EmPowerCyber 2023

What a fantastic event to end last week at #EmPowerCyber2023 ??

Friday 17th November saw 1000 enthusiastic Year 8 girls come together from across Gloucestershire. They dived into morning and afternoon workshops at a local venue, all geared up to explore the world of cyber.

The event didn’t disappoint. Starting with rippled audience waves, some energetic pop hits and loud cheers the girls were all set for the challenges that awaited them. They scattered across the workshops put together by ourselves at Gemba and 20 other industry partners. The sessions included code-breaker challenges, VR missions and not forgetting our very own nail-biting Escape Room!

Problem-solving was the name of the day and the girls did us proud. We set a 20/25 min limit for cracking our 4 room escape challenge. Team ‘Jammy Dodgers’ from Denmark Road High School (DRHS) blew us away, making their great escape in an incredible 9 minutes and 6 seconds. It was so impressive, we even pondered if they had found a secret loophole, but rest assured it was a legit win!

"Spending time inspiring the next generation of girls in cyber security is so rewarding” - James, our Exploration Manager. Steve, who designed our Escape Room couldn’t agree more, expressing how fulfilling it was for the students to experience "engineering and technology coming together in an engaging and exciting way".

And did we achieve our Gemba-Goal?.. “This, and the VR challenge were my favourites… just the right sort of hard for a challenge”, one of the students told us in the afternoon’. Well we’ll take that. Now what’s next??