Yesterday I hosted another event call Pair Up to code and it was another success where we had 37 participants from different skill levels (as a right now, I am offering 3 levels where level 1 is basic HTML/CSS, level 2 is basic Javascript and level 3 is advance Javascript).
Since I started with this idea, there is not more than good things that come up from it. Through this event I am achieving one of my goals of building a supportive and collaborative community of women interested on tech or who are already in tech.
In essence, with this specific event, I want to create a safe and comfortable environment where the participants can pair to code in a project or work on exercises while having the option to ask for help from TA’s (volunteers). I am super happy when I see how much progress people are making in their learning to code and how we can all help each other to fight against some of our super ego attacks or our impostor syndrome.
My idea on start hosting or helping to host events for women in San Francisco originated when last year I was trying to participate in different tech events and in the majority of the times I was one of the few females participants and/or the only one (specially the only latina). Moreover, I was also dealing with people stereotyping me and I even had to deal with people who thought I was part of the catering service instead of seen me as a participant. I hope I can avoid all of this for other women!
What did I learn on this last event?
One of the participants was trying to learn some javascript and got stuck. Through helping her, I learned to go back to the basics and to question what is that I am trying to accomplish. We ended up starting a discussion of the different approaches that we could use for that specific problem and how some of the UI Jquery plugins could make things easier.
Something to remember for the next event?
I want to encourage to the participants to sign up for level 3. I see many of them doubting themselves about their skill level and most of them say they are level 2 (maybe 3) but nobody says they are level 3 even though they are =)
