PR girl learns to code
It’s late and I’m supposed to be doing research on competitors for a new client launching a protein shake — that old chestnut — and I would be deep inside the pro’s of whey protein powders, but I can’t concentrate. Because I’m a little bit excited about what’s happening tomorrow: I’m one of 30 female participants who have been selected to attend the Django Girls Coding Workshop in Cape Town. Basically, it’s for nerdy girls like moi to learn some new skills and empower our digital futures. Viva!
It starts tomorrow and I’m dead keen. I’m somewhat experienced in managing Wordpress platforms, through running blogs and websites for myself and clients, so I know my way around basic HTML and backends. I don’t know much about CMS, although I have been known to find ways of digging in there to make small [read: very easy to change-back] changes. And I recently came to understand the RGB colour model, it’s a whole new spectrum.
Look at me throwing out terms like I know what I’m talking about! Truth be told, I had previously heard about Python from an episode of Orphan Black (I’m rather obsessed with that show) so I knew that was a coding program, but I had to google Django to understand the relevance of the name Django Girls — because obviously I initially thought it was bango-guitar related, but with some kind of South American flair? I’m really, really new at this, can you tell?
What is Django Girls?
Django Girls Cape Town is a part of a bigger initiative: Django Girls.org; a programming workshop for women. It’s a global non-profit organization and events are organized by volunteers in different places around the world. Since 2014, an army of 381 volunteers have organized 189 events in 144 cities across 60 countries. Wowzer.
The first day of the workshop is an Installation Party, that’s nerd-speak for a ‘Meet and Greet’, and making sure you have enough space on your hard-drive to upload the program-thingy. And the next day we get into it. This is the part where my excitement goes virtual: Because I am a webby-kinda girl. I graduated college into the digital-age and I never looked back (so-long advertorials and bylines). I started blogging on Myspace, so I think it’s safe to say I was blogging before blogging was cool and then over-saturated and then uncool.
And I have always had a website. My first one was called ThePonderingBlonde.com — it’s long-gone, but it essentially documented my foray into the music industry; as a young, over-enthusiastic music writer. I was basically a dj groupie, but I didn’t actually realise this until a few years ago when it occurred to me — with joy, of course- that I would never look back on my life and regret not going out dancing more often. [Being paid to write about music in your early twenties is probably right up there in the best things can happen to you, and then completely bore you, by 27.]
Since then, I’ve had various websites built for me, including a bunch of blogs — which then sat blank while I wondered what to write on them in my early post-music-scribe days. Now, mostly, I creative-direct websites to be built for clients which isn’t saying much at all — it’s probably really annoying, because I know exactly what I want and I have to bug someone else with my minutiae until it appears like I pictured. Luckily, my designer, she has balls of steel.
But in this day and digital age, it’s not enough to just outsource these projects anymore. Working in communications means adopting an evolving approach and being a jackette-of-all-trades. As the world of media inches into newly-defined and ever-more self-published spaces, the intricacies of web design is something I feel I need to embrace, understand and, if god is willing, be able to do for my clients and myself, to honour many awesome but unfinished projects. Not least of all, because it would save me about a million dollars.
As things move towards the mobile space, with the mobile-web and mobile-first communities, I am inspired to learn how to set up and run my own websites, ship them into shape and delve deeper into the world of mobile communities through opt-in platforms, native and content marketing and that shiny beast, programmatic advertising. You gotta start somewhere and that place may as well be now!
I’ve been following the development of the coding movement overseas via Twitter; and there’s a lot happening out there! GirlsWhoCode, Berlin’s Geekettes and even Robyn S is showing the love for coding with her own Teklafestival, a technology festival for girls hosted in Stockholm, Sweden — I am so impressed with that development, she is badass.
“Technology plays a huge part in how our society is developing right now, and it’s obvious that technology will be shaped by those who want to be involved with it. But this is a long process. Getting girls to be comfortable in technology is essential if women are to have an equal stake in influencing our increasingly technological society.” ~ Robyn S.
And so, it’s really great to have discovered Django Girls in Cape Town and be exploring this 10101010 path with them — thank you for including me, I can’t wait to pony up and get stuck into the underbelly of the web. This PR Girl is gona learn to code!
