Let's take your career to the next level!
Join us for 4 days designed to polish your skills and fully own your expertise through writing, speaking, and open source.
By the end of this intensive 4-day conference for technologists with marginalized genders, each attendee will possess and polish the skills necessary to fully own their expertise as thought leaders, conference speakers, and open source contributors.
8:00 AM
9:00 AM
Lateesha Thomas
Rebecca Miller-Webster
9:20 AM
Katherine Daniels
Writing is a skill we all use throughout our professional careers, whether we're documenting code or blogging. This talk covers various aspects of professional writing, including understanding your audience, technical versus non-technical communication, and even what it's like to write a book!
10:15 AM
10:30 AM
10:30 AM
Neha Batra
To kick-off our highly-interactive and energetic full-day seminar we explore the source of credibility and how to establish it. We cover strategies for making a greater impact through our writing, including how to escape a pigeonhole, how to preach beyond the choir, and the value of framing your message and yourself as part of a larger public conversation. Participants leave this session with a newly crafted professional bio.
12:30 PM
Neha Batra
Want to write, but have no clue what you want to say? We’ll challenge you through fun collaborative exercises and design thinking activities to be more thoughtful and expansive when reflecting on your own knowledge, skills and experience. Participants will leave this session with no fewer than 20 new topics that they can blog or speak about.
10:30 AM
Jiaqi Liu
For developers, growing into a team lead is not an overnight transition but rather a gradual process and it starts with making and owning technical decisions. I hope to show how engineers can leverage their expertise and influence to become a tech lead and contribute to projects beyond just code.
11:00 AM
Jessica Parsons
The rapidly growing tech industry is filled with stories of people who became overnight millionaires, simply by getting in early on a company that made it big. Riding this train of dreams fueled by survivorship bias, startup founders often use equity offers and the promise of future returns as a way to justify lower salaries, but in some ways, this is like being paid in lottery tickets. However, like the lottery, where chances of winning are extremely low if you play, but nonexistent if you don’t, equity and stock options can be a vehicle for monetary gains you might not otherwise achieve by diligent saving alone. The question then becomes, just how much are you willing to pay in lost salary for this chance? Further, how do you evaluate the value and fairness of the offer you’ve received? What options do you have for negotiating an offer to your advantage, and how can you make the most of it? I’ll help you wade through the sea of terms, options, and outcomes so you’ll feel prepared to make these choices for yourself.
11:30 AM
Jess Lee
Fact: there will be more developers tomorrow than there are today. How do we set ourselves apart as the number of programmers on linkedin and github continue to grow? In this talk, I’ll explain why it’s important to craft your dev identity and how participating in online communities can help you offline.
As someone who spends their time obsessing over how programmers share ideas and knowledge, I’ll give you a walkthrough of all the places I find developers hanging out. We’ll walk through the helpful parts of twitter, how not to be disheartened by hacker news, and how to start contributing on dev.to.
11:45 AM
Amelia Abreu
For humans, care is ubiquitous. Most of us perform and benefit from care on a daily basis, including operational care, companionship, child and elder care, routine assistance and accommodation. Technology has the potential to shape the way that we give and receive care, and the conditions in which the work of care is done. Yet, is it possible to automate the crucial tasks of caring, and is it in our own interest to do so?
Drawing on business cases and design research, this session examines care work’s impact across industries including healthcare, education, transportation and technology. How can we better operationalize ethics of care in order to design for privacy, security and trust? How can we design services, along with products and systems, to support care?
In this interactive workshop, participants will be encouraged to draw on their own professional and personal experiences. Following the presentation, we will share and take part in brief design exercises to define and iterate design principles and outcomes to support and recognize care work.
1:00 PM
2:00 PM
2:00 PM
Lara Hogan
Angie Jones
Katherine Daniels
Alexandra Millatmal
Katel LeDû
In this panel of women tech writers, authors, and technical publishers, you'll hear about the ways they use writing in their personal lives and careers, tips on how to get published, or self-publish, and the broader impact this work can have on the industry at large.
3:00 PM
Neha Batra
How can you present ideas quickly and effectively? In this session we’ll talk about the components of a powerful, evidence-based argument; and share a few helpful outline formats to help you put your ideas on the page.
2:00 PM
Lisa van Gelder
Last year, Lisa van Gelder was interviewing for a new executive job in NYC at the same time as two (white, male) friends. Because they had a similar amount of experience and similar interests, they ended up interviewing at the same companies at the same time, and Lisa found herself in an unintentional A/B test. When they compared notes, she found that she had a radically different interview experience than her friends. Lisa discusses what she learned from her accidental A/B tests, how the term “unqualified” is often used to reject marginalized groups in tech, and what we can do about it—both as individual interviewees and as hiring managers looking to improve the interview process.
