Code Ladies - A project inspired by Erynn Petersen's keynote at Drupalcon Austin 2014

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casaswing's picture

Hi all,

I have been a member of the Drupal community for almost seven years. During that time I became a developer thanks to the help and support of the Drupal community, its many developers and people that have dedicated their time and support at the meetups, camps, and various other locations.

I was at Drupalcon Austin back in June 2014 and I had the pleasure of catching the keynote of Erynn Petersen who spoke of diversity in the development workforce with a reference to the women in development and the attrition women experience in developing workforces that lead them not pursue or leave a career in development. The keynote can be seen here....

https://austin2014.drupal.org/keynote-erynn-petersen.html

I remember leaving this keynote wanting to do something about this as a way of giving back to the community. Some may ask why (considering I am a male developer that is taking up a cause to stop female attrition in the workforce), and the reason is my biggest influence in becoming the developer that I am came from a woman back when I was an intern starting out. She was a selfless, detailed-oriented person that taught me things that I use to this very day. I can honestly say if it did not come across that developer in that part of my life at that time, I would not be able to be the developer that I am and support my kids the way I do.

So I have taken my first step in giving back by creating a project I am currently calling Code Ladies. I am looking to hold events to teach women of all ages basic programming concepts, and have some developers speak to them about the aforementioned attrition. My hope is to create a support community for them and inspire them to take up a career in programming and engineering.

I am here to ask the Drupal developer community for ideas or thoughts to make this happen. I along with a few other people are working on a curriculum for the basic programming concepts events. I would love to hear from you as to what specific things can be done, what groups I should contact about this, what speakers would make a difference to inspire these developing programmers, and what could make this program really work. You can reply to this post or send me a message on my form at http://www.code-ladies.com.

Thank you Drupal NYC community!!!