Your Django Story: Meet Elena Williams

This is a post in our Your Django Story series where we highlight awesome ladies who work with Django. Read more about it here.

Elena Williams is a web developer currently working in Perth, Australia. She’s a Django Software Foundation member and Django Girls Australia organizer. She’s spoken at PyCon US and PyCon Australia. She is enthusiastic about open source, teaching programming to non-programmers, kitesurfing, endurance navigation sports and making/understanding things.

How did your story with code start? What did you do before becoming a programmer?

Coding is probably a good fit for my brain. I’ve always been fascinated by technology, problem/puzzle solving and understanding how things work. Unfortunately at my teenage years I had no interest in trying to be involved with the technical community after some bad experiences with the boys, therefore I came back around to computers through an indirect path later. Initially I worked in the finance industry (stockbroking then banking), studied a business degree and had a strong interest in reporting and accounting systems. I consulted both professionally before I was 24 and specialised in implementing computerised accounting systems and making customised reporting for a little while. Yet everywhere I went I was told that I was “really good with computers, had I considered doing that”.

As part of my specialisation in accounting reporting from my very earliest days I’d been writing logic that was as sophisticated as was allowed in ms excel, and then ms access. I immediately understood databases, parsing and schemas before I would say that I touched any code or had any idea what CS was. Honestly I feel as though I was thinking in the logic necessary for code basically forever. Not to mention that I had always been really curious about how computers worked and had a real interest in knowing how they fitted together and what all the parts were, once I left home one of the first things I did was to save up for and build my own computer, this was one of my hobbies for many years.

The internet has always been a passion for me, by 2004 I was having second thoughts about the finance industry. I sat down one spare day late in the year and said to myself “I am going to make a website today” and by late that night it was done (I think I still have it somewhere). Just a static website, but a start.

From then on I dabbled and learnt tools, picked up ColdFusion, ActionScript and PHP, but I got really serious about learning to program in about 2005/6. I’d been playing a lot of computer games but over winter I injured myself on a snowboarding trip and was stuck, bored and I decided to have a go at understanding how game engines worked. Some days later I was playing a games when suddenly, something snapped in my brain, games were suddenly finished for me, all I could see now was the game engine: I stood up from my computer, closed the game for the last time and opened a text editor – I decided at that moment that if I spent as much time learning to program as I had playing games I could probably learn to program.

Since then I’ve spent as much of my time programming/making websites as I can. I’ve maintained an average of making about one website per month.

 

What do you love the most about coding?

To be honest I can’t exactly put my finger on what it is that I inspires that deeply impassioned feeling. That feeling of “flow”. Most of the time I feel daunted by how ignorant I am and how many mistakes I make!

Though occasionally, just occasionally, something “clicks” that captures my interest, or I’ll get deeply into a problem at home or at work and I feel like I’m doing gymnastics in my head – like doing many different creative and technical acts at the same time and many happy, energetic hours disappear. Some of these times I actually manage to finish something that works(!), and I feel happy, satisfied and fulfilled. I feel good about myself. I aspire to have this feeling as often as I can.

While I’m still coming to terms with the fact that it’s an infinite learning progression and I’ll probably never feel “complete” in terms of how much I know, I do it for that feeling of actually being able to solve problems and do what I want.

 

Why Django?

In around 2007 I was working at the ANU, my best friend at the time Mike left (as is the way with universities) to take up a fellowship at Stanford. He left behind both me and another of his close friends, Dave. I didn’t know Dave very well, in fact I was kind of intimidated by him, as he’s very quiet/taciturn and apparently very smart. Turns out Dave is very smart indeed as he already loved Python and Linux and over the years since he has given me some of the best advice I’ve ever been given (he also recommended I use Python and emacs). Despite being a scientist he also has an interest in web development, as part of this he had discovered this brand new “Django” thing (it was 0.95 at the time), he was curious about it and he recommended I give it a go as well. Both Dave and I tried our first django installations soon afterwards. I did my first big paid Django job later that year (which is still live and actively used by the client!).