2:30 PM
Kronda Adair
Learn how being unapologetically, authentically YOU can build your personal brand, create an audience of raving fans, and help boost your next career move.
3:05 PM
Chiu-Ki Chan
Think you can’t draw? You can still sketchnote! Copy and learn the visual vocabulary of different letter styles, bubbles & ribbons, fun bullet points, and create your first sketchnote in this hands-on session.
4:00 PM
4:30 PM
4:30 PM
Neha Batra
The most common reason are participants cite for not blogging or writing is “I don’t have time.” Lucky for you we scheduled it into this session. Use the outline you created to write a draft blog post and give/receive feedback from your peers.
4:30 PM
Allison McMillan
Whether you’re trying to teach a technical concept or focus on professional growth, interactive workshops are the best way to get teams engaged and individuals to remember lessons learned. Any individual can create these engaging and interesting sessions by following a simple formula.
5:30 PM
Amy Wibowo
Being a good developer is, at its heart, about being a good communicator. Writing code is telling a computer what you'd like it to do, and well-written code can be easily understood by others (as well as by future you). In this talk I'll cover all the ways in which writing has helped me along my path to becoming a better developer, including academic paper writing, presentation writing, documention writing, and eventually self-publishing zines about computing concepts.
6:30 PM
Come join for food, drinks, swag, music and views of Portland's downtown area!
Puppet is located at:
308 SW 2nd Ave, 5th Floor (in the Block 300 building)
Portland, Oregon 97204
Access to the Block 300 building can be found off SW 2nd Ave. Volunteers from Puppet will be in the lobby to help guide you to the elevators to come and join the fun on the 5th Floor.
9:00 AM
Lateesha Thomas
Rebecca Miller-Webster
9:10 AM
Lara Hogan
In our work, we have moments of saying some prepared words under a spotlight - standups, presenting to a client, pitching your promotion to your boss - yet we all have different fears about those moments. We’ll talk through tactics to feel confident and equipped to step into that spotlight.
10:00 AM
10:00 AM
Ashley Powell
Learn the ins and outs of writing conference talk proposals — what they are, the sections that matter, and how to write one. Review an actual talk proposal and feedback from a conference organizer.
10:30 AM
Kerri Miller
Allison McMillan
Kira Prentice
Kaitlin Gu
Aliza Carpio
Hilary Stohs-Krause
Wondering what conference organizers look for when selecting speakers for their events? Hear from several conference organizers offering advice on navigating the CFP process and how to make your proposal stand out.
11:30 PM
Ashley Powell
Write a draft conference talk proposal and get feedback from experienced women and non-binary conference speakers.
10:00 AM
Amy Wibowo
This workshop will be an introduction to technical zine making and writing. Participants will explore how to explain technical topics via drawings, comics, diagrams, and stories, with particular focus on making complex topics understandable and accessible. At the end of the workshop, participants will have technical zines that they can exchange with each other and other conference attendees.
11:15 AM
Vaidehi Joshi
Developers love logic. And yet, we can react to failures in our software in illogical ways! In this talk, we’ll understand the psychology behind failure & the cognitive behaviors that lead us into dangerous, downward spirals. Let’s deconstruct failure and learn how to approach it with grit & grace!
12:00 PM
Sophia Le
Want to start a blog but worried no one would read your posts? Create an email campaign instead - and engage with your fans even after the conference talk is over. This workshop will teach you ways to break down a technical topic into bite-sized emails.
1:00 PM
2:00 PM
2:00 PM
Work with a partner to create an outline, slides, and presenter notes for a 10 min lightning talk.
2:00 PM
Angie Jones
Don’t become a closet rock star! While developing your brand as a thought leader, your company may not be aware of the impact that you’re making on the industry. Learn key strategies to ensure that your external stardom is also recognized and celebrated internally within your company.
2:30 PM
Ronnie Chen
Big Data is about wrangling large amounts of information and finding the signal in the noise. When people think about a career in data science, most of them imagine building complex models. In reality, the hardest problem in data is surprising simple: counting. This talk will explain why.
2:50 PM
3:30 PM
4:00 PM
4:00 PM
Never spoken at a conference? Now’s the time to check that off your bucket list! Present a 10 min lightning talk with a partner to a small group of conference attendees and receive feedback from your peers and an experienced speaker mentor.
4:00 PM
Rebecca Miller-Webster
5:00 PM
5:40 PM
Zeidee Pineda
Warning: This talk contains vocal fry, the word “like”, uptalk, and what has been described as “baby voice”. I’m sorry if I sound annoying, unintelligent, immature, and not credible. This is the story of how I navigated the insecurity brought on by people’s critique of my voice and speaking habits.
