Ladies Who Code: Interview with co-founder Angie Maguire

Ladies Who Code began in 2011 and is a collective of professional coders meeting to share knowledge and ideas. Two Mint Digital employees saw an opportunity to bring people who use code in their jobs, or who are just pretty damn good at it, together to create awesome stuff. Since then, the brainchild of Angie Maguire and Shoshi Roberts has gone from strength to strength through their flagship meet-ups in London and New York. They have just recently surpassed 1000 members and have huge ambitions for the group. Angie kindly spoke to Interhacktives.com to tell us more.

So, How did Ladies Who Code start?

We started in 2011, myself and my colleague Shoshi Roberts who works out of our New York office, were just discussing the kind of communities that exist in tech. One thing that we felt was lacking was monthly meet-ups. Shoshi was really into going to Girl Geek Dinners and I knew of a couple of other things like Women Who Code, Rails Girls and so on. There were loads of interesting communities around but one thing we felt was lacking was a monthly meet up for professional coders.

We thought we'd pilot it in New York and the first ever meet-up was the end of June 2011, I think about 10 people showed up, which was great, and we've spent the time since then developing a format that fits each community.

We're now in Manchester, London and New York now and we've just hit over a thousand members, which is really exciting for us. It's a really hot topic right now and everyone's screaming about women in tech. We're trying to create a safe space for people who wouldn't have gone to meet ups before and trying to empower women in tech.

What happens at the meet-ups?

In New York it's like a homework club, people bring their ideas and their laptops. Some people come because they're learning a new language others come because they need help in a particular sector. There's a lot of peer tutoring but if they don't have a project we have a couple of charities, not for profit organisations and social enterprises who ask for help and people can adopt that project.

In London we also have a speaker series, one of the things that have been brought up again and again has been the women at conferences ratio. I think it's really important to give people the opportunity to practice and get feedback, through Q&As and just getting people involved. We've actually got a start-up growing out of the London community, it's still very early stages but the fact that those people have come together at the meet-up is really good.

What kind of people come along?

It's a huge mix, Manchester, for example, is a very academic community. Some of the stuff going on there is amazing. In London people tend to be multi-lingual developers, we have a few people at the moment writing apps and a lot of the time people are doing hobby projects. So they'll work full-time for an agency but LWC gives them a bit of space to do their own stuff. It's so diverse, there are people who work for massive tech companies down to students who are just amazing coders, it's great.

Sounds good, but how do you make money?

We don't make any money! We get approached a lot by recruiters but that's just not something we want to do at this moment in time. Maybe eventually we'll find a space for that but it's not really the point right now. It's about bringing really interesting, dynamic and intelligent people together and getting them to build awesome things.We have a nice association with Developers for Good and Apps for Good and we encourage our members get out there any use their expertise for good.

When did you realise it was taking off?

It feels like it started yesterday, it's just such a natural part of my life now. What's really exciting are the plans to expand and to do a lot more stuff. I think we have such a brilliant talent pool now and everyone is so giving, there are so many talented people willing to give up their time and skills so I think that's going to be something that we give more structure to.

But this is a side project, right? How do you get time to do this?

My boss Cameron is really supportive. if it wasn't for him recognising what value it has to me and to the community as a whole then I think it would be a lot more difficult. I went to him with the idea and then ourselves and Shoshi sat down and talked about it and he lets me take time out of work to organise it all.  I wouldn't say it's been easy but it's been really enjoyable and I can't wait to see what we do next.

 So what will you do next?

My dream for the whole thing is to make it a bit more open source. I get emails every week from all over the world who would love to have their own groups and that's what I want. I want people to be able to say, 'I want to start a group somewhere, I've got three friends who are developers..' and be able to do it. At the moment I'm working on a Chapter document that will allow people to do that. I want it to be completely global.

By Beth Ashton