Snakes, Ponies and Balloons: Stories of Teaching Django to Thousands of Women

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Speaker 1: please welcome Ola Satarska

Speaker 2: 's So I'm super happy to be here today. Uh it's an amazing honor. If like if someone would uh say to me like two years ago even then we'll be speaking at 10th Django Birthday, I would never ever believe them So it's my first time in Lawrence and first time in Kansas and I'm really happy to be here. Um I could already see how many like how why so many people love this city and it's been really fun and really lovely and I'm super excited to speak to such a great audience. So let's start. My name is Ola Sitarska. I come from a small city called Jastram Vizdrui. Which probably won't none of you will pronounce. Uh this is in Poland. Um it's a city like the same size as Lawrence. Um now I work and live in London for the past nine months I work alongside pretty awesome people

Speaker 2: who are my friends too at a great place called Potato where we develop Django applications while working with like big clients like Google or Skype. Uh two years ago, together with another bunch of awesome people we organized Django Conin Warso, Poland, also known as the Django Circus Um, I'm also on a board of the Django Search Foundation and a member of the Django team. Uh and I started working with Django six years ago. when I was seventeen and a friend made me switch from PHP to Python. It was like one day when uh when he showed me the admin. And I was So more importantly, uh a year ago, uh together with Ola Sandetska, we started Django Girls, um, which may be known to you as a series of work workshop about Python and Django that are like tailored for women.

Speaker 2: And today we're gonna talk about this. So let me start with a story first. So this is Dory here on the uh screen. Dory attended the first Django Girls workshop in Berlin. Uh she never programmed before and for the first six hours of the workshop that uh the I think the workshop was like nine hours. And the first five or six hours she was just spending trying to do the um manage pie run server because she had Hungarian keyboard. And it turned out he didn't really like each other. So I was like, she's never like she's gonna quit it. She's never gonna do this again. This is like terrible experience. And she's just like I was like, oh my god, what do we do here? And And today Dory um works as Django developer in Budapest. She's running a meetup for Python developers there. She organized two Django Girls

Speaker 2: events, uh teaching Sixty Women How to Coat. Uh she coached on many Django Girls events all over Europe and we just couldn't be prouder that she's now a Django girl There is another story of Josie. So Josie attended Django Girls at EuroPython too when she was 14 with her mom, Tina. And shortly after the workshop, she got on the EuroPython stage to give a lightning talk. in front of like thousands of people. Like revealing her plan her plan to organize Pixidas, which was a workshop for for girls her her age about Python and Android and and stuff like that. So she's really amazing. Um she was also representing Croatia in junior Eurovision. But I think that's another story Uh so Anna attended the first workshop, the same at f uh at

Speaker 2: Europaidon. She's now running Django Girl Story, telling stories of like badass women who code in Django on our blog She's involved in organizing DjangoCon US and Django Software Foundation Grants Committee and she serves uh on Python's Software and Foundation Board of Directors. There is also Lacey. Lacey who spoke here just a couple of hours ago. She sent us an email, I think it was half a year ago, um, to organize Django Girls workshop in Portland. This led her to contribute to open source and to the accessibility chapter in our book, an article at Model V Culture, and she became Django Center Foundation developer member and DjangoCon diversity and financial A sure and it was I think like like three months and she did that. And I asked her recently if I can put her on my slides and and I asked her if she wants to maybe

Speaker 2: Say something. And this is what she says. So she said that Django Girls community is supportive, receptive, generous, and grateful. And their encouragement has in three months turned her from lurker and retweeter to an active participant in the Django community And she's so grateful to be part of this organization. There is also one more bit. I'm not sure if Lacey wanted me to put that on slides, but I did anyway. Uh she said that she's tearing up typing this. And I think I was tearing up reading this. So I could fill this whole talk 30 minutes just with stories like this from women who joined Django Girls and just turned their life around and and I humbled to know them and there wouldn't be Django Girls without them Yeah, so Django Girls started almost a year ago.

