This is how I felt yesterday, especially evening time. I made a complete a$$ of myself… in my mind it was a slow car crash happening and I didn’t have the power to stop it. Words were coming out my mouth and my brain blinky lights were warning me to stop. It was a geeky tecchie evening I was hosting, and it went according to plan. I got through all the items I wanted to, quick 101 on virtualenv and pip. Questions about IDE preferences segue into PEP 8, which is pretty important when it comes to best programming practices.

If you are curious, these are my notes from last night: https://hackpad.com/PyLadies-Dublin-gsxJwC3Ri88:h=PyLadies-Dublin-Website—Proj

And you know what really freaked me out, on my way home, when I was on a straight stretch of road (that I’ve been on and familiar with), I kind of blanked out while over-thinking about what happened earlier in the evening with all...

During the last year of organising female-friendly workshops and events, I have been getting requests asking why only women can attend, whereas it’s the furthest from the truth. Those questions are fine. Sometimes there are slightly rude comments and they are just that, comments from people who are probably not the right people to come along to these events. Maybe they are comments in jest, who knows… meh, just check out “Don’t read the comments”.

Seriously though, it makes women uncomfortable, short and simple. That’s the effect tech events have on most women (myself included).

The whole reason it’s labelled “female-friendly” is because it encourages women who otherwise would overlook coding workshops and events because they feel they are not good enough to attend/participate or even help out. I’ve been getting feedback from partners of friends (and my husband) that they wouldn’t...