All the conference sessions will be held at the amazing Deakin Edge theatre
in Federation Square Melbourne CBD.
With Rails Girls very own Linda Luikas, the amazing Rachel Myers and Sarah Mei amongst the currently confirmed speakers, we’re certain our team down-under will have a great time.
Fun fact: RubyConf Australia is hosting a Rails Girls workshop as part of their program. Follow @railsgirls_au for updates on that.
Travelling to Australia for RubyConf? Make sure you give those SpreeGirls a big hug from us!
I’m 28, living in Berlin since Oct 2011. After obtaining degrees in Psychology(MA) and Cultural Studies(BA) in Poland I’ve been working mainly in cultural management and non-profit sector in London and Berlin. While in Tactical-Tech Collective, 2013, (organization teaching online security, targeting especially human rights advocates), surrounded by researchers, developers and hackers I became familiar to some security tools, gained some more insight into the technical world, its importance and various implementations in a range of fields. There I also had my first peer-to-peer HTML and CSS classes. Nov 2013, I joined Rails Girls Berlin organizers team, finding the idea behind Rails Girls worth supporting. Also, although I still thought of myself as being far from the programming world, I wanted to get closer to it. I participated in Rails Girls workshop in Dec 2013 and with my study colleagues formed a project group the very same day. It was new and exciting. We began meeting regularly in January. I started taking online courses in HTML, CSS , Javascript, Ruby and Rails, focusing mainly on Ruby. At times I was getting puzzled in that ‘new world’, as it seemed a little overwhelming, but I received so much support and encouraged, and got inspired by Rails Girls and Ruby community members, that in March I decided to go for it fully. And here I am, learning, getting frustrated and excited daily, applying for the program, that being a part of will empower me and give me strong basis to pursue a career in software development.
I am a Computer Science student living in Berlin since 2009. Technology and programming have been my passions for a long time now. After several years of working in the pharmaceutical sector I decided to follow my heart and go back to university to study Computer Science. Although changing my career path was a very good decision, I realized that the university is not the best place to learn how to program; it provides not that many possibilities for gathering hands-on experience.
Joining the Rails Girls in 2012 has changed everything. I’ve found such a lovely, supportive community and helping hands to really get into the world of coding. Thanks to Rails Girls and the Ruby developers I met through Rails Girls I’ve found a way of learning that is fun and motivates me to go further. I was doing online courses after work and studies covering several topics. I became a Rails Girls Berlin organizer to share this passion with as many women as possible.
In January 2014 I quit my job as a personal/project manager to focus on my goal to become a developer at the end of the year.
And now, I am a proud Code_Padawan. <3
Our Passion Project: Ataru
Form IV: Ataru, also known as the Way of the Hawk-Bat, or The Aggression Form, was the fourth of the seven forms of lightsaber combat. The history of Ataru stretched back through the Old Republic, to at least as early as the Mandalorian Wars, where it was commonly employed by Jedi of that day. Ataru continued to be a common form among the Jedi in the latter stages of the Republic, and was also known to be employed by the Sith.
Wookiepedia
Ataru is a gem that can be used as a command line tool for documentation testing. You can check if the code samples in your software documentation are correct. You can also use Ataru during your CI at Travis.
You can find more infos here: https://github.com/CodePadawans/ataru
We released the first version (0.1.0) of gem Ataru on Rubygems.org
You can install and run it on your documentation.
The life of a Code_Padawan
Being a Code_Padawan means that there are rules to guide us on our path to become a Code_Jedi one day.
First of all, we have a group of really awesome coaches who are teaching us a lot of things. Most of the week we are working at Asquera , our main coaching company. One day a week we ware going to Fyber , our second coaching company.
We have a lot of amaaaaaazing people as coaches <3
Sebastian, Matthias, Kacper, Arne, Bodo, Jan
Dirk and Lucas from Cologne are our volunteer coaches
Ernesto is our drawing master
Jedi Power of the Week
During our journey we unlock some secret Jedi Super Powers every week. They are like a „quintessence“ of what we learned in this week. By remembering this word we can bring back all those amazing memories.
But they are also some principles that are needed to be a good Code_Jedi.
Here are some examples, but you can find all Jedi Powers on our blog
From our Padawans Diary
We hat a lot of amazing moments in the past weeks. It would be too much for this blogpost to tell them all. So we are just list some highlights and if you want more, read our blog
the moment when we had our first non-coach contributor on github
having this awesome logo <3
giving a keynote talk about our journey at RedFrogConf
having a lot of fun together
Writing (and deleting) a lot of code
And then the summer ends…
There are almost 2 weeks left working on Ataru.
We had (and still have) an amazing time!
