We interviewed part of the organizers of the Tech&Ladies Barcelona community. We caught them in the midst of preparing for the Women Techmakers International Women’s Day event. Conferences, workshops, and roundtable discussions about the world of technology with one particularity: All speakers are women. In the interview, we discuss everything from why they became interested in computer science and the development world to the goals they have with the Tech&Ladies community. We hope you enjoy it 🙂
Video
Interviewees
- Davinia García: Software Engineer at Opentrends and founder of Tech&Ladies BCN
- Adela Tort: Tech lead and Java developer at eDreams and organizer of JUG BCN
- Ilia Berlana: iOS and Android developer
- Judit Nieto: Data engineer at Beabloo
- Vero LoGu: Android developer at Zinio, organizer of GDG BCN and WTM lead
Interview Breakdown
1:24 How did you get started in computer science?
- J: You know when you tell a small child "don't touch that"... and they do exactly the opposite?
- I: No one thought I would even graduate. I started doing computer science in school, and I was good at it because I had a PC at home.
- A: I started at 17. I am not the typical girl who played with computers since childhood. I chose cryptography for my final high school project, and my dad encouraged me to do something practical.
- A: In my second year of high school, I began reading about pointers in C before going to bed. After 2 months, I realized that wasn't working, so I sat down in front of the computer.
- J: When you’re 9 years old and you go to the classes on Turbo Pascal, and they tell you that usually boys aged 18-20 attend... I go back to the previous point "don't touch that." Then I learned C++ and HTML on my own.
- D: The first time a computer came into the house... at 13-14 years old... the black screen... I started crying until I typed the first two commands "cd games" and "cd dukenukem."
- D: To this day, I can't imagine a day without coding. It hooks you.
7:00 What do you do in your day-to-day work?
- V: I am working on a project that is an Android application. You face a new problem every day. I try to explain to the machine what it needs to do.
- A: Right now, I am migrating a typical legacy project to microservices that we are breaking into smaller pieces.
- D: The last thing I did was the front end of a chat application. However, my specialty is backend.
9:16 How the Tech&Ladies BCN community came about
- D: It started thanks to Javi, a member of the GDG in Barcelona. He invited me to the GDG summit, where I met other girls from Tech&Ladies from across Spain.
- D: Thanks to the meetups I attended from GDG and JUG, I met Vero and Elisa, making them my allies to carry out the first edition.
- D: We know that it’s not easy to balance work and family life. Our goal is for anyone who wants to join and contribute what they can.
11:45 Women Techmakers International Women’s Day 2018
- V: Women Techmakers is a Google initiative that aims to give visibility to women.
- V: During March and April, we organize events for all types of audiences, but the speakers are women.
- V: We try to help women gain confidence so they can attend other meetups. We now have 900 signed up for the meetup, but when you go to events, you don't see them.
- V: Currently, there are no references to
15:08 Education, companies, and communities. How to change the trend?
- J: At the moment you say that you like coding in your free time, people look at you like you’re a weirdo.
- I: Saying "I want diversity in my company" does not mean you will have diversity.
- I: There are companies that go too far. In the end, I don't know if I am being hired because I deserve the position or because I am a woman.
- I: Some companies remove personal data from resumes to have completely blind diversity.
- I: Atlassian wasn't going to come to Spain when they were recruiting due to the belief that there was no talent. Thanks to David Bonilla's insistence, they came and ended up hiring 15 Spaniards.
- A: I think it’s important to create role models at all levels of the company. That people can enter without fear of becoming a mother or father.
- A: It’s cultural. We talk about the company, but we also need to talk about ourselves. The reduced workday can be taken by women, but also by men. The company needs to provide that information so people see that it’s good and not fear it.
- V: The family aspect is missing. You should also be able to find support systems just like you do in school from teachers.
22:30 Positive discrimination in technical events
- D: Laura Morillo gave a presentation at the GDG summit that left me speechless. She presented numbers of girls who decide to study computer science, finish their studies, work in the field, continue in it past 30, etc. After seeing that, I believe that positive discrimination is unfortunately still needed.
- A: It’s a positive discrimination that we currently have to implement. We are very far from parity.
- A: At the Software Craftsmanship Barcelona two years ago, we had 4-5 girls, last year we had 25. This may encourage us in 5-10 years to test removing this type of reserved tickets for underrepresented groups to see what happens and if it worked.
- A: In the Call for Papers for WTM, 40 girls applied. Where have you seen 40 girls at a conference?
- A: I would have my doubts about [supporting positive discrimination at events even if it were a reflection of current parity in companies]. Current events are not a technological reference for an 18-year-old student. They are a reference for final-year students or workers. I'm not sure it brings about a bottom-up societal change.
- A: It can't be that I have 10 female colleagues at the company, and when I go to an event, I only see 1.
- A: Our group creates a comfort zone for people to feel encouraged to present, with the intention that these girls dare to attend other types of events like JUG, GDG, or Software Craftsmanship.
- I: I hope that one day Tech&Ladies will be unnecessary. The goal is for there to come a day when this won't be needed.
28:10 The Promotion
- V: In two days (Saturday, March 10th), we already have #iwdbcn18. 12 talks, 1 workshop, and 2 roundtables.
- V: The tickets are sold out, but you can sign up for the waitlist and find all the information at: wtm.gdgbarcelona.com
- J: Even though we are Women Techmakers, we still haven’t eaten any boys 😂.