5:50 PM
Kara Carrell
In a world of GIFS and Emojis, our lives are becoming more and more visual. This presentation addresses how I've used that to my advantage with my bitmoji avatar, and how you can too.
6:00 PM
6:25 PM
8:00 AM
9:00 AM
Lateesha Thomas
Rebecca Miller-Webster
9:10 AM
Safia Abdalla
As programmers, designers, and technologists, we often look for tips on improving our craft from other members in the industry. Sometimes, we can find remarkable advice and perspective on producing software from people who've never even touched a keyboard. In this talk, Safia shares 10 stories and wisdom from philosophers, artists, writers, and others, both living and dead, that have changed the way she approaches writing software.
10:00 AM
10:30 AM
10:30 AM
10:30 AM
Courteney Ervin
12:30 PM
Kaitlin Gu
Kira Prentice
With the right outreach, hackathons can open doors for people who are interested in tech but don't know where to start. The founders of Flawless Hacks will talk about their interest in hackathons and how that turned into a 501c3 nonprofit and an annual event for hundreds of women in the New York area and beyond! If you've ever wanted to start a hackathon, or want to learn more about founding a nonprofit, we can answer your questions.
1:00 PM
2:00 PM
4:15 PM
4:15 PM
5:30 PM
Mina Markham
Mina shares reflections from the campaign trail and explores strategies to use your time and skills to affect social change.
6:30 PM
7:00 PM
Interested in starting a Write/Speak/Code Chapter in your city? Join our board members and current chapter leaders to discuss building our local communities! Anyone who wants to get involved in organising a meetup or is interested in starting a meetup in their location is welcome. Neha will talk about own your expertise and meetup organisers from different cities will talk about their experiences. Tell WeWork you're with Write/Speak/Code when you arrive.
Location: WeWork Pioneer Place, 700 sw 5th ave, Portland 97204
Time: 7-8 pm
(10 minute walk from conference location, food & drinks including vegan and gluten-free provided)
9:00 AM
Lateesha Thomas
Rebecca Miller-Webster
9:05 AM
Duretti Hirpa
Sometimes, working hard isn’t enough. Sometimes, other people need to see and value your work. Sometimes, you get lucky. This talk will cover hard-work, the myth of meritocracy, visibility, and what we owe one another once we are “successful”.
9:35 AM
Erica Dee Fox
Many talks focus on welcoming more marginalized programmers into the tech industry. However, we are doing nothing to address inequality if the custodians in our offices and the cooks in our cafeterias can't afford to live in town. Gentrification is a reality: we need to address it and overcome it.
10:10 AM
Melissa Chavez (moderator)
Jess Unrein
Stephanie Slattery
Carly Ho
Lisa Ghisolf
Erica Dee Fox
Hidden disabilities aren’t obvious to the naked eye, but affect your ability to function on a daily basis. Our panel of developers and designers will discuss their experiences and how they have built successful careers despite their issues.
Our panel is wide-ranging, from freelancers to corporate workers who have had to advocate for themselves to receive the accommodations they need. We will discuss keeping up motivation during depressive episodes, accessibility issues, the culture around sick days and more.
Takeaways will be:
11:00 AM
12:00 PM
Mica Alaniz
Time is the measure of the balance between work and life. Whether learning too fast or working too hard, free time is often the first to go, especially in tech. But it's a more expensive sacrifice than you know. What if I said there's no such thing as a waste of time? Learn to take back your time!
12:05 PM
Alex Qin
The story of the code cooperative, an open source educational program that teaches former inmates to code as a means to creating social change.
12:20 PM
Jamie Lee
The workshop is one part negotiation seminar, one part improv role-play sessions and one part open discussion on the best negotiation strategies and tactics for women in tech. The sum of parts is actionable negotiation insights; a clear blueprint for negotiating with power; and whole lot of fun.
1:30 PM
Alexandra Millatmal
In our unprecedented political climate, it's increasingly hard to not feel torn between work and world events. So how can you balance your professional and civic duties? This talk will offer different examples and strategies for integrating politics into your nine-to-five.
2:10 PM
Julie Pagano
It’s easy to feel lost as you advance in the tech industry when you are an outlier in a sea of homogeneity. This talk is a pragmatic look at surviving the center of the leaky, acid filled pipeline delivered to you directly from the trenches.
3:00 PM
Jess is a Chicago based software engineer, writer, public speaker, and community organizer. She believes code is a tool that people can use to improve their job prospects, problem solving skills, and generally better their lives. Jess's passion is getting people from non-traditional backgrounds into coding. Her personal 2017 goals are to read 52 novels and play 16 new board games.
