Oh my! I still can’t believe that this crazy wonderful summer is over! Can you? For everybody who wants to help us out and give us something: Your opinion!
To understand what happened this year, to make the next one even better, we want to know how your summer was. Honestly! (You are encouraged to not spare our feelings ;) )
Say what you always wanted to say and fill out these feedback forms. You will make us very happy and help a lot to evaluate our program. Every single feedback is super valuable to us ♥
Last week, we presented the first five of our remarkable silver sponsors. Now you can learn more about the other half. These generous guys make RGSoC possible; we think they’re pretty awesome!
“Envato is the Australian company behind an ecosystem of sites that helps millions of people earn and learn. We love summer, Rails, and supporting women in the tech community, which makes Rails Girls Summer of Code & Envato a match made in Internet heaven.” We agree, thanks Envato, you’ve helped us a lot starting step by step to make the Open Source community even better!
“innoQ is a consulting/software development firm with a focus on technology and architecture, and we maintain a very engineering-oriented company culture among our around 60 people. (…) with our involvement we want to achieve two things: Send a clear message about our attitude towards women in tech (we’re welcoming them), and do a small part in increasing the number of women who consider a career in tech in the first place.” innoQ has also been involved with numerous Rails Girls events by hosting and providing coaches. We are lucky to now also have them as sponsors!
Gnip makes the “ever/expanding universe of social media data available via a consistent and reliable architecture so the world can realize the full potential of this amazing stream of information.” Located in Boulder, Colorado, the company won the Best Place to Work award in 2012, and this summer also won over our hearts with their donation. You rock, Gnip!
At this point everyone knows Groupon, they are “a global leader in local commerce, making it easy for people around the world to search and discover great businesses at unbeatable prices.” But did you know that Groupon also have Women in Engineering and Employee Resource Groups like Women@Groupon and Pride@Groupon in order to **“foster diversity at work”, especially in the tech scene? They donated to RGSoC because it aligned with their core values, those of supporting women and increasing diversity. Groupon is “happy to support dreams coming true” and after such a successful summer, we can say that you have!
“At Shopify, we help emerging small businesses get off the ground and grow into successful companies. We do this by creating great technology and by making it accessible to people that previously wouldn’t be able to afford it.” With their silver donation, Shopify also supports women in tech and helps them grow into successful programmers!
SupaDupa is a “premium affordable boutique e-commerce platform aimed at people with an uncompromising eye for design who have one or many products to sell.” As their story goes, “almost two years ago SupaDupa was a flimsy idea with barely a leg to stand on!” Hmmm sounds like the early days of the RGSoC, and without amazing sponsors like you, we wouldn’t be here! You guys are supa!(…dupa)
Thanks sponsors, and keep supporting women in tech!
In the lead up to the Rails Girls Summer of Code, female coders around the globe were frantically refreshing the RGSoC donate page. Everyone was talking about what an amazing opportunity this summer was, how it would change so many lives, and how it had the potential to jump start the careers of women who had discovered their love of programming a little later on in life.
With each passing day, the amounts donated grew bit by bit, and uncontrollable excitement followed. Tweets from potential students, all in caps locks, circulated, as companies thrilled by the idea of having more women in the vastly male dominated tech scene gave what they could.
Without these constant and impressive donations, RGSoC wouldn’t be what is today, and for this, we have ten silver sponsors to thank. Here is the first half.
“Anynines is an upcoming PaaS written in Ruby. A hosting that grows with your apps!” But Anynines isn’t just about business. the company also “supports selected non-profit open source and charity projects with free hosting.” Non-profit open source and charity projects? The summer of code couldn’t have found a better match.
“Aupair World is the world’s leading au pair agency on the Internet. It lets au pairs and host families make contact with each other and arrange au pair placements directly and independently.” With 24 full-time employees, Aupair World not only helps families find their perfect au pair, but is now also a supporter of RGSoC and female programmers around the world. Thank you!
Rails Girls in Berlin are already well aware of DaWanda. The company has supported numerous Rails Girls workshops, and many happy new programmers have walked away with DaWanda swag following a full day of coding, as well as a newfound love for the company. For those who don’t know, “DaWanda is a marketplace where you can buy unique, customized and handmade products made by talented people, and sell your own creations.” Thanks for the continued support DaWanda!
“Engine Yard is the leading Platform as a Service (PaaS) empowering developers to plan, build, deploy and manage applications in the cloud. Engine Yard was started in early 2006 to meet a genuine need: customers were developing business-critical Rails applications, but they didn’t want to worry about application deployment, management and scaling.” Engine Yard is also committed to community, participating in meetups, user groups, conferences, and parties. As a community for women and and their supporters, we’re thrilled to have Engine Yard on board and a sponsor!
Next week, you’ll read about the remaining silver sponsors and their motivation to support RGSoC. Rock on!
They are everywhere. Just glance to the right, at the bottom or click on any other page: The wonderful, cute drawings that made my day for the last four months.
Today I want to show you, who’s behind that. Who made RGSoC look so amazing and could draw anything that we wished for. We are so happy she’s here, please meet: Rebecca Conrad!
photo: Anika Lindtner
Some weeks ago we met at the Travis CI office and - some days now it’s hard to believe - it was really warm outside. We chatted and I asked her some questions to get to know the woman with the most amazing tattoos and the one who can draw like I always dreamed of. After doing a lot of funny friday-hug-pics, we settled down on the couch and started talking.
How did you do these scribbles for RGSoC? At the computer?
