Last week at EuroPython 2015 was an amazing experience. Apart from having an honor to open the conference with a keynote I gave with Ola, we celebrated Django Girls 1st Birthday.
It was awesome! 🎉✨💗
If someone would tell us a year ago what the next year will bring, we would not believe them. Django Girls grew from being a small workshop organized by two people, to great, dynamic, driven and extremely open community with more than 140 organizers all over the world, more than 110 contributors, almost 550 coaches and more than 1600 women who learned abour Django at our workshops.
Django Girls Birthday party
We would not be oursevles if we missed opportunity to celebrate our first birthday. We planned to have a picnic on Tuesday, 21st July - the exact date of the very first Django Girls workshop - but we ended up postponing it to Thursday (23rd July) because of weather.
We were surprised to see how many people joined to celebrate with us! We thought that no more than 20-25 people would come, but we end up with more than 50 wonderful people!
If you want to see how our party looked like, you can check out our Django Girls 1st Brthday Party album and see a short video, when we sang “Happy Birthday”! The weather was wonderful and we stayed in a park till 3 a.m. listening to music, eating cupcakes and playing board games.
Thank you!
We prepared for you a little summary of all of wonderful things that we heard from you this past year. Check: 🌟🌟🌟Love Django Girls 🌟🌟🌟.
Thank you for all the 💖 and ✨ we received from you in last year! You are amazing!
We would also like to thank Divio for helping our team to come to EuroPython and celebrate Django Girls Birthday! In last year Divio sponsored multiple Django Girls events and together with Lincoln Loop, Elastic and Sentry they’re our global Django Girls supporter. Thank you for believing in us!
It’s Saturday, July 25th 2015. Bilbao, Spain. I am sitting in the Bizkaia Aretoa building along with 10 Django Girls participants, coaches, and organizers, and we’re all sprinting on various Django Girls-related tasks.
Some are editing or translating the tutorial, others are improving the websites they built during the workshop. And me? I’m blogging about the amazing workshop and conference that preceded this weekend.
Planning the Workshop
Since last year’s debut Django Girls workshop at EuroPython 2014 (which I graduated from), the programme exploded all over the world, so much so that our founders Ola Sitarska and Ola Sendecka were invited back to EuroPython to deliver the opening keynote. And yes, you should watch it.
With all the new responsibilities and activities involved with Django Girls in the last year, O&O couldn’t organize a workshop at this year’s EuroPython. So I did, with the help of Petr Viktorin, fellow Red Hatter and my trusted co-organizer from Django Girls Brno.
Initially we planned for a 30 participants, but unfortunately we had to downsize and ended up with 15 participants. This was due mainly to the fact that neither Petr nor myself live in Spain, and we didn’t have enough contacts to promote the workshop locally.
Of course it all worked out at the end, though, and we had a smaller but very dynamic group of women from very diverse backgrounds and very interesting stories! And what with all the surrounding conference logistics to take care of, I’m confident that we made the right decision.
People, Places, and Things
We partnered with EuroPython who provided space, food, infrastructure and conference tickets. We also were very lucky to be able to process sponsorship funds and financial aid via the EuroPython finance workgroup (this was pre-DGF), which allowed us bring international participants to Spain.
Recruiting coaches wasn’t a problem. In fact, we didn’t recruit any! As soon as we announced the workshop, we were flooded with emails from EuroPython attendees who offered to coach for us. We had over 30 coach applicants, out of which we selected five coaches (all women!) and two meta-coaches to assist throughout the day.
Thanks to our sponsors, we were able to provide financial aid for our international participants, as well as swag, equipment, and decordations for the workshop and booth. We had the honor of being sponsored by the following organizations:
We welcomed our participants to the workshop before the EuroPython breakfast, and then ushered everyone into the Google room at the Euskalduna Conference Center for the opening keynote.
Coding commenced immediately afterwards, and as in previous workshops, most of the time we couldn’t peel the participants out of their seats. If we didn’t need to lock the room for lunch, they probably would have skipped it altogether!
In total, the workshop ran from 8:00-19:00, with net coding time of around seven hours, with breaks for lunch, coffee, and a guest presentation by one of our coaches, Yamila Moreno from PyLadies ES.
