About WCH

This is me! You can find me on Twitter (@KierenJameson) or Linked In (/in/KierenJameson) or use the Contact Me form. 

All women who learn coding are heroes! At least they are to me. The tech industry is extremely skewed towards men. Women make up 57% of the US workforce, but are drastically underrepresented in info tech. Stats vary, but we make up between 10-23% of programmers, and much smaller numbers for women of color.

These are some of the stats that show that for many reasons it can be difficult for women to break into the world of Coding. But there are some great ways to get started. That’s where we come in!

Media

One of the reasons why I started this blog was captured in this video:

Other Media:

Why this Site?

This site was inspired by all the fabulous women coders and coder-wanabe’s that I met at Dreamforce (DF) 2014 (and a more than a few groovy and supportive men).  I had been working as a Salesforce Awesome Admin since 2012, but 2014 was the year that I realized that I needed to accomplish something that I couldn’t do with workflows or other click-based tools. I needed Apex! After posting to the success community I got some great advice, and managed to get my trigger running in sandbox, but got stuck on getting the Test Coverage working, so I couldn’t deploy my code! Super frustrating! I then got pulled away to other projects and my poor wee first apex code was orphaned, crying out for attention that I couldn’t give it. So sad :(

But that year’s Dreamforce was different. I was determined to learn Apex. I kept saying that this was my #YearToCode and just hoping that I could pull it off.  I met some awesome people and we challenged ourselves to learn this together. I attended some awesome sessions on learning Apex (@dvdkliu! You ROCK! David taught me my first Apex Trigger, test coverage and all!!), how to overcome the “Impostor Syndrome,” and strategies for  increasing diversity within the coding workforce. I was inspired!

This blog and the group I’m forming, RAD Women, is aimed at any woman Salesforce #AwesomeAdmin who wants to broaden her skills and learn to code. It’s also for women who want to move to full time into programming. I don’t know which camp I’m in yet, but I am passionate about learning Apex and figure the rest will show it’self in time. I don’t want to do it alone, so I ask you to join me. I’ll be posting details in the coming weeks, but please send me your contact details and I’ll add you to my list.

Some of my Women Code Heroes

All have inspired me and are presented in no particular order…

  • Becky (Aponte) Hughes, Director of Vendor Operations, AvidXchange. My learning buddy! We are going to take on the Apex world together!
  • Ashima Saigal (databasesherpa.com)  and Veronica Beck (Salesforce Foundation). These two inspiring women did a great #DF14 session on writing your first trigger…they challenged me (and the other 100s of folks in the room, but I know they were specifically talking to me!) to just do it, to find a mentor and start to learn to code.
  • Leah McGowen-Hare, Master Technical Trainer, Salesforce (@LeahBMH) What a trainer!
  • LeeAnne Templeman, Developer Evangelist, Salesforce (@leeandriod) – really wonderful presenter and who I want to be when I grow up.
  • David Liu, Salesforce Developer, Google (@dvdkliu) Yes I know he’s not a woman, but he is awesome! Taught me my first hands on trigger.
  • Maria S Belli, Developer, CASE Partners, Inc. (@JustAGirlyGeek)
  • Ayori Selassie, Developer, Salesforce (@iayori)
  • April Kyle Nassi, Devloper Community Manager, Salesforce (@thisisnotapril)
  • Mary Scotton, Developer Evangelist, Salesforce (@rockchick322004)

Sources:

Women and Technology: By the Numbers (National Center for Women in Technology)
http://www.ncwit.org/sites/default/files/resources/btn_02282014web.pdf 

Did you Know: Demographics on Technical Women (National Center for Women in Technology)
http://www.ncwit.org/blog/did-you-know-demographics-technical-women

Ety’s Trying to Fix Tech’s Women Problem. Why Aren’t You? By Ann Friedman (Medium.com)
https://medium.com/matter/this-is-the-last-thing-youll-ever-need-to-read-about-sexism-in-tech-56b9a3a77af0