Diversity Groups Around Ireland and Northern Ireland
This was initially created way back in 2017 by me (Vicky Twomey-Lee), first via Svtble, then through Medium and more recently I have it on EventGeek.ie as well. I've stopped updating Svtble but I still update both Medium and EventGeek.ie post. Double the effort, and I'm sure there's been typos made.
🤞 I hope that this time round I can get people to contribute via PRs on Github. Once this is live, I'll stop updating the Medium post (and prob EventGeekie's) with a note to refer to this site instead.
I'll keep the reason why I started this. So here we go!
The year 2017 has been interesting, at least three new Women in Tech groups that I know of popped up in Dublin. It’s amazing as back in 2008, I wished there was at least one group, and I thought my wishes were answered when Ireland Girl Geek Dinner started… but I wished there were more programming groups that have more people than just your atypical coder that attend techie events.
I co-founded Coding Grace (diversity-friendly coding workshops) which started in May 2013, and founded PyLadies Dublin (Python coding evenings) which had its first meetup in October 2013. It was certainly different to run and mentor workshops, and great to have technical events that’s not just about talks, and have some hands-on coding evenings or interactive workshops that are inclusive and friendly to everyone.
Another group that I want to mention is WITS (Women in Technology and Science) Ireland, who have been around since 1990, with amazing patrons like our first female Irish president, Mary Robinson, Mary McAleese and the current president, Michael D. Higgins. What makes this group different is that WITS Ireland is involved with gender equality policies on the government level in the areas of STEM and have members in public and private sectors.
It’s amazing that we have so many diversity groups, but I am not the only to think that we should be careful that we don’t fragment the community. The tech community (especially in Dublin) is small, the diversity community is even smaller.
I hope that all organisers will collectively be in touch with one another and co-ordinate (if possible), or even just let folks know in advance when their event(s) are on. Plus it’s a great way to give heads up and we can shout out about each other’s events. Maybe some folks don’t want to, that’s ok, I just want to be friends with everyone! 😊
🌈 You can contribute by PR to event lists, I've a CONTRIBUTING doc on github that you can have a read through on how you can share info about events, conferences and even opportunities.