Community Partners for CodeConf LA

Since we are only a few days away from CodeConf LA, we’re happy to announce our Community Partners for the next conference in our 2016 lineup.

Community Partners are chosen based on several criteria but the most important questions we ask ourselves when looking for partners are:

1. Do they have an audience that can benefit from free tickets to our conference?
2. Are they lowering the barriers for people from underrepresented backgrounds to enter the tech industry?
3. Are they doing socially impactful work in the community where the conference will be held?

We’re aware that genuine diversity and inclusion doesn’t result from an “if you build it, they will come” mentality. We know that diversity breeds innovation and that bringing people together from disparate backgrounds will not only enrich the conference experience but also the experience of contributing to open source projects. For these reasons and more, we’ve chosen to reach out to the following organizations to help us with our local outreach efforts in Southern California. You can read a bit more about some of our Community Partners below.

Operation Code

Veteran-founded and led, Operation Code is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt nonprofit organization on a mission to get active military, citizen-soldiers, veterans, and their families coding and building software to change the world. They help the nation’s finest and their families learn to code, network, and transition to careers while filling the nation’s technical talent shortage.

“I served in the Marines as an Infantryman for 5 years and I would like to build something that will disrupt how folks in the military transition out into the civilian world.” -Jameel Matin

Ticket Details: Scholarship recipients had to apply and meet two criteria: military service and strong interest in software development or open source. Finalists had to demonstrate open source contributions through GitHub and/or personal projects and a strong desire to join the industry as a software developer.

Sabio.la

Sabio is an inclusive and diverse community of exceptional software developers that are looking to improve their development skills. They work hard to encourage as many women and people of color to participate in an ever-growing community of software developers and have a proven track record of helping smart and motivated people get into tech roles throughout the country.

“The world is now flat, and all humans are connected via the awesome world wide web that is being created, modified, and improved on a daily basis. We must have diverse web developers to have an even better web.” – Liliana Monge

Ticket Details: Scholarship recipients are active members of the Sabio developer community.

Upcoming events: Information Session on on July 13th

Rails Girls LA

Rails Girls helps make technology more approachable for women through technical workshops that aim to teach skills and provide a community for women to connect with technology and build cool things.

“We are different and yet we are the same. We want different things yet we want the same things. Our differences and similarities weigh the same.”
-Jen Diamond

Ticket Details: Scholarship recipients include women who coached at Rails Girls workshops and who are leaders in the Los Angeles programming community.

Upcoming events: LA Summer of Code: Open Source Pair & Mob Programming on June 28th, 2016

Rails Bridge San Diego

Railsbridge San Diego is a free, 1.5-day workshop set up to increase diversity in the tech community by teaching people Ruby and Rails. The Railsbridge workshop provides a space for newcomers from often under-represented groups in tech to learn, ask questions, and connect to the San Diego tech community.

“People making technology should accurately reflect the diversity of those using it!”
-Railsbridge motto

Ticket Details: We distributed scholarship codes to women from the Railsbridge San Diego community who have continued learning to code. Recipients attended a Rails and Javascript coding school and have remained active in the local tech community. They’ve joined and contributed to local Ruby and Javascript meetups as well as volunteered at other diversity in tech workshops.

Los Angeles Jenkins Area Meetup
The Los Angeles Jenkins Area Meetup connects professionals in the pursuit of sharing practices, networking, open source, and exploring advanced topics such as build automation, virtualization, testing, and CI/CD.

Tech in Motion
Tech in Motion is a national event series started with the goal of bringing local tech communities together to meet, learn, and innovate. Tech in Motion topics are broad in the hopes that people of all disciplines and skills sets can come and learn something new each time.

Upcoming Events: Open Source: Shaping the Future of Los Angeles

It’s not too late to join us at CodeConf LA next week! Grab your tickets here and chat with these amazing Community Partners in person.

Written by

Bianca Escalante

@bescalante