Speaker 2: I think we have our anniversary in a week. Uh for me it was seven years into working as a developer and I was quite tired. I was tired of being the only woman in the room. I was tired of always being asked what I'm doing here Uh and before that I organized Django communors, I knew a lot of people in the community. Yet I could count the number of women I knew just like um using one of my hands So it was like not even two, just one. And that's why I decided to start Django Girls. It started because of like a pretty selfish reason. I wanted to have more women working alongside me because maybe then it will be it won't be like so strange anymore that uh that I I'm a woman and a programmer. And I've got this thing that if something bothers me for a long time, I either have to like get over it and just move on or do something about this.

Speaker 2: So I decided to do Uh so the reason I said it was pretty selfish, but what happened after was completely selfless and amazing. And it was made possible by m so many amazing people and generous people from this community. We made everything free and we decided to dedicate our free time. time to this goal um without like expecting anything in return. Everything we do is free for everyone. And in the last uh year Django Girls grew from just me and Ola to I think now more than 2000. Two thousand people who are who attended, who coached, who organized Django Girls events. And there are two things that are like the core of what we do. The main goal of Django Girls is to organise as many Django workshops as possible and to help us bring like the biggest amount of women into the industry

Speaker 2: However, we also know that we can't turn people into programmers in just one day. So that's why the main goal of the workshop is not to necessarily teach them how to code. but to make them like insanely excited about technology and opportunities that comes with that. And and just like kind of get them excited like this feeling you can see here on the picture that was taken at Django Girls in New York City. Like the picture when you spend so many so many hours trying to make something work and then it finally works. So we want people to feel that in our workshops. Um And they come to the workshop um knowing nothing. Like we say you have to know like anything about programming, you just have to bring your laptop. Um and so far the computer was just used as a device to browse Facebook Um and they live with knowing how the internet works. Um they

Speaker 2: know what's HTTP, they know what's the server, they know basic operations in Python, they know um all of this stuff. They have account on GitHub where they uploaded their code they created during the workshop and they have a blog application within Django that's deployed in the internet and just ready like to share a link with their friends. We do that all in one day, which is kind of scary and it's really a lot of material. Um but we would be surprised how many people actually finish this and how many people um actually on the way when they are uh working the tutorial they actually submit a couple of pull requests to our tutorial because they see a mistake or a bug or a typo and they just they have a GitHub account so they can just click the edit button and submit a pull request Beside the excitement, the goal is also to prepare them so they can teach themselves after.

Speaker 2: So we instruct our coaches not to give them like ready answers to all your questions, but to show them how to Google and to show them that Google has all the answers and that there is a stack overflow. Which is amazing uh amazing resource for them. Uh we don't make shortcuts by giving them like a ready environment in Docker or uh Vagran. We we c actually like intentionally Um make them install everything which takes like a an evening before. We don't give them ready solutions but intentionally lead them into mistakes so they can actually see the error, the yellow page. They need to read it. They need to understand like what's happening and how it works and they can Google answer themselves. So we give them the right tools for the job. Like we give them The tools we are working with every day, like is a proudest moment to say to someone like, Okay, so you you know all of that now, and this is what I use in my work every day.

Speaker 2: And I think this gives them like um they understand that this is something they like powerfully they they continue to do that. We like we try to strip everything from this layers and layers of abstractions so they can really understand how it works and and not just like accept okay this is how it works. I need to remember that. So this is all incredibly important to set them up for success and and this crazy excitement of working in a group of people in the same room and building and learning things Uh and and suddenly just seeing it click. I think this is what keeps them going long after the event is over. But when Django Girls is over, it's not the end of the adventure with Django Girls This is where like the second core thing we do comes to actions. And we work on empowering these awesome women to who already work as developers and give them a platform to contribute and shine and

Speaker 2: as well as like a community that supports them So the most amazing thing we discovered when we started Django Girls is the number of women who already work with Django, but we had no idea they even existed. exists. They saw Django Girls and basically came to us telling that they love what we do and asking how they can contribute. Anna who attended our first workshop, she is now making interviews with them and posting them to our blog And this is all these women you you just saw. Um now we have fifty uh eight stories of women who work with Django on our blog. So if someone will tell me like, I don't know, I can find a speaker who is a woman from an event, I'm just I can show it And to say interfaces. So that's my thing. And Django Girl is just like a real sisterhood. We support each other with uh no matter what, we share experience