And we learned a lot. About programming, about learning itself, about ourselves. We learned that programming is more than writing code. It has also a lot to do with creativity and communication with the people you are working with. Sometimes it’s important to be patient with yourself and to be not afraid to ask questions. There are no stupid questions!!!
We want to encourage everyone who is thinking about applying for Rails Girls Summer of Code or an internship or some other programming course: Do it! It will change your life. Maybe not the way you were expecting it but in a positive way.
Challenge yourself and find your passions.
…but our journey is not finished yet
The Code_Padawans will still follow the path to become Code_Jedis one day. We will continue with maintaining Ataru and learning to code.
So, if you want to help the Code_Padawans on their way, hire us. :)
Run and Validate!
(a traditional valediction of Code_Padawans following the path of Ataru)
The Rails Girls Summer of Code cohort for 2014 have almost made it to the finish line of the program.
Some who finished early, have now moved on, and some are battling through the final days to achieve their project goals.
Before the gray days (or the bright, sunny days depending on your hemisphere) of post SoC were upon us, we had to remind participants just how much we love them,
with a little care package.
To the surprise of, hopefully, all of our participants they would have received a big yellow box in the mail, filled with all sorts of delightful swag,
from our sponsors. From t-shirts, to stickers to pens, to notepads to ballons - the packages were chock full.
Unfortunately, unicorn eggs are strictly prohibited from being posted internationally, but we will work on that for next year.
Why We Like To Send Goody Bags
In and of themselves, the monetary value of the swag we send is pretty minimal. But the monetary value is not what counts.
Our goody packs are an opportunity for us to remind teams that someone is thinking of them, and sending them love from afar.
We hand packed every package so, if you happen to be a team that did not receive your swag package, please just drop us a line…. After all mistakes can happen, and sometimes they can take a while to get delivered.
It’s a chance for sponsors to make themselves present in the lives of the participants. Sure, it’s only a sticker or notepad to an outsider, but it’s intrinsic value to the person who receives it is priceless.
Getting that bright yellow (DeutschePost) box in the mail and getting to crack it open, is like being a kid on christmas morning; likely you have an idea what’s going to be inside, but it’s still fun on a bun.
The stickers recipients put on their computers, and around their houses remind them of their time in the program, and who made it possible; our sponsors, and volunteers.
So, again, why? Because it’s nice, it’s fun, and most of all everyone likes getting a present.
What makes Rails Girls Summer of Code special is the spirit behind the program.
Open Source is about community and contributing to make things better, and we try to remind participants of that every step of the way.
Thanks so much to our sponsors for sending all of the swag!
Stay tuned to the blog over the next few days as we close up the program for 2014.
We’ll be posting the last remaining Team blog posts, and thanking our sponsors for their generous contributions this year.
Yeah Mutants. We hit upon this name because we’re huge fans of X Men :-P We’re studying Information Science in our third year of engineering in Mysore, India.
Aayish: I got introduced to Ruby on Rails when I got curious and attended the local Ruby User Group in January; and I started learning Rails using online resources since then. Later on, I attended the Annual RubyConf held in Goa, and heard about RailsGirls Summer Of Code, and thought of giving it a shot. The rest is history :-P
Akshata: I attended Garden City Ruby Conf beginning of this year in January. And from then on meetups, more conferences and blog posts helped me get introduced to Open Source. I came to know of Rails Girls Summer of Code in March and thought of giving it a go. Started learning Rails
using online tutorials and applied to RGSoC! And you know the rest ;-)
##What we are working on
We are working on RailsGirls Summer of Code Teams app. Remember the teams app you used to register yourself, lodge an application and make a team after being selected? Well, we’re working on tweaking the process to make it better! First we started off with writing specs for the code to understand the code base better.
The best part was when we made our first pull request. The thrill of creating one and making the necessary changes after taking feedback from our mentor Sebastian was an experience on a whole new awesome level.
Then in month 2, we started working on a new feature that helps students make teams during the application process so that an application can be lodged as a team. Now we’re currently trying to implement the save as drafts feature for our application form.
Refactoring and integration testing next up on our to-do list!
##Awesomeness appreciated :
MAVENHIVE These folks we tell you! Amazing set of coaches we’ve got! Pavan and Monika are the best kind of coaches we could ever find and we’re so grateful to them. They’re always there to guide us. Be it right software engineering practices or some bug we just cannot seem to get the hang of, they’re there. Sebastian is our mentor and he’s been really helpful too! Tam, our supervisor! The best! She’s an inspiration to us.
The last few months in our Summer of Code have been awesome! It feels so good to have people around you who inspire you, make you feel comfortable
and are always there for you. Great job by the organisers in pulling together this really awesome program! :-)
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.
Sebastian, Matthias, Kacper, Arne, Bodo, Jan
