We are Team Popcorn based in Berlin, Germany. We met through the Women Techmakers community where we were both looking for opportunities to learn programming. Though our backgrounds are different and we don’t always get each other’s jokes, we share a passion for programming. Having both gotten into tech a little later in life and collected many different experiences along the way, we knew RGSoC would be a blast together!
“You can start late, look different, be uncertain and still succeed.” - Misty Copeland
As soon as we decided to apply for the program, we had to start hunting for coaches and a project. We were particularly keen to find other women to mentor us. After looking through the Nextcloud website we found Camila’s profile. We reached out and were delighted when she invited us to a Nextcloud meetup happening that very evening.
As it turns out, this would be a fateful evening for our team because Camila didn’t come alone to the meetup. With her was a little black dog with a big personality. An adorable rescue dog, Popcorn was our mascot during the sometimes frustrating process of setting up our development environments and we had no other choice than to honour her with our team name!
Some of the best days I had in 2017 were the ones when I got to program from morning to evening. I found my way into programming quite by accident. I did an online Ruby tutorial for fun and was hooked. Next, I scoured the Meetup pages and within days of enrolling in the Women Techmaker’s JavaScript Crash Course here in Berlin, I knew I wanted to do this full time. Through every bug and even the time my code broke just minutes before I was due to present my graduation project, I have been excited by programming. I had heard it was possible for work to feel like play, but I had never actually experienced it myself. And this is why 2018 has been a monumental year for me. I am delighted to say that I am now working as a professional web developer.
Originally from the UK, I moved to Berlin, Germany in 2010 to live with my partner. Programming will be my third career, as I have already worked in the film and television industry and speciality coffee industry. In both, I started in entry-level positions and worked my way up. Each has led me to where I am now and while neither field directly involved programming, I have gained many transferable skills. Since school, programming has interested me, but until now it has just been a hobby. Last year, I quit my job as a coffee roaster to make the change into tech. I have been studying online, attending meetups and workshops and completed a few courses in web development.
I have learned a range of languages including Python, Go, JavaScript and PHP. In 2018, I hope to find my first job in tech and RGSoC is proving to be an excellent start to this journey!
Kaja & Victor
At our coaching company we have two coaches. Kaja is a Ruby on Rails developer and RGSoC alumni who also had Absolventa as her coaching company. Victor is from Spain and he joined Absolventa as a web developer earlier this year.
Markus
Markus was a RGSoC coach last year for Kaja when he also worked at Absolventa. He is now working at Nolte & Lauth as a web developer.
Lora
“Lora Vardarova is a Software Engineer at Zalando. Passionate About Front-End Development, User Experience, and Agile Software Development.” (WTMB Meetup)
Camila
“Camila is from Brazil and has worked as front-end developer, with C#, Java and even Delphi. She got into open source doing C++/Qt development in the KDE community. After moving to Germany she worked with PHP, Ruby on Rails, AngluarJS, Go and Drupal 7. She’s now a desktop client developer at Nextcloud but just might do other things than C++ sometimes.” (Nextcloud website)
We also are happy to have Jan and Jona as our mentors and Neta as our supervisor.
Project: Nextcloud
Nextcloud’s website says it best. “Nextcloud offers industry-leading on-premises file sync and online collaboration technology. Our expertise is in combining the convenience and ease of use of consumer-grade solutions like Dropbox and Google Drive with the security, privacy and control business needs.
Our self-hosted solutions ensure you know where data is, who has access, and that even meta-data does not leak.”
We chose this project because we both felt it was important to work on a larger project and familiarise ourselves with the architecture, communication style and organisation this would required. We also liked that within the project, there are separate apps which we could focus on. Additionally, we felt strongly about working on a project that has a local community, which would enable us to connect with other members in person.
Since reaching out to Camila and Jan at the start of our application process for RGSoC we have been overwhelmed by the community’s support. We were even invited to join them in Stuttgart for their hackweek!
Photo credit: Nextcloud
Roadmap for RGSoC
We will be working on the contacts app, an address book application that links to the calendar and mail apps. Currently written in Angular.js, it is being migrated to Vue.js over the course of the next three months. We will be involved in this process which is a fantastic opportunity to learn Vue and to directly experience how a migration of this scale is achieved.