Speaker 2: experiences, we send each other's hugs and postcards, we meet the Django girls in different cities. And it's always like the best thing in the world. And I can't even count how many attendees became real friends and they stayed in touch even though they live in like completely different countries and they Fly to different events together and coached and they spread just the Django Girls mission everywhere. On our GitHub account, you can find that we open source five materials. And the most popular one is the FintLE Tutorial, which Jacob just talked about, and that we use during all of the workshops. Tutorial was written uh originally by me and Ola just before our first workshop because we're like hugely dissatisfied with the status quo. All of the existing tutorials was like hey they're assuming that, you know, what's Python, you know HTML, you know it's CSS, you know what server, URL, view, database, all

Speaker 2: this stuff. Like people don't know that. So our tutorial is free and we I think we like we wrote it in a week before EuroPython, which was like lots of sleepless nights And I think that was kind of the best decision and and the best thing we did with Django Girls. The tutorial is free and open sourced and has been read by 91,000 people so far, which is like the number I still go and I believe because it's like the whole of Lawrence, Kansas would learn how to code in Django Uh and also it became like one of the most recommended free Django tutorials out there and with the help of contributors and this it has been translated to six languages It's not definitely like it's not your usual tutorial and I strongly recommend you to check it out if you're like if you know Django already well. It's still I think you will find kind of the techniques we use and and how we teach useful

Speaker 2: if you are ever teaching someone and there's a like tweets from Twitter people like usually tweet when they finish Django tutorial and there was one guy from India I think and he tweeted hashtag I'm a Django girl. I was like oh that's sweet I like the this comment so much. We also wrote an organizers and coaches guide to make it as easy for people to as possible to organize an event in their city. Like there is no excuse uh like we are laiding out everything and while um so we want them to still like carry the unique spirit of Django girls which is always like fun and friendly and proactive we have highly encourage temporary tattoos and cupcakes and balloons or funny photo booths. This is all on our workshops. Um I think this makes people just feel like they're in the kindergarten again. makes them like more excited and the atmosphere is always very energetic and amazing.

Speaker 2: And I know for example today was Django Girls in Rotov, they did yoga in a break and they had like a bike with ice creams. This made it possible that in just twelve months, 1 ,646 women attended our events, which is something I never imagined possible. That's almost I think 140 women learning Django every month since we started. And it's going getting faster and bigger. And the community of organizers, women and men who code in Django on a daily basis, grew to more than 100 wonderful people now which I'm super grateful that I can get to know them and and work with them. But there is also a metric that makes me incredibly happy and I think that's the most important thing for me And so far we know about 13 women who work as the developers now after attending Django Girls.

Speaker 2: This number is probably even bigger because this is data gather gathered uh from only five events we personally organized out of I think forty six now that happened. And I think it's like really amazing and and each one of them is wonderful and and awesome. So I'm really proud that they are actually now working as developers A few weeks ago we also registered Django Girls Foundation. We've got the second register name too, which is Django Girls Foundation of Awesome Cupcakes and Emoji. Uh which is pretty fortunate because like the acronym of that is Dogface, which can be represent so you can uh you can refer to our foundation in just one single moji. I think it's pretty cool.

Speaker 2: So me and Ola haven't planned for Django Girls to become a thing that I just described. Like we seriously just planned this one event at Europe for 20 people people and I even found an email to I sent to Ola before like when I was trying to convince convince her to organize it with me. I was like, oh yeah, I'm not sure I I don't think it's gonna be a lot of work. It's like just twenty people, like we'll get six coaches, just like friends and It's gonna be like over in July and we have like vacation and stuff. So that didn't happen. And shortly after we announced it we received an email from Australia and from Taiwan in Asia and in from Nairobi in Africa an email from amazing women asking, like, how can I make this happen for women here? Like, can you come here? I was like, no. But In a year Django Girls like we just then put everything on GitHub.

