The Rails Girls Summer of Code and London

[damon]

Many of you have seen our re-tweets of the Rails Girls Summer of Code (SoC) programme organised by Rails Girls Berlin. The idea behind the program is stated on their website as follows:

"Just like in Google Summer of Code and Ruby Summer of Code, students will be paid 1500 USD per month so they're free to work on Open Source projects for a few months."

The requirements for a participant are:

  - She has attended a Rails Girls or similar workshop.

  - She has been working on her skills since the workshop.

  - She is available to spend 2-3 months full time this summer working on code.

  - She has found another person who fits these criteria to pair with on this project.

  - She has found a coach.

Getting paid to work on a code project sounds very appealing and the RG SoC project has attracted a lot of attention. 

Some of the criteria depend entirely on the women who signs up for it, for example whether she has attended a workshop, has been working on her skills, and is available for the required amount of time.

Other criteria depend on other people and companies. A Rails Girls participant needs to find another woman who has attended a workshop who is willing to pair with her. She needs to find a coach and there needs to be a company who will sponsor this.

For the coaches, the following is expected:

  - She must be available for 2-3 months.

  - She must be available "at least a few hours a day".

Obviously if a coach is a working developer, this is a rather serious commitment which she could not undertake without it affecting her paid work.

The organisations providing the projects are expected to:

  - Provide a mentor to act as an expert on the project domain.

  - Be available for a "limited" amount of time.

We have been contacted by a number of women who want to participate the RG SoC, but so far none of our coaches has shown any interest. The criteria put a fairly large burden squarely on the shoulders of coaches. The load could possibly be distributed if more coaches were involved, but for many London coaches even six hours a week is a commitment that would require the cooperation of their employers and clients. As a developer colleague pointed out, it would almost have to be part of your job to do this.

Perhaps in London, we could be more realistic about what work our coaches have time to take on and come up with some alternative solutions to the problem the RG SoC is trying to address.

I'd like to open this to your ideas!

[Lilly browne]

Dear Damon

I am definitely interested if there is still a place available for myself

Regards

Lilly Browne

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[damon]

We don't really control what places are available, so if you're interested you should definitely get in touch with the organisers on their project page.

http://railsgirlssummerofcode.org

:)