This Website Brought to You By: #LadiesLearningCode

Whew!

I created this website a few weeks ago and it’s just now I’m able to get some blogs up – I guess it took a bit of time before I started thinking of things as blog entries.

The seed was planted for this website over the summer, when I attended a #LadiesLearningCode workshop in Halifax for WordPress. It was held at Volta, a space dedicated to start ups and entrepreneurs, and which is AWESOME. I was instantly smitten – you walk up the stairs to the offices and the first thing you see is a giant painted mural of a Star Wars X-Wing space battle. What a great way to start your workday! The rest of the space is also really cool – their accent walls are of artistic spray painted tags, and inspirational posters pepper the space and make you feel like you can take on the world.

Image used with permission from #LadiesLearningCode

The #LadiesLearningCode workshop was fantastic – it went from 10am to 5pm, had a great mentor to mentee ratio and was also extremely affordable at $50 + tax. Our mentors were incredibly patient and helpful guiding us in the use of WAMP, WordPress and some basic coding to make things look how we wanted, and the structure of the actual workshop content was really well laid out and clear (we got an email leading up to the workshop with instructions and prep so that we could be ready ahead of time). I also found out later that the creator who put together the workshop also has a YouTube channel with helpful How-To videos on setting up WAMP and other steps, along with some troubleshooting (which were really helpful later).

I was also actually quite surprised at what a great networking opportunity it was – I guess given the technical nature of the workshop I didn’t think I’d get the chance to connect with the other attendees, but it was really well structured to give everyone time to get to know one another in addition to learning these new skills.

It was really something to be in a room with so many other women, many of whom were entrepreneurs or small business owners, working on developing their skills and wanting to either become self-sufficient with their web design, or more conversant in the language.

There’s another workshop coming up November 30th that serves as an introduction to Ruby – I think I’ll have to take it!

Thank you to all the mentors for donating your time and giving all of us such valuable skills!