Speaker 2: It's like okay, just take it, like this is what we know. And if you feel you can make it happen, then do it. And in a year, Django Girls virus has been spread to six continents and uh thirty three countries. Uh we are blessed with getting to know so many amazing women who made it happen in places in the world I didn't even know existed. So everyone asks us now, how would you make that happen? So this is when I'm gonna share with you a couple of things I believe were like the factors why Django girls grew in some like such a wild speed And I'm gonna give you a couple of insights and hopefully this you can apply to your community in your city or or whatever you're doing. So First and the most important thing is that we are doing something people really, really want and really really love. I cringe

Speaker 2: every time I hear someone saying like hey, this is not our problem that there is no woman in the community. like we don't stop them from coming. They are just not interested because like their brains are wired differently and stuff. So it turned out that if you write on your website like hey girl we know that IT industry is my lemon nominated and you probably think it's not something for you but here we are doing an event for um where it's gonna be like all women and they all know nothing about programming And you're like exactly the kind of person we want to see on our event, and they will feel invited and then they will come. So for our first event in Berlin, we received more than 300 hundred applications from women who who wanted to attend. And it's not a single incident. Like our events are regularly hugely oversubscribed. So it's not that women are not interested. It's just that they don't feel invited to the events that are open to everyone.

Speaker 2: And out of this kind of crazy excitement, excitement of all us being in the same crowded room, learning something completely new, and feeling completely free to make mistakes and ask even like the easiest question questions comes something else and I call this a contentious enthusiasm. So both me and Ola believe that enthusiasm is what makes Django Girls work. We we always like look on the bright side of things. We love laughing and We try to keep Django fun and friendly for everyone. We've got posters with like, you go girl on our walls. We buy like tacky gold balloons that take up like most of the room. And we're always jumping like of out of excitement because we know it's gonna spread to everyone in the room And I think the enthusiasm made one of the attendees of Django Girls, this one on the picture here, uh she was attending an event in Warsaw and she quit her job a day after the event.

Speaker 2: Uh because she decided like she wants to work in an environment that is just like like the world show and where she can just like have fun and laugh and just do exciting things. So she's not starting her own company. And I believe that this is the value that goes like from the bottom from the top to the bottom. And if like we are enthusiastic then it's gonna pass to organizers and they're gonna be excited and they're gonna pass this to attendees who are they're gonna get involved and contribute back to Django Girls. And the spirit of Django Girls is also I think well represented by the fact that we open source everything we do and with like no strings attached. You can take it and you can make a Django Wells event or you can rebrand it and organize something completely different on your own. And this makes it a one like an organization act more echo less and selfless. And we are incredibly happy that to surround ourselves with like

Speaker 2: like generous people who who value the same things as we. And when you think about Django girls, uh from the very very beginning when the people started sending us emails and we like, we are not gonna be traveling so much, like it's not gonna happen So both me and I wanted to Django goes to be something bigger than than both the both of our. Like we are not gonna go everywhere and do it on our own, but you can do it if you want. And I don't really take pride in in organizing a Django Girls event but I take pride when I I empower someone who like who will step up and do it because this is like the only way we are gonna grow. And to su the support team of Django Girls is six people now or we kind of the people who support organizers and even though this is like a very small volunteer team we still take time to like document every process

Speaker 2: uh like creating instruction or checklists, so there's like not a thing that we're like one person has like a bus factor equal to one. Like we share a responsibility. So If um if by any chance I think I'm like I'm hit by a bus tomorrow, I'm gonna uh I don't know, get lost somewhere, I do that. So Django Girls will continue to shine and and And we always think that like um about a ways to like when there is a problem and like one event and then we see the other problem with the second event, we are try always trying to kind of solve it uh globally for everyone so they don't have to worry about that But even with six people six people in the support team, we are still finding ourselves just drowned in emails and pull requests and questions from organizers. So we know that like the burnout is real and after a year of we found ourselves more and more tired.

Speaker 2: and less and less excited about replying to those emails. We found that we no longer have time to fix like the global problems um that are like in every event possible. Um because like the only free time we have we're already spending on replying to those emails emails and we can we know that we can make like an unproportionately bigger impact to what we already do, but we just don't have the time. So we made a terrifying and exciting decision to start Dangerous Foundation. And to hire someone for our like first pay position. We are looking for Awesomeness Ambassador and the application are still open for four more days. Uh we hope that freeing like more of our time is gonna help us recharge like recharge batteries and not lead us into a burnout and give us like more brain space to work on things that can impact even more people.