Hilary Stohs-Krause is currently based in Madison, WI, working as a full-stack software developer at Ten Forward Consulting. She came to tech by way of childhood website-building (a "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" fansite, to be exact). She volunteers regularly with several tech and community organizations, and co-runs Madison Women in Tech, a local group with more than 1,000 members. She tweets at @hilarysk.
Aliza Carpio is Technology Evangelist at Intuit's Consumer Tax Group, TurboTax. In her role, she focuses on initiatives that build Intuit’s tech brand and that create an awesome tech culture for engineers. A true "multipotentialite" at heart, she is an inventor with several filed patents with the United States Patent office, an Innovation Catalyst, a member of Intuit's Patent Committee and a member of Intuit’s university recruiting team. Outside of Intuit, she conducts pro-bono social media consultation for women owned, micro-businesses in San Diego. She is Board member at EvoNexus, co-organizer for San Diego React and React Native meetup and is part of the leadership team for San Diego Girl Develop It.
Kerri Miller is a Software Engineer and Team Lead currently based in the Pacific Northwest. She has worked at companies large and small, mentors and teaches students, and still finds time to work on Open Source projects and organize multiple conferences every year. Having an insatiable curiosity, she has worked as a lighting designer, marionette puppeteer, sous chef, and professional poker player, and enjoys hiking, collecting Vespas, yoyos, and working with glass.
Rebecca Miller-Webster is a software engineer, conference organizer, and educator. She is the founder of Write/Speak/Code and Practice Lead at DevMynd. Rebecca has been developing software professionally for over a dozen years, previously organized GORUCO, and was the founding teacher at Dev Bootcamp NYC. Rebecca's hobbies include drinking Cherry Coke Zero, wearing trousers, telling computers what to do, cuddling pugs, & wearing all the colors.
Courteney Ervin is a software developer at the New York Public Library, where she is thrilled to be writing code in her happy place: the junction of social good and open source. Previously, Ervin was a founding teacher at Dev Bootcamp’s NYC campus, and she has also led events and technology projects at a variety of nonprofits. She holds a BA in English and Anthropology from Columbia University.
Neha Batra is a senior software engineer at Pivotal Labs who, 5 years ago, was an energy consultant and quit to teach herself programming because “it was time.” She holds a bachelor’s in Mechanical Engineering from MIT and enjoys foodie adventures, planning trips (and has docs for most of her trip plans), and pronouncing GIFs how it should be: jiffs. If you want to hear her ramble on a topic, ask her about pair programming, tdd, or how she came around to agile processes, in general
Amy is a programmer and designer who cares about STEM and STEAM education and making the world better through human-centric design and technology. She is the founder of Bubblesort Zines—zines that explain computer science concepts via drawings and stories. Previously, she was a web dev at Airbnb, did machine learning research at Honda Research Institute in Japan, and HCI research at the University of Tokyo.
Vaidehi is an engineer at Tilde, where she works on Skylight. She enjoys building and breaking code, but loves creating empathetic engineering teams a whole lot more. In her spare time, she runs basecs, a weekly writing series that explores the fundamentals of computer science.
Last year, Lisa van Gelder was interviewing for a new executive job in NYC at the same time as two (white, male) friends. Because they had a similar amount of experience and similar interests, they ended up interviewing at the same companies at the same time, and Lisa found herself in an unintentional A/B test. When they compared notes, she found that she had a radically different interview experience than her friends. Lisa discusses what she learned from her accidental A/B tests, how the term “unqualified” is often used to reject marginalized groups in tech, and what we can do about it—both as individual interviewees and as hiring managers looking to improve the interview process.
Safia is the founder of Zarf, an online platform that allows independent writers to produce paid subscription content.
Lateesha is a conference organizer and speaker, occasional developer and workplace diversity & inclusion advocate. She's currently managing partnerships for Google's Women Techmakers initiative. Before that she was the Director of Strategic Partnerships, Business Development and Corporate Training at Dev Bootcamp, where she created programs and curriculum aimed at fostering a transparent, inclusive, equitable and empathetic culture in technology. She serves on the board of Write/Speak/Code (and is this year's conference lead), as well as an advisory board member for Lesbians Who Tech, and the Tech Jobs Tour (#AmericaIsHiring).
