IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - December 2014 - 42

Crystal augustono

Attendees at the "Non-Scary SQL: Databases for Non-Programmers" Code(Her) workshop at WeWork (Wonderbread location) in May 2014.

on their resources and stopped providing computers and employee trainers
to groups like DCWW. For a few years
DCWW didn't teach coding while they
were locating new partners. At the time
Edwards became president, it was hard
to keep a consistent mission since there
were new groups springing up, and there
was not as much activity as there should
have been. She worked with the Steering
Committee to rebrand the group, which
hadn't been done for ten years, and
update the mission. She came up with
the idea of offering Code(Her) workshops and put out a call for a volunteer
to run them and find partners.
Since 2012, DCWW has offered coding workshops, and Edwards considers
this offering one of DCWW's proudest
accomplishments. "People show up with
their laptops at our sponsoring facility,
WeWork, get a great instructor, and learn
how to code. We sold out the first, second, and third events and have had consistently high attendance at most of our
other classes since the inception," she
says with pride.
The classes are relevant and relatively
inexpensive, around US$35, so they can
be immersive but not soup-to-nuts. Two

IEEE women in engineering magazine

hours is enough to learn the basics of a
language, Edwards says. Then, attendees
can use their knowledge and learn more
on their own.
Another accomplishment Edwards
highlights is how much the group advocates for women and girls in technology.
Through DCWW's outreach program,
members help local at-risk teenage
girls, providing speakers who focus on
the topic of getting jobs and careers
in technology. They also host panels
and workshops at science, technology,
engineering, and math conferences for
groups like the National Society of Black
Engineers. DCWW hosts Girls Rock On
the Web workshops, where 8-12-yearold girls learn HTML, layout, and storytelling and create their own Web sites
and have fun.
In addition to coding classes, Edwards
is proud of the career development program DCWW offers to members. Its
monthly career development workshop
events cover topics such as career changing, portfolio reviews, personal branding,
and how to get hired for a federal job.
"The workshops help people make themselves more marketable to get hired. And
since many of the members are freelance

DeCEMBER 2014

contractors, myself included, we are
having more events geared toward contracting, pay, and salary negotiation to
empower those groups," she says.

Impacting Careers
For Gauri Shah, one of DCWW's technology directors and long-time member since 2000, having access to other
women helped her in immeasurable ways.
"In the early days, I was always able to
get prompt technical help from someone
on the DCWW listserv. I learned about
new technologies. Members read and
answered technical questions and even
recommended fixes to code that wasn't
working and were always very committed
to helping other members," she says.
As Shah's career moved more into
project management, she found the
group's members helpful when she needed honest advice, opinions, and career
help as well. She asked questions about
how she could get into a different field
and heard some of the challenges other
women had doing something similar. She
also listened to what others saw as trends
in the market. "Members try to help each
other. The information they provide really does help," she adds.

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - December 2014