And here come the SHEROESInTech!
“I am because we are, the meaning of Ubuntu, ” fittingly explained Sairee Chahal to a room full of budding female engineers at the first ever SHEROESInTech meetup this past Saturday, themed All Things Open-Source.
When SHE Met Tech
Building the women’s internet means building for women, of women, and, of course, by women. Girls constitute about 26% of the engineering workforce in India, and to turn this statistic upside down was an enthusiastic bunch of engineering students gathered at SHEROES for the first SHEROES In Tech meetup on August 31.
Why SHEROES In tech
When I was an engineering student, the ratio of girls vs boys in the entire batch was 1:12. It was hard to navigate a heavily male dominated industry, even harder to find fellow girl engineers to network with and learn from.
Women perform 3x better when they’re surrounded by women peer groups. Female engineers have a tough time finding the right mentors and getting the right questions answered. Study groups, peer networks, career guidance, opportunities and what not.
SHEROES In Tech celebrates these women in the technology industry and hopes to help shape the future of upcoming stars.
It is the facilitator that brings the engineers, mentors, and organisations in one room and enables conversations.
All things Open Source
Open Source Softwares are softwares with the SHEROES touch - developed by communities, and for communities.
For our non-coding friends, Open Source means anyone can easily get the source code, change it, redistribute it, and not get taken to court for doing so. Essentially, when an engineer contributes to OSS projects,
She writes code that benefits the community.
Hence, it only seemed fitting that SHEROES in Tech started its journey with a day dedicated to All Things Open Source.
Guided by Aditya Sahay, Head of Engineering at Sqrrl Fintech, our engineers got a sense of what it means to contribute towards Open Source Projects. A sneak peak into the history of software licensing, how OSS became popular, best practices and pitfalls to avoid were some of the key points he talked about.
While Aditya talked about the industry and how OSS have revolutionised the technology industry, SHEROES’ very own Satya (Satyadeep Karnati, CTO) took to sharing the very first working project he built as a kid — a rendition of Kaun Banega Crorepati in Powerpoint. Now who’d have thought that!
Bringing Student Leaders along
(Supported by Google Women Tech Makers & Google Developer Student Clubs at BVP and Github)
Students today, Engineers tomorrow.
This journey of SHEROES In Tech started when our summer interns, Gunnika and Kautuk, eavesdropped on the team planing SHEROESInTech, and hijacked the conversation :)
They participated and how, and in many ways lead from the front. After all, it takes a whole village, well, to build a village.
Leading the Google Women Tech Makers club for her college, Gunnika (also a Github Campus Expert) took charge to conduct a session on the basics of GitHub like-a-boss, while Kautuk, Lead, Google Developer Student Club, went ahead with a hands-on demonstration.
Not only these two, but Harshita and Shivani, also from WTMBVP, shared their experiences in contributing to Open Source as a student, Google Summer of Code and the Knock-out Opportunities there are.
What next for SHEROESInTech
How many times have you heard of a technical demonstration where one hundred percent of all the participants were able to practice along AND successfully put their learnings in action? 1 0 0 % successful and gratified participation.
We were able to do just that, and then some more. As the day came to a close, our team, led by our interns, helped all of the engineering students to successfully deploy git on their systems and commit and push their code to a cloud based repository for the very first time.
This, precisely, is what we aim to do at SHEROESInTech. With a laser sharp focus to build value for the student community, our energies are divested to bring more such discussions to life.
What to do, what not to do, how to grow in your career, where to find mentors, which course to specialise in, what framework and technologies are industry relevant, and more than that, who can I talk to — SHEROESInTech will continue to empower connections and conversations for these ladies who code.
How to be a part of the movement
If you’re the girl who codes, meet like-minded awesome women in tech, mentors and peers alike, on our Women in Tech community. Download the SHEROES app and get active in Women in Tech now!
Our student engineers, come be a part of our campus program at SHEROESInTech. Join the group, get mentored, connect with other students, and get to be a SHEROES Campus Lead.
SHEROES, the women-only social network is a safe, constructive, high-empathy space where women engage and chase dreams. It has over 1000 communities, free-to-use chat-based helpline, champions, resources, opportunities, a reproductive health tracker and a marketplace. It is accessible via Sheroes.com and the SHEROES app