Mina Markham is a front-end architect, conference speaker and organizer and lover of design systems. She writes code for a living, currently for the Growth Marketing team at Slack. Previously a senior engineer at Hillary for America, her work on the Pantsuit pattern library has been spotlighted in WIRED, Fast Company, and Communication Arts. A prolific public speaker, Mina has appeared at events worldwide, including CSS Dev Conf, Fluent, and Future of Web Design. In addition, she’s the co-organizer of Front Porch, a front-end conference which prides itself on showcasing and fostering new speakers. Mina likes ampersands, Oreos, traveling, cupcakes, and the color pink. When she's not crafting sites or teaching others, she is probably in her kitchen baking something chocolatey. Mina graduated cum laude from Syracuse University with a dual major in Graphic Arts from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and Women’s Studies. She lives in Oakland, California.
Mica Alaniz is a Chicagoan, first and foremost. She is a Front-end Developer at Leapfrog Online where she builds web apps and emails for Fortune 500 companies and is also the Volunteer Engineering Lead for Ameya Pawar for Governor. She holds a Master's in New Media Studies from DePaul. In her off time she builds Slackbots, maintains isthereacubsgametoday.com, listens to too many podcasts and is always trying to locate the nearest elote cart.
Lara Hogan is VP of Engineering at Kickstarter and the author of Designing for Performance, Building a Device Lab, and Demystifying Public Speaking. She champions performance as a part of the overall user experience, helps people get comfortable giving presentations, and believes it's important to celebrate career achievements with donuts.
Julie is a software engineer based in Portland, OR who likes to focus on the front-end and user experience. She fights for the user and cares about making tech a better place for everyone. In her free time, Julie dabbles in writing, comics, and firebees.
Erica builds websites for Ball State's Center for Business and Economic Research in Muncie, Indiana. She has worked as a full-stack PHP developer for two years. Her favorite things are her daughter, husband, bandmate, diesel Benz, and pasta. All at the same time.
Katherine Daniels is an infrastructure operations engineer at TravisCI who got their start in programming with TI-80 calculators back when GeoCities was still cool. These days, they have opinions on things like monitoring, on-call usability, and Effective DevOps. Before escaping to the world of operations, Katherine spent a few years doing R&D and systems engineering in the corporate world. Katherine lives in Brooklyn with a perfectly reasonable number of cats and in their spare time can often be found powerlifting, playing cello, or handcrafting knitted server koozies for the data center.
Sophia Le is a Partner at Modulus 7 and an expert in lifecycle emails. Her mission is to help software companies build loyal customer followings by combining the science of persuasion with marketing automation. In a past life, Sophia was a public safety spokesperson, a software project manager, and a policy researcher at the University of Colorado at Denver.
Chiu-Ki Chan is an Android developer with a passion in speaking and teaching. She has spoken at numerous conferences all over the world, and has been recognized as a Google Developer Expert for her extensive knowledge in Android. She is the co-creator of the public speaking newsletter Technically Speaking, and hopes to make the tech industry a better place by encouraging more underrepresented minorities to speak and be visible.
Allison McMillan is a software developer at Collective Idea. She's worn many hats including startup founder, community builder at the University of Michigan, and Managing Director of a national non-profit. Allison started programming at a Rail Girls workshop and is now a chapter organizer. She speaks on a variety of topics including mentorship, working remotely, and being a parent and a developer. When she's not coding, you can find her encouraging her toddler's climbing skills or pretending she has time to bake. Allison lives in the Washington, DC area.
Jamie Lee is a She Negotiates consultant and a pragmatic negotiation geek dedicated to teaching ambitious people how to negotiate with confidence and power. Earlier in her career, she negotiated on behalf of multi-million dollar enterprises and secured cost savings that directly impacted the bottom line. As a negotiation consultant and trainer, she has led workshops for Athena Center for Leadership, SIPA at Columbia University, Baystate Health, Essence Digital, Bullish Conference and more.
Angie Jones is a Senior Software Engineer in Test at Twitter who has developed automation strategies and frameworks for countless software products. As a Master Inventor, she is known for her innovative and out-of-the-box thinking style which has resulted in more than 20 patented inventions in the US and China. Angie shares her wealth of knowledge by speaking and teaching at software conferences all over the world.
Jessica Parsons has spent half her life teaching, and a quarter of it developing for the web. She now combines those passions as a developer support engineer at Netlify. Outside of her day job, she teaches workshops and develops curriculum for Girl Develop It, volunteers with OpenSMC, mentors with Write/Speak/Code, and is co-organizing Code for Good Week, a local open-source coding event. Away from a computer screen, she's baked and decorated wedding cakes, designed and sewn prize-winning garments, and taken apart and repaired all sorts of home appliances. She has even had someone dress up as *her* for Halloween! She lives in the beautiful San Francisco Bay Area and enjoys exploring its natural wonders with her shiba inus, Petunia and Monty.