Not everyone finished their websites by the end of the day, but most managed to deploy their websites and most importantly: Experienced their first dive into Web development!
EuroPython Conference
After the workshop, we unleashed our newly-inducted Web developers who attended talks, workshops, and conference activities throughout the week. We made sure to point them to all beginner-friendly talks, and it seemed that they had a great time exploring the world of Python and meeting the community.
We also had our very own Django Girls booth alongside other open source projects, where conference attendees could ask questions about the programme and discuss possible collaborations. This was also the spot where our graduates could find us if they felt lost or needed help with conference-related questions.
Our booth was soon titled “the happiest place at EuroPython”, complete with our first roll-up, palm tree and giant doughnut.
1-Year Birthday Party
On Thursday evening we all gathered in the park near the conference venue to celebrate the programme’s first birthday. Blankets, more cupcakes, drinks, and music accompanied a relaxed and fun evening-turn-night, as we raised a toast to celebrate the hard work that was put into this project and all the friends and supporters who keep the programme running and expanding.
Django Girls Sprint
It seems that it’s almost a tradition now, to hold a post-workshop sprint. Started as a last-minute idea last year at EuroPython 2014, the Django Girls sprint allows our graduates, coaches, and organizers, to get together around the same table and work on all things Django Girls.
I never know what to expect from these sprints, because we don’t require registrations for it, and the type of tasks that are done depend a great deal on who’s in the room at the time and what they are in the mood for. Our sprinters can team up on-the-fly with other sprinters and work together, or they can work on their own. There’s something for everyone!
Specifically today, we had quite a few translators on-board, and also several graduates who teamed up with coaches to improve their website. We even had a surprise coaching session about packaging the website in a Docker container. Dockerizing Django Girls? Why not!
Conclusion
It’s been a packed week, following months of preparations, emails, tweets, designs, and lots of late-night hacking, but when I looked around the workshop room and saw the buzzing activity, the smiles and laughs, I knew it was all worth it.
Unlike most local Django Girls workshops, organizing a conference-attached workshop with a higher percentage of international participants involved a lot more logistics and financial consideration, so if I had one piece of advice for future organizers of workshops of this type it would be to recruit a local organizer.
There’s only so much we can rely on the conference organizers, and EuroPython did their absolute best to help us out as much as they could, but they had over 1,000 attendees of their own to wrangle, and I probably would have been able to sleep a bit more if I didn’t have to take care of the local arrangements remotely.
Otherwise, I’m very much in favor of partnering with Python and Django conferences, as it gives a great added value to our participants, who can utilize their new knowledge and confidence right away and meet the communities who support and encourage their presence in these events.
And now, time for siesta!
Hugs, cupcakes, and pintxos, Mikey Ariel @thatdocslady
Monday was the first day of Europython, and the first keynote was by Ola Sendecka & Ola Sitarska, the founders of Django Girls. They gave a wonderful talk leading us through their journey in creating the Django Girls tutorial, its viral-like spread in introducing over 1600 women worldwide to Python programming, leading to a Django Girls Foundation with a paid employee, and their plans to expand the tutorial to a book, Yay Python!. This was all illustrated with an incredibly charming squirrel-centred parable, hand-drawn by Sendecka. The two Olas are clearly a formidable team.
And yet. I had no less than three conversations with men later that day who told me they thought it was a great idea to encourage more women in Python, but…wasn’t it encouraging stereotypes? Was it good that Django Girls was so, well, girly?
There may be a well-meaning concern about avoiding stereotypes, but I wonder if there also wasn’t some underlying discomfort, about seeing something encouraging people in their field that didn’t speak to them. Could programming really look like this? Maybe it felt a bit like being a squirrel surrounded by badgers, in fact.
So firstly. Certainly pink can be a lazy shorthand for marketing to women. But anyone who watches the Olas’ keynote can be in no doubt that they have poured endless effort into their work. Their enthusiasm and attitude infuses every aspect of the tutorials. There’s no way it could be equated with a cynical marketing ploy.
Certainly pink things, sparkles and curly fonts have a reputation as being associated with girls. Here’s a question to blow your mind: is there anything bad about them, besides the fact that they are associated with girls?
