Looking for more diversity in your workplace?

24th May 2020

Looking for more diversity in your workplace?

We set up Women’s Tech Hub to increase diversity in the industry and we do that through support, networking, training, workshops, and interfacing with companies. We run the tech3shed careers fair especially to try and make careers fairs more accessible and approachable for all (we’ve all been ignored at recruitment stands for not being their idea of what an engineer looks like right!?).

With the current situation we know that the likelihood of running a recruitment fair live is pretty unlikely this year and possibly into the next year so we are working around it. Obviously at the moment its a difficult time for recruiting due to the precariousness of the economy and various industries which have knock on effects to other service providers etc. But we are also aware that, as with many a crisis, there are plenty of companies who are thriving under lockdown and are looking to recruit and grow.

We are working on moving the recruitment fair online moving forward in a similar manner to how we run the Workshop Wednesdays. There will be opportunities for companies to present themselves to the members online and advertise their jobs when recruiting or simply give themselves a presence in the city with the community.

Currently, though we have plenty of amazingly talented women looking to work in great companies that embrace inclusive cultures. We are not a recruiter and therefore will not knowingly place women in companies that have a poor reputation around fairness just to make a quick buck. We are charging for the introductions based on placements but we are far cheaper than recruiters and believe that asking for companies to support our group and keeping it free for the women is the way that things should be in life! You can check out the women on our candidate’s page here.

Workshop Wednesdays

We are starting to get into the swing of these and had some great feedback from the last one so are putting together a list of fields of interest and speakers.

The next one will be on the 3rd of June (yes its almost June!!) and will host

The 2nd Business Analyst workshop by Sara Price
A User experience talk by Amy a UX designer at Dyson
Python Beginners
We’ll have a webdev 101 room for anyone wanting to talk web development
We have a new group joining us on software testing
We are happy to host other rooms if you want to discuss projects etc

Projects that you can support:

We are happy to do a shout out at the wednesdays fr projects that you may want to get involved with. The current ones are below:

The lockdown economy are considering how to move towards other solutions such as a Lockdown Economy merchandise shop. Its a UX designer running it for free currently so maybe also looking at how it could be monetised in some way may be good.

The Bristol Tech Fair is our website for the event that we ran last year in collaboration with Technotopia. As we are moving online and the name of the site is pretty child friendly we are looking to change it into a child tech resource-based site. There are lots of resources out there supporting kids in tech so making this a central resource makes sense. Anyone wanting to improve their website skills let us know. We will set up a Trello board for people wanting to put in ideas, it is currently a WordPress site.

17th May 202017th May 2020

Workshop Wednesday workshops are back

So we guess the can we go back yet was a bit of a ‘yeah but no’ moment. We spotted some tap dancing members out there playing so we’re really glad you are all keeping your spirits up mostly!

Workshop Wednesdays

To further keep your spirits up check out this week’s Workshop Wednesday lineup here an absolute essential if you are job hunting at the moment and anyone wanting to understand a BA role then a brilliant workshop/presentation on that. The main part will not have video except for the presenters so no need to put clothes/makeup/smile on .. and we’ll mute you to avoid overhearing your partners saying how much they would love a purple catsuit .. we didn’t hear that on Friday honest!! 🙉

There will also be a Python beginners course at 7:30pm. This is in addition to the workshops already scheduled here: https://www.wthub.org/workshop/workshop-wednesday-lineup-on-the-20th-of-may/
The intention is to follow an online Python Course, with fortnightly workshops to go over the course material with the opportunity to ask questions, share coursework etc.
The coming Wednesday will be the kick-off meeting where the specific course will be confirmed (based on initial ideas but also taking on board any feedback/preferences of attendees), agree the pace of learning, settle communication method inbetween workshops etc.
If you would like to join please sign up to Workshop Wednesday meetup link above – it’s open to all genders. If you can’t make the first meeting but are still interested, then you are very welcome to attend subsequent workshops.

The following one we are currently putting together and hopefully will include Tableau & Data visualization for current Excel users by Gabs#1 – again (TBC) and the 2nd BA workshop by Sara Price. We are currently looking at interest in Python and Webdev101 coming back.

We are also sharing projects that people can be involved with to up their skills and put on their portfolios, so if you have something you are working on and need help with you can do a callout at the meeting and we can set up breakout rooms for you to discuss.

New TechTalks platform .. and its free for us!!

On that note Adam Butler who runs the Bristol JS group has been busy putting together an app to support event organizers manage things a bit better!

TechTalks is more than just an events platform. It’s a home for your community. Sessions such as talks, panels and hackathons have so much value and shouldn’t just disappear or go elsewhere when the day is over. TechTalks can be a home to the content that you and your community create.