After the app has been migrated, we will begin to work on enhancements and have been encouraged to come up with suggestions of our own :)
You can follow our progress here, on the updates page and also on our Twitter!
Hello everyone, we are Lori and Amalia, two amazing ex-sociologist turned programmers. We are Team BarcelonaDuo. We met at codebar and are currently organizers there.
Codebar is a non-profit organization that runs workshops for underrepresented groups in tech. The aim is to increase interest and diversity in programming.
Lori and Amalia at Thoughtworks (image by Amalia Cardenas)
Lori
I’ve been working as an EFL teacher in Spain for several years now. In fact, my first experience
with coding came from looking for a way to motivate my students. I figured I could teach them
Scratch and from there they could make interactive stories or games. What I didn’t know at the time
was that programming involves research, problem solving, and learning – a type of mental stimulation
that I hadn’t felt in years – and I was hooked.
Lori studying code (image by Amalia Cardenas)
I got a bit more serious about coding a few years latter. I moved to Barcelona, in part for an opportunity to meet other programming hobbyist. I started attending codebar and met an amazing group of people who inspired and motivated me to take my coding to a new level.
Since then, I have become one of the organizers. I am really passionate about coding, and I want to share this love with others. Through codebar, I help with the organizing and I am currently working with other coaches to improve the python track to make it more project based.
I love programming and I would like to use this summer to build my skills. After this summer I intend to transition into tech as a developer.
Amalia
I was born in Mexico, but I moved to California when I was 5 years old. I met my partner while living in San Francisco and moved to Barcelona in 2008. I am based in Barcelona but spend part of the year in California and in Greece.
While in graduate school, through my research I started to see how the criteria that decide if somebody is seen as trustworthy online are decided by a few programmers. I became concerned to realize that in the era of big data and the increasing use of algorithms to sort, calculate and make decisions for us, the concerns of people that are already marginalized offline are not taken into account because of the lack of diversity among those creating the technology. I decided that in order to help change this imbalance I myself should learn to program.
Even though I am not the next Mark Zuckerberg, I want to increase diversity in the tech space and this is why I want to become a better programmer and be part of the programming community. In my spare time, I help organize the codebar Barcelona chapter. Codebar is a non-profit initiative that runs regular programming workshops for underrepresented people in tech.
Amalia coaching at codebar (image by Amalia Cardenas)
This summer is very important for me. I know that programming takes a lot of hard work to learn, but it is something that now I can see myself doing. I know that as I get better, I will inspire others that they can get better too. I look forward to seeing where this summer will take me. :)
What we will be working on this summer
Exercism.io is a platform that helps people achieve fluency in a programming language through individual practice and mentor feedback. Students can choose over 45 different languages to master.
Lori and I will be focusing on mentors, mentor resources, and tooling for mentors. We hope to develop resources that can make the process of giving feedback smoother for mentors and increase the quality of feedback across all of the exercises available on the platform.
Hello! We are Stefanni and Camila, two junior software developers from Brazil based in Vancouver, Canada. We didn’t know each other before the RGSoC and we are more than happy to introduce our team!
I am a millennial that likes how to cook, loves coding, cats, playing sports and chocolate. I moved to Vancouver in January because my husband received a job offer to work here and we brought our two cats with us.
My history with Rails Girls began in 2015. Actually, Rails Girls is the reason I decided to start Computer Science college in 2015 ( I only did 1 year and half, now I am studying by myself). I went as a student in the Rails Girls Sao Paulo 2015 workshop and since then I wanted to join the RGSoC, but I never applied.
I was also a coach on the 2017th edition and it was an amazing experience. The other coach of my group introduced me to the CTO of a Brazilian fintech where later I did a brief software internship before moving to Vancouver. So imagine how happy I was when Ana and Vaishali surprised us announcing that we were selected, Rails Girls has been playing an important role in my tech career!
Camila
Hello everybody, my name is Camila! I’m a Brazilian living in Vancouver with my husband. After finishing our master’s degree in Computer Science last year we came to Canada with our two cats - the flight was a great adventure!
During graduation I worked with Recommender Systems, characterizing the consumption over time in recommendation domains, and in social network analysis. In my master I was interested in understanding how sociological aspects are reflected in current technologies, such as the existence of racial bias/stereotypes in search engines, and what is the role of the algorithms on the propagation of these bias/stereotypes. I’ve been working with academic research since my first year as a undergrad student. And my plan was to finish my master’s degree and then apply for a PhD. But for now I feel the need to apply my knowledge to something that is really going to be used by several people and not only in the academic environment.
