Along with Jessica Tan (MP East Coast GRC, and GM Microsoft APAC) and Marcos Pinedo (Director, Microsoft APAC), I spoke at the CJC Career Day for the IT track.  We had about 70 students in audience, although I did notice that only 1/6 were female and even less were already intent on going down the IT path when I asked (oh well, maybe they were just shy in raising their hand).  Nonetheless, I was happy to see that many of the students stayed behind even after the talk ended to ask more questions and see more demos.

I promised that I'd post a few links so here they are:

• Popfly is a great way for non-professional developers to get started creating applications/mash-ups in a visual manner: http://www.popfly.com/.  Popfly Channel9 video: http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=308515
• Visual Studio 2005 Express offers students and hobbyists a free development environment to create simple to complex applications: http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/
• XNA is a game development platform that allows you to target the PC and the XBox 360: http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/game/