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Ruby on Rails Workshop

Thanks to everyone who contributed and attended the workshop this October. We hope we were successful in hosting an attitude-free, newbie-safe and mama-friendly tech event encouraging women to join the Ruby on Rails community.

Women are a minority in most technical communities, but in open source communities the numbers are even smaller — by a factor of about ten or more.

Moving forward, we encourage our newly empowered programmers to meet monthly and use their skills towards open source projects in a welcoming, collaborative, mixed gendered environment.

Click here to learn more about the Open Source Code Crunch.

Corporate Sponsors:

Hashrocket

EngineYardGitHub

RailsBridge

Individual Sponsors:

Julia Ashmun

Monthly Archive for November, 2008

Dev mom takes baby to class

Published by Liana Leahy on November 21, 2008 in Uncategorized. Closed

So what do you do when you are scheduled to attend a workshop at a conference happening locally and your babysitter goes to the hospital that morning.

Unfortunately, my babysitter (a.k.a. MIL) went to the hospital (she’s fine now, thanks) a few hours before.  Not wanting to miss a class I was really looking forward to, I thought I’d try bringing Lilli and see what happened.  She’s a very easy going baby and it was worth a shot since I live only 25 minutes away.

I felt very “cosmo-mom” bringing my baby to a conference.  Of course, these events tend to be male dominated and I wasn’t sure how the guys would feel to have a pregnant lady with a baby in class.  Russ was a little taken aback when he heard “moaning” in the back of the room during his talk but then was pleasantly tickled to discover that it was just the coos of my little girl.  He should be flattered.  She was engaged in his talk for over 3 hours.  All in all, everyone was very kind.  And while I did feel a little awkward, Lilli enjoyed herself immensely.  That’s my girl!

Mass NOW Conference

Published by Liana Leahy on November 18, 2008 in Uncategorized. Closed

The Massachusetts chapter of NOW is holding a one day conference in a few weeks and the keynote speaker
will address gender equity and education featuring the Exec. Dir of the Wellesley Centers for Women, Dr. Susan McGee Bailey. 

Where: Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study,
Radcliffe Gymnasium, 10 Garden Street, Radcliffe Yard, Cambridge
(For directions and parking information please visit www.radcliffe. edu/about/visitors. aspx)

When: Saturday, December 6, 2008, 10 am -2 pm
Registration fee – $5 for members, students and educators. $10 for the general public

What Has Driven Women Out of Computer Science?

Published by apatel on November 17, 2008 in Uncategorized. Closed

The number of women in the computer science field has been surprisingly dropping. In 2001-2002 28% of undergraduate degrees for computer science went to women, it went down to 22% in 2004-2005. Many computer science departments are reporting that the percentage is now under 10%. It is argued that the rise of male oriented video games correlates to the decline in women interested in the computer science/engineering field. Justine Cassell, director of Northwestern University’s Center for Technology & Social Behavior, has written in “Beyond Barbie and Mortal Kombat: New Perspectives on Gender and Gaming,” “The girls game movement failed to dislodge the sense among both boys and girls that computers were ‘boys’ toys’ and that true girls didn’t play with computers.” Another thought Ms. Cassell suggests for the drop in interest is the notion of being labeled a “nerd” or “geek” which may be unappealing to women.

Check out the full article here.

Wooing women gamers — and game creators

Published by apatel on November 14, 2008 in Uncategorized. Closed

A few women at Sony Online Entertainment have created a group called G.I.R.L, Gamers In Real Life, which is a scholarship program to attract more young women to careers in game development. According to the Entertainment Software Association, 38 percent of gamers are female, spending an average of 7.4 hours a week playing. Yet, the number of women who are actually developing these games are very low.

“Though the number of women who play games is high, they represent just under 12 percent of the industry, according to the International Game Developers Association. By diversifying the work force, developers can create products that appeal to a wider audience.”

Read the full article here.

The contest for the scholarship was to design a video game, here is the winner.

AllTop

Published by Liana Leahy on November 14, 2008 in Uncategorized. Closed

A coworker just clued me in to an awesome news website called AllTop.com.  The idea is to “help you explore your passions by collecting stories from ‘all the top’ sites on the web”.  

The layout is extremely classy and user friendly.  And clicking on the topic of women brought me to women.alltop.com with a very interesting collection of blogs.  Check it out.

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