 Hey, everyone. We are incredibly excited to stand in front of you today, and we are really, really grateful that so many of you came here so early in the morning to see our talk. It's hard to imagine that just a year ago, we both attended our first European in Berlin, and today we are actually standing on the European stage, talking to so many wonderful people. It's especially exciting, because today I'm not alone on the stage, and I have a great opportunity to talk to you with a great person on my side. We met three years ago when, by a very fortunate accident, we ended up organizing a conference together, and it was DjangoCon Europe 2013. It was famous circus edition, and we had amazing opportunity to host 450 Django nods in our lovely country. And after DjangoCon Europe, we knew that we are an amazing team, and we can basically do all crazy things together and make it work. And I must say that it's a very interesting way to learn about person by setting a circus stand in the middle of horse racing truck with planes flying above your head. We come from the same district of Poland called Silesia. Now we both live in London, and we work as Django developers for an awesome company called Potato. We've got the same first name, the same number of letters in our full names, and our last names all differ by only four of characters. Years ago, we actually became members of the DjangoCon team together. Some people actually think there is only one Ola, and they were sending emails to the wrong person. And the most hilarious are the threads where a person is responding once to me and once to Ola and you won't even realize that. So a year ago, here at Europe Python, something very magical happened, and Django Girls was born. If you don't know what Django Girls is, you should not worry, because you will find out very soon. But for now, we're going to go back in time to the imaginary world when all of the magic has started. Once upon a time, in the middle of magical forest, lived a little squirrel nameless. She was happy and trusting, and believed that the world has no limits, that nothing could ever stop her. This was super curious of all of the things. She did physics experiments with her parents and discussed newly read book with her friends. She attended art lessons, danced, and solved math problems. Everything was so interesting to her. She knew that she's capable of doing anything she can dream of. And one day, Liz discovered the forest of technology. She was amazed. At the bottom of her tiny heart, she knew this is something for her, something she always desired, perfect combination of art and logic. Look how awesome this is. She screamed with awe. Can I do the same? Can I? Can I? Of course, Sweety responded to her mom. I don't know how to do this thing, but I sure you can figure it out. From that moment, Liz spent days and nights browsing and exploring the wonderful places in the internet. She was trying so hard to learn all these interesting things, asking millions of questions to the strangers. Sometimes she struggled, but she also had so much fun when something finally worked as she wanted. At first, she didn't know anything, but then she can make one little thing to work, then another, and another, and then she understood something and she could do things. She was truly amazed with all the possibilities, computers, and internet can give someone. She knew it's something important. When the time came for Liz to decide about which forest she would go to learn more, she knew it needs to be the forest of technology. It's so interesting and so exciting. She couldn't wait to meet more squirrels who love technology and share her knowledge with Ruthen. Liz moved to another forest and was ready for a challenge, but she also felt a little bit scared. She didn't know anyone there. Her friends and family were far, far away. And it was not easy for Liz this time to fit in. She was incredibly excited to go for a first date at school. She was running, jumping, dancing through the forest. She couldn't wait to make friends, to meet other squirrels interested in technology. On her first day, she started to discover that there is not as many squirrels interested in technology as she felt. Every time she entered the room, everyone looked at her. Although many were interested in technology, she realized that most of them look kind of the same. It's so much different from her, the squirrel. There were budgers everywhere. She had nothing against budgers because most of the time, they were very friendly to her. But even though she really, really wanted to blend in and feel included, she couldn't find a place for herself. Whenever she met a group, someone had to ask, why did she come here? Or is she here because of her budger friend? Sometimes she also felt that she's invisible. And she started to realize that she could not fit in and make friends easily anymore. And she didn't understand why. Days passed, but she was still not her confident self. And even though she made some friends, she still felt those eyes on her every time she entered the room. And she saw that very often, others are embarrassed and don't know what to say to her. Even those friendly ones kept repeating the line, you are great, you are not like other squirrels. You are pretty good at technology for a squirrel. They complimented her with a big smile. At first, this felt special and started to believe. If everyone says that, it means it must be true, right? All of them were so clever and they knew so much about technology. They must be right about squirrels too. So maybe if I would act more like a badger and laugh at their jokes, they would accept me, she wondered. For next year, she tried very, very hard and learned as much as she could. Early, when she saw another squirrel who was talking about the technology, some budger started to peek on them. It was so scary, so scary that the shy side of Liz was preventing her from speaking about things she loved. She was the most quiet one at all the classes and meetings. When Liz was not careful enough and she spoke her mind in public, there were always some budgers who knew better and were