To this day am not that interested in using any other web development tool, though still regularly try out others. The Python and Django communities are also remarkably wonderful. I really do love the Django community culture as well as the technology.

 

What cool projects are you working on at the moment/planning on working on in the near future?

We’re in the very early days of setting up some kind of Django news distribution which a bunch of Django community members many of whom don’t currently actively participate in the community, which is exciting.

I’m also involved with a push to update the djangoproject.com website, working with an amazing team! This is still in very early days also, but we have high hopes!

I’m keen as anything to continue to be involved with DjangoGirls this is the best initiative I’ve seen in a long time. I’d love to be part of the USA event.

 

What are you the most proud of?

This is very hard to say as I’m the hardest critic of anything I’ve been involved with, despite having had  privilege of working on some amazing projects over the years.

It is true for me to say that I’m probably most proud of my own personal, independent progression. That I’ve stayed true to myself and that I hold my head up publicly in the technical world. It has been a long road for me to have the confidence to be here.

 

What are you curious about?

Of all the things I’ve ever been obsessed with understanding, the interaction between people, and the cultures which groups of people establish has been the most complicated and fascinating. Leveraging this to make more (and better!) positive culture is something we are just coming to understand, especially with the use of new information technologies. It’s very interesting to me and very exciting!

 

What do you like doing in your free time? What’s your hobby?

My old answer to this used to be “computers”, but now I do computers for a living my non-computer hobbies have taken off! Gosh, I have a lot of hobbies and am always trying (and failing) to cut down!

Sports, I’ve settled on some quite difficult (endurance navigation) and quite technical (kitesurfing) sports that I’m gradually working at improving at. I also love camping and riding my bike places.

I like doing hard and technical things because they’re hard and technical and knowing how things work or are made. I find it fun and compelling to make the things in my life “from scratch” if I can, such as food and objects, though struggle with it not being a good use of my time.

I grew up in a very artistic and creative environment, My Mum had us involved with community arts projects and teaching things like ceramics from a very young age, so I can’t help but occasionally spending time working on my creative skills (though I know this is not a good use of my time either!), for example I’ve just finished intensively leatherworking for several weeks. Before that I was learning audio editing for the podcast. I’m an active member of our local hackerspace and last year I learnt how to use the 3D milling machine, and spent several hundred hours working on projects with it. This year our hackerspace got laser cutters (which I love!) and I have several ongoing laser projects.

Of course I’ve also done volunteer work forever, which nowadays often takes the form of open source projects and community building. Yesterday for example (after I packed away all my leatherworking gear), I spent some hours working on the latest version of what will hopefully be the Django news delivery mechanism that Curtis Maloney, me and some others have been trying to initiate this year that I mentioned above.

I quite enjoy public speaking and teaching people to code and have given a few talks lately, though don’t have any planned soon. It’s likely I’ll organise another event or talk or some more DjangoGirls some time soon, as although it’s time-consuming I get restless if I don’t do these things every so often.

Of course I occasionally make websites for myself and my friends in my spare time.

 

Do you have any advice/tips for programming beginners?

Don’t worry if someone knows more than you. Everybody who has ever learned has been where you are now and therefore knows how it feels (even if they’ve forgotten!).

Don’t let anyone get you down, don’t take rubbish that people say to heart. Work hard, study hard and do it for yourself.

Do your “homework”, you’ll never regret it.

Regularly make things for yourself, even if you never show them to anyone (but show them to people if you can!). Finish projects, then pack up all your workings and put it away neatly – keep things tidy for your own sake. You don’t want that stuff cluttering up space in your brain.

Oh, and have a good system to keep your things organised, and do constant maintenance. Have a good “To Do” system and have a good backup and logically organised file system.

Never ever feel ashamed.

Thanks Elena! :)

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