Meetings will be held every-other-week on Wednesday evenings starting at 6:30 pm. and will last approximately 2 hrs. RBM Technologies has graciously donated meeting space. Attendees will chip in to buy a communal dinner. Non-alcoholic drinks will be provided, but feel free to bring your own beverage of choice.

The next meeting will be held at RBM Technologies on March 16th, 6:30 pm, 215 First Street, Cambridge, MA 02142 on the first floor across from the entrance to Technique. The information desk can assist if you have problems finding the office.

RBM Technogliges is a short walk from either the Lechmere or Kendall T-stations. On street parking is tight but sometimes you will get lucky. The Cambridgeside Galleria parking lot is closeby and very affordable after 5pm.

Attendees should have read/studied and completed Chapter 1 & 2 before the next meeting.  We will start with Chapter 3. Bring your laptop, a hard copy of the book if you own one, and your enthusiasm.

The Ruby on Rails Study Group for Women is being coordinated by Liana Leahy,  liana at liana.org, and Susan McM. Tucker,  smtucker at prettycoolsolutions.com

Feel free to forward this announcement to anyone who might be interested.

I spoke to Eman about her hopes for Kolena Laila in the future.

Jillian York: What exactly prompted you to start Kolena Laila?

Eman AbdElRahman: I was talking to another blogger, Shaimaa Samir, and suddenly we found ourselves complaining about the same frustrations due to limitations applied by the society on us (as females). So I asked her, “What if the society woke up one day to find out that all females decided to speak up together.
and we decided that the first step can be in the blogosphere?” That night, we were in a virtual meeting with other 3 girls we’ve recommended.. and that was it, we put the plan and started working. Along with myself, the other founders are Mariam El Naqr, Zeinab Samir, Hagar el Tarabishy and Shaimaa Samir.

JY: You’re coming up on the fourth annual Kolena Laila day. What have you learned from the past 3 years and what do you hope to accomplish this year?

EA: I learnt that changes comes slowly.. and that the problems we suffer from now, are not just male-female struggle, but rather more of social issue that needs to be dealt with by the entire society.

I wish Kolena Laila to flourish more in the Arab world – so it can turn into linking efforts between similar organizations, campaigns, initiatives.. etc , advocating and encouraging women’s freedom of expression.

JY: How many women (and men) are involved in Kolena Laila each year?

In 2006, our main theme was speaking up! Five female bloggers from Egypt organized it, and about 70 female bloggers participated, with around 100 posts. We discussed topics from discrimination in upbringing to street harassment, and the initiative received reactions varying from sympathy and acknowledgment of problems to complete denial that such problems exist. In 2007, our main theme was Enabling Discussion, in 2008 it was to gather stories of women who don’t use the Internet. That year we grew to about 150 male and female participants, with about 350 posts published. I don’t have the statistics for 2009 yet, but instead of five organizers, we have 30+ from different countries in the region (instead of just Egypt), including Syria, Lebanon, Morocco, Tunisia, Yemen, and Libya.

JY: What has been your experience in launching a project as large as this? Have you suffered any technical setbacks (filtering, DDoS attacks, hosting issues, etc)?

EA: Challenges we faced were mainly connected to synchronizing all volunteers’ work, as we’re each in a different country…also, trying to discuss all our different ideas and try to bring them closer.

JY: Do you have any advice for women in the Arab world in terms of getting started in building an online campaign or project?

EA: Just to be optimistic, and to keep going. There are frustrations they will face while working, but that should not affect their passion and dream. Networking is one of the most important things they should pay attention to. And should always have a list of close and “trusted” people, in different fields, to turn up to when they meet obstacles for advise. Always give credit to the ones who did something.. especially if it is volunteering work. To assign tasks to others, even small ones, but to make her team feel ownership of the campaign just like her.

Thanks to Eman for sharing her story. You can visit Kolena Laila online. The site is also available in Arabic.

There is no such thing as gender equality in technology.  Women must consistently prove themselves to colleagues over and over again.  But try representing yourself as a man, and all this changes.

“Taking a man’s name opened up a new world. It helped me earn double and triple the income of my true name, with the same work and service” says James.

But your tech cred doesn’t just drop because you’re a woman.  Your race, your accent, your weight, and even your clothes all come in to play.  And forget about getting any respect while your pregnant!

It’s not shocking to think that a person would hide behind an online persona to be judged on the merits of their work alone.  Have you tried it?  Would you like to?

Read more about James’ story here.

Here’s what you can do to help.  Check out SpeakerRate.com.

