Hello from Amsterdam

Posted on by Roos de Bildt

Categories: blog and student posts

We are Maud and Roos, better known as Team Cheesy. Proud to be Dutch, we identify with our country’s best, and some argue even only, culinary treat. Greasy, smooth and tasty, that’s us! Also, we love to make people smile (“Say cheese!”) and joke around with a little cheesiness.

Team Cheesy

Fun Fact #1: Psst… don’t tell, but “Kaaskoppen” or “Cheese Heads” is a not so friendly nickname for Dutchies.

But what we love most is… coding! Making stuff work and work even better. Back and front. So if we could choose anything in the world, why not start by making the Rails Girls’ lives easier? That’s why we chose to work on the one and only Rails Girls Summer of Code Teams App. For noobs: that’s the web application where everybody who is involved in the SoC is working with the application process, the team, activity updates, et cetera. As a back- and front-end combo, we can add some fantastic features that will improve the experience of this summer of code and the next ones to come.

Fun Fact #2: Maud’s favourite cheese is Dutch blue cheese made out of raw milk. Brrrr.

But we weren’t always as melty as we are now. Actually, we just met on Twitter before the summer. After Maud heard about the SoC at the RailsGirls workshop in Utrecht and Roos on a JavaScript meetup in Berlin, we started looking for a teammate on Twitter. Co-organizer Lieke Boon (now our supervisor!) did the math and 1 + 1 became Team Cheesy.

Fun Fact #3: Did you know we started a campaign #thingsrailsgirlssay on Twitter? Send your own RailsGirls proverbs @team_cheesy!

And holy cheese, do we have a pro-team of coaches to support us. The top coding superheroes of our small country got together. We’ve got:

  • Thijs Cadier who’s “monitoring the crap out of Ruby apps”
  • Hans Gerwitz who’s way (!) too humble about his full-stack superpowers
  • Andre Medeiros our Screenhero who’s always there for the rescue
  • Yorick Peterse, “general geek” and simply too smart for his age (ENVY!)
  • Shannon E. Thomas our UX and front-end superGIRL
  • The Artifical, the brand-new-skippybal-rooftop-terrace-daily-snacktime-equipped palace Roos may call her office this summer

Team Cheesy

Artwork: Roos de Bildt

Even though this might become a little cheesy, we want to thank all of our coaches, our supervisor Lieke Boon, our mentor Carsten Zimmerman and the Rails Girls Summer of Code organisation for all of their time, dedication, effort and kindness. Because honestly, the happiest moment so far has been to meet everybody and realize what an amazing team of people we have who voluntarily put so much effort in our learning process. Heartwarming! <3

So everybody, keep cool and keep coding. We wish you a cheesy summer!

Fun Fact #4: [by ghost editor] Did you know Roos finished Team Cheesy's first Pull Request? Yes, you do! Hint: take a look at your team's activities page...