# RailsGirls Summer of Code: Student application now open!

We’re extremely excited to announce that the RailsGirls Summer of Code student application is now open!

The Berlin team, especially the incredible Rails Girls Hero Sven from Travis CI  have been working unimaginably hard to bring this to you. Big ups!!

RailsGirls Summer of Code is a project that aims at lowering barriers for RailsGirls students to participate in Open Source projects. It is about encouraging, motivating and helping newcomers to learn and eventually provide valuable, significant contributions to the world of Open Source.

Following the footsteps of Google Summer of Code and Ruby Summer of Code students will be paid so they’re free to work on Open Source projects for a few months. Open Source projects set goals and name mentors. Coaches help students to get started, keep motivated and be successful.

What’s a bit different this time is that the RailsGirls Summer of Code is not about pushing sophisticated, high-end code that very few people could write. It is about lowering barriers, connecting people, motivating newcomers and raising diversity. Remember, all open source projects are not just about code, an eye for desig or other could well be needed!

Any project is elegible as long as it’s open source. Especially projects that:

• offer the chance for a student to do a significant, valuable contribution
• are simple, yet challenging enough that a beginner will be able to complete it in a time frame of three months or less.

A project can include anything that helps open source like: Bug fixing, implementing small features, documentation, design, etc. Anything that will allow a student to both apply her experience and grow with the challenge.

We invite all around the world who:

• Attended at least one Rails Girls or similar Ruby introduction workshop.
• Expanded their Ruby skills after the workshop in a study group or independently by working on a Ruby project.
• Can spend at least two and ideally three months this summer working on the project.
• Have found another student to pair up with and a coach (we can help with that).

An ideal group to apply would consist of two students (who will both be paid) and one or more coaches (who won’t be paid). No status as a student at a university is necessary, and there are certainly no degree or age limitations. This initiative is focused on bringing more women into the world of open source. Men are not excluded, however women are given priority and we hope that all understand the need for this. Let’s hope there’s no need for prioritizing in a few years time ;)

If you want to attend Rails Girls Summer of Code as a student, then head over to their homepage and read the Student Application Process page: here!

About the editor: Henrietta is a Rails Girls bigsys since a few years and so happy to see this spur from all the efforts of the Berlin team, Travisci and all the community once again supporting! She also loves: cats, robotics, living material and this planet.

Rails Girls awarded with Ruby Hero 2013 

Picture courtesy of @tenderlove 

Rails Girls was just awarded as the Ruby Hero 2013. Me, Karri & Henrietta were humbled and happy to accept the award in RailsConf on behalf of the whole movement. 

In just over a year Rails Girls went from 10 events to almost 80 cities. What started as a very small-scale and whimsical event in Helsinki in 2010 spread from Belo Horizonte to Berlin, from Gurgaon to Cologne, from Kampala to Kyoto. 

We’ve seen attendees become coaches, get jobs, found their passion. Conservative estimate is that over 5000 women have taken part in the events. Several cities have seen over 600 applications for the workshop. We’ve taken hundreds of Friday Hugs pictures and added new guides. We’ve gotten recognition far and wide, from personal blogs to EU Commissioners. Rails Girls is reaching further than ever with the Rails Girls Summer of Code program. 

All of this is possible because of the community. The biggest explosion of happiness, creativity and compassion I’ve ever seen comes from the Ruby community itself. Every city happens, because somewhere there is a team of people who want to help beginners be a part of the magical world of software. 

And in the end, we want one diverse, strong, colorful, opinionated, fuller, more flexible, more comprehensive community of software developers. Rails Girls is only one small step towards this - and hopefully one day not even needed. 

Here’s to another year of bringing more excited beginners to the Ruby community. 

Linda is the co-founder of Rails Girls. She (suspects that she) has never finished the Rails Girls Guides herself, but one day hopes to travel all the cities and meet all the teams. Have a story to share on your experience in a workshop? Shoot an e-mail at linda (a) railsgirls.com

Meet the kickin’ Krakow girls: year ago beginner, now coach!

Cześch! 

And big hugs from Krakow. We have three absolutely cool stories to tell (and more on their way ;) ) 

Three women were attending Rails Girls in Krakow in the initial workshop in 2012 just before Railsberry - this year, they are already coaching. Meet the amazing girls! 

