a bunch of us went to the totally excellent and huge (50+ people) double union launch event which had a bunch of really great short talks on all kinds of topics (technical projects, a women's google glass hacking group, history of textiles, singing in navi - which is apparently an inclusive language, experiences from using the internet with a male-gendered handle, comics, and stand-up). it left me personally totally inspired to have open short short talks at sudo (less pressure than 5 minutes of fame) and totally amazed by the density of hacker women in our area. we are not doing a good enough job getting women at sudo room, but we have a great new partner in double union.

afterwards a few of us went to a women who code open hack night at the new relic office (more on that below). they had pizza (boo) but also salad (yay). there were at least 30 women here, all at various levels of experience. there was a lot of app talk and a lot of interest in working for companies.

a number of women shared their experiences of getting work at corporations, getting mentorship in order to move up in corporations, and forcing their organizations to take gender inclusion seriously. while i applaud the accomplishments of all women who find work in an exclusive field and also applaud the formation of alternate professional networks, i am very sad that we have to applaud and cheer whenever a single women gets a leg up, or support, or a job, or successfully leverages another woman in her network to help her find work.

it was also interesting to observe in myself the effects of efforts at inclusion - when women would say that their attempts to bring attention to the lack of women at their company were well-received, or when they talked about how a boss was supportive of their professional development, i could see myself giving little ++'s to their organization. sharing with other people the ways that communities demonstrate their commitment to inclusion is a key part of getting more people in the door. this is why i think that it's really important to share what we do at sudo and the ways we pay attention to and act on our mission of inclusion.

finally, jordan and i chatted with the women who code people about their organization. it's all volunteer-run, they have no budget. they have meetups three times a week now (algorithms study group!). they meet at different companies who give them space for free and agree to cater (apparently organizing this is not as much work as it would seem..they said they now have a pipeline and enough industry connections to make this easy). they rarely meet at hackerspaces because of the lack of ability to sponsor food.

we talked to them about starting an east bay chapter at sudo focused on linux/open source projects/?? and they were super supportive. they said that this would meet a need that they saw in their community: from their experience, many women were able to reach "intermediate" levels of experience through their groups, but hit snags when starting to develop projects of their own and joining open source communities. their people needed support learning how to navigate open source communities and knowing where and how to start. we'll see what comes of this.