Code & Community: A Virtual Platform

Women have been left out of technology for no good reason.  Left out of technology, also means left behind economically as the technology field offers high wage, flexible and secure careers.  Now is the time to change this  narrative and include women in technology.

We are proposing to change this narrative by creating a welcoming, accessible and inclusive online environment where women can explore, learn and develop technology skills. This platform would offer on-demand classes, live coding labs, tutoring and coaching matched with community and networking support.  

The classes and live support are critical to our work to rewrite the narrative, but the community this platform will build has the potential to not only engage but to start a global movement as we offer a network of encouragement, advice and open career doors. 

Economic empowerment is achieved with careers that offer security and high wages. Right now, the tech industry offers both. By 2030, IMF predicts a global shortage of more than 85 million tech workers, meaning that tech companies are currently hiring and paying more. Now is the time to prepare women for these jobs.. 

Without a focus on supporting women in tech, we exacerbate income and wealth inequality between men and women, specifically women of color.   We saw this during the pandemic where women lost one million more jobs than men in 2020.

This project seeks to change the narrative by addressing core reasons why women have been excluded which are false stereotypes, bias and other barriers that tell women they don't belong.  

Our solution is to expand our current offerings and build upon our decades of success by creating a virtual environment that hosts our classes, allows for live events and builds a community around our learners.

Key elements of this platform will include:

• Video library for on-demand classes
• Schedule of live events 
• Chat & meeting functions  

We will leverage our existing class hosting technology (Bevy) and our Slack Channel along with a video library hosting partner to build our platform.  

In addition to leveraging existing technologies we would build in functions to help our learner map their progress & goals, earn badges and connect (when ready) to career opportunities. 

GDI was established over a decade ago to teach software development skills to women & non-binary adults.  Over this last decade we have served over 100,000 individuals through our live classes and events. Our members have used our classes to build careers, launch businesses and grow in numerous other ways.   

Women have come to GDI over the years for a safe place where they can take flexible classes, ask questions and find support and a community of women to help them with their next steps.  

In 2020 we moved our classes virtual and quickly realized that by breaking down the barriers of geography we could serve an even greater population and offer a larger class and event selection.  We have chosen to stay virtual and to build our community around subject matter rather than city.  

Our demand for virtual classes has been overwhelming and we have had over 5,000 individual attend our classes and events in our first 12 months. 

Our members have told us through surveys and direct communication that  they are looking for increased access to our materials, more hands-on labs in various time zones and express a growing interest in virtual community building. 

This project is built from this feedback.  This solution allows us to serve without limits and offer our programs globally.

This project, which is designed to offer training to women, fits into two dimensions  of this challenge. 

We chose the second dimension above, since our key mission is to reduce inequalities in the digital workforce for women but our training program could also be considered for the first dimension since we do offer accessible & affordable training for those in or entering the workforce.

This project is Growth Stage.  GDI has been offering our trainings to women for over a decade.  We have a well honed curriculum, a strong core of instructors and systems to deliver our training virtually.

We also have a large community and a reputation that we have built in the United States of women who have taken our classes and share our work with others.  

Our move to serve virtually in 2020 was a big shift for our organization but proved very successful and our challenge has been to offer enough courses at a variety of times to serve our populations interests. 

This project represents a major scaling for our organization.  Offering our core content virtually removes the barrier of time for our classes and allows our members to take classes on their own time (and own time zone). 

Code & Community is innovative step for GDI as well as the ecosystem who supports gender inclusion in technology.  Just two years ago, GDI believed we could only provide our model of high quality training through an in-person class.  From that point we have designed, experimented, learned and ultimately created a virtual program that has brought us further towards our mission than a decade of in-person classes.  This next step, of offering on-demand classes pushes us even father and breaks through the barriers of time and geography in new ways.  

Opening our program up globally and refocusing our energy on student engagement rather than just repeated classes has the potential to change the industry even more.  

Our solution will combine several existing technology platforms to build a hub that offers all of our services in an easy to use website.

We see three main technologies coming together.  The first is our current class hosting and scheduling system which is hosted by Bevy.  This system will be used to host our live coding labs, office hours and events.  

The second systems would be an on-demand video library.  We would ideally work with a vendor in this market as an enterprise partner which would allow us to host our own classes as well as expand our offerings. 

Lastly, the final piece is building our community features by working with Slack.  This would integrate slack into our site and grant access to key features.  For example, we would invite someone who access our on-demand classes on Frontend Design to join our Slack Community on Frontend Design and our live Slack coding sessions and office hours to support their learning. 

We envision this site including automation features that will guide learners along a path of learning, connecting and engagement. 

Our solution is to build upon technology that is already used and valued by our community.   For example, Slack has been a core part of our community for several years.  We have used it to connect to teams, shares news and much more. 

Our instructors often use slack as a chat feature in our live classes which allows for ongoing dialogue among our learners.  What we often find, is that our community members start to build confidence in their code in Slack as they answer peer questions and offer help and advice.

Supporting an open source social community like Slack will always have a risk especially when if comes to harassment or abuse.  We have a very strict code of conduct that we introduce to all of our users and have the right to remove access to anyone who breaks our code of conduct.

As we grow our community, it will be essential for us to have our community manager and Subject Matter Experts moderate our Slack to ensure we using to reach the goals of the organization.

Currently we are serving 5,000 through all of our virtual programs.  We believe we will double this number each year over the next five year with this project.  This would mean that in five years form now we will be serving 25,000 women and non-binary adults annually.  

Our biggest impact goal will be the number of people who attend our programs. However we are also looking at the following impact numbers to measure not just attendance but impact:

• Number of student who take multiple classes
• Number of students attending Coding Labs
• Number of students who become TAs/Instructors
• Activity on Slack (Members/engagement)
• Class Survey Feedback (satisfaction, accessiblity)

Currently we measure class attendance and look for both one-time attendance as well as multiple class attendance.  We also measure satisfaction in our classes, instructors and TAs.

Our current staffing includes:

• One Full time staff 
• Three contractors
• Nine Board member volunteers
• Thirty Instructors (contractors)

We believe we are well positioned to take on this project.  We have a strong track record of success as well as the expertise to implement Code & Community.   We believe that by leveraging existing technologies our lean team can focus on engagement rather than technology building. 

Our Board approved a new Diversity, Equity and Inclusion statement in 2020 and have had a strong commitment to ensuring that our leadership team as well as our instructor team clearly represents the community we serve. 

This is an amazing opportunity to seek seed funding to help us invest in the technology and staffing we need to launch this project. 

We have been serving in the US for a decade.

We would be very interested in partnering with Udemy or Coursera to leverage the enterprise version of their technology to not only host our classes but to utilize their catalog of on-demand courses.