This weekend saw the first Rails Girls Sydney weekend launched with support from some of Sydney’s leading technology organisations and we were there providing the T-Shirt sponsorship to this amazing event.
As the founder of reinteractive, I felt it was important for us to help establish a stronger and clearer path for women who want to learn the art of Ruby on Rails development. reInteractive already co-ordinate and host the free monthly Ruby on Rails InstallFest and Development Hub services with many females taking advantage of these self paced Ruby on Rails training. However, sponsoring Rails Girls meant that we could increase the pace of bringing in more diversity in our community that has been male dominated for a long time.
Attending the event on Sunday was a breath of fresh air. In the room were over 35 attendees, of all backgrounds and ages, taking their first tentative steps into the Web application development world. Accountants, school leavers, business owners and people from all walks of life were learning and doing.
Increasing the mix of women in our Rails community brings a lot of benefits. Bringing people from all walks of life allows us to get different views on the same problem. Bringing people from all genders mixes this up even more and provides us with an enhanced opportunity to diversify and find new, unique and exciting solutions to problems we have either thought long solved, or long unsolvable.
Rails Girls is an important part of this growth in our community and we will be involved in the next one.