If you’re a tech event organiser then we’ve got your back. You’ll soon be able to accept or discover talk proposals for your community. It will be seamless, all the control with none of the copy and pasting. That’s just for starters, a whole host of tools will be available to make running your events more efficient and better than ever.

As a speaker, you can build and grow your personal brand, host your content and publish your speaking schedule. Soon you’ll also be able to get insightful metrics and feedback on your sessions too.

Oh, one more thing. TechTalks is also a community itself. I’m a strong believer in getting product feedback early. I’ve made our roadmap public and we’ll be hosting regular remote sessions to find out what our community wants from TechTalks.

This is just a start, but an exciting one. Not everything is ready right now but there is a vision and we’re moving fast towards it. Join us and be a part of it.

Women’s Tech Hub are available for support online in place of our Free Three Fridays (F3F) for zoom catch-ups. Sign up on our meetup here or mail us on info@wthub.org for details.

We are also aware that we need to up our efforts into getting our members into work – for now we have our candidates page here but we are working on being a bit louder moving forward so bear with us for now while we put it together.

10th May 202010th May 2020

Can we come out to play again yet?

We know its starting to get a bit like groundhog day for those furloughed or housebound during this period. Others are simply working flat out and hearing how others are spending their time cutting the individual grass on their lawn with hair scissors for the perfect looks or hand fashion their own homemade toilet seats or whatever the latest trend is. But at least there’s a lot of stuff on and if we can’t come out to play then its the virtual playground/workshops from home (at least there’s no traffic!)

Workshop Wednesday (and F3F)

Seems like there are loads of ideas and offers for workshops out there. The first will be a “Job applications (CVs, LinkedIn, portfolios)” by Gabriella Morales (Gabs #1) on the 20th of May from 6.15 til 7.15pm Followed at 7.30 to 8.30pm workshop #1 of 2 by Sara Price on what a BA does. We are just putting together the details and setting up the meetup so bear with us on the details.

We then have #2 of 2 by Sara on the following one and Tableau & Data visualization for current Excel users by Gabs#1.

On top of that we are currently organising:

How to Twitch (its a platform btw)
Git
SQL databasing
Google analytics
UX
Agile/lean intro
Cloud/AWS vs google vs azure
Flutter?

plus all the ones we mentioned in last weeks newsletter of course!

Women’s Tech Hub are available for support online in place of our Free Three Fridays (F3F) & Workshop Wednesdays for zoom catch-ups. Sign up on our meetup here or mail us on info@wthub.org for details.

A couple of our members who normally lead some workshops at Workshop Wednesdays are in the speaker linup for Women in Data Science | IBM Code Bristol so go check them out:

Dr. Elena Hensinger – Senior Data Scientist will discuss real-life challenges with time-series data and discuss ways to provide value to your client, no matter the quality of data.

Alexandra Craciun – Audio Algorithms Engineer at XMOS will look into voice activity detection and discuss optimisation approaches for designing an efficient low-power algorithm to detect speech.

Digitalmums have just announced that they have been funded to support women on free boot camps for women who are in roles that are at risk through automation – check it out here Free Digital Bootcamps for mothers in at-risk retail roles

2nd May 20203rd May 2020

All zoomed out yet?

I think there may be some new dictionary additions this year 📚 It’s getting busy with zoom but we are starting to settle into this online life, it shouldn’t have been too hard given the nature of the group!

Workshop Wednesday (and F3F)

Currently, we are available for support online in place of our Free Three Fridays (F3F) & Workshop Wednesdays for zoom catch-ups. Sign up on our meetup here or mail us on info@wthub.org for details.

The Workshop Wednesdays are coming together – currently, we are lining up possible workshops and are currently speaking to potential speakers. If anyone fancies running a workshop then please get in touch and we can work it into the agenda. The best time to discuss it would beat this weeks zoom meeting Workshop Wednesdays by Women’s Tech Hub ~ Bristol

CV workshop and job hunting
Linkedin profile
Cybersecurity- subject to speaker
BA workshops by Sara Price
System thinking – subject to speaker
Python beginners
Webdev101
‘Intro to’ Sessions

Bristol College initiative

We are pleased to announce the new partnership between NW digital education provider & apprenticeship specialist Code Nation and City of Bristol College this week – a move which will expand the provision of Software Development courses and apprenticeships in the South West, as well as Code Nation continuing their work in Manchester.

User Testing opportunity

We are looking for up to 10 IT professionals across a range of career stages to help with some user testing. Sessions will last no longer than an hour and will take place between the 11th – 22nd May. We’ll confirm our selection by Friday 8th May, and successful participants will be rewarded with £30 Amazon vouchers. If you’re interested in getting involved, sign up here: https://hubs.ly/H0q0dZn0.

For a bit of extra money it may be worth looking at joining up at peopleforresearch as they regularly advertise user research or website testing for amazon vouchers or money – and its not like some of you are strapped for time (although I know alot of us are still very busy!)