Make sure the women speakers you have seen or know have a profile and rate the talk.  The presentations can and should include user group presentations etc.

If the woman in question doesn’t have a profile please email her and suggest she get one.

So cool that folks travelled to Boston from as far away as PA to attend Ruby on Rails Workshop for Women!!

…it makes a huge difference to be able to ask someone stupid ?s.

I like being able to say that I deployed my first Rails application today before lunchtime like running a half marathon.

Totally impressed with the amount of Ruby and Rails info the students absorbed.

I want to thank the teaching assistants at #rorw4w. You were never judgmental and always patient.

You know what’s a lot of fun? TAing at #rorw4w.

It was indeed entirely attitude-free, as promised – unique in my experience! I appreciated that so much, and I had a lot of fun, as well.

Read about what our teachers thought about the workshop.  Sarah Allen wrote about Stone Soup and Andy Gregorowicz wrote about the workshop from his perspective.   Or just check out the tweet stream.

Moving forward, we encourage our newly empowered programmers to meet monthly at the Open Source Code Crunch.  If you want to stay in the loop, please join the OSCC mailing list.

Open Source Code Crunch

Women are a minority in most technical communities, but in open source communities the numbers are even smaller — by a factor of about ten or more.

The Open Source Code Crunch seeks to promote mixed gender collaboration. Programmers will meet monthly and use their skills towards open source projects in a welcoming, collaborative, attitude-free, newbie-safe environment.

First meeting will be on October 21st at 6pm
The Berkman Center
23 Everett Street, Second Floor
Cambridge, MA 02138
Phone (617) 495-7547

Please join our mailing list for future events and news.

While all our sponsors were enthusiastic about contributing towards childcare costs, Julia Ashmun was our sole individual contributor earmarking her donation to waive referral fees for attendees in need of sitter services.

Our first sponsor Hashrocket has got to be one of the coolest dev shops on the planet.  If only because Desi Mcadam works there, founder of DevChix.  Thanks for all your support, Desi!

Congratulations to EngineYard who just raised 19 Million with new investors. Nice to hear good karma coming back to good people.

We also send thanks to GitHub, the most popular Git hosting site.  Brought to you by Logical Awesome.  Don’t you just love that name?

And lastly we are grateful to RailsBridge for inspiring these workshops and reaching out to individuals and groups who are underrepresented in the community.

Thanks so much!!  Can’t wait to meet everyone tomorrow!

We’re proud that we’ve been able to offer childcare to our attendees who might not have otherwise been able to attend and due to a generous donation made by Julia Ashmun, the referral fee has been waived!

The focus of the event is to encourage women to participate in open source development.  So workshop coordinators made the request that men who wish to attend find a woman to sign up who might not otherwise have considered checking out a tech event.  There was never any intention to exclude men from the event, but rather enlist their help in broadening the community.

So in response to community feedback and to be as inclusive as possible, we’re opening the event up to anyone who would like to attend — girl geeks, boy geeks, and all geeks in between.  Just sign up here. Looking forward to the day!

We are seeking to create an attitude-free, newbie-safe and mama- friendly tech event to encourage women to join the Ruby on Rails community. Men are warmly welcomed when they find a woman who wants to learn Ruby on Rails who will register and bring a guest.

Women are a minority in most technical communities, but in open source communities the numbers are even smaller — by a factor of about ten or more. Moving forward, we would like to encourage our newly empowered programmers to meet monthly and use their skills towards open source projects in a welcoming, collaborative, mixed gendered environment.

For more details, read on…

This is particularly true in male dominated fields such as technology where an employee is expected to devote significant off hours on the computer. Keeping up with industry blogs, maintaining website side projects and contributing to open source is becoming an expected norm among web developers. This makes it tough for parents of both genders to stay current, but its assumed that mothers can’t keep up.

So what do you think? Has the motherhood penalty affected your career? Are unrealistic expectations keeping women from pursing the geekier jobs in web/software development?

Girls in Tech | Boston

The Boston Chapter of Girls in Tech will be hosting a lifestyle panel discussion designed to explore the following issues:

* work/life balance
* career management
* leading a purpose-driven life

Agenda:

* 6:00 – 7:00 pm » Networking
* 7:00 – 7:45 pm » Panel Discussion
* 7:45 – 9:00 pm » Open Audience Discussion

Event Details

* Date » Tuesday, June 30, 2009
* Time » 6:00 pm – 9:00 pm
* Location » 38 Cameron Gallery, Cambridge, MA

This event is FREE. Hors d’oeuvres and refreshments will be served. Reservations are required.
More info here.