Compulsory femininity, where girls and women are expected to act and look a certain way, is bad, yes. But femininity itself is not inherently weak, or silly, or frivolous, or bad.
Monospace white-on-black command-line aesthetic is a stylistic choice. It’s one that is relatively unmarked in our community. Glittery pastels is a different aesthetic. They are both perfectly valid ways to invite someone to be a programmer. And they will appeal to different audiences.
Most reasonable people these days would agree that demeaning or dismissing someone solely because she is female is socially unacceptable. However, demeaning or dismissing people for expressing feminine qualities is often condoned and even encouraged. Indeed, much of the sexism faced by women today targets their femininity (or assumed femininity) rather than their femaleness.
Demeaning feminine qualities is the flip side of androcentrism. Androcentrism is a society-wide pattern that celebrates masculine or male-associated traits, whatever the gender of the person with these traits. It’s part of the reason why women who succeed in male dominated fields are lauded, why those fields themselves are often overpaid. It’s how we find ourselves being the Cool Girl, who is Not Like Other Girls, an honorary guy.
It’s not a coincidence that people in our community rarely attend with a feminine presentation, for example, wearing dresses. Fitting in – looking like we belong – currently requires pants and a t-shirt. Wearing a dress is a lightning rod for double-takes, stares, condescension, being doubted, not being taken seriously.
To be explicit, this doesn’t mean that all women currently in tech are longing to femme it up. Many women are perfectly comfortable in a t-shirt and jeans. But implicitly expecting women to conform to that uniform is just as much a problem as expecting feminine attire. The problem is the lack of freedom to present and participate as our authentic selves.
Read these personal accounts and believe that this is how feminine women in tech get treated. They’re both hugely insightful.
(Then maybe read Julia Serano’s piece again and think about the connections to these two stories – seriously, these three pages are dense with concepts to absorb.)
Like Ola Sendecka, Sailor Mercury is a talented illustrator, as can be seen in her article. She ran a Kickstarter campaign to create her Bubblesort Zines (which you can now buy!). The overwhelming success of her Kickstarter (it reached its goal in 4 hours and eventually raised over US$60,000) speaks to an excitement and hunger for this style of work.
Inviting women into tech isn’t worth much if they have to leave their personality at the door to be accepted. Being supportive of diversity doesn’t mean much if you expect to look around and see things look basically the same. The existence of Django Girls does not compel all Pythonista women to femininity, but it does offer and even celebrate it as an option. If it’s not for you, so what? Take your discomfort as a starting point to figure out what you can do to make your community more welcoming for feminine people. Embrace femininity: Take a feminine person seriously today.
PS. If you’re still stuck back at “isn’t something only for girls (REVERSE) SEXIST?” - Read the FAQ.
I had a moment of panic at Chipotle, wondering if all these boxes of taco fixings were going to fit in my Honda, especially since the box of t-shirts was still in the trunk. After swiping my card to pay for the installation party dinner, the chef started making trip after trip out of the kitchen with boxes and bags of Mexican food. This is never going to work, I thought. I needn’t have worried; my backseat is surprisingly spacious, and the whole way back to Treehouse my mouth watered from the smell of roasted chicken and sofritas. When I got to the event space and walked in the door, arms laden with bags of salsa and tortillas, the room was already filling up.
They’re early! I hadn’t had time to put the butcher paper over the food tables, I realized that we totally forgot to get ice, and damn this was a lot of food to set up while I really wanted to be greeting our attendees and making them feel comfortable.
This is why coaches are awesome. Monique, Andrew, and Craig lept into action. They unloaded the rest of the boxes of rice, beans and steak from my car, set it all up, discovered the food labels Chipotle had provided (yay! no more wondering if I’d have time to label all the food for those with allergies), got the sterno lighters lit, and let me start greeting people.
The whole weekend of Django Girls Portland was like this; I’d start to panic that something wasn’t going right, or someone had a question I couldn’t answer, but other people swept in to fix it, handle it, answer it, and keep things going smoothly. In the end, Kenneth and I learned that planning a Django Girls workshop is a ton of work, but it is so worth it. We got so many hugs, thank you notes, tweets, Instagram photos, and expressions of joy and gratitude from the women who participated that weekend. One woman, who was a survivor of domestic violence and was attending the workshop to better manage the online presence of her nonprofits, said at the end of the day (and I’m paraphrasing here), “I’ve felt shut out of other workshops like this before, and I came in here expecting something similar. But I noticed every little thing you did to make us feel comfortable, to make this fun, to make this accessible to all of us.”