Zeidee (pronounced Zay-Dee) means grandpa in Yiddish. She is not a grandpa but she is a Data Scientist at NBCUniversal where she pretends that Jimmy Fallon and her are co-workers and uses data to continuously improve entertainment. She's created lots of side hustles, some more successful than others, but really none of them have made her any money and she's okay with that. She graduated from the University of Florida with a BS and MS in Industrial and Systems Engineering. She lives in New York City, where she enjoys sleeping in the city that never sleeps and waking up feeling blessed to have a job that she loves.
Alex Qin is a Brooklyn based software engineer and educator. She cares deeply about access to computer science education, and about leveraging technology to create positive social change. She is the Director of Technology at Gakko, a global educational collective that builds spaces, experiences and tools to reclaim the magic of learning. She is also the founder and lead teacher of the Code Cooperative, an open source educational program in which former inmates learn to code as a means to creating social change.
Duretti Hirpa is a senior engineer on the backend engineering team at Slack. Currently, she’s working on the growth team, which is the team that helps onboard and nurture new customers. She's also a Slack Platform alumna - where she made it easier and more intuitive to build applications on top of Slack. She’s constantly thinking of ways to humanize engineering - there’s strength in the soft skills, after all.
She’s arguably the most extroverted person she knows, and is intensely interested in other people. She produces a podcast called “snackoverflow”, about snacks, computers, and their surprising intersection. She has an undying love for Beyoncé (praise be), an immaculate gif game, and a real candy problem.
Rachel is currently a Technical Evangelist at Microsoft, but is also a self-taught programmer & occasional artist. She is currently working on multiple video game projects, a VR cat cafe, and thinking about what IoT devices she can build for her two black cats. Her other interests include glitch art, 80s horror, and indie games. Her aesthetic is fog machines, laser lights, and broken VHS tapes.
Jiaqi Liu is a Software Engineer at Button. Prior to this she was a Principal Data Scientist at Capital One. While at Capital One Labs, she’s worked on a variety of rapid prototypes leveraging data science, design thinking and software engineering to improve financial wellness for consumers. She is passionate about challenges in consolidating the art, science and the engineering part of data-driven work and is excited about finding the right devops and architecture solutions for production-scale projects. Outside of work, she is active in the Women Who Code NYC chapter and often mentors at hackathons. Jiaqi holds a Bachelors in Computer Science from Columbia University with a minor in History.
Amelia Abreu is a design researcher and the founder of UX Night School. Based in Portland, Oregon, she has worked with teams at Nike, Mozilla, Microsoft Research and Intel, as well as startups and cultural organizations. She holds graduate degrees in Human Computer Interaction and Information Studies from the University of Washington and the University of Texas-Austin. Her writing has appeared in The New Inquiry, Motherboard, and Model View Culture, and she has been featured as a commentator on the BBC and Wired.
Kira Prentice is a UX designer and engineer at athenahealth in Boston. She co-founded Flawless Hacks, a 501c3-status nonprofit and hackathon in NYC dedicated to supporting women in tech. She enjoys cycling, running and getting people together to learn new things. kiraprentice.com
Kaitlin is a software engineer at Google working in Apps for Education. In an effort to create a safe and non-competitive space for women to create and explore their interests in tech, Kaitlin co-founded Flawless Hacks. Kaitlin is passionate about making knowledge accessible and enjoys sketching, reading, and doing self-defense training in her spare time.
Ronnie Chen builds and scales the core data pipelines at Slack. She is a recovering physicist and was a Sous Chef at a Michelin-starred restaurant in a previous life. She is an avid deep sea technical diver and enjoys dressing dogs up in people clothing.
Kara Carrell is a Developer by day, CommuniTechie by night, and a Queer Blaxican changemaker always. She’s an advocate for intersectional feminism, anti-blackness, and LGBTQIA Rights, through her work with United Latinx Pride. Kara teaches code-newbies of all ages with orgs like Code Platoon & Blue1647, and is committed to caring for & growing codebases that challenge the “Way Things Are”. She lives in Chicago, and is the human of the cutest dog EVAR, Sadie.
Alexandra is part web dev, part journalist, and a full-out feminist. After an award-winning stint in broadcast and online news, Alex transitioned to a career in development by enrolling in Omaha Code School. Now, in her roles as an educator and software engineer, she pushes to increase accessibility and inclusion in her local tech community. When she's not thinking about refactoring her Ruby or the perfect JavaScript function, Alex spends a lot of time thinking about secular space/discourse, data visualization, communicating "othered" experiences, how many cats she can foster at once, and if she’ll ever make a zine.
