It’s been a whirlwind year in our community, as we have built it from nothing at the beginning of the year, formally launched it in February 2018, and grew it into an exciting, vibrant group of passionate women developers and allies in a very short period of time.
Courtesy of VueVixensMX Chapter
Vue Vixens by the Numbers
Here’s a snapshot of our community, based on some important numbers:
Patreon Patrons: 12, $125/mo
Slack members: 284
Twitter followers: 2572
Meetup members: 83
Blog stats: 1039 reactions, 54,134 views
Chapters: 14 worldwide
Events completed in 2018: 30
Women directly impacted by our project in meetups and skulks: 495
Chapter leaders: 23
Highlights and Evolution over 2018
We started Vue Vixens with a firm notion that we would emulate ng-Girls’ model of hosting workshops at large Vue.js conferences, or more generic conferences that would support us. We did do this in Europe and the U.S. But it soon became clear to us that our potential for impact was curttailed by our ability to travel to events limited to these regions. When we were approached by a group of amazing women in Argentina to start a chapter in Buenos Aires, it soon became clear that we would need to extend our mission to include the concept of chapters to scale the program worldwide.
We have now scaled to include 14 chapters: Mexico, Argentina, Sweden, Mauritius, Germany, Peru, Spain, Washington DC, Nigeria, Uruguay, Brazil, Canada, Michigan, Raleigh/Durham, and two more coming soon in Venezuela and Ireland.
Our record-breaking skulk with over 30 women attending in Raleigh-Durham at All Things Open Conference
Our chapter leaders are on the frontline of balancing our mission of educating women and building community. We salute their efforts and wish them enormous success growing in 2019! We saw the power that these chapters can muster as we hosted our very first Vue Vixens Day in Argentina in July. This event was an enormous success that we hope to emulate in 2019. It involved a half-day mixed talks and a half-day women-only workshops. When your workshop attendees don’t want to leave at the end of a long day, you know you’ve had a huge success.
Vue Vixens Day in Argentina, with ages spanning from 13 to over 70
We tested various formats for our skulks, including breakfasts, lunch ‘n’ learns, three-hour minis, and full day workshops. Each format has its merits, and depends highly on the level of staffing available.
Roadmap for 2019
Chapters:
It seems clear that our workshop model will be balanced by a concentration on building our chapters. We are keenly aware of the challenges faced by Girl Develop It and are watching their implementation of safeguards to ensure that our values of diversity and inclusion are met throughout our chapters. We want to ensure that the staff never gets disconnected from the chapters, and will be looking to meet regularly in all-hands worldwide meetings. 2019 will be all about shoring up our chapters by means of solidifying our budget, documentation, reporting procedures and and organizational structure.
Events:
We are expecting for our staff to attend several international conferences and ‘skulk’ there:
February: FrontendDeveloperLove / Vue.Amsterdam
March: Vue.US
April: NativeScript Developer Day Amsterdam
June: Refactr Conference in Atlanta
Summer: Concatenate Conf
October: Vue.Toronto and Connect.Tech ATL
Chapter leaders will also lead skulks in other conferences such as JS Conf Eastern Europe, Vue London, Node Foundation events and conferences in Mauritius. We are happy to consider other conferences as well, especially the Voxxed family!
We will also attend smaller local conferences, including DevFests in Boston and elsewhere.
We are hoping to host at least one, and perhaps two, Vue Vixens Days in South America in 2019. Watch for these on meetup.com!
Technical work:
We are looking to perform a content refresh in 2019, adding more mini content for our chapter leaders to use. We are currently floating ideas on how to do a refresh on the full-day material, although it is a large task.
Statements from Staff:
“2018 was the year of the dog in the Chinese calendar, my year, and it did not disappoint. From the moment I stepped off the stage at Vue Amsterdam conference after announcing the launch of Vue Vixens, and then seeing the barrage of positive reactions flooding my Twitter feed, I knew we were on to something big. I did not have any idea just how big, and we are carefully scaling the program to meet individual regions’ needs, but I am tremendously proud of the amazing achievements of our staff, chapter leaders, and the women and allies who join us on Slack every day to build community. If we can find a way to ensure that our mission is always met in all our far-flung activities, I will be happy! - Jen Looper, Founder and CEO
“It was a year of the big work - and a year of the huge success. Since the moment I was invited to join VueVixens I knew it will change the Vue community and my own life and I was ready for challenges. And there were challenges! Creating all workshop content, convincing conference organizers and starting to scale - it wasn’t easy and I am eternally grateful to our awesome staff and chapter leaders for all their efforts.” - Natalia Tepluhina, CTO
“I had no idea how much Vue Vixens was going to change my life. Since day one, we had a strong connection and our mindset is aligned. My life changed for better after meeting not only Jen and Natalia but all the awesome women in our community. We have grown to empower each other and bring the best of ourselves as professionals and personally. My goal since I started working on reaching out to women worldwide is for all of us to remember that there are no limits to what we can achieve! Our mission is to empower women in a safe environment with awesome allies and to insert them in the global tech ecosystem; our mission is to make a difference. My mission is to take that message far and near. ” - Diana Rodriguez, Worldwide Community Organizer
Community Testimonials
“Going to the Vue Vixens workshop was a HUGE confidence boost for me... I was able to follow along and finish both the pet shop and mobile apps! And, I got to meet so many people who don't have CS backgrounds, who career transitioned like me, and even who are professional developers who don't like the backend or math...” —Heather, Vue Toronto Conference Attendee.
“VueVixens is a community of awesome women both acting as mentors and learners that are trying out Vue.js to help them improve their knowledge to build apps and websites.” — Gift, Nigeria Chapter Leader
“Being a part of the VueVixens community has given me the opportunity to connect with women in tech in a way I never could have done on my own -- the support and encouragement from the community is second to none in so many ways.” — Malinda, US-West Regional Chapter Leader
“Until a few weeks ago, I was the only person I knew with an interest in Vue. I'm so glad to find this vibrant community!” - Marjorie, Community Member
Gif courtesy of Victor Cabrera
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