Our attendees said they felt empowered, capable, like they understood what they were doing, motivated, grateful, excited, and energized.
One attendee, a stylist and cancer survivor, told me that three years ago she was in the ICU and unable to walk on her own. Learning to code was something she always wanted to do so she’d be able to start a website to promote herself on a page that she controlled, not her employer. She said that Django Girls felt like her second chance.
Kenneth and I were ready to drop by the end of the day, but before we left, we were already comparing calendars to plan our second workshop. These are some of the things we want to keep in mind for Round Two:
Things That Were Awesome!
T-Shirts
Some backstory: Django Girls ran a fundraising campaign to sell t-shirts that said, “This Is What A Programmer Looks Like.” Those shirts are awesome!
Kenneth and I talked to some men about those shirts, and while they loved the message, they didn’t want to buy one because wearing it would perpetuate the stereotype that all programmers are dudes! So we chatted with the other organizers in the Django Girls Slack channel about a possible slogan that would work for everyone, and someone suggested, “I Code Like A Girl.” We loved it.
Kenneth got to work and designed the logo for our shirts (which came out amazing, as you can see) and the response to them blew us away. We even had someone in Alabama request a onesie for his daughter over Twitter! So we are definitely doing these shirts for future workshops. They worked for our men coaches just as well as our women coaches and our attendees, and one attendee even commented, “I love that the guys are wearing this shirt, too!”
Noisemakers
Our venue, Treehouse, has a tradition: When someone finishes filming a new course, everyone cheers for them when they come back to the office. Kenneth had the idea to recreate this during our installation party and workshop. We picked up a bag of noisemakers from a party store and told our attendees to make some noise when they did something cool! We heard rattles, bells, and whistles when they finished the installation, got the light blue “congratulations!” page, deployed, or just fixed a really tough bug. It made the atmosphere fun and celebratory; every time someone used their noisemaker, everyone else in the room stopped for a moment to cheer. It felt like a party all day!
No pizza
Well, very little pizza. We served pizza for our coaches’ meetup, but we wanted the workshop events to feel more special than that. So we had a taco bar from Chipotle for dinner at the installation party, and a spread of kebobs, hummus, spinach pie, and pita from a local Mediterranean restaurant for lunch the day of the workshop. These meals also had the benefit of being very friendly to dietary restrictions.
But protip about Chipotle: If you cater from them, only order for about 75% of your headcount. They send you a ton of food, and Kenneth and I will be eating leftovers for the next week.
Childcare
We offered free childcare, and we had 3 attendees take us up on it! We hired a friend of ours, a nursing student I know personally who passed a drug test and a background check to get into her program, to spend the day with an infant and two toddlers. They finger painted, sidewalk chalked, had snacks, napped, and generally hung out in the next room of our event space. Their moms were so grateful that we were able to offer it, and they also felt reassured that the childcare was on-site. Again, this is something that didn’t take up a lot of our budget, even making sure we paid our nanny market wages, but it made it possible for several of our attendees to make it to the workshop. It was totally worth doing.
Let’s do it better next time
There were a few things about the workshop that we’ll do a little differently when we do this again.
First of all, this is a workshop for women, and many women menstruate! We should have had baskets of basic feminine products in the bathrooms. One attendee needed an extra pad, and we scrambled around trying to find her one. It wouldn’t cost much out of our budget, and it would have been a thoughtful thing to do.
Second, we would have looked for a venue with its own tables and chairs. Treehouse was amazing, and we are so grateful to them for letting us use their space, but they’re still pretty small. We rented tables and chairs for this event, which meant arriving at the venue really early to wait for them, lots of manual labor to set them up and break them down, and waiting at the venue the next day when we were really tired (thanks, Kenneth!) for them to be picked up. It also ate up a significant portion of our budget. Moving around in our venue became a pretty tight squeeze, which could have presented a real problem.
