Ladies Learning Code

Scaling an Organization like Ladies Learning Code

First, An Announcement: The Ladies Learning Code Job Board

Let me start by introducing a project the Ladies Learning Code team has been working on for a few weeks: the Ladies Learning Code job board! We told our community about it last week by email, and now we’re excited to share it with all of you. It’s a WordPress theme that we edited – thanks to Ladies Learning Code mentor Ivonne Karamoy for modifying the CSS, and to Anna Klibanov for creating the pretty header image. Most of the project was managed by Laura Plant – thank you, Laura!

Check out the job board here: http://jobs.ladieslearningcode.com. And check out the Ladies Learning Code Intern posting here!

Now, back to “Scaling an Organization like Ladies Learning Code”

When I tweeted back in June about how Toronto should have a group for women who want to learn to code, I obviously didn’t expect it to turn into the Ladies Learning Code we know today. I never would have predicted that the idea would be so popular, or that the group would receive such widespread support, both in Toronto and beyond. I am, of course, thrilled. Building Ladies Learning Code from just an idea to an incorporated not-for-profit organization that people really seem to appreciate has been the most challenging, fun and rewarding thing I’ve ever done. I know that Laura, Melissa and Breanna would say the same thing.

But we’re really only getting started. Our first-ever event, that brainstorming session, was less than seven and a half months ago. In that time, we’ve run six workshops (with two more planned in the next two weeks). We threw a pretty cool launch party. We now have over 1000 women (and men) signed up to our email list, and another 250 people have joined our ‘tech help’ email list, effectively saying that they’ll support Ladies Learning Code by volunteering at our workshops. We have really incredible, engaged and helpful communities on Twitter and Facebook. And even though we’re now doing two workshops a month, we’re still selling out. Really, really quickly.

So, What Next?

We want to continue what we’re doing, and we want to have even more impact. We want to be able to do more workshops, and other events, and we want to be able to pursue other interesting opportunities that will support our mission of inspiring and empowering more women and girls to become passionate builders – not just consumers – of the web and technology. We want Ladies Learning Code to be around in the long-run, for as long as people want it to be around, and creating a self-sustaining organization is really important to us. So, over the next few months, we’ll be rolling out a few exciting initiatives that we hope will help us get there. I’m letting you know now, because we’d really like your support.

Here’s where we’re at: for us to have more impact, we’re going to need more resources. And a small, dedicated, full-time team is one of the things we’re going to need – this year.

A Few New Initiatives from Ladies Learning Code

One of the first things we’re pursuing is the Ladies Learning Code job board, which is officially launching today. The inspiration for the project came from our community – a few months ago, we started receiving a lot of emails (several per day) from people who were hiring. They saw the Ladies Learning Code community as a great place to find the talent they need. I totally see their line of thinking. After all, our community is made up of over 1000 women (and men) who are mostly tech-savvy, university or college educated, and invested enough in their personal and professional development to see the value in getting up before 8 am on a Saturday to learn something about computer programming. That’s a really special group. And then, on the other hand, there’s our community of developers – special, in their own way, because they care enough about their industry to join our ‘tech help’ email list, effectively saying that they’d like to support Ladies Learning Code by volunteering their time to teach beginners at one of our workshops. If I had an open position to fill, whether I was looking for a Marketing Manager or an Agile Engineer, this is one group I’d definitely want to start with.

Five emails a day from people looking for talent is a quite a bit to deal with, though. Plus, we have no interest in being recruiters. But my team and I saw opportunity here: what if we gave people a way to find the talent they need (or the job they want), while supporting Ladies Learning Code? Plans for a job board started immediately.

You can post jobs for free until March 1st (click here to add yours). At that point, we’ll start charging for postings – and all proceeds will support our not-for-profit organization. We hope the job board will serve our community and that people will get a lot of value out of it. Because this job board, if successful, is going to make an enormous difference for Ladies Learning Code as an organization. Please feel free to spread the news to anyone you know who is hiring, and please consider the Ladies Learning Code job board when you’re deciding where to post a role you’re hiring for.

Two More Initiatives: New Workshop Formats

We have two more announcements coming in the next two weeks about other initiatives we’re rolling out in February and early March. Both of them are new workshop formats (by request), and both of them feature one really cool improvement: the developers leading or assisting with them all get paid. More details on one of the new formats coming tomorrow – stay tuned!

(In case you’re a developer or designer and we’ve caught your interest, join our ‘tech help’ email list here.

Questions? Comments? Suggestions? Massive donations or sponsorship offers? Get in touch! You can email me any time at heather [at] ladieslearningcode [dot com].

As always, thank you for your support. Here’s to what’s already turning out to be an exciting 2012!

Heather
Ladies Learning Code Team