happy to point her out how wrong she is. She was so afraid to fight back. One day, she was asked a question by a newly-met budger. She answered that correctly, but the budger said, 90, 90% of squirrels don't know the correct answer. He made his point and Liz didn't know what to say to him. Another time, she had organized some nice technology event and was asked if she's there just by accident or for social reasons. She was speechless again. I must prove that I'm worthy to be there, to be here to almost every single budger. She asked herself with sadness, why budgers that know less than me are able to speak freely and I can't. What's wrong with me? In this moment, she was unsure if she can continue her journey with the technology. She was clearly too quiet, not confident enough, not experienced enough. And the word around her was telling her, this is not your place. Despite of that, she managed to make some friends. She discovered some truly wonderful budgers out there. Actually, they just seemed like budgers, but if you took a closer look, you would discover the true nature. There was a kangaroo with the widest smile in the world. There was a cheerful chinchilla and cat and bear, fox and lynx and more, more wonderful mates. And they convinced her that she's capable of doing anything and they never questioned their skills. And thanks to their support, Liz decided that maybe she will try to hang there a little bit longer. And gradually, Liz began to see that maybe there is nothing wrong with her, but in fact, there is something wrong with the world of technology. She spent days thinking why there is not as many squirrels in her beloved forest of technology. Why am I the only squirrel who likes programming? Is it possible that technology is truly not a squirrel thing? She asked the same questions in the internet. And then, beetroots. Beetroots appeared. It's obvious squirrel brain are smaller than badgers. Squirrels are not meant to coat. This is how nature works. Yes, squirrels can program. A washing machine. You're not a real programmer. Squirrels are too emotional. They can't think logically. She tried her hardest doing million projects and helping everyone around. Yet, she still felt it's not enough. She felt like she needs to do so much more than any other badger to receive the same recognition. And when she tried to speak up about that, badgers did not believe her, or even worse. They accused her to spoil everything and make everyone else feel bad. Liz fell alone and hopeless for years. She knew she's just a little squirrel with absolutely no power to change anything. Liz was so afraid of all these internet beetroots. She was terrified that she will not be able to deal with them if she will be their target. And even though she loved to coat, once again, she started to think that maybe this is not the best place for her. She was basically too tired to fight every single day. But then, one day, thanks to a series of fortunate events, she met another squirrel. They had so much in common that they even shared the same name. They became friends, and Liz finally had someone who shared with her the same feelings and experiences. She realized that she's not the only squirrel out there that feels alone, intimidated, and scared living in a badger's world. And it's not only her who had to prove herself over and over again. One day, she said to her friend, imagine how awesome it would be to know even more squirrels who coat. Can we somehow convince others to join us and show them that programming is fun? They both liked the idea, and in a short time, they came up with a crazy plan of teaching squirrels how to coat. They wanted to share their passion to programming and get squirrels excited about all the possibilities that technology gives them. They had no idea how to do it, but they couldn't sleep out of excitement. They told all their friends about the idea, and they loved it. With their support and many, many others who just came and joined them, the crazy idea started to become a reality. And a year later, thousands of squirrels have learned how to coat just because in the right time, in the right place, two little squirrels met and got excited about some idea. And today, Liz is standing right here on this very stage to tell you a magical story how one dream turned into something bigger, something that is beyond one single squirrel, or two of them. This dream is called Junk Girls. A year ago at Europe Python 2014 in Berlin, we organized the very first Python and Django workshop for complete beginners, people who never wrote a single line of code in their lives, except all of the more women. We started this quite unexpectedly just two months before the conference, and we only planned this to do this one single time, because with our daily jobs and everything we've been already doing for the community, our schedules were already really tight. What we didn't expect is that the next year we'll turn our lives upside down, and we will have amazing opportunity to teach Python and Django to 1,600 women, literally all over the world. All started with an email. Just two months before Europe Python, I met with Marcos, the organizers of the conference in Berlin. After that breakfast, I came up with the idea to make Europe Python more diverse and inclusive. The very same day, I sent an email to Ola. Hey, do you want to organize a workshop for women at Europe Python this year? Back then, I also wrote I don't think it's going to be a lot of work. She lied. We just need to find like 20 attendees and six coaches, including the size of Europe Python, it shouldn't be too hard. We'll use some ready-to-target from the internet and that's it. I don't think I could be any more wrong on that. But Ola jumped on board with excitement and we started working on this immediately on the very same day. It was just the two of us and we had less than two months to make that happen. And honestly, most of the time, we had absolutely no idea what we were doing. And very soon, in this very first workshop, we're going to take a little bit more time and work than we first anticipated. For example, we came up with the idea