Our thank_you board is finished! Did you see the new red squares on top? :) (Image: Ana Sofia Pinho)
The countdown to Rails Girls Summer of Code is over! Can you believe it!? July 1st is finally here! For the next 3 months, 40 women from 11 countries will be dedicating their summer — or winter, depending on the hemisphere they live in, — to work on Open Source projects and take their software development skills to another level. This summer is going to be one of the best summers of their lives and you know what? You made this happen!
The mystery unfolds…
As you might recall, a couple of months ago, we created our thank_you board and gave each individual donor a square with their name. We applied the same principle to each sponsor and attributed them a group of cards depending on the sponsorship package. We hope you liked this tiny and heartfelt gesture. <3 As time went by, the board transformed — or shall we say became more diverse — and along the way you might have wondered why we never added a square to the top three rows…
The RGSoC thank_you board transforming throughout the past few months. (Image: Ana Sofia Pinho)
Until now! Those red squares were saved for our RGSoC 2016 teams: students, coaches, mentors and supervisors. More than anyone else, these teams will be dedicating their time and energy to this project, sharing their knowledge and giving back to the community. So, now that we are onboarding all the teams we can finally add them to our board! Whohoo!
The teams of RGSoC 2016 on the thank_you board. (Image: Ana Sofia Pinho)
It’s time to close our fundraising campaign
As the Summer of Code begins, the fundraising campaign for RGSoC 2016 ends. And just like we did on previous years, we are now opening the fundraising campaign for 2017. This means that if you want to contribute to our program, you can still do it, but all the money we receive from now on will be used on the RGSoC 2017’s edition.
The 1st day of RGSoC 2016 all over the world
The location of the RGSoC 2016 teams all over the world. (Image: Ana Sofia Pinho)
The best part of our day 1 of Summer of Code is that it lasts more than 24 hours! Our first team to kick-off is from Melbourne (Australia) and the last ones are from San Francisco and Portland (USA). This is a 17 hour timezone difference and so far we were able to count 11 timezones! This makes RGSoC a 24-hour-non-stop-coding fun! So here they are, this year’s 20 teams, in case you missed our previous posts. Oh, and if you want to follow them on twitter we made this twitter list.
RGAU2016 (Kylie and Ramya)
Location: Melbourne, Australia Project: exercism.io
Location: Frankfurt, Germany Project: Discourse – Visual Forum Analytics
Periféricas (Emma and Geisa)
Location: Salvador, Brazil Project: Speakerinnen
MitPal (Sherri and Anitha)
Location: Atlanta, USA Project: Open Source Event Manager
B’More Stunners (Ashley and Ore)
Location: Baltimore, USA Project: Bundler
JaM (Malisa and Jeena)
Location: Portland, USA Project: Servo
Hackbrighters (Patricia and Melissa)
Location: San Francisco, USA Project: Lektor CMS
Today is the day we have been expecting for so long!
We wish everyone an amazing summer (or winter!!) and to our amazing RGSoC 2016 students, coaches, mentors, supervisors and organizers: Let’s get this Summer of Code started! It’s time to code! 🎉
Only a couple of days to go until our program kicks off in 16 different locations around the globe. We want all participants to celebrate this day with us on July 8th! In Berlin, for example, we’re planning a low-key kick-off picnic. On July 8th, we encourage you to have a little get-together in your own city with your team; have a picnic, a small party at your coaching company, celebrate with cake, coffee, a tea party or a bbq!
It doesn’t have to be a huge party, and should be an opportunity to bond with your coaches, your team mate, other local teams, and your local community. If you have a coaching company, maybe you can even ask them to cover some of the drinks/food, or to let you use the location after office hours.
If you want us to connect you to other teams or alumna in your city, let us know — we’d be more than happy to do that. You can also open an issue in our Github summer-of-code issue tracker if you want to make the event public or use that as an RSVP list.
We wish you a wonderful kick-off day on Friday and an amazing kick-off party next week — we can’t wait to see how you celebrated your first full week of RGSoC. All pictures are welcome, and we’d love to see your videos, too.
For the first installment of our “Alumna series”, we’ve spoken to Oana Sipos, who took part in RGSoC 2013; she’s currently living in Belgium but is planning to move back to her home country, Romania, very very soon. When she’s not busy coordinating Rails Girls events (she’s organised four editions in Brussels so far and has started the Cluj and Timisoara chapters), she loves playing with bits all day long!
Where do you currently work and what do you do?
I am currently working for UnifiedPost, a Belgian company developing its own products for document processing where I am a combination of a developer and a technical writer.
What does your usual day look like?
My day is a nice mix of documentation, writing tutorials for all kind of internal gems we develop and training people on the platform built in-house. It is a bridge function where knowledge transfer is critical.
How did you get interested in programming?
Ever since high school I liked the mystical side of it – it felt powerful and intriguing to know programming-related stuff. At university, I studied Telecommunications; so technical studies, but still not programming-oriented enough. So I took my heart in my hands and started learning by myself and with the community’s support.
Is a career in tech something you had planned all along? Where did you work or what did you study before?
Not sure I have planned it, totally not after finishing university; however a semester at KU Leuven brought it more on my way so I gave it a chance :) Sometimes, the best things happen when you are planning the least.