I actually start by plain drawing old fashion in my sketch books. Then I scan it and work on it at the computer a bit.
So, when did you actually start drawing?
When I was a kid and I went with my class to the “Deutsches Technikmuseum”, we had to draw the machines we saw there. I was the only one who had fun doing that - that’s when I first realized, that I had a passion for drawing.
But actually half of my family is creative, my grandpa was an author and stage actor at the “Berliner Ensemble”, grandma would do poster designs and my uncle is a painter, so no surprises there ;)
Later I studied graphic design at the BTK where I also learned everything from comic to aquarell. When I started to understand the different techniques and possibilities I knew that drawing and illustrating will probably be something I want to do for the rest of my life.
Did you always draw for yourself or did you share it?
Well, I always drew for myself in my free time. A lot of the stuff dusted away in my drawers because it used to cost me (and still sometimes does) a bit of effort to share my work with others. But after 5-6 years of drawing regularly, getting feedback from other students, teachers and friends, I grew more confident and eventually created a website.
Which kind of has a weird name, right?
Yeah (laughs) - ejaculesc.com. I wanted to combine creative ejaculations (or “Künsterliche Ergüsse”) with escaping since drawing, painting, crafting is always a bit like a getaway for me. You spend hours concentrating on pen and paper, just letting the ideas pour out and forget about time and the world around (and the pizza in the oven). It´s a bit like mediation, or programming? So I just merged those 2 things together and this is how it came to the name for my website. Perhaps it´s weird, I guess, but I like weird. The downside is that I get lots of corny spam mails.
What do you like to draw best?
Usually something that doesn´t require a masterplan. Spontanious scribbles. I like those abstract telephone call sketches a lot. I really have troubles keeping any sheet of paper blank.
I also like crafting things, things you do with your hands: Pyrography, pottery and old fashion techniques like lino cut. I like to experiment a lot and always have phases I go through, so my favorites always change.
Sounds really fun! You also experiment with programming, right?
In one of my former jobs, I sat in a room with two programmers, and I got more and more curious what mysterious number thing they were talking about so I went to find out. I attended a JS course from Open Tech School and was intreagued. I wanted to start solving this mysterious world of code. Then I read about Rails Girls Berlin and from there on everything took it’s way.
Now I’m meeting up with the ruby monsters (the first study group that formed out of Rails Girls Berlin) at the Travis CI to program every week, but you can’t leave it at that. You have to do that at home too and learn regularly, repeat and repeat to feed the progress bar. It´s not always easy to stay focused and motivated. Have to admit I get lazy sometimes and level down. But I am super grateful for this study group and the experiences. Also watchig the whole railsgirl´s movement develope is exciting. I am happy to play a little part in it. :)
Did you have any goals when learning programming?
At first I did it because it was fun, to do something that had nothing to do with drawing. But I found also similarities. programming is also creative, meditative and abstract, so it’s actually not THAT far away. ;)
I have this idea of a little app and it would be great to build it on my own eventually.
What kind of app?
Just a tiny thing, some sort of trend indicator for your feelings. You would be able to push three emoticons buttons to document your every day mood.
Then have some kind of data visualization for it so you can easily see your ups and downs over the year.
Or maybe a fart app and you could record your own sounds. ;)
Are you going to continue coding?
Yes. I want to keep on learning Rails but I am also becoming very interested in really learning frontend. I used to work at a place where we had a clear seperation between designer, frontend/backend developer. But things have changed and you need to know about coding in a lot of jobs already. I think it´s about time to become seriously familiar with javascript, HTML and CSS. So lot´s to learn!
Born and raised in Berlin. Grew up at Tempelhofer Ufer 32, in the apartment german singer Rio Reiser was living a few years before with his band “Ton Steine Scherben” (OMG!). Worked 4 years as a graphic designer for toonpool.com, a website for cartoons and illustrations. Then switched to fab.com Europe to work as a production designer. Currently looking for new opportunities. \o/
1) An abbreviation used in Medieval Latin Documents 2) A developer-centric, developer-run company who MAKE PRODUCTS WORK 3) The nickname I gave my cat
Okay it was a trick question. Tilde is actually all of the above, but today let’s focus on Option
2- our wonderful sponsors of Summer of Code!
Founded in August 2011 by Leah, Tom, Carl and Yahuba, Tilde is an open-source focused
startup in San Francisco and Portland. Led by current leaders and alumni of projects like Ruby on Rails, jQuery, and Ember, Tilde is quickly building a profile as ‘the hostess with the mostess’. Just like that one friend who
seems to be able to do everything right when they throw a party – food, music, ambience
– Tilde are a multi-talented team of developers, with an impressive and varied portfolio.
They’ll build your product, deliver you a marketing strategy and train you up on the
software you need to DIY in the future.
Oh and Tilde Co-founder Leah Silber ran the first (and only) Ruby Summer of Code in 2010,
where fellow Co-Founder Yehuda Katz served as a Mentor. So they’ve got a history with
this particular initiative, and we’re big fans of the resources they’re putting back into open
source communities.
If you want a piece of their magic for yourself, learn more here and check out their first
developer product, Skylight, launched recently. You can also chat to them at the SF Ember Meetup (which they run)as well as at annual events that they work on like the Golden Gate Ruby Conference and RailsConf. By night (and when else should it be, cause they are already involved in so much amazing stuff) they worked on getting devswag running - an Open Source merchandise project you should definitely check out.
In short, Tilde ♥ open source ecosystems and we ♥ them for helping our Summer of Code
Students turn their dreams into a reality-
Thank you for your support Tilde!
