Diversity in Practice¶
“How the Boston Python User Group grew to 1700 people and over 15% women”
- by Jessica McKellar , Asheesh Laroia
- Boston Python user group organizers
- PSF members
- PSF outreach and education committed members
- Open hatch
- FOSS
Basics¶
- Diversity membership makes user groups better.
- Diversity outreach helps user groups group
Motivation¶
- No women at user group events
- No pipeline for newcomers / beginners.
- To fix it, they decided to change things from within
Goals¶
- Bring more women into the community. Get to 15%
- Show examples of great women programmers
- Encourage other user groups to think about diversity
Workshop goals¶
- workshops + follow up events
- Over 200 women alums
- Large volunteer base
- Beginner’s stay inside!
Schedule¶
How they do it:
Friday: Spaces¶
- Windows and Python sucks.
- Fixing tabs versus spaces
- Practice with the interpreter
- All their materials are available on the web
Saturday: Lecture and practice¶
Basics of python objects and structures (2 hours)
Lunch
Build your own project (2 hours)
- A couple games
- Play with the twitter API
Post event¶
- Hack nights
- Discussion groups
The results¶
Before¶
- 1 organizer (Ned Batchelder)
- 700 members
After¶
- 3 organizers
- 1800 members
- Monthly lecture-style events
- hack nights
- classes
- more
Reflection & Sharing¶
Volunteers are awesome
Why’d you sign up? “Women, judgement-free, free”
Staff wrap-up. Lesson’s learned:
- More coding practice
- simplified projects
Scaling out: impact beyond Boston¶
How they influenced the world
Montreal Python: Women & friends workshop
Pystar: Workshops and material
- PyStar Philly
PyLadies: women-friendly python user group(s)
Ladies learning code: women-oriented tech programming in Toronto
7 of the 50 poster sessions came out of women who got involved because of these groups
Next steps¶
- Continuing innovation of organization
- Get people in via workshops, user groups, PSF memberships,
- project nights