Women Who Code Fellowship 2021 - The application phase

This was my pitch while applying for the wwcode fellowship.

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Hi, My name is Princiya Sequeira. I am from India but now living in Germany. thanks to the job advertisement I found in the Women who code's newsletter 6 years ago which landed me a job here in Berlin. I have more than 10 years of experience building full-stack web & mobile applications, and 3 years of experience leading technical teams at scale.

Apart from my day job, I also volunteer in coaching under-represented folks with opensource contributions, advise them with career decisions, resume reviews, and interview preparations. Given this background, I am very excited to apply for this leadership fellow position because I want to be able to make an impact to a larger global audience. As an underrepresented person in tech myself, I understand the challenges and do believe and strive to have a diverse representation at a technical leadership level at companies and in opensource. I do take pride in being able to be at an engineering management position which I envisioned 10 years ago and to get here I have had to overcome multiple hurdles. It's not an easy road and this is what definitely keeps me motivated, but often there are times when I am alone all by myself and nobody to the immediate rescue. Communities and events like this are a great place where you find similar people with whom you can connect to, get inspired by and to know that you are not alone. It is a matter of time when diverse representation in tech becomes the new norm and we don't have to empower the already empowered under-represented folks.

It is literally true that we can succeed best and quickest by helping others to learn and succeed and with Women who code events together we can do so much.

Begin by introducing yourself. Tell us why you are interested in becoming a Leadership Fellow. Next, we want to hear your Women Who Code pitch! Pretend you are starting your first event as a Fellow and share the WWCode Mission, Vision, and Code of Conduct.

Planning Promotion Agenda

We want to know how you would plan your first event.This question is required. * Explain the steps you would follow to plan the event, sharing as much detail as you'd like!

Topic - Theme Marketing Speakers Budget Feedback Logistics Registration Quality Code of conduct

• Choose a topic. "Craft your own web development journey" - We want to showcase different topics that one can choose to strengthen their web development career path.
• Find speaker(s), check their availability.
• Call for speakers from the audience sign up if they have any interesting web development journey to share. Security, accessibility, developer tools, core web standards, performance optimisations, opensource contributions.
• Arrange budget/sponsors: Speaker reimbursements, logistics.
• Setup tools/software for: event registration, volunteer management, feedback collection, notify audience and communicate with them about event updates, moderate the event access and guest list, record the event.
• Assign volunteers to tasks, event moderation, topic curation, logistics, etc.
• Write a Code of conduct for the event.
• Measure the event's success: Setup metrics to collect, gather feedback from audience and speakers

How would you promote the event?This question is required. * Consider the timeline, where you would promote it, etc.

• Promote the event primarily on social media: Twitter (start promotion asap details are finalised).
• Write a blog post about the event (2-3 weeks prior)
• Ask speakers, volunteers, audience to promote the event (before and during the event)
• Excite the audience who has signed up with additional details about the events, topics, etc. via emails
• Identify volunteers to participate in event promotion and track progress. Focus on open and clear communication to meet expectations.

Describe the event agendaThis question is required. * Explain start time, segments, duration, etc.

"Craft your own web development journey" - We want to showcase different topics that one can choose to strengthen their web development career path. - Choose a time slot that best fits global audience. - Ideally 3-5 hour event with wellness break, community chat time, etc. If there are ample topics and speaker availability then it could also be an 8 hour event. - If an ideal time slot cannot be found, run the event in 2 batches so that majority of the audience can participate. - Introduction (15 min) - Speaker 1 (20 mins, 5 min QnA) - 5 min break - Speaker 2 (20 mins, 5 min QnA) - 10 min break - Lightning talks (30 mins) - Break - Ask me anything or panel discussion (45 mins) - Game: (blind website design challenge or quiz) - Wrap up

Q: How has Women Who Code impacted your career and why is it important to you?

I gave my first keynote at WWCode Connect Recharge 2022. I am humbled by this opportunity. As a leadership fellow with WWCode I get to interact with the community and be recognised as a leader outside of my regular day to day job too. Thank you WWCode!

Q: How will you benefit from this scholarship? Please share 2 professional goals.

I am looking at ways to scale my career to the next level and I believe this scholarship can help me get access to a leadership coach, a global community of other peers who are on a similar path and learn and grow alongside.