I'm uploading Jen's Getting Started with XNA series. I have a bunch of things to upload myself, but I promised Max I wouldn't flood the site. I'm Diane on Channel8, so you can check out what I'm uploading or blogging about here. YAY!!

Thinking about competing in ChicTech's Games for Girls or the Imagine Cup Game Development Competition? You might consider checking out Rob Miles' new site Very Silly Games. These are small funny games with source code for XNA. Rob teaches Computer Science in the UK and I had the good fortune to meet him at the 2006 Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals in India. It seems that he's also writing a book about learning programming through Game Development. Can't wait to check it out!

Alfred pointed me to this cool competition. Registration is VERY soon (Jan 31) but this could be a great opportunity for women working on games. For a broader audience (aka women AND men!), I recommend checking out our Imagine Cup Game Development Competition.

ChicTech's Games for Girls Competition: Enter Now!
by Sonya Harris
January 10, 2008

ChicTech, an outreach program of the University of Illinois' Department of Computer Science, extends an open invitation for college women to participate in the third annual Games for Girls Programming Competition (G4G).

Registration must be submitted by January 31, 2008, at http://www.cs.uiuc.edu/g4g. Completed projects are due by April 9, 2008.

We invite teams of up to five college women to design and implement a computer game for younger girls. The competition is designed to encourage the development of computer games that appeal to middle- and high-school-aged girls, while fostering the development of communities of college women majoring in computer-related disciplines. Projects will be evaluated by approximately thirty high-school girls attending the annual ChicTech retreat weekend on the U of I campus in April. Their evaluation will be based on their overall enjoyment of the games.

G4G is part of an effort to attract and retain women in Computer Science. The creative process of game-building can help female students develop a stronger sense of belonging to the field of Computer Science and seeing the work of college women can help high school girls relate to the potential of CS as a major. The judging of the G4G games has proven to be one of the highlights of the ChicTech retreat weekend.

This year's competition is sponsored by State Farm. G4G will award each member of the winning team $1,000, with cash prizes also going to the second- and third-place teams. An additional $1,000 will go to the first-place-winning team's department to help support programs to attract and retain more women in Computer Science.

Games must be PC-based. Teams may use any development tools they wish, but we encourage them to use the GameMaker platform, which has worked well in previous G4G competitions. Please visit our website for complete competition details.

The competition is open to all college women currently residing in the United States. Each student team must submit an on-line registration by January 31, 2008. Visit the web site to complete an application: http://www.cs.uiuc.edu/g4g.

Sonya Harris is the Outreach Coordinator for Undergraduate Recruitment, Retention, and Outreach at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Well, I can't NOT post about CES, so I'll post this link to a funny little video from BillG's keynote. I was amused, as it seems a lot of other people are. This is also intended to ensure people don't need to keep sending it to me! ;-)

Andrew is an MSP in the greater NYC area and has recently started blogging about his Imagine Cup Game Design team.

This blog is going to be devoted to my triumphs and challenges in organizing, motivating, and facilitating an Imagine Cup game development challenge team for the '08 year. You'll get a glimpse of my experiences with the competition, the trials I'll face, and how I've gone about solving problems. The material will lean towards technical; but, will probably remain easy enough to understand for the non-programmer.

Nikita has been an MSP forever and often blogs about developer events in Tampa, as well as his musings on technology. I think he's spending a lot more time on Channel8 than his blog right now. :-)

Max is practically a student. ;-) He's our Channel8 guy and lately has been spending a lot of time perfecting his new bachelor pad in Seattle.

Who should I be reading? What blogs by technology students do you read?

Hilary introduces her Office 2007 top ten favorites. A very interesting screencast for students considering buying Office via the Ultimate Steal. :-) Any bets on whether Erin watches this video just to see if her favorites are there?

http://blogs.msdn.com/springboard/archive/2007/12/18/give-me-15-mins-i-ll-give-you-15-hrs-office-2007-tips-and-tricks.aspx

Having now comfortably unpacked from the Ohio trip, I can start enjoying my holiday bounty. The 2008 electronics highlights from my holiday season:

• My first Digital SLR. This reminds me of "My first Sony" but a touch more expensive. Hopefully equally as gratifying. I'm only sad that I can't take a picture of my new camera with my new camera.
• New RED 8GB Zune. Awesome. I think I need to make a Channel8 post about it. This is a huge improvement from last year's brown Zune, both in size and color. (Yay for being Buckeye themed!) Clearly my manager was thinking about the national championship game when he sent this. Hopefully the whole ADE team will be carrying around scarlet Zunes to support the football team.
• Blackjack II. This was from the Windows Mobile team. Thanks guys!

What cool new stuff are you playing with?

Ok, technically I've been back in town since Saturday and back at work since Monday, but today was the first day I've felt comfortably back. I spent all of Sunday unpacking Christmas gifts, suitcases from the trip and baby shower proceeds. ;-) And Monday was "stomp on email" morning followed closely by "troubleshoot issues with remote access." All in all an exciting start to the week! Quinn and I spent yesterday watching football. While we rarely want Michigan to win, dislike of Florida and desire to see the Big Ten do well in bowl games made it a hard game to watch. We only made it about 1/8 of the way through the Rose Bowl…

As many of you know, my travel will be restricted this spring. Starting in February, I won't fly and sometime in March I won't travel at all. I'm trying to make the most of my availability and have spent some time today booking short trips. I'm pretty excited about some of them, like our big technology trends event at Stony Brook or the NYC High School Women in Computing Conference. I'm also a little disappointed to have to miss all four greater NYC Digigirlz Day events and a big conference my team has in Seattle each year.

I hope everyone enjoyed the holiday season!