of providing financial aid for attendees that meant we need to find slightly more sponsors, then plan to review more applications from attendees and find a way to transfer money to them. It also turned out that we don't like annotated tutorials that are out there. We usually dissatisfied the status quo and that every tutorial available assumed that you're a programmer, that you programmed before, you know what a web framework is, you know what's a server, a URL, a host, IP, and so on and so on. And honestly, people just don't know these things. So we ended up writing our own tutorial, which I think ended up as a small book, it was like 90 pages of text. At the same time we also tried to promote the event every way possible. We set up the website, we spammed almost 70 university around Europe. We also passed information through all the social media. We could. At the very end, we also spent more than 20 hours just reading 300 applications for the workshop and we convinced Europe item to give us a bigger room. So we could fit 45 people instead of just 20. And now, one year later, the tutorial we written has been read by almost 90,000 thousand people. That's one fourth of the population of the Oval. And this number is like unbelievable. Today we are also proud to say that during the last year, 1,646 women learned about Python and Django workshops. And many more did this in home just by reading our free tutorial. Django girls madness has been spread to six continents and 34 countries. 70 workshop has been planned in all different parts of the world. From Canada to Australia, Django girls has been everywhere. We are working on that too. Some events even happen in places we didn't know exist. We grew so big, we recently had to start a legal entity. Django girls foundation has been formed just a month ago. And if someone would say that to us one year ago that this is what's going to happen, we would never believe them. We also registered it. That's a fun fact. We registered it under a program called Django girls foundation of awesome cupcakes and emoji. This is actually quite handy because the acronym of that is dog face. Which means you can represent Django girls foundation in just a single emoji. And we think it's very cool. And all of this was possible thanks to hundreds of organizers, tutorial contributors and an army of coaches who dedicated to programming with others. And we also came up to the point where the amount of work to coordinate all of the volunteers was basically too huge to two of us. And we decided that we couldn't do that alone. And not getting run out. And we ask for help for amazing people. Anya, Kasia, Baptiste and Jeff. And since then they are helping us to do the same. But it's still not enough. And we realized that we need to make some big decision to keep it going. That is why Django girls foundation is now hiring for our first paid position. We are looking for a ambassador of awesomeness who will help us make sure that we are always doing the best work we can. Honestly, it was a pretty huge deal for us and this decision was both extremely terrifying and incredibly exciting. And we still don't know what we are really doing. We are making up a lot of things as we go. But we believe that this is the right decision to make sure that Django girls is sustainable and can grow beyond this. And most importantly, we are doing this because we don't want to stop here. And we know that this is only the beginning. And we believe that we can make even bigger impact. And we want to make sure that we can make sure that we can share one of our huge plans with you. I'm getting super nervous whenever all starts this last paragraph. But, well, here it is. So it all started with the tutorial. It turned out that we really enjoyed writing it. And it also turned out that to our surprise, apparently we did a pretty good job and people loved it. It's one of the most recommended Django tutorials that currently exist. It's one of the most popular tutorials before Django girls. But the one we did is the one that finally helped them understand what Django is all about. As you've seen just a moment ago, the tutorial was read by almost 100,000 people. And we got many requests for more advanced tutorials or tutorials covering different parts of computer science. And we had this feeling that we were very limited by the form of the workshop. You can only teach so much in one day. So basically we skipped through the material and just explained things that are absolutely necessary. But there is so many wonderful and beautiful things you can learn and you can teach both the internet and computers. We want to make learning computer science fun, beautiful and exciting to empower people to continue journey on their own. We want to make accessible for everyone easy to understand and beautiful because we believe that the tiny little widows matter. So without further ado we would like to announce that we are in the process of writing a book. APPLAUSE Now there is no going back all on out. And this book is called Yay Python and we are now working to make that happen. So it's going to be very much in the Django Girls spirit as you can see. With a good dose of emoji, beautiful illustrations and funny little quirks and storytelling. We believe that the form of a book will let us expand the material to cover and include important things we missed in the tutorial and will also allow us to make an even bigger impact on a broader audience. We want every person, every woman out there who enters the bookstore and see this book among other technical books and immediately think, hey, this one is different. The same way they think about Django Girls. This is the book that you always wanted to have when your family or a member or a friend asks you if they can learn how to program. If you can explain them what you are doing the whole day or if you can just help them understand computers. Yay Python is all about exciting, incredible and beautiful world of technology. This book is still a tutorial that will teach you how to do Django website. But it will also include chapters where we explain how computers work. Exercises