Hi there! As the end of the application process is just around the corner (May 2nd), we thought we might update you on the status of the crowdfunding campaign. But let us give you the tl;dr version first:
So let’s see what happened in the last 27 days. We’ve updated our progress bar, with the help of our designer Rebecca and we love it:
… and as you can see we are halfway on the road to support 20 students (10 teams) to work on a Open Source project of their choosing this summer. Help us fund those last teams!
We are detemined to help our students have an amazing experience like for example Laura had. She was a student last year:
“Last summer changed my life. I never expected this and now i’m moving to Hamburg to work as a graduate developer at ThoughtWorks. I couldn’t have done it without the Rails Girls Summer of Code and my mentors.”
Last week we received so much support and kind words from our community - we’re still blushing! The wonderful Ruby Rogues mentioned us in their podcast, and so did Scotty and John from ideveloper.co. Jen Myers (also one of our Trust Comittee members) talked about Rails Girls Summer of Code to Mike from UGTASTIC at RailsConf. We were also mentioned as the ‘web tip’ of the week on fm4 (awesome radio station you should check out nevertheless) and… guess who was featured (twice!) in The Ruby Weekly?! Spoiler alert: it’s us! Plus, we love every single support tweet from you, especially when there’s a lot of hearts in them:
Hi there! We have made some changes to the website and we thought we would let you know!
First off: There is now a Support Chat for the community where you can hop on to give us all your questions - wether it’s about applying, getting involved, sponsoring etc. See you in here:
Rails Girls Summer of Code Campfire Chat.
We also added a Code of Conduct for the project - which was admittedly much overdue. A primary goal of Rails Girls Summer of Code is to be inclusive to the all of our part-takers - participants, coaches, mentors, supervisors and everyone in the organizing team, with the most varied and diverse backgrounds possible. As such, we are committed to providing a friendly, safe and welcoming environment for all, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, ability, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and religion (or lack thereof). Our Code of Conduct outlines our expectations for all those who participate in our community and introduces our super-amazing Trust Committee composed of both core organizers and externals.
Anne Wizorek, Jen Myers, Uta Sommer, Anika Lindtner & Sven Fuchs
We added Sponsorship Guidelines to outline what we are looking for sponsors. Spoiler alert: we are looking for companies that can identify with the values of Rails Girls Summer of Code and stand behind our mission to support women in technology and furthermore getting more women into Open Source. Do check ‘em out if you’re curious!
We also had loads of mentions during local Rails Girls events and Ruby user group meetups. Laura Wadden gave a lightning talk during a Rails Girls Berlin workshop in last week, and Laura Gaetano did the same at Rails Girls Ostrava in the Czech Republic. Miss Gaetano also mentioned our ambitious project during a recent vienna.rb meetup (the Ruby user group in Vienna, Austria), as I did at the Berlin chapter. Judging from our Twitter response there are a lot of Rails Girls and user group chapters that will also host a Rails Girls Summer of Code related (lightning) talk. And the beauty is: everyone can do it! Do reach out if you feel you need any extra information, feel free to shoot us an email and we will bring you up to speed: contact@rgsoc.org.
The historical moment was April 3rd, 12:01 CET, when we tweeted about it for the first time:
First, thank you all for being amazing supporters of our mission and making our dream of more women in Open Source come true more day by day! This is really moving. Haven’t donated yet? Do eet now and join all the other wonderful people: railsgirlssummerofcode.org/campaign/! And while others can’t stop high fiving about this, running around with a big smile in their faces or buying chocolate for everyone, some couldn’t stand still anymore.
WE JUST CAN’T HIDE IT
The whole team has been so happy about this campaign! We just can’t hide it. Two of our organizers, Floor and Anika, even jumped around out of joy:
And these 7 days truly have been something to jump around about for all of us.
We funded 8 students in 7 days,
got 110 retweets of our announcement tweets,
had 2.233 website visits within 4 hours,
have 64 individual donors, (we found two Tobias’, two Patrick’s, two Jeremy’s in there),
got 17 ♥s in the comments
and have already 11 company sponsors hopping on board!
We are so happy about Travis CI joining as a lead organizing supporter through Travis Foundationand Github as a returning Platinum sponsor, supporting us from the very beginning. We also are super happy to announce SoundCloud again as one of our biggest sponsors, as well as Google Open Source. So great to see the magic happen again.
FAVORITE MOMENTS
Magic also always happens in the small moments and one of our favorite was definitely this donation comment from @eljojo:
We also love every single tweet from you and that you help us spread the word.
Another week lays before us, we look forward to having even more amazing people and companies join our great supporters and help us bring our mission forward: Getting more women into Open Source! You all started making that happen and are helping us reach our goal of supporting 20 students: railsgirlssummerofcode.org/campaign/ ♥
6wunderkinder, Envato and Springest support our Summer of Code by being Coaching Companies, a role we defined for this year’s edition as we noticed that some of last year’s most successful student teams have been supported greatly by local coaching companies. Companies like SoundCloud, who provided a place to work and a pool of coaches to help out two student teams at their Berlin office, inspired us to formalize this role.
