<p>Last week I asked on twitter for communities or groups that female leaders in tech were a part of.</p>n<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-dnt="true"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Where do female leaders in tech hang out? Specifically looking for groups / communities to talk, discuss about engineering problems, scaling teams, hiring + firing, career growth options for tech leads etc.</p>&mdash; Princiya 👧‍ (@princi_ya) <a href="https://twitter.com/princi_ya/status/1294960996113698817?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 16, 2020</a></blockquote>nn<p>The tweet got some nice attention and some of the suggestions I received were helpful. None of them were women specific, and the next thing I had in my mind was this:</p>n<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-dnt="true"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Would you be interested in a virtual Q&amp;A to discuss engineering problems, scaling teams, hiring + firing, career growth options for tech leads, problems specific to women leaders etc.<br><br>RT for reach 🙏</p>&mdash; Princiya 👧‍ (@princi_ya) <a href="https://twitter.com/princi_ya/status/1296374565963276288?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 20, 2020</a></blockquote>nn<p>Over the weekend I sat down to map my mind on a paper and help myself get what I want.</p>n<h2 id="what-do-i-want"><a href="#what-do-i-want" aria-hidden class="anchor"><svg aria-hidden="true" height="16" version="1.1" viewBox="0 0 16 16" width="16"><path fill-rule="evenodd" d="M4 9h1v1H4c-1.5 0-3-1.69-3-3.5S2.55 3 4 3h4c1.45 0 3 1.69 3 3.5 0 1.41-.91 2.72-2 3.25V8.59c.58-.45 1-1.27 1-2.09C10 5.22 8.98 4 8 4H4c-.98 0-2 1.22-2 2.5S3 9 4 9zm9-3h-1v1h1c1 0 2 1.22 2 2.5S13.98 12 13 12H9c-.98 0-2-1.22-2-2.5 0-.83.42-1.64 1-2.09V6.25c-1.09.53-2 1.84-2 3.25C6 11.31 7.55 13 9 13h4c1.45 0 3-1.69 3-3.5S14.5 6 13 6z"></path></svg></a>What do I want?</h2>n<p>Firstly, I had to be clear to myself on what was I trying to search.</p>n<p>I was in the lookout for communities or groups to discuss problems what tech leaders face, more specifically, what women tech leaders face. When I realised from my above tweet and after a bit of research that there weren’t groups or communities to discuss women specific tech leader problems, I wanted to create a virtual space myself so that women could come and share problems, find solutions.</p>n<h2 id="why-do-i-want"><a href="#why-do-i-want" aria-hidden class="anchor"><svg aria-hidden="true" height="16" version="1.1" viewBox="0 0 16 16" width="16"><path fill-rule="evenodd" d="M4 9h1v1H4c-1.5 0-3-1.69-3-3.5S2.55 3 4 3h4c1.45 0 3 1.69 3 3.5 0 1.41-.91 2.72-2 3.25V8.59c.58-.45 1-1.27 1-2.09C10 5.22 8.98 4 8 4H4c-.98 0-2 1.22-2 2.5S3 9 4 9zm9-3h-1v1h1c1 0 2 1.22 2 2.5S13.98 12 13 12H9c-.98 0-2-1.22-2-2.5 0-.83.42-1.64 1-2.09V6.25c-1.09.53-2 1.84-2 3.25C6 11.31 7.55 13 9 13h4c1.45 0 3-1.69 3-3.5S14.5 6 13 6z"></path></svg></a>Why do I want?</h2>n<p>As a female leader in tech, sometimes I have my blue days and I was hoping to have a closed group to talk and rant over the day to day things. In the past, ~3 years ago in 2017, when I newly started out in opensource, it was overwhelming too. I contributed to Firefox devtools debugger and then I did Outreachy internship which was a game changer.</p>n<p>Last year, in 2019, I was helping co-organise the bi-weekly open source diversity calls, where people in open source used to gather and discuss how to make the space more diverse and inclusive. Prior to this, I was part of a closed open source maintainer cohort whose attempt was to bring more <a href="https://princiya777.wordpress.com/2019/04/07/diverse-maintainers-in-open-source/&quot; target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">diverse maintainers</a> into open source.</p>n<p>During my mind-mapping activity I realised I wanted a similar thing about female leaders in tech.