Stephanie Slattery is a web developer who specializes in front end, accessibility, and user interface design. Stephanie is a Front End Engineer at Clique Studios and also develops web apps for a variety of gaming groups in the Chicago area. They come to the world of programming from a psychology and physics background at the Illinois Institute of Technology and is a graduate of Dev Bootcamp Chicago. In their free time, they can be found running roleplaying games, creating glitch art, or taking their cat on walks.
Carly Ho is a full-stack engineer from Chicago with a background in computer science with an emphasis on human-computer interaction. She currently works for Clique Studios as a full-stack engineer and develops web applications for gaming groups in the Chicago area. She enjoys fiber arts, managing a roleplaying game blog with her fiancée, and recording soft ukelele covers of J-pop songs.
Ashley Quinto Powell has been in technical consulting sales for 10 years, and is the Business Development Manager for Bendyworks. She speaks nationally on Salary Negotiation for Women in Tech, and most recently presented at DisruptMSN and the Madison Speaker Crawl. She actively contributes to tech and entrepreneurship by co-organizing the Madison Women in Tech, as an ambassador for the Doyenne Group, and by promoting mentorship in the community. She's an enthusiastic contributor to the planning efforts of Forward Fest, Madison's greatest 8 days, and is passionate about helping entrepreneurs get right-sized technical solutions. In 2017, she has been named a Brava Woman to Watch and an InBusiness Magazine 40 Under 40. She has been quoted in MSNMoney.com and the Huffington Post and when not evangelizing Bendyworks, she be found at home- painting, crafting, cooking and toddler-wrangling.
Katel LeDû is the CEO of A Book Apart, where she helps passionate tech community members become successful authors. Previously, she worked with National Geographic as their digital director of photography, and has been in publishing since the early aughts. She's seen a lot. She enjoys running (no, really) and learning the secrets of life from her snaggle-toothed mutt, Hugo.
Kronda is a sparkly devops alchemist who effortlessly melds project management, technology and marketing. She strips away entrepreneurial egos and replaces them with bigger bank accounts based on data driven marketing. She is the founder and CEO of Karvel Digital, a digital marketing consulting agency. In addition to helping businesses drive more revenue with online marketing, Kronda gives business owners the training they need to own and manage their digital presence. She is a regular speaker at Wordcamps and other tech conferences, and has been a guest on popular industry podcasts such as WP Elevation, Revision Path and The Matt Report. She has given talks on WordPress deployment processes, successful site planning, starting your own business, and more. She also writes and speaks about issues of diversity (or lack thereof) in the tech industry. She has been interviewed by sites such as Revision Path and Less Than or Equal. You can read her personal blog at kronda.com or sign up for her weekly newsletter at tinyletter.com/kronda . Her latest project is Working Websites, an online community to give small business owners the training and tools to create successful websites that help grow their business. When she’s not working, she can be found enjoying time at home with her wife and two cats, reading dead-tree books, riding one of her five bikes, or enjoying the postcard vistas of the state of Oregon.
Jess is a co-founder of dev.to, a place for programmers to learn and share ideas. She keeps the ship sailing with her background in product and marketing, and she can be found committing to the codebase at her local rock climbing gym.
We are actively working with hotels to reserve room blocks and will be adding more as soon as they are available. Last year, some attendees arranged amongst themselves to share hotel rooms or Airbnbs on the community Slack, to which you may request an invite after ticket purchase.
750 SW Alder St, Portland, OR 97205
503-402-8785
0.4 miles from Elliot Center
Reserve by 5:00 p.m Pacific Time 7/22/2017
$239/night + tax
1022 SW Stark St, Portland, OR 97205
503-546-8502
0.4 miles from Elliot Center
Reserve by 5:00 p.m Pacific Time 7/10/2017
$255/night + tax
Call 503-546-8502
For great companies for women, sponsorship is the most effective way to recruit talented, driven women to fill key technical positions and demonstrate your commitment to the professional development of women at your organization.
Read our 2017 Prospectus
Pivotal transforms how the world builds software. Pivotal combines the Silicon Valley state of mind, modern approach, and infrastructure with organizations’ core expertise and values. We enable the leading companies in the world to innovate by employing an approach focused on building software. Our methodology is about evolving, in both development and innovation, and our culture is empowering. Our team uses agile and lean approaches to teach next-generation developers to create and build new solutions. We optimize for change so enterprises can move at start-up speeds and with greater business agility.
CDK Global is the largest global provider of integrated information technology and digital marketing solutions to the automotive retail industry.
kCura: kCura develops e-discovery software Relativity for managing large volumes of electronic evidence during litigation or investigations.
Mailchimp: More than 10 million businesses around the world use MailChimp for marketing automation and email newsletters.
Our event and its associated online spaces are dedicated to providing a harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of gender and gender identity, age, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, or religion (or lack thereof). We do not tolerate harassment of participants in any form. Sexual language and imagery is not appropriate at any point during the event. Participants violating these rules may be sanctioned or expelled at the discretion of the organizers.