Having the exposure to a productive work environment and ready access to coaches, greatly helps our students get the most out of their summer! And the other way around, a Coaching Company brings in talented people, excited to learn as much as they possibly can. Their fresh take on projects, and possibly unorthodox questions, are a valuable asset. Plus: you get to actively support the Open Source community.
We are excited to have 6wunderkinder (Berlin, Germany), Envato (Melbourne, Australia) and Springest (Amsterdam, The Netherlands) on board. And all three of them just sent an email to the Summer of Code team about how they wanted to support Rails Girls Summer of Code in a more ‘offline’ way.
Last year, our dear friends at SoundCloud offered coaching and space to our students and besides that it was a big success for everyone involved, they clearly had some fun (and cookies!).
Did you know that being a Coaching Company means that coaches employed by the company will have to prepare one (or many) team’s application together with the students. If you are thinking about applying to Rails Girls Summer of Code, it might just be a good idea to register at our teams app, to find a coach at either of these companies.
Chad Fowler, CTO at 6Wunderkinder:
“We are excited to do anything we possibly can for Rails Girls Summer of Code. Looking forward to this summer!”
Chad coincidentally is also a member of the organizing team behind Rails Girls Summer of Code.
Wouter de Vos, CTO at Springest NL:
“As a learning company, we love this opportunity to share our knowledge and help people find their dream. We think it is opportunities like these that build towards a more equal environment in the developer community, and we are proud to be a part of it.”
Collis Ta’eed from Envato is also super excited to offer some help to future Rails Girls students in Down Under: “We have a lovely creative office in the heart of Melbourne with plenty of desks, and we can offer some coaching support ready to go”
Do you have free space for at least a one to two-person team to work? Do have developers passionate about helping newcomers, and working on Open Source? You might just have what it takes to be a Coaching Company. Do register your company by emailing us: contact@rgsoc.org.
Rails Girls Summer of Code 2013 was a resounding success!
We had over 30 students working on Open Source projects over the summer, most
on a full-time basis, sponsored by the community and our company sponsors. A
significant amount of those students went on to present at conferences, and
meetups, as well as moved onto their own coding projects!
Preparations for this year’s instalment of RGSoC have begun, and we’re looking
for companies to support this incredible program in 2014.
This year we have three options for companies to join and support the program
as:
Sponsors,
Coaching companies and/or
financially supporting organizers
1. Sponsors
While we are going to open our fundraising campaign as soon as possible,
sponsors who sign up early will get a significant amount of exposure, and
publicity, since their logo will already be on the website when the hype goes
off on Twitter.
Sponsors are listed on the site not only according to the size of their
donation, but also their sign up date. Our sponsorship packages will remain the
same as they were in 2013, giving you the opportunity to choose your desired
package early! Take a look at the packages we are planning to offer
here.
Sponsor logos will be listed and linked via the Rails Girls Summer of Code
homepage and on the dedicated “Sponsors” page, with a blurb text that you are
free to choose.
Other perks of sponsorship include: getting your swag in goody bags which are
sent out to our student teams, your logo on students’ slides at conference
talks, mentions in our press kit and newsletters, blog posts dedicated to
sponsors, lots of tweets and of course love from the community.
Want to be one of our early-bird sponsors? Get in touch with us:
contact@rgsoc.org
2. Coaching companies
Some of last year’s most successful student teams have been supported greatly
by local coaching companies,
who have given them a place to work in their offices and a pool of coaches to
help them. We are looking to formalize this support into an option for
interested companies this year.
A great example from 2013 is
SoundCloud,
who sponsored RGSoC and provided coaching resources for two student teams at
their Berlin developer office.
Their developers were put into a coaching pool and alloted a certain amount of
time to coach the students. Students presented their work during company
meetings, and met with other staff members during lunch breaks. There were a
number of other companies who provided similar setups with great success, too.
Some companies have a policy in place that allows developers to work on Open Source,
or other beneficial projects, during business hours. If you do, ask your team
if they’d be interested in coaching a team of two students onsite.
Please keep in mind that student applications cannot be selected upfront and
being backed by a Coaching Company is not a guarantee for them to be accepted:
Student applications
will be rated based on the set criteria, and the best ranked applications will
be selected. However, you can greatly improve your team’s chances of getting a
sponsored seat by helping them prepare an outstanding application.
If you have the ability to be a “Coaching Company” we’d love to hear from you:
contact@rgsoc.org
3. Supporting organizers
A mammoth amount of work goes into organizing Rails Girls Summer of Code, and
a vast majority of it is done by volunteers. We would like to provide another
paid position for an RGSoC Orga Team Member to dedicate themselves to Summer of
Code organizational activities part- or fulltime.
A great example of financially supporting organizers is Travis CI,
who support Rails Girls Summer of Code by paying Anika Lindtner to work on the
program, through the Travis Foundation.
The sponsored organizer will have displayed a track record of reliability and
honesty, and will be vetted to ensure they will make terrific use of a paid
position.
If you are interested in this new initiative, then please get in touch:
contact@rgsoc.org
