My name is Paula Aragón, I am part of the Python Barranquilla Organizing team and I have been linked to the Django Girls initiative since its inception in the city as a participant in 2017, a collaborator in 2018 and an organizer in 2019, the latter being the experience I want share them in that post.
When invited to participate in the organization of the event, I found the idea very intimidating since I know that a high standard is held to give the participants the “best first” real development experience possible. However, I accepted as a way of giving back to this initiative that has given me endless learning from different perspectives and the opportunity to put into practice many of the soft skills that have always been difficult for me to develop, such as public speaking or conversing with new people.
As you can imagine, it was not an easy task, there are always many details to coordinate such as specifying the place (where we thank Koombea for their unconditional support), getting the sponsorships (thanks to Monoku, WeKnow and Fundación Green Energy ) and finding the talented team members of guides and staff who make all the magic happen, which was far surpassed by having a wonderful support group that stepped out of their comfort zone to put time, energy and lots of love into the task of creating a quality event. Infinite thanks to Javier Daza, Brayan Garcia, Yuliana Martinez, Yudy Herrera, Yesenia Hernandez, Ana Elles, Sara Galván, Leonardo Orozco, Darío Guzmán, Oswaldo Rodriguez, Carlos Mario Herrera, Wilmer Llamas and Miguel Celis.
During the development of the event, there were also situations that we had to overcome as a team, such as technical problems with the water that made one of our organizers have to mop many times throughout the day (we had never had a Django Girls! so clean!), the delay of the flight of one of our guides or that the gifts we had planned to raffle did not arrive. All this was compensated in a great way, with the emotion of our participants, when they saw that following the instructions in the tutorial they were obtaining results on those computers that they usually use for daily tasks, without suspecting their true power.
From all this process I take the satisfaction of having fulfilled my duty, which was the creation of a space dedicated to encouraging a group of women to learn more about areas of science and technology, and why not, to promote a new generation of female developers who move all those ideas that the Caribbean region has to offer.
You will always be welcome to be part of this type of movement from the different communities that have been formed throughout Colombia and the world, such as Python Barranquilla, Django Girls Colombia, PyLadies, etc. Let's do it!