What I did at WWCode Connect Asia 2019 (Part I)
Written by Anj Cerbolles
The first-ever Connect Asia was held in Singapore last August 31, 2019. This was participated by WWCode Singapore, WWCode Kuala Lumpur, WWCode Tokyo, WWCode Seoul, WWCode Manila, WWCode Taipei, WWCode Delhi, WWCode Hyderabad, WWCode Beijing, WWCode Mumbai, WWCode Bangalore, WWCode Chennai, WWCode Shanghai, and WWCode Melbourne.
Connect Asia was started by Amanda Hill-Attkinson who did the Women Who Code Global Keynote. She is the Program Innovator Director and she talked about what is Women Who Code, updates in Women Who Code Global, and welcomes the new network. Women Who Code is an international non-profit organization founded in Los Angeles. It is the largest and most active organization for technical women in the world. They produced more than 1800+ annual free technical events, more than 8000 training, workshops, hackathons, conferences and more. They also have coding resources that you could look into. WWCode helps women to have a community to support them, especially in the tech world. They have technical communities that they started which focuses more on a specific track which is Women Who Code Front End, Mobile, Mobile, Python, Blockchain, Cloud and Data Science.
The second keynote is about the Community which was presented by Chee Yim Goh, Director of Women Who Code Kuala Lumpur. She inspired me about her point on the power of community and by far she did great during her keynote. She shares about “The Three Reciprocity Types” which are: Takers, Matchers, and Givers. She enumerated the three books which I need to start looking for and read it. The three books that she shared are the following: Give and Take by Adam Grant, Nudge Theory by Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler, and Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest by Zeynep Tufekci. My take away during this keynote is ‘taking risks makes yourself better in time’. We need to build long-lasting communities that know how to think together as well as tolerate the failures. These failures help us grow and bring the best of ourselves.
After the keynotes, we had breakfast and some personal networking. We were roaming around the booth, taking pictures and meeting new and old friends in the community. After breakfast, we attended some technical workshops and training for the whole day.
Check out Anj Cerbolles blog.