Here’s what AdaFruit says about our partnership:
It doesn’t matter if you’re a kid wanting to learn how to make the next popular gadget, or an educator who just wants to have a a great resource for your students to learn. Limor “Ladyada” Fried and her company Adafruit Industries (http://www.adafruit.com/) help makers of all skill levels learn basics of electronics and making things, all the way up to advanced engineering! Adafruit is thrilled to help sponsor CodeChix.org !

So here I was with my good friend Melody Bliss, talking about inspiration, technology and what it means to be an woman in technology. Correction, a woman developer/programmer/engineer in technology.

Laura Granka, our moderator asked us all how we got into technology and what inspired us. I had to think pretty hard about this since it’s not something I think about very much. It occurred to me that there were two main reasons (off the top of my head) that drove me towards technology/Computer Science, in particular. The first is that it seemed to me to be the only field where I could make an income that would make me financially independent. The second is that it seemed to me to be the only field where I could do my job without having to wear heels or fancy clothes. The latter was a more powerful driver than the former in my case.

The question about what inspired me was even harder to answer. All I knew was that I had this insane, inexplicable drive inside me which pushes me to do these things (like start CodeChix). I never asked myself where this drive comes from or what triggers it. And now I was being asked this very same question in front of 200 women. Pressure. And that’s when the simple truth dawned on me. I like helping myself get better, helping others get better and helping the environment get better. My deep need to help others (and, therefore, myself) and my love of nature and mountains are all tied into CodeChix. Creating the first ad-hoc, grassroots group for female developers in my living room, teaching/learning/creating/inspiring each other and going for hikes or planning to band together to contribute to something bigger than us – that is the CodeChix DNA.

I got to meet Megan Smith and wear the cool Google Glasses and take pictures with it at the event. I am still humbled by how approachable Megan was and how much energy and passion she exuded. She inspired me. And all the CodeChix members who show their support in different ways inspire me.

So, on International Women’s Day, I thank the powers that be for all the women that have been my inspiration – family, friends, acquaintances, colleagues, neighbors, teachers, students, mentors, mentees, email pals halfway across the world.

Thank you for being you and for standing up for yourself and showing us all that brains, beauty, compassion, hard work and achieving your dreams is what we are all about.

And, now I’m going to go modularize my code…

May the code be with you !
Rupa

GIT Workshop by GitHub – Part 2

Sunday, February 24, 2013 from 12:00 PM to 4:00 PM (PDT)
at Andreessen Horowitz in Menlo Park
Open to Women and Men. GitHub’s sponsoring lunch!

Register Now: http://codechix-git2.eventbrite.com

GitHub developers Julie Ann Horvath, Paul Betts, and Kevin Sawicki are back to hold the second part of workshop on GIT fundamentals. By the end of this workshop, you will have an in-depth knowledge of GIT including branching, merging etc.

If you have not attended “GIT Workshop – Part1″, just complete pre-requisites before coming to this workshop.

http://teach.github.com/articles/github-class-prerequisites

Tech Talk: Arduino/RaspberryPi for Engineers and Tinkerers

Wednesday, February 27, 2013 from 6:30 PM to 8:00 PM (PDT)
Location: TBD
Open to Women and Men

Register Now: http ://codechix-arduino.eventbrite.com

CodeChix founder Rupa Dachere, will be talking about her arduino project. This tech talk will provide the basics of Arduinos/Rpi’s and what they are and how they work. In particular, Rupa will go over the hardware components, all the code as well as doing a live demo. Fun Fun Fun!

Please feel free to forward this along to any interested women and men. Thanks for showing your support for our speakers and CodeChix Bay Area by signing up today!

Feel free to forward this message to anyone who may be interested in these events. Thank you!

Big Data TechCon is technology-agnostic and will apply to organizations using relational databases, NoSQL databases, graph databases, unstructured data, flat files and data feeds.

Receive a $100 discount off the 3-day pass by inserting the code MEDIASPONSOR when prompted. Exhibits are free. www.bigdatatechcon.com

Potluck Holiday Party – Games and Toys for Tots
Sunday, October 21, 2012 from 12:00 PM to 4:00 PM (PDT)
at Andreessen Horowitz in Menlo Park
Open to Women and Men.

Register Now: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/4686227633/eorg

To sign up for a dish and see what others are bringing, go to http://www.signupgenius.com/go/20F0444ACA829A31-codechix.

A prize will be awarded for the most creative dish so bring it on! A prize will also be awarded to the most creatively geeky ugly christmas sweater!

There will also be a white elephant gift exchange, so bring an old gift or a gag gift to participate. If you are planning to buy one, please limit the amount to $15 max.

Codechix is also partnering up with a local non-proft (Toys For Tots) that ensures kids with disadvantaged backgrounds will have a gift this holdiay season. So feel free to bring a new children’s toy to donate at this party.

