'Girl Develop It' set to launch in Fort Collins June 26, help women get involved in technology

By: InnovatioNews Friday May 30, 2014 Tags: developer classes, Fort Collins, women in technology

By Diana Sproul

InnovatioNews Correspondent

FORT COLLINS -- The national non-profit "Girl Develop It" (GDI) was organized to empower and assist women who want to get involved in technology. GDI has a successful Meetup.com group in Boulder that's one year old with 500+ members.  Its classes teach developer best practices with practical coding applications.



The group is launching a Fort Collins chapter with a party set for June 26, 6:30 p.m., at El Monte Grill, 1611 S. College Ave.

An organizational meeting was held May 29. Members attending included a teacher of math and Internet skills, software developers and testers, marketing people, graphics and website designers and a writer, among others. 

A common element was workforce challenges: One woman had her job outsourced to two other countries and several told of difficulty rejoining the workforce after leaving to raise families.

The Fort Collins group is organized by Daun Davids, an independent software developer, and Gretchen Kastetter, a Web designer, front-end developer and owner of Haunted Mesa Design.

New group members are invited and the organization is seeking sponsors. In particular, the group is looking for class meeting space, ideally with computers available. Sponsorships at many levels from appetizers for events to donations of old PC and Mac laptops for coding coursework are sought.

Classes and workshop tuition will range around $10/hour, less with sponsorship. The first course on HTML and CSS will take place in late July. Future events will include Code and Coffee events and evening networking, "Code and Cocktails."

To find out more or to contact the organizers, see the Meetup.com page (http://www.meetup.com/Girl-Develop-It-Boulder/), Boulder's GDI website (http://www.girldevelopit.com/chapters/boulder), or e-mail the Fort Collins chapter leaders here: [email protected].


Diana Sproul is a tech enthusiast and founder of Sproul Creative Graphics and Website Design. See SproulCreative.com and LinkedIn for more information.

[caption id="attachment_35216" align="alignleft" width="105"] Diana Sproul, Sproul Creative[/caption]