Write/Speak/Code

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Help Write/Speak/Code Find a Venue for 2016 Conference in Chicago!

Write/Speak/Code, is a (soon to be) non-profit/501(c)3 dedicated to increasing the visibility and leadership of women coders by teaching the skills to become thought leaders, conference speakers, and open source contributors.

Our major annual event is a 3 day conference with each day focused on one of our core skills: writing (thought leadership), speaking (technical conference speaking), and coding (contributing to open source software). You can check out details from the 2015 conference here.

The first two annual conferences were in New York City. Half or more of our attendees have come from out of state and we’d like to show how i(nter)national we really are.

We would like to bring the 2016 Write/Speak/Code conference to Chicago!

But we need your help finding a venue.

Holding the conference at a university during a time when students are on break has worked well for us.  We have some unconventional venue needs due to the workshop nature of the conference. That said, we are open to other options.

We would greatly appreciate any leads or introductions for venues in the Chicago area (especially free or low cost ones).  Feel free to forward this blog post along.

Thanks!

ps – We are also looking for additional organizers (women in tech who live anywhere) as well as a retreat center/place to house speakers, organizers and scholarship attendees on the cheaper side.

 

Sample email

Hello there,

A friend of mine runs Write/Speak/Code and is looking to put on a conference for women coders in Chicago in June/early summer of 2016. They have some unique venue requirements (break out rooms, childcare area, pumping/nursing room) that you can see here.

It’s a great organization and good cause (increasing the visibility and leadership of women coders!) and I was hoping you’d be able to help with their venue search.

You can email rebecca@writespeakcode.com with any questions or to get more details. Feel free to pass this request along as well.

Sincerely,
YOU

 

Get social with it!

Help @writespeakcode find a venue in #chicago for their 2016 annual conference for #womenintech! Needs here:https://github.com/WriteSpeakCode/wsc-resources/blob/master/events/wsc-venue-requirements.md

WriteSpeakCode.com is looking for a venue for their conference/workshop for 150 women coders. Chicago. June/early summer 2016. Needs here: https://github.com/WriteSpeakCode/wsc-resources/blob/master/events/wsc-venue-requirements.md

Details

Quick specs:

  • Write/Speak/Code conference for women coders
  • Chicago area
  • June or early summer 2016
  • Main room holds 150-200 people
  • 5+ break-out rooms
  • Pumping/nursing rooms + supervised play area for kids required
  • Free or low cost

More info:

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Check out NYC’s LiveStream of their August event!

On Thursday, August 27th, Write/Speak/Code NYC held their event “Developing Blog Posts Workshop for Women Devs” at Intent Media in Manhattan.

Intent Media has a great set up in there cafeteria area and was able to set up a livestream so that we had a recording of the night’s activities.

Melissa Wannish started off the evening by giving her lightning talk about Contributing to Open Source. Her slides and an additional post is available at her website at Ruby Thursday! Be sure to stop by her site and thank her for the useful information.

Luna took the stage next and presented on what she learned from reading The Healthy Programmer (you can find the book from The Pragmatic Bookshelf.) She has also graciously shared her slides on GitHub, you can download them here.

The rest of the evening was spent generating topics that we were experts at writing about. We then spent a good portion of the evening writing our first blog post and reviewing it with other women in attendance!

A reply of the night’s event can be found on LiveStream sites: please check it out!

Our next Meetup in NYC is Wednesday, September 30 at ThoughtWorks and we’ll be talking about
Learn & Teach Tech with Write/Speak/Code. Register on Meetup.com so you don’t miss out on the fun. 🙂

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Thoughts From a Lady Who Wants To Learn To Code More

There is a burning desire to grow more in technology and spread my wings. Coding is calling me but I have become overwhelmed at the different programs. By attending meetups such as Write/Speak/Code, I feel I may get reinsurance to hurl myself in and do something and feel good about where ever I start.

I come from a tech background in health technology, hardware, network support, troubleshooting and application setups/upgrades, testing. Working in the IT field has been most of my career path. Prior, I was an exercise instructor. Similarities with both of these careers is the passion to build, to fix, maintain, to revise the output with diligence.

This leads me to believe that I have to move toward coding…It is calling me. But I get doubts and think ” I am not the typical woman coder type?” I am not out of college, or in the common age group, and I am a single mom of two kids (almost tween/ older teen). However, I have a passion to expand my love of applications and configurations of front end software to working behind it to further improve the quality, the output.

As I reflect from my second Write/Speak/Code meetup, there is hope and there is a way. Networking with other women feels good and is necessary to break negative stereo thoughts that run in a female mind, dominated by their male allies. I appreciate the group’s involvement in empowering me and need to keep coming to keep the desire burning and eventually produce the desired output in the coding and programming field like I have done in other fields.

Dawn Feintuch
Application Analyst, Software Tester, Inspiring Coder