#techsisters

Autumn is here and so is Tech Sisters with our new and exciting plans ready to be realized. This time we have something new and something old for you to discover and we hope it inspires you as much as it has done for us!

As some of you may have already noticed, we sent out our fist newsletter and we promise there will be more coming! We’ll keep you updated with what we’re up to and what is generally trending in the tech scene right now. So if you haven’t signed up for our newsletter yet, then this is the best time to do it!

Our season’s first long awaited networking event will take place in less than 2 weeks on the 23rd of September. This time we will be hosted by one of the greatest software development company in Estonia - Nortal. More info of the speakers can be found on the event page. Those of you, who are not able to attend this time, due to a limited number of seats, keep your head high because we have another event planned already on the 20th of October in BIGBANK. Stay tuned by liking our FB page or following us on Twitter to make sure you don’t miss out on anything! 

Tech Sisters’ events are not only inspirational but also practical. Meaning that there will be at least one HTML & CSS workshop coming this year and many more in the future. Also if you happen to know any enthusiastic teenagers who are interested in IT and tech, give them our Digigirls web and Facebook page address, so that they’ll have the chance to be part of something awesome and also practical. This time we will visit other Estonian counties not only Tallinn, so spread the word about the events to your friends all over Estonia.

Anyone interested in Startups should already book their calendars on the 13th until the 15th of November because that’s when we’ll have another Garage48 Pärnu Women Special event happening in Pärnu. This time the theme of the event is Tourism! So get your best ideas and friends together and make your million dollar dream into a reality!

For those of you who got really excited just by reading this post and feel they have some spare time, motivation and wish to give back to the tech community, even when you’re not in tech world yourself, we’d love to have you on-board to help us spread the word even further. If you recognized yourself, dear future volunteer, please send us your motivation letter and contact info to [email protected].

If all that above hasn’t inspired you enough, keep your eye on our Facebook page, because there are several fun and exciting events happening all the time and we’ll keep you posted as soon as we have more info ourselves!

In the spirit of Estonian ICT week, Tech Sisters decided to throw an epic HTML & CSS workshop to demystify tech for women, attracting participants from all walks of life to challenge themselves and try out web development. So by 5 pm on May 14th, Garage48 HUB was packed with 50 women, 50 laptops and 50 pairs of hands ready to write code - for the first time ever.

During the workshop, mentors helped participants go through the Codecademy Make a Website tutorial. By the end of the 3-hour workshop, everybody had had a taste of laying the foundation of a website with HTML, and styling it with some CSS. “I had always thought that learning web development was too difficult to even try,” admits Alice Aasmäe-Kahar who participated in the event. “But it turned out it’s like assembling a puzzle - and I love assembling puzzles!” She adds, “The whole gang of mentors and speakers was simply very inspiring.”

There were also great inspirational talks from amazing women making it happen in various roles in the tech industry. Elise Sass from Microsoft Estonia talked about how she first started out in tech, and how her ability to think like a programmer (granted she’s not a programmer) has helped her land some truly exciting jobs. Helen Kokk from YourDesignWorks also shared the story of her humble beginnings, as she dove head-first into front-end development and how she became a UX designer. Janika Liiv from Toggl shared her thoughts on why women should learn IT skills and encouraged everyone to challenge the status quo of the ‘brogrammer’ culture.

As per a survey conducted prior to the workshop, there was a variety of different reasons for wanting to participate in the workshop.They ranged from making a total career change, to having better choices on the job market, to a chance at a higher salary. There were women with ideas they wanted to be able to realise on their own, as well as women wishing to become freelancers. Someone even said they wanted to participate because “programming is sexy”. That is a totally legitimate motivation, by the way. 

“As a mentor, I was very pleased to have so many questions from the participants - questions that were on much broader topics than just about the tutorial,” says one of the founding members of Tech Sisters and a lecturer at Estonian IT College Katrin Loodus. “These kinds of in-depth thinkers, who are able to see the bigger picture, are exactly what the IT landscape needs.” 

At the end of the evening, another Tech Sisters’ volunteer and a mentor for the event Hanna-Mari Kirs shared some of the wisdom she gained when learning tech skills on her own. “When I first started to learn tech skills, it was really exciting, but with so many resources available, it also got really overwhelming really quickly,” says Hanna-Mari. “That’s when I learned to embrace the confusion and let go of the feeling that I have to understand everything as the information is presented to me, before I can move on. In fact, with learning tech skills, it’s really important to keep moving, practicing and asking questions. Having real problems to solve makes it so much easier to stay focused and motivated.”

The event’s main organiser Kaidi Ilves, who was also a mentor at the workshop, says this project is very dear to her heart. “Not only because I live and breathe tech every day but because I believe that when you make it easy and safe for women to learn coding from their peers, something exciting happens.” She also admits she was over the moon that the event received so much positive feedback from the participants. She says, “I hope we can make more of these events happen in the future. I’d really like to see a tight-knit community grow out of these and other Tech Sisters events, so women who want to learn tech skills have a place to ask advice and collaborate.“

Järgmine üritus toimub 23. mail 2015 Tartus ZeroTurnaround-i kontoris. Ühtekokku võtame vastu 40 tüdrukut. Rohkem infot meie Facebooki lehelt