Hosting the Rails Girls Summer of Code Kick Off Party
By Laura
The relationship between DaWanda and Rails Girls Berlin is a special one — we have been a longtime regular sponsor of the workshops in Berlin, many of us are involved in either organising or coaching at the events, and we’re supporting the international Rails Girls Summer of Code for the third time this year.
Don’t have any idea what Rails Girls is? Well, it’s a movement that started 2012 in Finland and offers free coding workshops for women. Within 1.5 days, they get an introduction to web development with Ruby on Rails, and especially in Berlin, many keep on learning afterwards. There are a bunch of self-organized learning groups that have already managed to set up amazing projects, such as Speakerinnen.
The Rails Girls Summer of Code then aims to get more women involved in open source projects. It’s a three-month long scholarship program in which teams of two women contribute to an open source project with the help of coaches, mentors and companies. This year, 16 teams could be funded all over the world and DaWanda was happy to host the Kick off Party in Berlin on July 3rd.
We decided to offer, next to delicious food and drinks, some fun activities. So in case you ever host a tech-related party yourself, feel free to be inspired. Also, feel free to improve ;)
Tech Trivia Pub Quiz
Know any weird facts about technology, like what half a byte is called? Or who coined the term bug? We collected 13 questions, some of them from our own memory, some from the depths of the Internet. The party people got into teams and had 15 minutes to find solutions — again, either in their own mind or via their favorite search engine of choice. While a lot of fun for the teams, we also enjoyed evaluating the answers, as creativity was apparently key.
Bug Fixing in Real Life
The winning team was then invited to fix a major bug that had been hanging around in the DaWanda office for some time. Or rather: a piñata in the shape of a bug. Equipped with a computer keyboard, team High Five smashed the bug into a million candy pieces! Very metaphorical, and very yummy.
Crafting Computer Science Unplugged
For the crafty people, we set up a DIY table to combine some Computer Science Unplugged with creative tinkering. The idea was to make cards with which one can understand as well as explain the binary number system better — as this is what computers work with, in the end. To be honest, there wasn’t really much time for crafting in between the socializing, trivia quizzing, barbecuing and bug hunting. But maybe we’ll find another opportunity for this activity.
Wrap up
We’d like to thank all party people for making this such a memorable event. But most important of all, we wish all the Summer of Code teams many new learnings, fun with code, successful bug hunting and a beautiful summer! ❤
Originally published at https://www.codeoclock.com/2015/07/15/rgsoc_party/ on July 15, 2015.
