This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Ruby Buzz by Obie Fernandez. Original Post: Check out the DevChix Feed Title: Obie On Rails (Has It Been 9 Years Already?) Feed URL: http://jroller.com/obie/feed/entries/rss Feed Description: Obie Fernandez talks about life as a technologist, mostly as ramblings about software development and consulting. Nowadays it's pretty much all about Ruby and Ruby on Rails. Latest Ruby Buzz Posts Latest Ruby Buzz Posts by Obie Fernandez Latest Posts From Obie On Rails (Has It Been 9 Years Already?)

The DevChix are a group of highly-talented and motivated women in technology, which I'm proud to mention was kicked off by my wonderful girlfriend of many years, Desi McAdam. Why did she do it? Here are some excerpts from Desi's writeup on the DevChix About page:

Once I started working at ThoughtWorks, where Agile is practiced properly, (pair programming, constant customer feedback, open communication, and collaboration etc.), I realized that many women, like myself were unaware that real Agile development existed. I decided to make it my mission in life to get the word out to other women that life as a developer can be a wonderful place. I realized that the mindset of the software world about women needs to change, and that my responsibility as a woman and passionate developer is to help make that change happen.

Desi points out that women are still sorely under-represented in the world of programming.

I started by looking for other groups of women developers out there. I found groups for women in IT, women Sysadmins, women Business Analysts, but was unable to find any group specifically targeted at women Developers. The industry as a whole is changing its mindset about women in IT and we have seen some growth in the number of women in areas such as system administration, quality assurance, and business analysis, but women are still poorly represented in the world of code. I knew from attending user groups and other events that there are some women developers out there. I figured that I should use my outgoing personality to build a community of women developers. Thus the DevChix was born in late 2005, with an initial membership drawn from some user groups that I attended and RubyConf 2005.

The DevChix have been writing some great content lately, reflective of the talent of the group's members:

DevChix now has a very diverse group of women from varied technical backgrounds and levels of experience. We have experience in Perl, PHP, Python, Java, C#, Ruby, and C. We have women who own their own companies and some who work for very cool shops. We have a couple of college students and we have women who have been in the industry for more than 10 to 15 years. We are a friendly bunch and have a lot of aspirations for ourselves.

I encourage you to check out their site and tell other women developers about what the DevChix are doing.