 I'd like to thank you all for coming today and it's wonderful to see so many professors and distinguished guests as well. Welcome as well, headmistress, scholars, and other gentle folk. My name is Lovelin Treasure Box and it is an honor to be here with you today at Ravens Comf. While I'm not an official alumna, Raven Claw has drawn me in with welcoming arms. It is a very special community, but you already knew that. As you've seen in your scrolls, my talk is called Beyond Hogwarts, a half-blood's perspective on inclusive magical education. For generations, the world's magic has been performed by witches and wizards, carefully identified at an early age, and cloistered away in Hogwarts or Drumstang or Salem Witches Institute. There they are trained and groomed in their magical abilities, and then sent out into the world to carry on our traditions. It's been a good system, proven by time and trial to grow the magical talent we need to thrive. But several years ago, the magical world faced a threat like no other, twice. Under great losses on both sides, Voldemort was defeated. It's easy to forget that when Voldemort and his forces threatened us all, two of the three wizards and witch who let his defeat were not raised in the magical world. Those events lifted a veil and have revealed to the world the incredible magical potential of Muggleborn. But I believe even of squibs, but we can discuss that at dinner. As you also read in the scroll, I am a half-blood. My mother is a Muggle, but my father was a wizard, a part of the magical world. He even served the ministry for a few years as an aura. I, however, was raised in the magical world, complete with Muggle schooling. I was quite fortunate, and unlike Mr. Potter, was never actively denied my magical heritage. But I was never actively brought into it, either. For most of my life, I thought my magical side was just a curiosity, a fluke. I thought it couldn't possibly lead to anything more. So for years, I ignored the quiet owls wrapping on my window pane. You see, only a chosen few are summoned to Hogwarts with the tenacity of Dumbledore. My first steps into the wizarding world were a long time incoming. Finally, I opened my eyes to the wonderful magical world before me, and I dove right in. I've even been able to find some of my magical father's commentary. But you'll notice my robes are hand sewn. My spellbooks are only borrowed from Diagon Alley. And my precious wand was a gift from a magical friend and her equally magical network. This wand was given to me at the time of my greatest despair. Like Hermione Granger, I've been very lucky. But how many of our next generation's potential witches and wizards won't be as lucky? Where would we be now if half-bloods or muggle-borns like Severus Snape or Lily Evans missed their chance and never made their way through Hogwarts halls? Severus Snape is famous for a lot of things, but being a half-blood isn't one of them. Opinionated and brilliant, if sharp-tongued, Professor Snape's knowledge and training have saved countless lives. Lily Evans started her life as an ordinary muggle. While she showed some signs of magical ability, she had no real idea of her potential. Until the day she received a visitor from Hogwarts who introduced her to her true calling. Lily Evans is better known as Lily Potter, member of the Order of the Phoenix and Harry Potter's mother. Without Lily Evans, we'd probably all be speaking parcel-tongue now. There are great and terrible things just past the horizon. We will need every bit of magical talent we can find to face them. We must all look beyond Hogwarts and beyond our old ways of growing magical talent. And it's not just muggle-borns who have needs beyond Hogwarts. Once our students are in school, a few of our brightest are not finding what they need there. The Weasley twins, Fred and George, quite notoriously abandoned their educations to follow their creative sides. I say notorious because if you fly out of school setting a fire dragon on your teacher and leaving in a shower of fireworks, it's hard to be known not for dropping out. The Weasley twins put their skills and talents to good use. The products of their entrepreneurial spirits have brought great joy to the magical world. Even as they've taken a little of our productivity and a lot of our gold in return. And they are not alone. We sometimes forget that even Ollivander himself, our revered wandmaker, upon whose tools so much of our magic depends, is not known for an illustrious school career at Hogwarts. I've even heard rumors he used to race brooms. And there are so, so many more. We need to make room for all of these magical minds to build and create in their own ways as well. Even if that means extending Hogwarts-level magical training and mentorship beyond Hogwarts walls. We have a third and final challenge that is sometimes only whispered. The Ministry of Magic is finding that the spells taught at Hogwarts are in some ways insufficient. Even our brightest graduates are lacking in the latest techniques and charms. While their theoretical knowledge is superb, learning magical theory alone does not help much when faced with a real-life conflict. Learning the owls is not enough. This gap between knowledge and experience and between theory and practice was laid bare after the Battle of Hogwarts. To be blunt, the students who fought and survived Voldemort and his death eaters are simply better witches and wizards today. By having the opportunity to develop their magical skills in the real world, our most favored trio and their battling allies are better prepared for any magical venture, whether in times of peace or of war. So we are now faced with great threats and a growing body of students who were either found later in life and are too old for Hogwarts or who have needs beyond the Hogwarts curriculum. We need to look beyond Hogwarts. First, we need to take better advantage of the recent explosion in beginner magical training opportunities. Just a few years ago, a budding witch or wizard's only real opportunity to study magic was within Hogwarts walls. That time is gone. Today, high-quality, beginner-level magical training is just a swish and flick away. And yes, there is a great deal of bad magic out there as well. It is up to us to amplify and increase the reach of the beginner-level training. There have also been tremendous strides in developing Hogwarts-level magical training in smaller venues. What these small schools lack in scale individually, together they can make up in total reach. But we need more of them, and they need to go deeper. One of these magical schools regularly receives many more times the number of qualified applicants than they have capacity for. When asked why they don't expand to fill the need, one witch involved in selecting their last cohort replied that they would love to. She said they have the demand, and they have the support from magical industries. But what they lacked was enough experienced witches and wizards willing to teach them all. And that school is only one of many that are starving for more witches and wizards who want to teach. They are looking for