Anna Migas, @szynszyliszys

“Rails Girls made me think more about developing.”

Anna had had some rails classes before, and at Rails Girls she held a lightning talk and got to know more people. Anna used to be intimidated by public speaking, but now she can speak to any crowd, after she overcame the fright!  The hard-working girl started Webmuses with other women and they designed more workshops… with time they have more boys but they still have the most girls, to keep it appealing especially for the females.

Now she is a designer and front-end dev at @lunar_logic - “I remembered the company after eating their sponsored cupcakes at the workshop, and then applied for a job. Before, I hadn’t really decided what to do in life and now I have a great place to work - there’s a lot of fun in the team.”

Anna’s dream is to sometime work less and the rest of the time be there for other people, or / and work from Bali as a developer and meditate. WOW! 

Wiktoria @chwilalada was a student at human-computer interaction, in which she received her BA last year. She then last March got involved in webmuses, and Rails Girls was the first event webmuses promoted. “Inspiring, inspiring people like from a different planet because they were so nice to me” is what she said of her first RG workshop. 

Wiktoria said that despite having previous experience in programming, the atmosphere, lightning talks and fun at RG KRK ‘12 were the big inspiration for her. 

“Linda said that programming is like learning a foreign language. I’ve always loved foreign languages so just thought of it as a easy thing, and not as something creepy.”

This year, in RG KRK ‘13, she was a full coach - teaching and inspiring others. She now coaches also children, and is active in Webmuses! Her dream is to change the world. 

Her advice to beginners: “Stay open, work hard and meet people!! “

Julia Jacobs @jul_jacobs 

Julia had some friends programming, and she thought it seemed cool - but she did not know how to start. At first she started studying philosophy, and later on changed to electronic information processing. Around the time of she got more interested in programming, Rails Girls happened and she joined as a slightly more advanced beginner. After attending Rails Girls, she managed to get an internship at Applicake (now base). 

What was the hard part in now being a coach instead of an attendee? 
“It was hard to coach at first, and hard to remeber how it was at first to not know all the things. When my group started understanding my explanations,  it was such a great feeling of satisfaction!”

Right now Julia is working more in front-end, but she is drawn by the back-end.. she keeps constantly learning. “I still think of myself as a beginner!!”

Julia’s advice: there are a lot of online courses, which give you a lot more than learning on your own, use them! It feels more like group studying, with feedback loops.. “I’m not a self learner, so this helped me jump start.”

Julia adds: “Also, don’t be afraid! Once you get past the initial fear you will be fine. The IT community is so great, it’s worth it all just to be a part of the community and to be connected to these great people!”

“It’s a great opportunity to see some options you might of not thought before. :) “

Thank you @basiamadej  for the amazing workshop and for setting an example to all! You rock as a coach, developer, organizer, friend and anything in the world you decide to do! :) 

The very first #RailsGirlsLima

This article originally appeared in Stephanie Frias’s personal blog.

Team Awesome

Team Aaasu

Team PHP

Team Frutas

We had a nice intervention from very strictly judges to select winning team, which was Aaasu Team :)

#RailsGirlsLima Judges @grubhart @quiroz_gustavo

To close the day, each coach and organizer presented a “lighting talk”

• Karen gave some tips on How to go next on Rails/Ruby learning.
• Pamela talked about GitHub and how it help us to work collaboratively.
• Francesco invited us to collaborate on Open Source projects and pick one out of Ruby Perú repository.
• Florent gave us an introduction on Heroku and steps needed to publish our app.
• Pablo talked about how to overcome a bug and all the patience it needs :D
• Me , I invited attendees to join Tech Communities, telling them how helpful and fun it is!

Thanks @karen_dax @pamcdm =) more Rails Girls Lima ahead

Photos! thanks to  Jhoon Saravia
More Photos! thanks to  Freddy Cahuas
Resources

Rails Girls: After The Event, How To Continue With Programming

This article originally appeared in Daniel Puglisi’s personal blog. 

First of all, thank you all for joining us at the Rails Girls Event in Basel. It was so much fun and I want to thank you all for being super motivated. You are awesome!

So unfortunately (!) the event is already over and I am writing this blog post to help you find the best way to keep going with learning on how to program!

There are 4 steps which I’ve came up with and I encourage you to really take them to your heart and do them.

