As a little girl growing up in the Deep South, my mother told me that my future lay in my education. And she was right.

Our camps and workshops offer a space where girls of color can learn computer science and coding principles alongside their peers, with mentorship from female role models who have established themselves in tech fields where women, and minority women in particular, tend to be underrepresented.

Gender is not central to coding.

It's critical for girls to see role models like myself that are in technical fields. Looking for ways to come in as speakers or do a career day, or just find a way to connect with students or invite students to their workplaces to shadow them for the day... is critically important.

In the digital age of 'overnight' success stories such as Facebook, the hard slog is easily overlooked.

I'm very happy, and I try to answer the encouragement I receive on social media through my efforts on the field, for everyone from the fans who buy a shirt to those who encourage us inside the stadium.

I have to say there are a lot of me-too products and companies. Yet another social network, of the 15th flavor - that's common in every new technology revolution. There are imitators who have marginal improvements.

Authoring tools' are terrible; there is almost no software that can create closed captions for media players. And of course there is no training. TV captioning is bad enough, and this stuff is generally worse.