The EGOI aims to promote female participation and excellence in the field of informatics by providing a platform for talented female students to showcase their skills and compete at an international level. Participants from various countries worldwide come together to solve challenging programming problems during the Olympiad.

Like other programming competitions, participants are typically required to solve a series of algorithmic and problem-solving tasks within a given time frame. The competition not only fosters technical skills but also encourages teamwork, critical thinking, and creativity.

The EGOI plays a crucial role in encouraging more women to pursue careers in computer science and related fields, where women are often underrepresented. By providing a supportive and competitive environment, the EGOI aims to inspire and empower young women to excel in the field of informatics.

Why is an EGOI necessary?

The goal of EGOI is to encourage young women to enjoy and deepen their interest in computer science with a particular focus on the following aspects:

  1. Encourage young women to participate. The stereotype of computer science being a male-focused profession persists. Many young
women do not even consider this field, even though they have talent and would enjoy it. This is where the competition comes in: girls who may not have the courage to participate at an Olympiad in Informatics feel included and directly addressed, enabling them to find the self-confidence to participate.
  2. Raise awareness among teachers. By educating teachers, they can explicitly encourage young women to participate.
  3. Introduce female role models. The participants will get to know female computer scientists and can meet female role models from a variety of different fields and occupations.
  4. Strengthen self-confidence and acceptance. One goal is for women in computer science to develop their full potential. To achieve this, young women need a sense of achievement, self-confidence, and acceptance. We hope to promote these aspects with the competition. The organization wants to highlight the outstanding careers and accomplishments to which young women can successfully aspire.

Aside from benefits for the participants, EGOI is an opportunity to increase public awareness about women in computer science. Ideally, this is achieved with a publicity campaign in cooperation with representatives from the industry. As one of the first hosts of the contest, The Netherlands shows itself as a pioneer in gender equality and promote itself as a leader in industry, education, and innovation.

Oracle’s presence at the event

On Monday evening a teambuilding game (Build Your United Nations) offered the opportunity for the contestants to get to know each other. During this two-hour game, they worked in small groups of 6-8 girls to create their own invented country. Women helped the girls communicate and understand the task.

Victoria Sørensen, Recruitment Manager OCI EMEA, represented Oracle during this fun evening activity. Victoria manages the OCI Talent Advisory organization in EMEA, leading product development and software engineering hiring in key lines of business. She joined Oracle in 2007 and has worked across most Oracle lines of business, from Tech and Apps to most of the Oracle Global Industry Units.

On Tuesday, a Knowledge Fair featured multiple female speakers presenting concurrently in parallel sessions of 40 minutes. 

Ana-Maria Mihalceanu, Senior Developer Advocate at Oracle, Java Champion Alumni, spoke at the event during the Knowledge Fair. Ana is Developer Advocate for the Java Platform Group at Oracle, guest author of the book “DevOps Tools for Java Developers”, and a constant adopter of challenging technical scenarios involving various frameworks and multiple cloud providers. She actively supports technical communities’ growth through knowledge sharing and helps organize several international conferences as a program committee lead/member.

Ana shared from her personal experience how the desire to control computers ignited her passion for coding, leading to learning and experimenting with various programming languages. Her talk highlighted how love for programming (particularly Java) inspires creating software that serves people effectively while nurturing collective learning.

Interested in the Oracle Academy program and what it can do for you and your students? Learn more at academy.oracle.com

To find out more about EGOI 2024, go to wiki.egoi2024.nl