Most of you reading this have known me for seven years or less.
When I first started as a software engineer, I thought I’d never meet anyone like me.
I thought there would always be bathroom jokes and porn pranks.
I thought team bonding outings were not for me.
I thought I’d always love what I did, but not who I did it with.
My peers tended to be 35+ men, and I, a girl in my 20s, was leading a very different life.
And then this community happened.
I think I heard about a user group for the first time online somewhere.
I ended up going to one in Menlo Park NJ. I was programming in C# and ASP.NET at the time.
I was still a minority in the room, but the people there were passionate and excited about new technology. This was different than most of the programmers I had met so far.
I don’t know how long I had been going or how we really met but I ended up meeting Peter Laudati who was the MS Evangelist for the NYC/NJ area. He was super nice, and invited me to some events in NYC. Namely: the NYC Code Camp, the first large development event I ever went to.
It was awesome, people were excited about what they were doing and teaching each other new things. It was contagious. I was hooked.
Through Microsoft, and eventually becoming an ASP.NET MVP I found many mentors that changed the course of my career.
People like Jon Galloway, Scott Hanselman, Rob Conery, Matt Podwysocki, and Scott Reynolds. These prominent community members went out of their way often to champion my growth and experience as a developer.
As a member of that community I found role models! Actual people that I wanted to grow up to be like. People like Sarah Gray, Sarah Allen, Leah Culver, and Rachel Appel.
The community was a place I could thrive.
From hosting WAN Parties (video chats on Weds nights), to doing embarrassing things like this, to hosting meetups, starting Girl Develop It, and becoming active in the JavaScript Community. JSConf, Boro.js, hundreds of friends and coworkers same.
Through this community I have always had champions cheering me on and making sure that I find success in whatever I do.
Here’s the thing, not everyone has been so fortunate. There are many parts of that funnel where I could have gotten lost.
The porn pranks, the being different, the not being invited. I could have been lost in the very beginning when I started hacking on computers at age 12 and 90% of the local bbs members were dudes. Countless numbers of minorities get lost on their way.
I talk to so many women who reach out to me through cold emails or warm introductions who find themselves exactly where I was seven years ago.
I’ve spent most of my career trying to change this.
Last week I came to all of you with an ask: help us build a world where female engineers aren’t rare.
And you responded, 884 of you so far. We hit our Kickstarter goal in just a few hours. We doubled it in days and we’re headed to triple it this week.
I was originally going to write this post as a request for help with the Kickstarter. However, with the success of the campaign I have the privilege of writing this as a thank you. So here it is:
Thank you, to the community that has changed my life and made building software a rewarding experience.
Thank you to the friends who shared the campaign with their friends and family.
Thanks from all of us at Jewelbots, we’re going to be bringing you some awesome updates tomorrow and we wanted to take some time today to say thank you from the bottom of our hearts.