Luckily, we now have relationships with other sponsors who have more space, AND Treehouse is soon moving to bigger offices, so we should be able to avoid extra rentals next time!
And finally: we forgot ice! We all had room temperature water and soda all weekend. This is not the worst thing in the world, but when we do this again, it’s something I’ll remember.
What’s next?
We had such a great time planning this event, and we learned a lot about how to make the next one even better. Next for Kenneth and I is to decide on a date for our second workshop and start planning!
In the meantime, we’re using MailChimp to keep track of people who’d like to be informed when the next workshop happens (and you can sign up here!). We’re also thinking about starting a semi-regular meetup to keep our attendees and coaches in touch with each other, and to give even more women a safe space to go through the tutorial at their own pace. There was a lot of interest from the women we talked to in having another space where they could keep learning and growing as coders. Portland has a super active PyLadies chapter, so we’re exploring ways to introduce our attendees to those women, as well.
Finally, we couldn’t have done any of this without our sponsors!
Treehouse, an online education platform that provides low-cost programming tutorials, provided us with a venue and some amazing swag
Quick Left, a company that builds web and mobile apps, hosted our coaches’ meetup
PDX Code Guild, a local developer bootcamp that teaches Python and Django, gave us financial support
Sweet Spot Diabetes, a local Python shop that helps healthcare providers get better data about their patients, gave us financial help
GitHub sent us stickers, gave our attendees a free year of the Micro plan, and helped us out financially
Travel Portland gave us some awesome Portland buttons to give away
Thanks also to all the coaches, volunteers, friends, and family members who supported Kenneth and I in putting on this event. And thanks in advance for supporting us through the next one!
Ana is a non-ninja software developer from Moldova. In 2012 she started programming in Python and lived happily ever after. She doesn’t like coffee, but enjoys plenty of tea, adores cats and good stories.
How did your story with code start?
It was a sunny winter day. I entered the university and went straight to the second floor, where we had a little shared room for IT faculty students. “It’s empty”, I whispered. I hoped there won’t be many coming later since it’s winter vacation.
I picked up “C++ primer” from the bookshelf, sat closer to the window, took off my shoes and put my feet on the radiator. I opened the book on the first chapter and started reading. First time in life I saw a step-by-step description of the mechanism of creating new programs, a motivation to design a new language, an intro to programming paradigms.
It all started making sense to me. Around that time I began putting meaning into concepts like data, algorithm, variable, function, a simple “return” statement. Even though C++ never stuck with me, that book disseminated some of the mysteries I always fought to understand. Until then I was limited to putting words into a computer screen and pushing a magic button to show me a console output. That’s how I went through high school computer classes.
My code story began with this aha moment, that gave me the necessary understanding and confidence to dig deeper.
What did you do before becoming a programmer?
I graduated from College of Constructions in Chisinau, planning to become a civil engineer and continue my studies at the university. I was pretty serious in my intentions. While writing my final thesis I decided to switch to programming. There are several rational reasons behind my decision. Mainly it was market instability and seasonal work. Work in office was resembling routine, work on the site was hard and definitely not lady-inclusive.
What do you love the most about coding?
A lot of things! The thought process of making design decisions, going through the possible solutions, anticipating future changes and adapting the best decision. It gets more interesting when you learn more and more and your vision expands to unseen dimensions. I also like to watch experienced programmers going through the process and coming up with ideas.
Needless to say I like debugging. In fact it’s a skill I acquired due to programming. I keep my spirits high by ensuring myself the solution exists, I get equipped with my favourite tools and techniques and go brave into the bug hunt.
Furthermore I like coding, because it spreads over the whole world. It’s pretty awesome that we can work in international teams, collaborate and contribute to same code bases. In fact I truly believe the world of coding is inclusive and offers equal opportunities for everybody.
Why Django?
It all starts with an idea. Every year there is this one student who wants to make FAF (acronym of the speciality I studied) more visible. Obviously I volunteered to create a brand new website for FAF to tell the whole world how awesome it is to be a part of our community. I picked up Django fast and it felt very easy for common tasks. I didn’t do any web development before that, but I knew some stuff about client-server architecture and was already fluent in Python.
Over time I tried other frameworks, but the philosophy of Django is closest to my heart. It clicked with me. Now I can confidently say that I came for the batteries, but stayed for the community.