experienced, passionate teachers and tutors for their students. They're looking for you. Finally, we need a revival of an old practice. Apprenticeships. Magical industries, both large and small, have already embarked on this path. And they're finding success. Apprenticeships are proving to be an excellent old new way to grow magical talent. But there is still a terrible imbalance between the number of future witches and wizards seeking out these apprenticeships and the much smaller numbers of those enabling them. We are poised at the brink of a new age in the wizarding world. By increasing the reach of our owls. And by supporting magical training beyond Hogwarts walls. And by expanding the reach and the depth of apprenticeship programs. We will be ready to identify, reach and train the army of witches and wizards we will need to meet the challenges ahead of us. I invite all of you to join me in this mission to reach out beyond Hogwarts for the future of our magical world. With the threats and challenges looming on the horizon, we will need every single shining star and diamond in the rough working together to defend and guide the magical world. Hang on. Both of our words gone. Let's talk about those other threats. Let's talk about power. What are the ABCs of a conference? Always be charging. We don't have to just accept that. We want devices that use less power. We want to be able to let our needs dictate which apps we run and which apps we turn off. How many times today or yesterday did you put your phone into airplane mode just to save some power so you'd make it through the day? We shouldn't have to do that. A solution to this will require the skills of electrical engineers and it will require the talents of a software engineer who's thinking about energy consumption as they code. Also, our work as developers feeds on energy just as much as the work of a farmer feeds on water. Our future selves will depend on software that is respectful of energy use and our future selves will depend on software that enables a stable and secure electrical grid. The grid, where we get all of our power, is run by software. Software that someone or a lot of someone has to write. Second on that list is privacy. There are three big buckets of people attacking our privacy today. First, we've got the nosy neighbor and that's not the privacy slide. That's the privacy slide. We've got the nosy neighbor or the creepy ex or your aunt who's lurking in your Facebook feed. And then we've got the authorities. We've got the NSA recording everything. Wave hello to the camera. NSA will see. We've got police departments who want to make you use your fingerprint to unlock your phone. And we've got HR departments who make you swear to spy on your colleagues on social media. It's not a myth. And finally, we have the free services that we actively give our information to. By now, it's an old saw that if whatever you're using is free, you're actually the product. And companies from Google to Facebook to Twitter have built empires around selling information about us. But play for pay companies are starting to follow suit. Uber and PayPal are doing their best to learn everything they can about you. Just check out some of their job listings. Our security threats come from multiple places too. First, there are the hackers and the scammers, those lovely, helpful folks who send you the emails covered with your bank's trademarks and try to fish your login information out of you. And so to fight them, we create complicated passwords and train ourselves to be wary and internet savvy. But then we discover that the layers of security we create become so difficult to penetrate that a lot of people simply don't use them. We might set our passwords to autofill on our browsers or use easy passwords. Just because we want to get to the article already. Or we become dependent upon services like LastPass. Or we link our accounts to each other. So we just have to sign in once. It's easier than remembering long strings of gibberish, but it's not the safe way to go either. By bringing in new programmers who started out in other fields and by fostering entrepreneurship in our dropouts. We not only gain more soldiers in this fight, but we gain from their experience and insights. And we can gain in smaller ways too. Artists and teachers can make great UX programmers. We won't know what we don't know until someone new comes along with a different perspective. So where does that leave us? We've got threats, both big and mundane. And we've got a tremendous potential army just itching to get in there in code. And we've got you. And each and every one of you has a skill or resource or a battle scar to share. And if you don't know where to start, look up your local Learn to Code group. Maybe one is right down the block. Or maybe not. You could look up a girl development chapter or a study group or start an intro night at your Yerza group. You can spend some time on the Code Newbies chat on Twitter or the million other Learn to Code chats that are going on. You're bound to find lots of folks who can benefit from just some bits of your experience. If you have a little or a lot more time, consider starting your own group. Eta was started about two years ago by a handful of developers, a lot like you. And looking out, I know exactly like some of you. Madison Software Academy, Project Ascend, MotherCoders, all of these were homegrown grassroot schools working to give people their start. Or you can reach out to newbies at your own company. Bree Thomas before, earlier today, and Pamela Victor's after me, both are talking about specific ways that you can help, that ways that have worked in their companies and that you can model into yours. If you don't have time for a big, huge commitment, all you need to do is take one or two of your newbies under your wing and mentor them. You could offer to pair on something and let them drive or you could host a brown bag to talk about something that you're passionate about and then encourage your fellows to join along with you and the next one. You might be surprised at both the turnout and what you can learn when people come up for their turns. And if you're in a position of influence, either by title or otherwise, consider starting an official apprenticeship program at your company. Have only 10 minutes a day? Spend some time on Exorcism IO. We're missing a huge part in the middle between what these beginner coding schools can do and what companies are looking for. And if you don't have lots of time to devote to helping raise up and grow the talent of our next generation of programmers, just a little bit of time on organizations and sites like this can help pass on the knowledge that you have and the experience that you've gained from your programming. Have more money than time? That's what crowdsourcing is for. There are countless people out there looking to bootstrap their own educations. Spending a little time on these sites or just paying attention to your Twitter feed, you will find lots of people and organizations that you can impact. And I included a cat picture, so I think that means that the talk is done. Thank you.