Building A Community That Supports Women In Technology
One of the best ways to promote women in technology is by creating a supportive community.
Leading startups and technology companies are working hard to create more inclusive environments. At DigitalOcean, we have an incredible online platform that serves as an educational tool, complete with tutorials and Q&A’s catered to our community of developers and system administrators. But we also believe in the importance of building a strong offline community.
As someone with a lot of experience curating events, I’ve seen first hand the magic of face-to-face interaction.
My advice to startup executives: empower your staff to have these ambitions and represent your company. One of the reasons I joined DigitalOcean is the C- team is fully supportive and provides necessary resources, e.g. adequate budgeting and locations for events.
I know it’s a lot of time and work, but it’s worth it. And don’t be afraid to ask your peers for help. Just this past weekend our friends at Monarq and Trello helped put together the New York Chapter of SheHacks — an all women hackathon co-founded by our Customer Support Manager Tammy Butow — to connect developers, designers, and businesswomen throughout the city.
These types of initiatives are invaluable in getting more women to participate in technology.
Key Takeaways For Your Next Event
1) Build Relationships: Events can be awkward, especially if conversations aren’t buzzing. That’s why for this year’s International Women’s Day event, I made sure to incorporate activities that focused on communication and relationship building. Don’t get me wrong — inspiring speakers, hackathons, and Q&A sessions are great event activities. But I think it’s just as important to set aside an hour for networking (and fun!).
2) Offer Internal Resources: Another great thing you can do as a company is offer your internal resources to the community. It’s one thing to have an amazing speaker, but it’s another to offer attendees face-time with them. Attendees of this year’s International Women’s Day event were especially thrilled to have one-on-one time with our Technical Recruiter Manager, Jill Jubinski, who coached them about the interview process and answered any lingering questions.
3) Individual Contributions: If you’re looking to participate as an individual, ask your employer if you can use their space after hours to host a small meetup. Or join a technology meetup in your local community and offer your expertise. Our meet-up group currently has more than 1,400 members and we’re always looking to have more members join.
4) Listen To Your Community: At the International Women’s Day event we had the opportunity to interface with our community and collect feedback. What we heard is exactly what we plan on incorporating in our upcoming events.
Upcoming Events At DigitalOcean
While there is still progress to be made in the advancement of women in technology, we are excited to be one of many companies playing a role in building a more inclusive environment. You can join our meetup group or follow us on Twitter (@digitalocean) to keep an eye out for upcoming events ☺
Sneak peek: At the end of this month we’ll be offering virtual office hours with our technical recruiting team. Later in the summer, we’ll be hosting an interview intensive event that will offer training on the entire process, with advice directly from our CTO James Cariello. Stay tuned!
Check out last month’s video from our International Women’s Day Event