What cool projects are you working on at the moment/planning on working on in the near future?
For the last year I have been dedicating my free time to Systers Portal - it’s an open source project, a unified platform for Systers and its sub-groups to share information and get the latest news. Maybe it doesn’t sound as cool as making your own Enigma machine or creating the next viral 2048 game, but I see the coolness in its usefulness.
What are you the most proud of?
Being busy and delivering. When I was a student, I managed to build myself a schedule that I’ve been able to follow pretty well. I spent 6 hours at work in the office every day, around 5-6 hours at university, did my homework regularly, managed to spend some time with the loved ones, meet friends, do a little bit of volunteering, occasionally go for walks.
It’s not always like that, but the main rule is to be productive and get some results out of it.
What are you curious about?
In terms of programming, I’m curious about enhancing code quality. I can easily get stuck when naming entities or making a design decision. It would be so nice to develop more formal methods for making our linters smarter in identifying good and bad names. Who knows, that might be my next pet project.
Regarding other aspects of life, I’m curious about making life better from the inside. By inside I mean our thoughts and understanding of the world. I am in search of that peace of mind.
What do you like doing in your free time? What’s your hobby?
I consider myself a savvy backpacker. Whether it’s a one-day trip in the nearby woods or a 6-months adventure in South East Asia, I’m on it!
Do you have any advice/tips for programming beginners?
Seek mentorship. A mentor will help you grow faster than you can imagine. To the very least grab a friend and say “Please explain to me all the types of loops in C, because I don’t understand them.” That’s what I did :)
After finishing her Ph.D. in Physics, Marina decided to move her career towards the Computer Science field. She discovered Python in an amazing EdX course, where you had to give PacMan some intelligence in order to escape the maze. And soon after, Marina started learning Django and did a small application as part of a research project. Then she got lucky and was hired by an amazing marketing company, where she’s been able to keep learning Django and building amazing things. Finally, Marina started a website, where she shares tips and notes about Django, Python and some other useful stuff!
How did your story with code start?
I started coding when I was doing my PhD. The common language used in the department was Fortran, so I worked mostly with it…. until I discovered Python. Unfortunately that was at the very end of my thesis, but I kept with it since then.
What did you do before becoming a programmer?
I don’t know if I consider myself a programmer. It’s true that I spend most of the time in front of a computer, yes, and I also code a lot. But my work is also about research and development, about finding new tools and tricks to help improve the inbound marketing strategy of our clients.
When I code, I’m usually in what it’s called a state of flow: I’m fully immersed in the process, and with energized focus. Of course there are bad times (like debugging), but usually I’m enjoying what I do.
Moreover, when building something new, I’m involved in the whole process: planning, executing and controlling the results. All these steps are interesting and challenging, and encourage me to be creative to find better ways to solve a given problem.
Why Django?
I discovered Django at the very end of my PhD. I was doing a Python application for another research project, and we wanted it to be online. Django was just a nice solution for that.
However, after discovering it, and knowing that I wanted to change fields, I started a project of my own with Django. It was a MOOCs database, where students would review their courses and find new ones based on shared preferences. I didn’t finish it, as I started my current job, but nevertheless, it was really fun. I learned a lot during that short period of time. Specially thanks to all the online Django community.
What cool projects are you working on at the moment/planning on working on in the near future?
There are two cool projects I’m working on right now: one personal and one professional.
The personal is the TaskBuster Django Tutorial, which explains best practices for building a more complex Django app. It also includes a Django project template, to help developers start their projects faster.
The professional is an analytics tool for inbound marketing projects. It will provide our clients a deeper understanding about their website analytics, focusing on the performance of their inbound marketing strategy.
What are you the most proud of?
My website. I always admired people that post their solutions on the web, just to help others. When I started at the marketing company, I realized I could do the same by creating a website. Since then, I’ve been writing a post on every solution I find to a given programming problem I encounter. Specially if I can’t find it already in the Internet.
What are you curious about?
Many, many things. When I had more free time, I was always doing some MOOC course about all kind of different subjects: biology, architecture, programming, artificial intelligence… I’m always eager to learn new things.
What do you like doing in your free time? What’s your hobby?