I learned to code in my early years of graduation and I have a good experience with algorithms. I have good knowledge in Python, C, R… But I have almost no experience in software development, software engineering, testing, etc. So I think the Rail Girls program will be a great opportunity to be part of the Open Source community and learn a lot!
How did we meet?
Because we are both relatively new to Vancouver, it was difficult to find a teammate here. So we used the RGSoC google groups to search for teammates and there was where we met each other. We went to a coffee shop and discussed about our application and we soon got along, especially because we both have cats =).
Thanks, RGSoC organizers for providing these mediums for us to find a teammate :)
How is work going?
This week has been great! We are reading and collecting information from the Public Lab codebase and the API docs/tests. Also we focused on learning more about Git, RESTful API’s, and how to document code changes.
We also want to thank the Predictable Revenue for letting us use their space to work. Thiago, one of our coaches, works there and we asked if we could work there. The office is great and it’s located at the historical site of Vancouver, a central location in the city.
Camila, Julio, Stefanni and Thiago on our first day! picture taken by Stefanni Brasil
Meet our Amazing Team
Coaches:
Thiago Araujo and Julio Albinati. Thanks for being our coaches, we couldn’t be part of this amazing program without your help.
Mentor:
One of the reasons we applied to work on Public Lab is because it’s a very inclusive and supportive community. Jeff Warren is always helping us and we are happy to be part of it.
Supervisor:
Mayar is our RGSoC’s Buddy and we want to thank you for all your support and advices for us to have a great summer of code.
Thanks everyone for helping us and for being part of our team, you are amazing! :)
About our Summer Project
We are working as a part-time team on the Public Lab app, more specific on the API feature. We have a Planning Issue here with the Timeline and a Github Project page if you want to check out and/or give some help and tips :) We don’t have much experience working with API’s so we are really excited to learn everything that we can this summer.
So, why Brazilian housewives coding?
We are junior developers and have only been living in Vancouver for a few months. We were both beginning our career in Brazil when our husbands got a job offer to move to Vancouver so we were having a hard time finding opportunities for juniors here. We thought it would be a good name to play with our status here! :P
What do we expect for the RGSoC 2018?
Understand more about modeling an API
Become familiar with SQL queries
Be experts on Ruby on Rails
Learn more about JavaScript and Tests
Improve our documentation skills
Be just the beginning of this amazing Open Source adventure
Welcome to part 3 of our RGSoC OSS Project Spotlights (previous posts here: part 1 and part 2)! We’re excited to present another 3 awesome projects today:
Let's get RGSoC started! (image by Ana Sofia Pinho)
Rails Girls Summer of Code is about to begin! All these months of preparation, from submitting the OSS Projects, to finding the coaches and applying to the program; fundraising and selecting the teams; a “You are Accepted to RGSoC” surprise video and an extra 5 teams that we managed to welcome… We could be tired of listing all of these things, but we are over the moon — or shall we say “over the sun”, — to kick off another year of our summer of code. We hope you are as thrilled as we are!
Organize a kick off event in your location
This year, as we usually do, we would like to invite you to organize a kick off event in your location. You can organize something low key with your friends or your RGSoC team (teammate, coaches, mentors, etc.), or something open to your whole local community — it’s up to you.
The Kick Off events list is in this GitHub repository, so feel free to add an issue with all the info of your event there.
And there is going to be a live stream!
Actually, two livestreams! Next Monday, July 2nd, to celebrate the first day of the program, we will be hosting two worldwide livestreams. Everyone who is part of RGSoC 2018 is invited to join and say hi. The goal is to give us an opportunity to meet each other, beyond slack messages and GitHub comments. If you want to join, please check your inbox for the invites.
IMPORTANT NOTE: We will be filming some bits of the call, if you don’t want to be filmed, but you still want to say hi, please send us an email to contact@rgsoc.org to let us know and we’ll figure something out. :)
Happy summer of code!
P.S.: If you tweet, please tag us and/or use the #RGSoC hashtag!
![The warm welcome we recieved from our coaching company [Absolventa]](/img/blog/2018/rgsoc-2018-07-23-welcome-teampopcorn.jpg)