Speaker 2: And it's like a small shameless flag that we still need some help to fund a salary for this person. We are currently have seventy-five percent of money committed for a year by these awesome companies here, uh DVO Century Elastic and Lincoln Loop. Um but we need a bit more. So you can support us on Patreon or you can shoot us an email and we can talk. But let's talk about balloons now. So we are always trying to keep Django girls friend fun and friendly in like many different ways. We buy the gold balloons. the flowers, the temporary tools and the stickers and we play nice music during workshops. We do group hugs and we try to like hug the internet on our group photos. makes it just easier for people to go through the whole day of thing of doing things they never done before. And every now and then we hear that we gave someone like the best day they have in a while.

Speaker 2: We gave them like permission to act goofy, to act like a kid again and not feel like embarrassed about it. And because just because like we are not embarrassed either. Um we make like real friends with these people. We like we keep meeting for a coffee or or stuff like that and we also keep it fun for us because after all like Django Girls is our very time consuming hobby. So it will if it wasn't like for the fun I'm not sure it will be um as as productive and as good And I think you can just totally see this kind of thing when you're whenever you're interacting with us. Like if you send an email to Django Girls, you will receive like a response with our one of our legendary Signatures. So instead of best regards, you will see like hugs, cupcake, cupcakes, and rainbows, Ola Starska, or like kisses, pierogi and sunshines, and

Speaker 2: you tweet at Django Goes, like you're gonna see like a rainbow of emojis in return. So you're not gonna like hide that like we really enjoy this. It's kind of and this is who we are and we don't take ourselves too seriously. But there is one thing we take seriously and this is going the extra mile for people. Like we even invented a saying for it. So we call people who go like above and beyond to accommodate someone or just like make someone happy. We call them a gammy bear kind of people. So there is a story. And these are like the people and companies who if you like order t-shirt from them, they're gonna send you a t-shirt and a pack of Gummy Birds. And that's actually happened to me when I was testing Django Girls t-shirts. So then I was like I was sharing that on Slack and Batis was like, okay, so then I think on the another occasion she just

Speaker 2: He d he used like we were talking about something and he was like okay I think like we should go with them because they're like gummy bird kind of people. Um this is like stick now we are using that And it shows like in many different ways we like for supporters at Patreon we send personalized handwritten uh thank you notes uh like via regular old school mail And we put like confetti or lollipops in the envelope and it takes a few hours to prepare them, but we enjoy making like people happy and and we believe that it's it 's important to do that And I think that the thing is like we don't compromise to the status quo. Like our only status quo is to make the best possible thing you can and just go this five extra miles because We just care. And I care and I want like others to care too. So the greatest gift for me was like this girl at the worshipping war.

Speaker 2: So she wrote an or like attendee discussion group. She wrote like we that we had like she had the best day in last year and like Like she's like never gonna forget this. And I think that was um because like she felt so taken care of. I think like I was crying when I was actually reading that Um and we care because we believe that all these like little stupid beautiful details make a real difference in lives of people who join us. And I cheer up every time I hear a woman who attended, coached, organized And event saying thank you, you changed my life and you gave me an ash to do something about this. Because technology is like beautiful and important and Python and Django are really cool, but and then I think people are everything that really matters and it's all about these like real human people whose life we are gonna change at least a bit and it's about just giving them an opportunity to to do something and all these little moments and the inside

Speaker 2: jokes and hugs and kisses And I think Django girls are generally just peop peop people who share the same values, who don't believe in status quo and who know we can always do better. And people who are like brave and passionate enough to step up and say, Okay, hey, let's change it, let's do this. Uh tell me how. Um no matter like the gender or the race or age because like we are not a um no boy boys allowed club anyway. And this is what I believe made Django girls what it is today. So thank you Yeah. Thank you.

Speaker 2: I got time for some questions if you have any. Okay. Okay. I don't see a lot from here.

Speaker 3: Um how how do we get involved if we're interested in uh hosting in Django Girls in our town.

Speaker 2: So you have to go to Django Girls org slash organize and then just go from there. We provide with organizers manuals we can see everything we need to do to organize the Django Girls event is like all a to the list. like what has to be done and how and how we can help. And then we'll just shoot an email and we'll give you an access to the website. We'll give you access to everything and all of like welcome you to the community. So that's how it really uh works and it's quite simple I think to to start. Okay. That's it then. Thank you very much.