26th April 202026th April 2020

Thank you to CV19 and it’s Cyber volunteers!

Lisa Forte – has been a great supporter of WTHub. She is a brilliant international speaker of some repute, a brilliant trainer of Cyber and many things in between. She put a call out some weeks ago to look for a volunteer force to help on all things cyber to support healthcare services during this pandemic. They are now live and going out internationally to support so check them out here and feel free to put the word out. Lisa and the team – we would like to say THANK YOU!

CV19 is a volunteer organisation setup to provide Cyber support for those in need. This was setup following the outbreak of COVID19 (Corona Virus) across the world. Our focus is on Prevent and Response services to support healthcare services in the UK and Europe on a voluntary basis. Here you will find a wealth of information regarding how we and our volunteers can help in the fields of cyber security, network security, internet security, information security and computer security. If you are a healthcare provider in need of assistance please use our service request form. If you wish to volunteer please see both our volunteers page and also visit our LinkedIn group and LinkedIn page.
CV19 Cyber Volunteers

Anyone fancy visiting Leeds?

Leeds are hosting their Digital festival virtually – which means that we all get to visit – looks like there’s a plus to this shutdown when it comes to virtual festivals. @leedsdigifest is massive and has some great workshops – we’ve listed them, with links, below but the main site details are here.

Workshop Wednesday (and F3F)

Currently, we are available for support online in place of our Free Three Fridays (F3F) & Workshop Wednesdays for zoom catch-ups. Sign up on our meetup here or mail us on info@wthub.org for details.

For Workshop Wednesdays we are looking for members to pop along and tell us what they are looking for – we are currently discussing continuing the training sessions with a social time and then a workshop. You can therefore pop in and out for whichever part you will be interested in, the next WW will be discussing what we will be offering for these – and we would love your input to check that we are supplying what you want to support your learning.

Stuff we spotted and thought we would pass on

Last week we were looking at upskilling into electronics and to be fair it was difficult to find great resources online. Interestingly the very next day we spotted on the UKESF blog that the open university is offering up a free course on it so if you want an introduction into electronics then take a look here.

Other upskilling resources can all be found on our training page.

The AI summit is offering us 25% discount and will send on all the presentations as its US-based – mail us on info@wthub.org for the discount code

Current service offer – Bristol Mental Health Employment Service

We support people who need support with their mental health and wellbeing, are facing problems at work or searching for employment. This can be through brief interventions, or over a longer period – usually 4 months of fortnightly support. We continue to offer employment support and take referrals for this.

Our landline and email address are still the best ways to contact us: 0117 9232741 enquiry.bmhemployment@richmondfellowship.org.uk. During this unprecedented health crisis we are relaxing our criteria to include anyone who has a wellbeing support need – this can include their employment situation, or it can be about coping with isolation, anxiety, concern for others or anything people might need to talk about. As experienced mental health professionals we can offer a listening ear and provide any information we have, as well as signposting to sources of support and information we are aware of. We are also happy to hear from those who have a mental health support need and only wish to volunteer, rather than seek paid work in the current period. We understand that there is an increased need for volunteers and many people want to help.

SWCTN

We are continuing our Covid 19 business support sessions! Offering the most up to date, and key information in this ever-changing time, SWCTN have teamed up with legal firm TLT, and accountants Saffery, to give our network some added support. With this expert help our aim is to cut through the noise and ever increasing mountain of information facing businesses and freelancers, to give them the guidance that they need to continue doing what they do best.

These sessions will cover the below areas:

Legal Services
Intellectual Property
Accountancy Services
Access to Finance Alongside assisting participants in accessing additional funds, which we understand to be of upmost importance in the current climate.

Check them out here.

Paper Airplanes

Paper Airplanes is a nonprofit organization that provides free, one-on-one language and skills learning for individuals whose lives and education have been interrupted due to conflict. Their Women in Tech program works with women ages 18 – 35 who speak advanced English, have little to no coding experience, but are interested in learning coding. The program seeks to equip women with basic skills in coding languages such as CSS, JavaScript, and HTML. Each student is matched with an instructor and a personal mentor, who meets with her once a week to help with assignments and answer questions! They are currently looking for instructors to deliver the content for our Women in Tech program. They are especially looking for individuals with experience in the coding languages above. They prefer candidates who also have previous experience teaching coding, and can speak some Arabic – but these aren’t requirements! This is a volunteering position, with an expected time commitment of 4 – 6 hours per week. Importantly, they are looking for people who are passionate about providing educational opportunities for women and refugees.The application for their summer session is now open. It will run from June 21st until August 29th. If you are interested, have a look here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1RgfeSbWf81r0_amltfn50iiJuXBlHaz94iYvYl0MTcQ/viewform?edit_requested=true