Building Community with Geekettes

This post is a long time coming and somehow it seems fitting that it will kick off the new www.jennapederson.com. For the last six months, I have been co-leading the Twin Cities Geekettes organization. We strive to get and keep women involved in technology, design, entrepreneurship, and innovation. Over the last year, we have held monthly events that do just this. During and after each event, I am absolutely floored by the amazing support from the tech community here in the Twin Cities. Don't get me wrong... I had no doubts that the people here were awesome, but each event just solidifies it even more.

We have had so much interest in and support for our events. For instance, last Tuesday night we held an introduction to JavaScript event (sponsored by Twilio and FRWD and taught by Kevin Whinnery and Kristina Durivage) and had about 25 people sign up, but 36 people showed up. Our previous events have been just as popular, free events selling out after only a few hours. In September, we held an event during Twin Cities Startup Week and had a waitlist of 30 people. We also made an announcement to over 600 attendees at MinneDemo that same week about the Twin Cities Geekettes organization and we were each approached later in the evening and the weeks that followed by people and companies asking how they can help the Twin Cities Geekettes.

We have also had support and attendance from other organizations like Girl Develop It Minneapolis, Gr8Ladies, PyLadies Twin Cities, and Girls in Tech MSP. We partnered with Gr8Ladies on a workshop earlier in 2014 and look forward to doing so again in 2015. Our impact on this community multiplies exponentially with these other organizations.

All of this tells me that this community is thirsty for more. People want more involvement, more support, more local talent. They want to build products. They want to build businesses. They want more local investors. They want to learn to code. They want to code. And they want it right here, in the Twin Cities.

We want to keep growing this community. And we need everyone's help.

Keep asking how you can help and then actually follow through on that offer. Keep asking how you can be more involved and then get involved. Keep hosting and attending events like those that the Twin Cities Geekettes, Girl Develop It Minneapolis, Gr8Ladies, PyLadies Twin Cities, and Girls in Tech MSP (and all the other local meetups) hold.

If you are interested in becoming a Geekettes member, checkout our membership page.

If you are interested in partnering or supporting or geting involved in any sort of way with the Twin Cities Geekettes, please email me at jenna@geekettes.io. We would love to have you!