Women Who Code Connect!
Original post published here.
Last week I had the honor of being able to attend Women Who Code Connect. I was a whirlwind day of networking, great talks, fun workshops and awesome swag. The morning started off bright and early at the Twitter building in San Francisco. People from all over the country came to recruit or to get a job. The energy was high as we stood in line for our badges. And there was a fun buzz in the air. As a job seeker myself I was excited to make new connections and hope to make an impression. I was pleasantly surprised when I didn't have to wait to network. People in line were so eager that I was able to do some great networking before even getting my badge! After getting my badge and going up to the main conference area I was blown away by all the booths and fun food set up for us that day. There were over 20 booths from different companies and every single one of them was highering! I was so excited I didn't even take the time to see what they had for breakfast. I started in straight to networking at each booth. I did break off my networking path in time to see the keynote speakers. Candi Castleberry gave one of the most inspirational speeches about how to make it in the software engineering industry. She gave great advice, saying that every impression you make will be a playing card on your path to success. Make sure you are memorable and leave a good impression. Following the keynote, I finished up my rounds of networking just in time to see a great talk on Data Science. Having a data science background, I was so happy to see someone give such a candid talk about how messy data science can be. I was also able to attend a graphql workshop with Eve Porcello which was fun because we actually got to explore graphql and work with it. I also got to see a great talk by a fellow Hack Reactor Alumni Leslie Pajuelo about her experiences at Walmart Labs during black Friday weekend. These were just a few of the great talks that I saw that day. At the end of the day, I realized what a great treat it was to have an engineering conference that was for women by women. There were so many inspiring women that I want to be like when I grow up (aka the next few years)! It was refreshing to sit down and not look around to count how many women were in the room, I could just focus on the talks and my job of finding a job. It was also so truly beautiful to not just see just white women in the crowd. There where women of all shades of color and backgrounds. To me, this is the most beautiful thing. Women from all backgrounds coming together to create such a strong and uplifting atmosphere. Only when we truly diversify the workforce in Software Engineering will we be able to truly build products that represent our users.
Inspirational talk by @Candi @WomenWhoCode pic.twitter.com/89xTgwxaOK
— Erin Frolli (@EvaFr0) April 28, 2018
Birds eye view @Twitter of @WomenWhoCode connect #WWCode pic.twitter.com/LNJydIub2x
— Erin Frolli (@EvaFr0) April 28, 2018
#DataScience isn't simple! But uses so much #openscience tech #WWCode pic.twitter.com/b6mM8OtoC9
— Erin Frolli (@EvaFr0) April 28, 2018