Will You Help Us Grow Our Community?

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Thank you.

Thank you for reading this article.

Thank you for caring about Women In Technology.

Thank you for sharing your time, your interest, and your comments with all of us at Code Like A Girl.

It has been an amazing first year for us. I’m amazed that we have more than 350 articles, written by more than 200 authors! In just the last 3 months, our readers have spent about 3500 hours reading Code Like A Girl articles. To put that in perspective, the last 3 months combine for a total of 2160 hours. If you read 24 hours a day, you’d have to read for 145 days to read what Code Like A Girl readers read in the last 90 days.

We now have more that 16, 000 followers and we’re growing fast — with more than 2000 new followers in the last 30 days. That is an amazing community we’ve built together in just over a year.

Community is a powerful thing. I Community. I remember getting my first taste of what participating in, building and leading a community could be when I was a teenager. At that time, I had two places where I was soaking up everything I could about community: Grand River Collegiate Institute and the AR Kaufmann YMCA.

In both places, I had the opportunity, which I am very grateful for, to belong. At my high-school, Grand River Collegiate Institute, I became involved in theatre and school paper. I made friends and learned skills that continue to be an important part of my life today. At my local YMCA, I was mentored as a camp leader and eventually worked summers as a camp counsellor.

Since then I’ve worked on conferences, election campaigns, started tech meet-ups, sat on boards, and volunteered around the world. Here’s one of the most important lessons I’ve ever learned about community: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

This quote by Margaret Mead is one that has inspired me for a long time. I guess I consider myself to be a thoughtful and committed citizen — so Mead’s words feel like they are being spoken to me. I am certainly an optimist with a great deal of hope for the future. That hope is founded on my belief that things can get better and we can, each of us, make a difference. I also believe that together — that difference can change the world.

That’s what this publication is all about. Code Like A Girl is a publication that celebrates redefining society’s perceptions of women in technology. The world of Women in Technology is changing — for the better. Not always and not in every way, but we are making progress. Our mission, at Code Like A Girl, is to amplify the voices that are driving this change — a community of thoughtful, committed citizens who are trying to change the world.

I started this by saying Thank You and sharing some stats about Code Like A Girl. Here’s one I didn’t share with you. According to toppub.xyz Code Like A Girl is currently ranked at 104th by followers. That’s amazing. It’s an accomplishment we’re very proud of. But we think we can do better — we need to do better. And we need your help. Today.

We need your help to get us into the top 100. Why is this important? Is this just a vanity metric? Perhaps, but there is something significant about this kind of measurement. It helps demonstrate the traction of this project within the context of Medium.com’s publication ecosystem. It provides a simple and easy message about our growth and stature. This objective is about accelerating our growth, to grow a larger audience — to grow our community.

Here’s how we’re going to work together to achieve this outcome. Our goal is to add 5000 new followers by the end of March 2017. We need your to help by introducing Code Like A Girl to your network. This isn’t about posting a meme on your feed (although that could be pretty cool too). This is about genuine and authentic sharing about something you care about and want to see continue to succeed and grow.

Our mission is to amplify the voices that are celebrating the changing role of women in technology. Please help us by participating in our #AmpCodeLikeAGirl campaign.

We are asking you to introduce 5 people you know to Code Like A girl over the next 25 days. We’re also asking you to spread the word, share your favourite Code Like A Girl article on FB, Twitter and LinkedIn and tag it with the hashtag #AmpCodeLikeAGirl.

We need your help over the next 25 days. We need you to introduce Code Like A Girl to 5 new people.

When someone in your network follows us, they can post about it with the #AmpCodeLikeAGirl hashtag, sharing something like:

“Hey — I just followed Code Like A Girl, an awesome publication about #WomenInTech http://code.likeagirl.io/ #AmpCodeLikeAGirl” or their own message.

You can also invite them to comment on this article — we’d love to hear from new followers as we work together to #AmpCodeLikeAGirl.

Thanks!