Originally this talk was planned for the end of the event but you girls were so focused on coding that we just didn’t want to interrupt you. :)

So here it goes:

1. Keep on Coding

Mastering a craft requires constant repeating and perseverance. This also applies to programming. I encourage you to repeat the Rails Girls tutorial which we did at the event and try to play around with it some more.

After that here are some free and paid resources which will help you to take things to the next level:

Courses

• Rails for Zombies - A Rails Screencast which was created by Codeschool. Its free and Codeschool provides also a series of paid Ruby and Rails courses which are awesome. You should really try them!
• Codecademy - The world isn’t just created with rubiez. There are also plenty of other languages like HTML/CSS, JavaScript, Python and so on. Try them out.

Books

• Rails Tutorial - A awesome book which has a free HTML version and a paid print version. The book provides you with a lot of great material which we couldn’t cover at the Rails Girls workshop.

Screencasts & Videos

• Railscasts - Short and simple screencasts about Rails by Ryan Bates.
• Confreaks - Talks from conferences all over the world.
• Peepcode - Paid Screencasts by Corey Haines and Aaron Patterson.
• Richard Schneems Screencast

MOAR

• Thoughtbot Trail-Map - Guides to different topics.

If you have any other good resources, hit me so I can put them into the list.

2. Build something real

Build something real means you should try to create something which is actually needed in the end. The hardest part will be to find a real project. If you have no idea, try to think of something that really upsets you. Do you have to use something in your daily life that pisses you off? Write an application for it and try to solve that pain. This way you will be more motivated than by just following tutorials.

And don’t forget to show your application to your friends and the world. Ask for feedback and keep on learning.

If you still have trouble finding something you can work on I have an idea for you: railsgirls.ch.

We could use a new Rails Girls Switzerland website and if you are interested you could fork ourrepository and build something better and new! :)

3. Get in touch

Its always easier when you have someone you can ask. With this in mind, go out and find someone who you can talk to. Now is the best time for it, because you just got to know a lot of like minded people which have more or less the same level as you. There are a lot of ways to communicate nowadays, e.g. host a local meetup group, use Google Talk, create Facebook Groups or write a good ol’ letter :)

From my experience, knowing some people who have the same interests as you is one of the most important parts. Try to convince people, that programming is fun. If you have a brother or a sister, show them what you’ve learned. Or show it to your parents, children or friends. Just try to build a circle of people with the same interest in programming and technology.

Also try to find something like a mentor. Programming can be really intimidating sometimes, so it can help to know someone which has more experience and can help you with your problems. For example: ask someone of the Coaches who attended at the Event. You find a complete list of them here on Twitter.

If you don’t have the time to host your own meetup group, thats ok. There are already a few groups which you can join:

• Ruvetia - Ruvetia is a meetup (or drinkup) where we will come together every now and then and just socialize. This meetup is not about content, its about getting to know the people in the community. Every meetup is in a different city so check out the Ruvetia website from time to time where the next meetup will take place.
• Railshöck - A Rails meetup in Zurich
• Geneva Ruby Brigade - Ruby group based in Geneva

This list is incomplete, so if you know another meetup, contact me and I will add it to the list.

One of the girls at the event (thanks Helena!) had the great idea that we could put up a list with all the attendees, coaches and organizers.

Update: I created the list and its on Github, check it out here.

4. Have fun

Last but not least, have fun. If you don’t enjoy programming it is probably not the right thing for you. But thats the same story for every profession or hobby. Not only for technology related topics. But if you just read this I think you are perfectly made for programming, otherwise you wouldn’t be here in the first place ;)

So, if you liked the workshop and the event - you’re in the right spot.

If you have any further questions, don’t hesitate to ask. You can do this via Twitter or via Mail. The Codegestalt Team will be happy to try to help you and answer your questions. Just drop us a line oncontact@codegestalt.com.

I also want to send out a big hug to Rodrigo and Magdalena and all the coaches and assistants. You guys rock and without you, the event would not have been the same! <3

Thats it, keep on coding and let’s build the future!

First Italian Rails Girls event held in Rome

What an amazing weekend we had!

The last days had been hard to get through despite meticulous preparation, yet the event turned out a success. Organizers and coaches were overcome by the energy and sheer enthusiasm of girls of all ages and from all experiences that had chosen to delve into programming during the weekend.