which you can connect dots to see how Django goes from request to response. Where you can learn about open source community and people who do that. Yay Python is going to be beautifully crafted book that's going to introduce people to technology showing its best parts, the community and the people. We want to tell people a story about our favorite things, about the internet so they can fall in love with it the same way we did. We believe it will be very unique, I hope so. And we literally can't wait to show it to you. We're just at the very, very beginning of this huge, huge challenge. We just started to write first chapters. But if you want to follow our journey you can visit vapython.com today and sign up for our news letters and we plan to share stories from behind the curtains. So when we think about the book now, it reminds us how excited we were just a year ago to announce Django Girls to the world for the very first time. We started with a very small idea, with just a team of two. And now there are thousands of people involved and Django Girls turned into something much bigger than just the two of us. None of that was planned. None was expected. I'm not sure what Ola would reply to me when I would tell her a year ago in this email that this is what's going to actually happen. I have no idea. I would probably think twice. But here we are now, a year later and we will probably be more grateful for everything that happened during last year. And if there is one thing that we knew from the very beginning and that didn't change during the last year, is that we wanted to do Django Girls our way. We made one rule and one rule only. No matter what, always go the extra mile for people. I think you can see that in almost everything we do. You can see it in all these little wonderful details at our workshop. We truly believe it makes a real difference and that people notice it since the very first contact with us. For example, when you send us an email to our Django Girls account instead of boring best regards, you will have signature hugs, cupcakes and sun shines or something like that. And we always try to be as friendly towards people as possible and they are friendly to us in return. I think this signature was actually started by Mikey who is sitting here first row. The spirit of the Django Girls is carried through your whole experience. You can tell anything about our workshops but that they are ordinary. Instead of boring classrooms, we decorate the room with balloons and table clothes and flowers. We do silly things like photo booths or yoga classes during the programming workshop. Everyone feels like it's extraordinary fun and exciting. At Django Girls workshop we will provide you with a very unique experience. It starts with forming very small groups of free attendees per one coach during the workshop and ends with group hugs. We believe that every person matters and we want to make unforgettable for people. I still remember after a workshop in Warsaw where you saved this long letter from one of the attendees and she said to us that we gave her the best day she had this year and I think that was quite amazing. And to ensure that organizers, although the words provide the same kind of experience to their attendees we open sourced basically everything. It took us weeks to write down every single little step and document it. But it also let us achieve one important thing making Django Girls making sure that Django Girls can be bigger than just two of us. We won't be around forever but Django Girls can shine and strive even without us. So every person out there who is not sure what it takes to organize the workshop can simply go and see one of our manuals at our website, read it and do that on their own. I think it removes one of the biggest barrier for people who never did anything like that because there is every single step from finding sponsor to providing balloons or things like that. So there is everything there. Most importantly we have a huge amount of enthusiasm and excitement. We always look on the right side of things and we love laughing and we try to keep Django Girls fun and friendly for everyone. For us too. We've got these posters with huge you go girl we buy tacky gold balloons that take up most of the room and we are always jumping of excitement because we know it's contagious and it's going to spread to everyone in the room. When me and Ola are excited about something it's going to get passed to organizers who are going to get excited and they are going to pass that on attendees too. And I think this power of enthusiasm is really huge and I think this is what helped us involve so many people into Django Girls in such a short time. But as you probably suspect all of these things don't happen on their own and making that happen is a huge huge amount of work time and energy. We really care about people we work with and people who attend our workshop and because we care we put a lot of feelings a lot of empathy and we try to make sure that everyone is happy and it's very very hard. Every labor of love comes with a huge emotional cost. We always think like we don't do enough yet and because there is always something to do we very often guilt-trip ourselves for not being productive enough and sometimes it really feels like there is no end to this. And the days come when we are simply just tired of working to full-time jobs. It's frustrating at times where it turns out that your free time now consists of trying to catch up with your inbox or bookkeeping or wasting energy to resolve the politics of people in your community. It's very often not the glamorous work but yet the work we spend our free time on because we believe it matters. And there is one thing in particular that keeps us going the stories of amazing women who changed their lives because of jungle girls. Like the story of Dori. Dori is actually sitting here somewhere in this room with her second Europe item. So last year she attended the first workshop at Europe item and she spent half of the day just trying to start Django server that didn't want to play nice with her Hungarian keyboard and there was