I think my hobby is writing on my website, as I spend a lot of time doing that. But I also like to hang out with my friends, play Padel, travel or just walk around Barcelona.
Do you have any advice/tips for programming beginners?
If you get stuck, Google your problem! There is an amazing community out there, that posts their problems and solutions. If your code raises an error that you don’t understand, just Google it. I’m pretty sure someone else got it, asked about it, and had a response from a member of the community. And if you can’t find the solution, but you manage to solve it, make sure you make it public :-)
Believe it or not but Django Girls is turning 1! Yay! 🎉
It wouldn’t be possible without all the awesome people who put their hearts, energy, time and inspiration to make this amazing thing happen! In other words - it wouldn’t happen without YOU!
We hope to meet you during the Django Girls 1st Birthday Party which is going to happen really soon - at EuroPython on July 21st in Bilbao, Spain. We’re aware that not all of you will be able to come to Spain but we’d still love to invite all of you to celebrate - at least remotely! :)
In order to do so here’s what you have to do (don’t worry - nothing complicated or time-consuming! ;))
get your laptop/phone camera or any other camera and take a picture of yourself making a heart out of your hands just like Lacey did here: https://flic.kr/p/vL1Bsn. This is just an example so feel free to use your imagination and get a little bit crazy with your photos! :) Once you do so, send your photo to us at kasia(at)djangogirls(dot)org or via Dropbox, Flickr or whatever suits you best :) We will use it to create a collage of the whole Django Girls community! :)
If you were involved in Django Girls in any way (no matter if you’re coming to Bilbao or not) we’re looking forward to make a big Django Girls 1st Birthday pic together!
Leslie Ray was born and raised in Logan, Utah, where she fell in love with music, then moved to Houston, Texas, where she fell in love with her husband David Ray. They had babies in Indiana and Utah and are raising them in North Carolina. She is the current organizer of PyLadies RDU, thinks her garden is magical, and continues to sing loud and play the fiddle. She holds a Doctorate of Music from Indiana University, a Masters of Music from Rice University and a Bachelors of Arts from Utah State University.
How did your story with code start?
My husband is a singer turned software engineer. We met in music school. Occasionally I would look over his shoulder to see what he was doing. My interest grew from there.
I was first exposed to coding when I worked as a program coordinator at Utah State University where I helped organize the Open Ed conference. I met some really cool programmers who became forever friends. They used Python and told me I should learn it but to be honest, it looked very foreign to me.
What did you do before becoming a programmer?
I have taught music since I was 18 and have done a lot of University teaching and performing. Most of the things on my bucket list to build pertain to music.
What do you love the most about coding?
I like that Python can solve simple, everyday problems such as merging excel files or help you conduct a raffle. I like to build out my own ideas and like music, coding offers a continuous path for learning.
Why Django?
Django is well organized and I have great resources to help me out in a pinch.
My husband discovered Django and it was his enthusiasm that got me interested. My first exposure was a bootcamp through Caktus Consulting Group. They did a fantastic job! My life is very busy with music, teaching, working and kids so it wasn’t something I could spend 100% of my time learning. I played around with online tutorials like Tango with Django, the Django doc tutorial and of course the Django Girls tutorial. However, creating a simple blog gets boring. Recently, I took a Django class at UNC taught by Caktus’ Astro Code School teacher Caleb Smith. He was wonderful, very patient and really cared about his student’s success. To keep myself going, I am teaching a Django class through PyLadies called, “Beyond the Blog.”
What cool projects are you working on at the moment/planning on working on in the near future?
Currently, I am working on a project which will help my musician friends create and share musical programs. My life is full but I hope to get this launched soon.
As organizer of PyLadies RDU, I am hoping our group can create a Django site as a community service project. We’ve had a meeting on this and I hope this is something that comes to fruition. This fall I will be helping to TA a DjangoGirls workshop organized by Caktus Consulting Group. They’ve really done a lot of good in this area promoting Django, and women in tech.
What are you the most proud of?
My kids. They are awesome and super funny too.
What are you curious about?
New ideas. I am always trying to figure out and solve the world’s problems and become fast friends with anyone who tries to do the same. With regards to programming, I really want to improve my Django skills am also curious about Pandas.