Everything went smoothly thanks to our sponsors Mikamai, GitHub, SETIT, Plivo and Wooga, and the patronage of the Agency for Digital Italy.

Out of 60 highly motivated applicants we ha to select 30 attendees with different backgrounds and experiences, including a few high-school students that had attended last year’s NERD (Non È Roba da Donne / Not For Women), a series of ICT seminars held by the University of Rome.

The simple Wufoo registration form was very helpful to know prospective attendees better but one particular information turned crucial. As half of the girls owned Windows notebooks, coaches feared that software installation could be very critical and would require a lot of time. The idea then was to pack all software into an Ubuntu virtual machine on top of Virtual Box. This way, installation required a few minutes per machine and all participants shared a perfectly identical environment on OSX, Windows and Linux.

After the install fest and coach dinner on Friday night, we started out on Saturday morning with a breakfast provided by our partner The Hub Roma. Sharing good food was the key to better relations, so we immediately started the programme with guest Cathy Nangini, Helsinki Rails Girl of 2010, who talked to the girls about her experience and the meaning of the event in perfect Italian.

Simona Forti of sponsor Girl Geek Dinners Rome welcoming the participants.

Marcello Barnaba starting the dances with his “Welcome, Developers!” talk.

The real workshop begins.

Lunch time is more than welcome, not only to get to know each other better. Please note the exclusive “Rails Girls Rome” red tote bag.

A second technical talk by coach Fabrizio Regini focusing on how to design web apps.

During the day we had more technical and motivational talks by Mattia Quilici of SETIT and Stefano Guglielmetti of Mikamai, our local sponsors, and by Alessandro Ligi, CIO of MoodMe.

The hands-on session goes on.

We also had a short video call with Linda Liukas from New York and Gaia Costantino (Girls in Tech Italy) from Milan!

We all learned a lot. Repeating the event here in Rome is only a matter of time, and moving to Milan is already in the workings.

You may have a look at our repositories where you will find the applications, presentations and  the ’dotfiles’ repository with the core of the customization of @vjt’s virtual machine. The apps are also live on Heroku (Certifier, Messenger, Bookmarx, Playlist).

Finally, some thoughts from coach @fregini.

Teaching is the best way to test your own skills. While explaining stuff to the girls I found myself struggling to find the words to communicate a concept in a clean and straightforward way. It’s an exercise developers are not used to, which is a shame because we usually develop such a great amount of knowledge during the years…

I loved to hear the girls’ questions, pretty interesting ones even though their knowledge of the subject was quite low in general. It was a very tough day, but none of them was willing to lose a single word of mine till the end. I’m sure many of them will go ahead trying to make things with the inputs we gave them.

I hope they’ll keep in touch with us, I really long to hear more questions, to craft out my answers until I can see that ah-ah moment in their eyes again.

Helsinki Girls Get Coding In A Post- Women’s Day Frenzy

Rails Girls Helsinki ran its 5th edition of the workshop on March 8-9 at Startup Sauna. Our group of 55 participants and some 15 coaches and organizers kicked off the weekend in a festive mood with some International Women’s Day sparkling.

On Saturday morning we gathered over a nice breakfast spread, courtesy of the cool folks at Futurice. Shortly the day got started with lightning talks by Joni Kanerva from Devlab and Emilia Mattila from Eficode, Satoko Hinomizu from Futurice.

After that is was coding as usual. We were lucky to have a mix of new and old coaches - some have been coaching in Helsinki since the very first Rails Girls!

Here’s Markku Roto, aka Zorcam running a TryRuby.org warmup like the seasoned RG coach he is!

“Who here is a Rails Girl?! Show of hands everybody!”

In the afternoon, Lauri Hynynen presented some handy tools for building websites.

• With Backlift, you can get your newly created website live right away and start sharing it with friends. The files are put on your Dropbox and the site is automatically updated as you make changes, so you don’t have to worry about git, Heroku or other advanced tools.
• Another nifty trick is using Google Chrome’s “Inspect Element”, to better understand structure of HTML. To try it out, just right click on any website and choose “Inspect element”.

Ladies, a challenge for your followup exercise: use these tools to learn HTML and build your own portfolio site!

Lauri also made a starting template for to be used with Backlift, check it out from here.

