GDG Women Launching event
The first event by GDG Women Mombasa
The first ever GDG Women Launching event courtesy of Google
GDG Women Mombasa hosted it's first event to officially launch the GDG Women Chapter in Mombasa which was held at the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology on Saturday 13th July 2013. A total of 20 people attended the event, out of which 6 were male and 14 were female, how impressive :) Thanks to all the attendants.
The event kicked off with an ice-breaking session where by attendants were asked to introduce themselves and explain in a sentence why they chose Information Technology and not any other field, the answers were really interesting...Later on Alifiyah Ganijee and Said Fuad officially marked the opening of the event and welcomed the attendants with a brief introductory session about GDG, GDG Women, its goals and why the initiative, after which we had an open discussion on challenges facing women in technology and amongst the few mentioned were lack of self-confidence, discrimination from the contrary sex, laziness, negative attitude (mindset) towards programming, persistence and resilience and also lack of resources for example access to computers and internet facilities...These were some of the reasons discussed which hinder women to reach where they need to be...
Later on, we had a brainstorming event where by we discussed on the expectations of the members from this Chapter and GDG at large and again it was very interesting, we had ladies who gave out inspirational talks about their experiences in IT and how they came to be where they are, it was a truly moving session.
Lastly, it was time to get inspired and look into the future activities as a community, so to make it all interesting, we showed the attendants some of the best videos of Women at Google and in leadership at large. All eyes were glued to the screen.
Finally, Alifiyah Ganijee and Said Fuad concluded the event with closing remarks and thanked the attendants for making it happen, and we then had a cake cutting ceremony with drinks for all the attendants, I bet everyone enjoyed the scrumptious cake and would love to have it again ;)
In a nutshell, this was a good start and we all hope to grow and build the community even better. We aim to encourage women to make it to the top and show out their passion in their respective fields and we believe that very soon, ladies in Mombasa will be shining in tech in the Coastal style... ;)
Check out Event Photos
Until the next meet up...cheers!