</p>n<h2 id="how-do-i-want"><a href="#how-do-i-want" aria-hidden class="anchor"><svg aria-hidden="true" height="16" version="1.1" viewBox="0 0 16 16" width="16"><path fill-rule="evenodd" d="M4 9h1v1H4c-1.5 0-3-1.69-3-3.5S2.55 3 4 3h4c1.45 0 3 1.69 3 3.5 0 1.41-.91 2.72-2 3.25V8.59c.58-.45 1-1.27 1-2.09C10 5.22 8.98 4 8 4H4c-.98 0-2 1.22-2 2.5S3 9 4 9zm9-3h-1v1h1c1 0 2 1.22 2 2.5S13.98 12 13 12H9c-.98 0-2-1.22-2-2.5 0-.83.42-1.64 1-2.09V6.25c-1.09.53-2 1.84-2 3.25C6 11.31 7.55 13 9 13h4c1.45 0 3-1.69 3-3.5S14.5 6 13 6z"></path></svg></a>How do I want?</h2>n<p>When I got to the <code class="language-text">HOW</code> part, it made more clear to me about the earlier <code class="language-text">WHAT</code> and the <code class="language-text">WHY</code> topics. I started analysing similar activities from the technical and non-technical space. For example:</p>n<ul>n<li>Monica Lent’s <a href="https://bloggingfordevs.com/blog/&quot; target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">blogging for devs</a></li>n<li>n<p>Entertainment shows which I love to binge watch; for example: The Kapil Sharma Show</p>n<ul>n<li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kapil_Sharma_(comedian)&quot; target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Kapil Sharma</a> is an Indian standup comedian who is known for his witty jokes and excellent comedy timings</li>n</ul>n</li>n<li>There are other examples too, but for now, let’s stick to these two</li>n<li>One thing that is common here is that both of them know their domain pretty well and are able to generate content and keep the audience engaged</li>n<li>When I started to ask myself how do I want to create a closed space or answer in detail the <code class="language-text">WHAT</code> and the <code class="language-text">WHY</code> topics, it made sense to learn the subject matter and get better so that at some point (say in one year from now) I could lead the discussions myself or produce more content around these topics</li>n</ul>n<h2 id="what-have-i-found-so-far"><a href="#what-have-i-found-so-far" aria-hidden class="anchor"><svg aria-hidden="true" height="16" version="1.1" viewBox="0 0 16 16" width="16"><path fill-rule="evenodd" d="M4 9h1v1H4c-1.5 0-3-1.69-3-3.5S2.55 3 4 3h4c1.45 0 3 1.69 3 3.5 0 1.41-.91 2.72-2 3.25V8.59c.58-.45 1-1.27 1-2.09C10 5.22 8.98 4 8 4H4c-.98 0-2 1.22-2 2.5S3 9 4 9zm9-3h-1v1h1c1 0 2 1.22 2 2.5S13.98 12 13 12H9c-.98 0-2-1.22-2-2.5 0-.83.42-1.64 1-2.09V6.25c-1.09.53-2 1.84-2 3.25C6 11.31 7.55 13 9 13h4c1.45 0 3-1.69 3-3.5S14.5 6 13 6z"></path></svg></a>What have I found so far?</h2>n<p>I have joined the below slack groups, and I am reading lots of articles by scouting through their old messages. I try to read ~3 articles per day.</p>n<p><a href="https://twitter.com/Jupiterrrr/status/1295116583661166594&quot; target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">https://twitter.com/Jupiterrrr/status/1295116583661166594</a></p>n<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-conversation="none" data-dnt="true"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Not specific to women, but there’s a slack group for engineering leaders that I find super useful to discuss these topics: <a href="https://t.co/0kPVROCl2Q">https://t.co/0kPVROCl2Q</a></p>&mdash; Kenza Iraki (@kenza_dev) <a href="https://twitter.com/kenza_dev/status/1295059930593075206?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 16, 2020</a></blockquote>nn<p>I also found this interesting newsletter from <a href="https://levelup.patkua.com/&quot; target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Patrick Kua</a>.</p>n<p>This github repository on <a href="https://github.com/LappleApple/awesome-leading-and-managing&quot; target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">leading and managing</a> is in my browser bookmarks.</p>n<p>You can follow my blog where I try to document what I learn in this space.</p>n <div style="margin-top=55px; font-style: italic;">(This is an article posted to my blog at princiya.com/blog. You can read it online by <a href="https://atomic-temporary-42700218.wpcomstaging.com/blog/are-you-a-new-tech-lead/">clicking here</a>.)</div>