True Story. This conference changed my life and is the reason why I now write and speak about code. And Im only one of many! @WriteSpeakCode https://t.co/WZUxrkwcud
— Angie Jones (@techgirl1908) November 26, 2016
One of the things I always love about @writespeakcode is that I find so many new amazing techie women to follow. ☺️ #wsc2016conf
— Sarah Mei (@sarahmei) June 18, 2016
Thanks for an awesome conference @WriteSpeakCode - so many great talks, so much support in this community! ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ #wsc2016conf
— Resist, Rise, Repeat (@ajpeddakotla) June 18, 2016
I've had an amazing time these past few days with ~150 women developers. Can't recommend attending @WriteSpeakCode enough!
— Annie Hsieh (@ankey) June 18, 2016
I'll promote @WriteSpeakCode to ALL women developers I know! Best part is being in a room of all women and unapologetically being ourselves!
— Emily Stamey (@elstamey) June 18, 2016
THE RUMORS ARE TRUE: @WriteSpeakCode is an amazing conference. Super hands-on, inclusive, empowering. #wsc2016conf
— Siena (@sienatime) June 15, 2016
Yay for the amazing energy @WriteSpeakCode!! Excited for growth and community these next 3 days 😌 #wsc2016conf pic.twitter.com/6uyYoNZzRh
— Tiffany Mikell (@mikellsolution) June 15, 2016
I am in awe of the developers I’ve met @WriteSpeakCode today. Seriously!
— Emily Stamey (@elstamey) June 16, 2016
One of the best conferences I went to in 2016. #writespeakcode #wsc https://t.co/rznCoNE506
— Nicolette Chambers (@nicolette3883) January 6, 2017
Thank you @WriteSpeakCode for #wsc2016conf - amazing, tiring, happy, wonderful experience. #womenintech
— Kal (@KalUndefined) June 18, 2016
@WriteSpeakCode is legit one of the best conferences I've ever attended 😂🙌🏾💁🏽 #wsc2016conf #WeLoveColor 🎨 pic.twitter.com/c2Ga7DMVEY
— Debbie-jean Lemonte (@TheLocdBella) June 18, 2016
A warm THANK YOU to @WriteSpeakCode for organizing such an amazing conference!! Hope to see everyone I met there again! #wsc2016conf
— Julianna Rusakiewicz (@juliannarusak) June 18, 2016
Having a fabulous time @WriteSpeakCode. Honored to be a speaker & thrilled to be a part of a safe, welcoming community.
— Iris Amelia 📎✊🏽 (@epubpupil) June 17, 2016
glad to see @WriteSpeakCode organizers are easily identifiable by their shiny purple sashes. CRUCIAL to enforce a code of conduct!
— Cat (@cfarm) June 17, 2016
We define ‘coders’ as anyone who has written a line of code (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Ruby, Python, Java, SQL whatever) and can explain what it does. Designers, E-book publishers, Salesforce Admins and beginners as well as engineers with 20 years of experience have enjoyed our workshops and been inspired by each other.
The closest airport is Portland International Airport
To contact the Write/Speak/Code organizers please email info@writespeakcode.com
While we don't offer refunds, you can transfer your ticket to another person free of charge. Please reach out to info@writespeakcode.com before transferring the ticket for verification.
Sponsor representatives will get to network with attendees during lunch breaks, extended snack breaks, and conference parties.
The deadline for sponsorship depends upon the type and level of sponsorship. To sponsor the conference & conference related events, sponsors must commit by end of July. The deadline for lanyard sponsorship is July 7. The sponsorship deadline for the local Own Your Expertise events will vary based on the local schedules.
Check out our 2017 Sponsorship Prospectus for information on sponsorship levels and benefits then email us at sponsor@writespeakcode.com.
Write/Speak/Code is proud to offer childcare and eldercare for all of our full-day events. Childcare will be available for the entire duration of the conference (4 days). In addition to noting childcare and/or eldercare on your registration when you purchase your ticket, please email info@writespeakcode.com with the following information:
Childcare and Eldercare will take place on the premises unless specifically instructed otherwise.
We will once again be offering a private Lactation Room for attendees during the conference. More information on room scheduling will be released leading up to the conference for those who request it. Please email info@writespeakcode.com.
Write/Speak/Code 2017 will be held in an ADA accessible venue. ASL interpreters and/or CART services will be made available as needed. In addition to noting your needs on your registration, please also email info@writespeakcode.com if you require other accommodations. We're happy to do whatever we can to make your experience comfortable, safe, and welcoming.
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