What do you like doing in your free time? What’s your hobby?
Coding, family, running, biking, pretending I’m a rock star. I make and occasionally sell homemade soap called “Singer’s Soap: A Natural Accompaniment to Clean Performances.”
Do you have any advice/tips for programming beginners?
The hardest part is learning enough to be able to ask the right questions. Once you know how to ask the right questions, you become more resourceful and don’t have to rely as much on others. Also, remember most adults don’t learn new things because they are too afraid to go through the steep learning curve. Don’t be scared. Life’s too short. Just learn the way that works for you and always surround yourself by nice people.
In a three weeks Django Girls will be one year old. We honestly can’t believe it! From a one-time workshop we grew to a global movement and the Django Girls community grew incredibly in last months.
We have some crazy plans regarding Django Girls Birthday celebrations, but what matters to us right now the most is to know what you think about Django Girls.
We’ve created a survey that everybody could answer and give us feedback on what we are doing. If Django Girls changed something in your life, if you learned something or you like the community around it - let us know. No matter if you were an attendee, organizer, contributor, volunteer, sponsor, speaker or you went through the tutorial on your own at home - we appreciate your input. It will keep us going for the next year!
If you know anyone who took part, contributed, coached or did anything related to Django Girls - make sure to send them a link to the survey.
Most of the questions are not required, so you can answer only those you are comfortable with.
We’d love to hear from you! Share your story with us!
And remember: you are awesome and your voice matters!
Iulia is a full-stack web developer and open-source enthusiast. She’s been working with Python for the last three years (and loving every minute of it), but before that she tried a series of other languages and technologies, including C/C++, C#, PHP and Java. Iulia currently work as a web developer for the Romanian company Eau de Web (http://www.eaudeweb.ro), based in Bucharest.
How did your story with code start?
I wrote my first lines of code in my 9th grade computer science class. I have vivid memories about that time because our teacher used to challenge us in interesting ways in order to arouse a passion for programming. Finding a solution, and more than that, finding the most efficient solution, was then, as it is now, very rewarding.
What did you do before becoming a programmer?
Before becoming a programmer I was studying computer science and economics at the Bucharest Academy of Economic Studies.
What do you love the most about coding?
I love the ever-changing domain of technology. I like that every new project has its own particularities and brings new challenges into the picture. I love struggling with an inexplicable bug and finding an unexpected solution during a coffee break or after a good night’s sleep.
Why Django?
In addition to all of those features that everyone loves about web frameworks (fast development, clean and elegant code, good performance), what I highly appreciate about Django is its vast and thorough documentation and its strong community. I have actually contributed to the Django project during this year’s sprint session at PyCon and I had the honor to meet some of its very passionate developers. I had the chance to overview the contributing process and it struck me as very organized. It has allowed user-reported issues to be solved quickly by contributors even though each contribution goes through a thorough review process. The feedback from the reviews only serves to improve the individual contributor’s work and in the long term this virtuous loop grows the quality of the community and the technology.
What cool projects are you working on at the moment/planning on working on in the near future?
I’m not working on a personal project right now, but I have a few ideas floating around that I hope to materialize in the near future. Most of them revolve around the concept of volunteering. I would like to build a platform that connects people who have the know-how and disposition to do volunteer work with those in need.
What are you the most proud of?
A project I am very proud of is the Python & Django course I taught at the Bucharest University last autumn. This was an extracurricular course meant to offer students an introduction to web programming using Python and our beloved framework, Django. This experience filled me with joy as I could pass my knowledge and experience to young and enthusiastic minds.
What are you curious about?
I am curious about people and places, about other cultures and mindsets.
What do you like doing in your free time? What’s your hobby?
As you could tell by my previous answer, I love traveling. I find great pleasure in wandering around the streets of a big city or exploring the slums. I also enjoy reading, running and spending time with my friends.
Do you have any advice/tips for programming beginners?
It’s ok if you don’t understand something the first time you encounter it. Don’t feel discouraged. Try reading the same piece of information from multiple sources - this way you’ll get a better understanding of the subject.
Don’t reinvent the wheel. Before starting to write code, research available options. Most of the time it’s easier to extend an existing feature, than to write your own custom one.
