We're back with our annual tradition to review the biggest changes of this past year and set some goals for the next. This has been quite the year to say the least, but we managed to create a somewhat concise overview.
This was 2022!
Role models
As you may know, every year we interview +- 10 members and feature their story on our community blog. The goal is to create visibility for local role models and to give people a better sense of all the different code-related career options that are out there.
Check out all the interviews so far (ordered from recent to oldest)
Launching a job board
This year has been the year that we launched our community job board. Besides helping our members find better jobs, we hope to create more transparency regarding diversity and inclusion, but also make talking about wages, hiring processes less hush hush.
Eva leaving the team
One of the more unfortunate updates this year: Eva left our core team to pursuit one of her longtime academic goals.
Eva had been part of the core team from the very beginning back in 2017. During her time in the core team she practiced a role as co-organiser & host, followed up with incoming messages, occasional did portfolio/resume reviews, functioned often as soundboard, which led to new initiatives and so on...
For those who didn't know about our core team, read how the community started out.
On that note, Eva is still a beloved part of our community and we really wish her all the best in her academic pursuit!
Our TechTalks events
This year we were able to host 4 separate TechTalks events, the first edition of 2022 was still hosted online, after that we held TechTalks in Brussels, Ghent and Antwerp. It was truly wonderful to finally meet people in person, sometimes we met for the first time and sometimes it was more of a happy reunion where we could catch up.
Spot the good vibes in each edition 👀 👇
In case you're interested, you can check out some of the recaps of our past events:
Our first webinar
In November, on the day of our 5th anniversary, we had the pleasure to host a webinar with Michelle Sandford from Microsoft. The theme and focus of this webinar was Rise of the Tech Influencer - small steps you can take to increase your reach, meaning that Michelle taught us how to use a platform such as on LinkedIn to improve how we are perceived, the connections and impact we make.
IDK if you attend the event, but my experience was that Michelle did an amazing job and I definitely gained new inspiration to work with in the new year.
In case you missed the webinar, or want to watch it again, we uploaded it on Youtube. (subtitles are not added yet)
Collab with Le Wagon
This year we collaborated with Le Wagon Brussels to organise an informative career-focused event for their students. The goal was to introduce students to the different code-related career options that are available to them besides the more mainstream frontend, backend and fullstack developer jobs. To do so we invited 3 professionals, each with a very different career.
- Marta, who works as Remote Sensing Scientist (Marta's member story)
- Floriane, who works as Innovation Engineer (Floriane's member story)
- Martin, who works in a freelance capacity and has worked in many different tech / code-related roles, as well as in many different types of companies and cultures. (Martin's website)
5th anniversary
2022 was also the year that marked our 5th anniversary. Originally we wanted to do an event to celebrate, but due to some unforeseen circumstances this didn't seem very feasible at the time. This opened up some other possibilities though, such as launching some community swag! More about that a little further along this post.
Summary 2022
To summarize all of the above in terms of numbers, a little visual:
Goals we didn't meet
Some goals were harder to meet, especially finding people who occasionally want to write guest blogs. While several people have self-assigned themselves the role of guest blogger, not a single person outside our team has made the effort to pitch or submit something this past year.
Another goal we didn't meet was finding volunteers for certain roles such as social media management.
Due to being shorthanded we'll postpone and or shutdown some of the initiatives we just don't seem to have enough time for right now. This will ensure that we can keep delivering quality in the things we will keep on pursuing.
But let's not dwell on the not so great stuff and move onto looking forward!
What's next?
Business as usual
We'll keep on hosting our regular TechTalks events in different cities across Belgium, who knows, maybe we'll even manage to land in a few new cities this year.
Looking for guest speakers
As always, we're looking for Belgium-based guest speakers for future events in 2023. We encourage first-timers as well as more experienced speakers to leave their info. Check out our speaker info pages for the general details, inspiration and to leave your contact info.
In terms of locations; Antwerp, Brussels, Ghent and Kortrijk are practically certain. More locations might be revealed throughout the year, so please don't let this withhold you from leaving your info.
Looking for sponsors
Our community is like a business in some ways, there are certain costs to be able to function and undertake new initiatives. Hosting & domain, subscriptions for meetup, zoom and so on take a huge bite out of our budget. Plus, it would be nice if we could thank our volunteers and guest speakers with a little gift to show how much we appreciate them. So every bit of financial support is more than welcome.
Visit our Ko-fi page or contact us directly for other options. (contact info in footer)
Hosting a women in tech event for a change
As you might already know by now, our community's main focus is women who code, which doesn't necessarily always mean women in tech. But in 2023 we want to host at least 1 women in tech event after several parties who are interested have brought this to our attention. At the moment, we are still in a very early stage but the following can already be disclosed:
- Location: Ghent or Brussels
- Focus/theme: We feel that there are a lot of initiatives out there that focus on women entrepeneurs, managers, founders and so on..., so we will focus on the opposite instead: low to mid level careers.
- Timing: Likely in May, June, September or October
We are open to ideas, so people who want to get involved, companies that want to sponsor the event and so on...
You can subscribe to a mailing list that was specifically set up for this event. The signup form also gives you the opportunity to share ideas, get involved, or mark that you're interested in sponsoring the event. (No worries, you can also just signup without the extras)
Sign up here for the women in tech event mailing list
women.code(be) swag ✨
We felt it was about time that we had some community swag! And so a year ago we set out on this quest to have our own unique women.code(be) design. We took the sustainable and ecological aspect into account and looked for a company that offered such solutions and services. The shirts are from a Belgian brand called Stanley/Stella and are made of 100% organic rings-spun combed cotton.
We opted for unisex t-shirts that come in a broad range of sizes, from XXS to 5XL. Available colors: Off white, heather grey and black. (check pics below)
Sign up for the swag mailing list and be the first to know when preorders become available!
We hope the past year was good to you and your loved ones and that 2023 may be one full of joy, peace, good health and success.
Hope to see you again in 2023!
Thank you for staying with us till the end of this post! ❤️ If you enjoyed reading this, why not share it with your network?