Fueling innovative software
July 15-18, 2019
Portland, OR

How CodeChix built a community for technical women with open source

Rupa Dachere (CodeChix)
5:05pm–5:45pm Thursday, July 18, 2019
OSCON Business Summit - Open Source in Enterprise Case Studies
 Location: C120-122
Secondary topics:  Customer Centered
Average rating: ****.
(4.00, 2 ratings)

Level

Non-technical

Studies done by the NSF and the Anita Borg Institute highlight that up to twice as many women drop out of the technical ladder in the corporate world compared to men. A look at the numbers published by Facebook (16%), Google (18%), and Slack (18%) demonstrate the extent of the problem. In open source, the numbers are around 5.4%.

CodeChix, a fledgling CA nonprofit, is addressing this retention problem in the tech industry through open source tools and methodologies by promoting building open source side projects, open source technical curricula targeted toward busy professional women engineers and developers, technical talks provided for free on YouTube for all women and men developers to learn from and, in particular, creating an environment to support technical women engineers and developers so that they can be as successful in their corporate careers as their male colleagues.

Rupa Dachere discusses the need for, achievements of, and hurdles to creating a unique, technical community for women from the corporate world and explains why and how open source is a successful approach for sustainability and retention.

What you'll learn

  • Understand the need, achievements, and hurdles in creating a unique, technical community for women from the corporate world and why and how open source is a successful approach for sustainability and retention
Photo of Rupa Dachere

Rupa Dachere

CodeChix

Rupa Dachere is the founder and executive director of CodeChix, a 501( c )3 charitable nonprofit dedicated to the education, advocacy, and mentorship of women engineers in industry. Rupa has been a software engineer and tinkerer for decades and loves to learn new technologies and skills and share her knowledge with others. A recognized speaker and panelist at PyCon, OSCON, the Grace Hopper conference, and several international conferences, Rupa is known for her straight talk about the challenges that women face in the tech industry and her dedication to addressing the retention issue through her unique annual technical conference, DevPulseCon, which focuses on open source. Rupa holds a degree in computer science from the University of Colorado Boulder. She received awards from the IEEE and ABI. You can learn more about her at Rupadachere.com.