Own Your Expertise: Write/Speak/Code
On the first day of Write/Speak/Code 2015, we were asked to privately list turning points in each of our life stories. I listed, among others, the Boston Python Workshop for Women and Friends that I attended several years ago. That was the weekend that started my journey into programming — the turning point when I changed my mind and thought I could do it.
Write/Speak/Code 2015 felt like another pivotal moment for me. For those who haven’t heard about the conference, you can read about it here. Its mission is to “empower women software developers to become thought leaders, conference speakers, and open source contributors.” If you identify as female and are a computer/data scientist, software engineer, tech community organizer, or some other sort of advocate for women in tech, then I urge you to find out more about Write/Speak/Code by following what they’re up to. I want to emphasize that the conference is also engaging and helpful for people with limited technical experience, as long as you’re interested to learn more about working with technology in a public-facing way. Here’s why Write/Speak/Code 2015 was such a rewarding experience for me:
We learned how to give feedback.
I usually don’t think critically about what a speaker did and didn’t do well. At this conference, we were put in a situation where we took turns giving each other feedback on lightning talks. This makes you:
- listen more closely to your peers so you fully benefit from the perspective they have to share
- more cognizant of techniques that can effectively communicate information — and when and how to use them
- better equipped to give helpful feedback that encourages others to continuing speaking up
We met incredible women.
The crowd is a perfect blend of:
smart
There were some very intellectually curious folks (and quite a few Recurse Center — formerly known as Hacker School — alumni). The woman I paired with on Speak Day wrote a Scheme interpreter on her own and didn’t even bring it up when I asked what kind of personal projects she worked on — — no big deal. Many of these people are self taught.
ambitious
CTOs, book authors, and accomplishers-of-many-other-things were in the house. One theme for me at Write/Speak/Code was that I would have an enjoyable conversation about tech with someone during an icebreaker activity and later on, I would realize how much more professional experience that person had than me. Several of these women are people whom I would have been too intimidated to talk to had I been aware of their professional profile, but whom I felt at ease chatting with during icebreakers. YAY ICEBREAKERS! Not enough conferences include them.
supportive
The panelists and facilitators do amazing work for the community:
they are conference and user group organizers who think of ways to improve diversity at tech conferences, such as open CFPs, hosting an unconference for talks that were close to being accepted, and fairer talk rating systems.
On Speak Day, attendees were each paired with a partner to present a lightning talk. When my partner and I got on stage, I was petrified. Our Speaker Mentor told us, “No matter how this goes, you two are awesome.” That helped: the talk was hard for me but because she had said that, I felt much better after.
It was striking how supportive the attendees were, too. Unprompted, they encouraged each other during group exercises and volunteered to help explain technical concepts.
We were galvanized to action.
This conference is designed to get you off your butt to define goals and milestones. This involved things like drawing with markers, crumpling up paper and throwing it around the room, and finding accountability partners. We were productive in a short amount of time because:
- The facilitators broke down goals like drafting blog posts and lightning talks into discrete action items and enforced time limits for each of them.
- We were surrounded by people who gave constructive feedback.
One attendee who gave a lightning talk about Github said, “I had no idea I had that much to say about Github.” We set goals for the next month, 3 months, 6 months, and year to continue momentum after the conference.
Chocolate-covered strawberries, Cyndi Lauper jams, starfish role play and Filipino food were also involved. These are things I did not expect to enjoy at a tech conference but someone’s got to set the precedent.