Which of your skills helped you most to be successful during RGSoC?
I was part of a volunteering team in RGSoC, as I couldn’t find another girl to pair, and (now I say) luckily that lead to organizing all those Rails Girls events. Critically thinking, it wasn’t necessary a skill, but the ambition / perseverence / stubborness to join even if I was by myself, was what made my RGSoC experience a fruitful one.
Which difficulties did you face during the program — and how did you overcome them?
Motivation was definitely the first one of them — being alone there was just too difficult to keep it up. Discussing with people around me helped a bit, but not sure that made the trick. Having a clear to-do list and speaking up when something is not clear would definitely be my allies, were I to start all over again.
How did Rails Girls Summer of Code help you get to where you are today?
A very nice part of Rails Girls Summer of Code was that they handled free tickets to conferences. This is how I got to go to ArrrrCamp in Gent, Belgium and give a talk. That was a way to spread the knowledge about RGSoC and at the same time, a call to organize Rails Girls Brussels since I could find no girl to form a team. By the end of the conference, I had a bunch of developers interested to help and coach and also I was introduced to my current company :) so, tl;dr life changing!
Who do you look up to in your field? Do you have any role models?
My friends who told me about Ruby definitely are. All the people in the Ruby community (with special thanks to Belgium Ruby User Group) who have been very helpful and encouraging also. I cannot pinpoint to a specific person, but they are definitely those closer to me, in the community.
Do you have any advice for future Rails Girls Summer of Code students and for women who wish to work in tech?
Working in tech is challenging, but not nearly as difficult as it may seem. Just give it a try, keep the ball rolling and ask for advice when you are stuck. Don’t stay stuck, there are plenty of people out there willing to give a hand. Walk before you run ;)
What is it like to work in tech?
I must start with “it is not about coding all day long”. It can be, but there are other functions which need both an understanding of technical specs and a set of soft skills. Get out of the box and for sure you will soon identify all kind of opportunities.
Is it difficult to be a woman in tech?
This is about knowledge more than it is about genders. I was the only girl in my office of 13-14 developers and hardly felt different because of being a woman. It might need a while to prove yourself, but I guess there is this starting point everywhere when you are new in a team. Just go for it and don’t let this stop you ;)
We have managed to get FOUR extra teams on board this year!
Last week we announcedseventeen RGSoC 2016 teams. Unfortunately, one of them (TeamASU) has cancelled their participation for personal reasons. As much as we feel sorry when someone can’t do the Summer of Code after being selected, we are super happy to greet new teams. Now we have twenty in total! This is truly amazing, isn’t it? Remember, all of it became possible due to your support: the money you sent us over the last few weeks opened up the possibility to sponsor 2 teams and support 2 volunteer teams. Thank you for making this happen!
And now, meet our new teams!
All of our 2016 teams (updated)! (Image: Ana Sofia Pinho)
We’ve had so many awesome applications this year, and picking only a few was incredibly tough; we really wish we could have had the money (and the resources) to have them all on board. But let’s not forget how far we’ve come this year already: Thanks to our amazing community and sponsors, we are able to fund not 11, not 12, but FOURTEEN (!!) teams for 2016 — and have an additional 3 take part as volunteer teams. Look at them all on our map:
All of our 2016 teams! (Image: Ana Sofia Pinho)
For the very first time in RGSoC history, we’ve got teams from Egypt, Singapore, the Czech Republic and Brazil — it’s so great to see teams applying from “new countries” every year, and we can only say a huge THANK YOU to you all for spreading the word among your own communities.
And now, the moment we’ve all been waiting for: it’s time to announce the teams we’ve chosen to take part in Rails Girls Summer of Code 2016! Here they are:
Sponsored Teams
KaUlah (Ula and Katarzyna)
Location: Warsaw, Poland Project: GitLab Community Edition
RubyCats (Izabela and Kinga)
Location: Warsaw, Poland Project: Rails Girls Summer of Code — The Teams App
Joda (Dayana and Johanna)
Location: Berlin, Germany Project: SoundDrop
Twitches (Taneea and Vrinda)
Location: New Delhi, India Project: OpenFarm
MitPal (Sherri and Anitha)
Location: Atlanta, USA Project: Open Source Event Manager
RGAU2016 (Kylie and Ramya)
Location: Melbourne, Australia Project: exercism.io
l1ghtsab3r (Srishti and Soumya)
Location: New Delhi, India Project: VOC
kindr3d (Elvina and Micaela)
Location: Frankfurt, Germany Project: Discourse – Visual Forum Analytics
For every team that didn’t make it: please don’t let it discourage you. As much as we love our scholarship program, there are many ways to start contributing to Open Source and our initiative is only one of many. <3 Have an amazing summer — we sure can’t wait for ours to start!
Our thank_you board is finished! Did you see the new red squares on top? :) (Image: Ana Sofia Pinho)
The RGSoC thank_you board transforming throughout the past few months. (Image: Ana Sofia Pinho)
The teams of RGSoC 2016 on the thank_you board. (Image: Ana Sofia Pinho)
The location of the RGSoC 2016 teams all over the world. (Image: Ana Sofia Pinho)