like six coaches around her and we thought it's like the worst experience ever she's gonna give up hate it and never do this again. And today Dori works as Django developer in Budapest where she also co-organizes a meetup for Python developers. She organized two Django girls' events teaching 60 other women how to cause. Dori also coached on many Django girls' events all over Europe. A very similar story happened to Agapta. She attended Django girls together with Dori and now she works as Python developer in Brotswaf. She's involved she's also involved in Brotswaf Python meetups and also she put together two amazing Django girls' workshop there. Josie was only 13 when she attended workshop with her mom. Right after that she got on Europe Python stage in front of more than thousands of people and with no fear she gave a lightning talk about her experience and her plan to organize Pixie Dust a programming workshop for girls her age. This workshop actually happened last fall in Zagreb, Croatia. Whenever I open my inbox and I see 15 new emails to respond to and I feel like I just want to die I think of stories like the story of Hustina. Hustina applied as an attendee but we convinced her to become a coach and since then she coached at five Django girls' events and organized them twice. Linda organized workshop in Nairobi in Kenya just two months after our pilot workshop in Berlin. She blazed a trail for many other women who organized workshops in Africa after that. When I have a birthday I also remember about Lucy who started learning programming a year ago. She attended Django girls' workshop but this didn't stop her from giving a wonderful talk at DjangoCon Europe this year and organizing Django girls in Paris. Ana is running Django Story on our blog. She's also involved in DjangoCon US DSF and she's in the PSF board of directors. Kinga from attendee became a serial Django girls' coach and organizer. She's always going around Europe visiting her Django girls' friends and teaching people how to program everywhere. All of these stories are only for women who attended the very first workshop that happened at Europe Item. We had 45 more workshops like that since then. We could easily fill this whole talk with two stories like that. And knowing that women who attend Django girls' workshops actually change their lives is what keeps us going and makes us believe that countless hours, energy and feelings we spend on Django girls are simply worth it. But absolutely none of this would happen if it wasn't for these amazing people, amazing girls and the generous Python community from the very beginning the amount of support help and love we received from strangers all over the world left us completely speechless. And there is absolutely no way that Django girls could be this big and wonderful if it wasn't for hundreds of people who shut, hey how can I help and immediately jumping on board. So from this place we would like to say a huge thank you for absolutely every person who helped us along the way. We are grateful, humbled and we want you to know that Django girls is your success too. There wouldn't be Django girls without you. So thank you for putting all of your faith in us. Thank you for all the words of support, advice and encouragement and all of the hacks. So thank you for time, courage and commitment. We couldn't possibly be more grateful. Starting Django girls made us realize that how many amazing, badass and successful women who code in Django are out there. We knew only a few before it all started and now we can count them almost in hundreds. And the most surprising fact is how many of them just needed this tiny little spark to do something amazing for others. And there is so many people out there who are capable of doing amazing and big things. Yet they are waiting for some imaginary permission and we couldn't imagine that doing something so simple as saying hey, here is how we did it. You can do it if you want. And this was all what's needed to empower them to start. Everyone who works making Django girls happen doesn't expect anything in return. We do it because we believe that together we can actually change something. In fact, our dream is for Django girls to not even exist in five years. If we have no reason to be here in five, ten, maybe fifteen years it means we achieved everything we wanted. That's, I think, the ultimate goal of Django girls to not be needed anymore. And the biggest lesson we learned last year is that doing good things helping others and not expecting anything in return creates real magic. It turns out that one way or another the universe is going to find a way to pay it all back to you. And the number of crazy, amazing, wonderful things that happened to both of us in our personal and professional lives during the last year is simply unbelievable. We can't even begin to explain how exhausting but wonderfully rewarding this year has been for both of us. In fact, there is no way we would stand here today in front of you opening EuroPython 2015 if it wasn't for Django girls. So for a long time we thought that there is absolutely no way that we can change or influence anything. We worked believing that this is how it is. But in the end it turns out that all it takes are two little squirrels with a big, big dream and a generous, wonderful community to make something amazing happen. So whenever you think you are just a tiny little drop in the ocean and that all of the things you do don't matter. Just like our list of stop and take a minute look around. You are not alone. You are among friends. Thank you very much. One more thing. Can you still hear me? All I was too humble to brag about this but all of the illustrations has been actually hand-drawn by her. Let's give her maybe one word of applause for that. Great. Thank you so much for this amazing talk. Unfortunately, for the 15, 20 minutes of standing ovation we are a bit late. So maybe have time for a couple of questions and then we'll have the next talk starting five minutes late so we can deal a little bit with the delay. Questions? Or comments? Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you all.