2019 was a banner year for our organization. We are now a 501(c)(3) public tax-exempt nonprofit and we are here to serve our community! In this article, I'll outline the work we did in 2019, the lessons we learned, and where we hope to go in 2020.
Our mission remains unchanged since 2018: We are a community organization whose mission is to educate people who identify as women in web and mobile technologies. We do that in various ways: through 'skulks' (our name for workshops), meetups, chapter activities, written content, mentoring, and more.
Without further ado, please download our Annual Report for a big-picture view of our activities in 2019.
Our staff includes:
- CEO Jen Looper
- CTO Natalia Tepluhina followed by Michele Cynowicz
- Worldwide Community Organizer Diana Rodriguez
- At the end of the year we expanded by including a new Events Manager, Maria Lamardo.
Looking Back: Some interesting statistics for 2019:
- We have 27 chapter leaders with 16 active chapters worldwide.
- We completed 66 events in 2019, including conference skulks (our name for formal workshops), meetups, and more
- We had two large Vue Vixens Days in Colombia
- We impacted 1643 women directly in our events, representing 🎉332% growth since 2018🎉.
Some standout events in 2019 included:
Vue Vixens Day Eje Cafetero in Colombia, where our chapter taught students of all levels in a rural area, not often served by this type of effort.
The launch of Vue Vixens Japan, an exciting moment for us as we launched our first chapter in Asia!
Concatenate Conference in Lagos, Nigeria, partnered with Vue Vixens Nigeria for a fun-filled workshop with amazing ladies.
Looking Forward: 2020 Roadmap
Continuation: In 2020, we intend to continue in our tradition of scaling through chapter growth. We hope to build on the model successfully pioneered by Vue Vixens DACH in Germany to have city coordinators running events in various cities in a given country.
Events: We hope to have more day-long standalone events such as the upcoming Vue Vixens Day US. We are considering borrowing the model pioneered by Global Diversity CFP Day: recorded talks, and one on one mentoring. Watch for announcements on our web site. While we will be happy to bring our workshops to conferences who reach out to us, we won't be found at every conference. If you're a conference organizer whose business model aligns to our community-based grassroots organization, or a corporate event that loves to work with this type of community, please reach out, let's work together!
New Initiatives: We are also looking to scale outside the Vue community to offer workshops built to teach React. Stay tuned for more information on this new initiative! If you would like to help us, this would be a fantastic way to do so; please reach out
Funding: We are blessed with good Patreon support from many members of the community, and we also have several corporate sponsorships. As "Mrs. Moneybags" somewhat obsessed with the balance sheet, I would like to shore up our funding in 2020 to something more sustainable. Long-term corporate sponsorship would allow us to solidify what we can do with our chapters and what we can offer to our scholarships.
We have had a tremendous two years and look forward to branching out, expanding, and serving you even better in 2020. Please find us on Twitter @vuevixens, on our web site (https://vuevixens.org) on Facebook and Instagram, and on Slack (link to join is at the bottom of our web site).
Header photo by Erik Mclean on Unsplash
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