We are Team Speakerinnen, yeah!

Posted on September 21, 2014 by Team Speakerinnen

As we are both graduates from technical studies, we have first hand experience of how scarce women in technical studies and jobs are. The Rails Girls Summer of Code has given us the perfect opportunity to have some great first hand experience as developers.

We really stand behind the Rails Girls Summer of Code. We have never heard of or experienced a better way to get started as a woman developer. Often we hear from CTOs that they want to employ more women, but none have applied. Obviously, we hope to change that!

We appreciate the opportunity we were given very much. Through the Rails Girls Summer of Code, we not only have had the opportunity to get to know the exciting start-up scene of Berlin a little better, we also see the actual day to day work of a great IT company and their development teams. It is a bit like Christmas. We can ask as many questions as we want and always get amazing help from professional developers.

The support of all the different organizations and generous people have been overwhelming. We have very involved mentors, Anja and Maren, who can tell us all about the Speakerinnen platform. And Erik and Duana from Soundcloud who volunteered to do code reviews with us. Also, we have our great coaches from 6Wunderkinder, such as Chad, Duncan, Nathan, Ryan, Hans, Bruno, Aditya, Stefan, Dennis and many more. A team of at least 20 excellent developers and other supporting co-workers who know it all ;-)

Our supervisor in Sweden, Björn, who is available to us for all matters around the RGSoC. And the RGSoC organizers who are the ones that have been at our side the whole time and held up good spirit and opened up networking possibilities by e.g. handing out tickets to conferences, organizing parties and a boat trip. We are so glad they picked us and thereby allowed us to have this great experience.

As you can see, the Rails Girls get all possible support.

How did you hear about the SoC and why did you apply?

We read about the program over the internet. And were both excited from the start. Participating would give us the opportunity to take time explicitly reserved to find out what the magic about developing is all about.

What was your happiest moment?

Writing code that actually contributed to the Speakerinnen project for the first time. Since this project is enabling our fellow women to speak at all kinds of events independent of their origin and their education. The speakerinnen platform supports women and event organizers to get together and network directly and easily.

What was most challenging moment?

Figuring out what tasks would fit best for the RGSoC - ones that were not too difficult, but which are interesting enough to challenge us. In our first few weeks we jumped right in Test Driven Development. This was exciting because it was our first experience with Behaviour Driven Development and it gave us our first steps into the codebase.

If you could code anything in the world, what would it be?

The speakerinnen_liste project is quite amazing, since it enables women to stand up and talk about their interests and competences. I guess we are very lucky to be in a project like this. And we plan to contribute to it, even after our RGSoC is over.