Once again, it was a splendid day. Thanks to our sponsors Eficode, Futurice, Devlab, Teknologiateollisuus and the Ministry of Transport and Communications as well as all coaches, speakers and participants who showed up!

Note also that we have a follow-up event on March 26th - come one, come all, it’ll be a great chance to share our post-workshop thoughts and feelings!

• More photos from the event here
  
• Read about the event in Finnish
  

Photos: Yu Shen

Power to create - from a Rails Girls Bath participant

So much of our time is spent exploring the the internet and the digital world, liking, commenting, reposting, etc. Although I use the internet in a fairly productive way, for the most part, having a taste of coding today has made me eager to really begin using my ‘digital time’ constructively and channelling my passion for the digital world into something . In one Rails Girls day I am no expert coder, or even merely adequate, but the taste the day has given me for power, power to create and to manipulate the web, is not something my former web surfing would ever have led me to. 

With a strong sense of the potential I have to create if I can only develop the necessary coding skills, I’m determined to continue my Rails pursuit, using the resources and help provided today. 

It is such a great use of sponsorship, to provide women, and of course all people, with a taste of manipulating the web for themselves. Creating web applications is something I and many of the ‘rails girls’ I met today expressed desire to do but have until now always fallen at the putting-ideas-into-action hurdle. 

Forget French and German, coding is probably the most vital language you could learn if you want to communicate with the world. I don’t know why more men end up in web development but hopefully successful initiatives like Rails Girls will begin to inspire the integration of coding into our education system!

Hazel Evans is a freelance designer who took part in Rails Girls Bath. 

The First Rails Girls event in Riga

Now the emotions have subsided and I have time to think of what happened during those two remarkable days in Riga and share some thoughts.

The first Rails Girls event in Riga was the first in many ways - the first journey into programming and web application world for the girls, the first express teaching experience for mentors, the first time for us as organizers. Young children try doing something new almost every day – there are a lot of common and not so common things around them to learn. But for the adults it is different, it is harder. As adults we are used to being good at things we do and we have higher expectations for ourselves. To do something for the first time is a huge step out of our comfort zone.

We organized the event using guidelines (thanks to all who created them), therefore I won’t go into any detail about those experiences. I want to share some glimpses form event and a couple of thoughts.

Preparation for installation party – the most important things are WiFi access and sparkling wine =)

Before diving into the world of technology we warm up and calm down with chit-chat and sparkling wine.

No long talks, let’s install!

There are a lot of emotion when girls use ‘Terminal’ for the first time and mentors have to fix unexpected errors =)

After morning coffee and welcome words Stefanie shared her thoughts about Rails Girls as such.

Friday hug on Saturday morning.

The first lecture about programming and web-applications. No need for chairs or notepads.

No more presentations, let’s split in groups and start to write the first lines of code (of course under mentors supervision).

Sharing and collaboration works very well. If mentor is busy, then the girl next to you can help.

When girls started to personalize their apps, even Grumpy got involved and got programmed in application.

Retrospective. After all day programming girls shared their thoughts on what they have learned and what could be improved.

Heroes of the day – smart, open and awesome mentors.

Rails Girls – right in the target.

No doubt that Rails Girls are needed and welcomed in Latvia as we received 156 applications. But why? Is it about gender and stereotypes, need to create or just curiosity?

I agree with those who think that this is the age of networked intelligence, and Rails Girls events seems to be all about it. Information technology is taking increasingly larger part in our daily life and has become a common tool. Rails Girls teach women how to implement their ideas and create internet content for their own purposes and not only be able “like”, “share” and “google” already existing things. Those events also encourage knowledge exchange among mentors, girls and organizers. This is more about networking and knowledge sharing than learning programming.

You don’t have to give up your femininity to program. This is something I didn’t realise before my colleague Jana pointed it out. It is completely fine to buy new pair of shoes before programming classes, it is completely fine to have a red laptop instead of a very powerful, but black computer and it’s fine to talk about kids and create applications for food recipes, kindergarten or movie rating. Women can enjoy technologies and create good programs as well as men. Even more, women see and do things differently from men, therefore women can create different solutions and contribute to variety of products.

– Zane

Photos by @martinskemme

P.S. Rough numbers: 156 applications, 2 days, 50 girls, 11 mentors, 5 kg of chocolate.

Rails Girls playlist by Floor →