Receive a $100 discount off the prevailing rate of either the 4-day or 3-day pass by inserting the code MEDIASPONSOR when prompted on the eRegistration page.

Register early for even bigger savings. www.sptechcon.com.

Tech Talk: Building a Cassandra based application. From 0 to deploy
Wednesday, Novemeber 7, 2012 from 6:30 PM to 8:30 PM (PDT)
at @WalmartLabs in San Bruno
Open to Women and Men

Register Now: http://cassandra4codechix-eorg.eventbrite.com/

This talk is for people unfamiliar with building an application with Cassandra or would like a complete example. We will take a simple video sharing web application and go from design to implementation. One of the first questions asked when starting with Cassandra is: “How will my data look?” By starting from the beginning, you will see how the design process works. We’ll cover topics like data modeling, designing for application needs and considerations for deployment. The language used in this talk will be Java, but all data models will be expressed in CQL 3 DDL and are abstract enough for implementation in any language.

Tech Talk: Cracking the Coding Interview
Wednesday, October 17, 2012 from 6:30 PM to 9:00 PM (PDT)
at Intel HQ in Santa Clara
Open to Women and Men

Register Now: http://codechix-code-interview-ccweb.eventbrite.com

CodeChix is honored to present Gayle Laakmann McDowell (Founder/CEO of CareerCup.com and Author of “Cracking the Coding Interview” and “The Google Resume”) for a heart-to-heart talk about technical interviews and what sorts of CS concepts, code and design you need to know/prepare for and how to do it.

Please join us for an evening with an exceptional CodeChick who will share with us her thoughts and experiences while working at Google, Amazon and Microsoft.

GIT Workshop by GitHub – Part 1 (Beginners)
Sunday, October 21, 2012 from 12:00 PM to 4:00 PM (PDT)
at Andreessen Horowitz in Menlo Park
Open to Women and Men. GitHub’s sponsoring lunch!

Register Now: http://codechix-git-part1-ccweb.eventbrite.com

Learn about Git fundamentals directly from the source! We’re pleased to have GitHub developers Julie Ann Horvath and Paul Betts hold the first part of this 2-part workshop.

Please show your support for our speakers and CodeChix by registering now.
Have suggestions for an event/topic, or want to speak to CodeChix (Tech Talk, Workshop, etc.)? Please email rupa at codechix.org.

Workshop: Free Red Hat OpenShift Workshop (Python/MongoDB)
Open to Women and Men
Some free tickets, Some $10 Donation tickets**
Limited Seats!

Sunday, September 9, 2012 from 12:15 PM to 3:45 PM
The Offices of Andreessen Horowitz in Menlo Park, CA
Lunch and Drinks provided!

Register today: http://codechix-openshift-adv.eventbrite.com

This is a follow-up, hands-on workshop to our first OpenShift Tutorial workshop held on July 26th. We’re excited to have Red Hat’s Steve Citron-Pousty back to talk to us again!

“In this workshop we are going to be developing a web application on the Platform as a Service (Paas) from Red Hat called Openshift. Using a PaaS let’s you focus on building applications not managing servers. We are going to build a simple web application in Python using the Flask web framework and we are going to talk to MongoDB, a document-based NoSQL database.”

Please view more details about this event at http://codechix-openshift-adv.eventbrite.com.

** What are the $10 donation tickets?

To thank you for donating to CodeChix Bay Area, CodeChix Bay Area will give you a free O’Reilly book! When you donate $10 to attend this workshop, you’ll be able to pick a book from our collection when you arrive.

We’re raising funds to apply for non-profit status and for 2013 CodeChix T-shirts. Applying for non-profit status is a hugely expensive process (on the order of $5K-$7K) and we would love to have any help we can towards this effort. And, we’d also love to get CodeChix T-shirts to distribute, too. Please help us by signing up, coming to our event and donating towards these items.

We are greatly appreciative of your support and hope to continue bringing you great speakers and events.

Please feel free to forward this along to any interested women and men. Thanks for showing your support for our speaker and CodeChix Bay Area by signing up/registering today!

Workshop: Creating Browser Extensions (Limited Seats!)
How much: $10 Donation Suggested, Open to Women and Men

When: Sat, Aug 25, 12p – 4:45p
Where: The Offices of Andreessen Horowitz in Menlo Park, CA
Food: Lunch and Drinks provided! (Lunch and drinks have to be ordered in advance; the amount ordered will depend on how many people register.)

Register today: http://codechix-browser-extensions.eventbrite.com/

“In this seminar, software engineer Sharon Minsuk will draw on her experiences working on Kachingle’s browser extension to give an overview on writing your own browser extensions.”

Please feel free to forward this along to any interested women and men.
Thanks for showing your support for our speaker and CodeChix Bay Area by signing up/registering today!