 Thing ladies, who's excited to get this event going? Make some noise please. Oh come on, we just had a really good dinner. You can do better, right? Let's do it again, make some, that's more like it. So my name is Elisha, I'm the founder of Tech Ladies and today I'm so excited to be here to tell you more about what the Tech Ladies book can five. It's gonna be about and our first Tech Ladies mentorship program. So a lot of things are gonna happen today and I'm so excited to be here. So before we get the event started proper, just wanna do like, show of hands, don't stretch your hands a little bit, okay? So how many of you are here at your first Tech Ladies event? Oh, that's a lot. How many of you has actually been to your Tech Ladies event before this? All right. Yeah, like people in the first row are actually the volunteers, so kinda, yeah, by default. Cool, okay, cool, cool. So how many of you are currently in the tech industry? Oh, so maybe about 25% and the rest, how many of you are new? How many of you are not currently in the tech industry and want to join the tech industry? And the rest of you are here for free food? That's the Tech Recruiters Count as Tech. Yeah, Tech Recruiters is kinda in the tech industry. Not bad, not bad, all right. Okay, so last question. How many of you are interested in joining the Tech Ladies bootcamp? Oh, so like you wanna join the bootcamp but not join the industry? Seems like, okay, okay. And how many of you are interested in the Tech Ladies mentorship program? Good, even before knowing the details you're interested in program, that's really good. I like that, keep the energy high. How do I go next? Oh, just that. Okay, so I'm gonna quickly bring you through the plans for today. We are about like 15 minutes behind. But by and large, we're gonna start with talking about what Tech Ladies is about and then we jump straight into what is the Tech Ladies bootcamp five? What are the NGOs involved and what is Tech Ladies mentorship program all about? So we should wrap up at about 9.30 and that's where everyone can go home and enjoy your Thursday. So I wanna give like a huge, huge shout out to Microsoft, we're so graciously sponsored this lovely venue for us, so please give Microsoft a round of applause. And I'd like to have Sarah, our host, to give a short shout out. Cool. Thanks, Nisha. So this is really, my name's Sarah, nice to meet you guys. I'm from the developer relations team. So we actually do host a lot of meetups and I can really tell you from experience this is a very welcome present. Normally we see two to three ladies in our room, two like that. So this is great. And also we're actually moving on to students so this is a really good, ready to close out office with a man like that. Just, yeah, so thanks so much for coming. Very good to see you ladies learning STEM. It's, we have a lot of women in Tech, so myself I don't know that much coding yet and I hope to pick it up. So yeah, all the best to you guys, enjoy the night. Thank you so much, Sarah. And I think you touched on a really good point that we typically see like a reverse ratio in terms of men and women. But having said that, I also wanna take time to give a shout out to our male allies. A lot of them are G-Cultures here. I know there's one from Penang and all the way at the back are our male allies from Pakistan. Yeah, so these are the community leaders that I have the pleasure to work with and they're amazing, amazing people. Okay, so I wanna start with an introduction on what Tech Ladies is. So we are a community led initiative to help women learn and connect and grow in the tech industry. Now what does community led initiative mean? It means that we're not a real thing. We're not a not-for-profit, we're not a private limiter. We're just a group of people with the same vision and passion to see more women enter the tech industry. And that's why all of us are volunteers with our day job. We'll take on more, set aside more time to be able to see more women, people like us, to join the industry. So and at Tech Ladies, what we believe in is we wanna increase women's participation in the industry. We wanna see more women in meet-ups. We wanna see more women speaking at conferences. We wanna see more women in our workplace. And again, even though we wanna more women doesn't mean that we are anti-men. Yeah, we still welcome the presence and the contribution of our male allies because gender diversity in tech is not a woman's problem, it's an industry problem. And it requires all of us to chip in and contribute to make our industry a more diverse one. So right now, just a quick sharing in terms of where we are. We are currently over 3,000 members in Asia. We have two physical chapters, one in Singapore, well, obviously. And also one in Penang. Yeah, actually, this photo is in Microsoft. Yeah, before they renovated the place, it's amazing. And in terms of workshops and bootcams, we're trained over 500 women, of which very happy that 12 of them are now software engineer, junior role, or interns. Isn't it cool, like, when a group of volunteers come together and contribute, we see we can really change people's life? That gets me going, you know, that makes me excited about tech ladies. And these are the people who are contributing to tech ladies. This is the team. I'm Malaysia, all the way there, I'm the founder. Sue Ng is our Penang chapter lead, so she's not here with us today. Dilis is the event coordinator. She also runs the tech ladies meet event series. Janine is right here, which you'll hear a lot more about tech ladies from her later on. Liyan, she might be outside helping out because she's a volunteer, but she runs the study group, which I think some of you have already met her through that. And Vasu is also, oh, you actually met her downstairs. So they are helping out with the registration downstairs. So Vasu is leading on the mentorship program. Okay, so I want to quickly show you about how we at Tech Ladies think about the things we want to do to increase women's participation in the tech industry. It's going to be very colorful, so be prepared. Boom. Okay, so when we think about women joining the tech industry, we want to be able to help women at all stages of their journey in terms of entering the tech industry. So it's not just about, so we start with people who are exploring. This is the industry is for them. And for that, we have two programs, the study group that I talked earlier. This is a monthly study group. I'll share a bit more afterwards. And we also have the networking event. So for a woman who knows that, yeah, this is technology is what I want to pursue. I want to be able to invest more of my time to learn more about technology. Then that's where the bootcamp comes in. And afterwards, if you are looking for really ready to join the industry, that's where the mentorship program will come in to help you to give you the soft skills and guidance and the network for you to be able to break into the industry. So this is how we think about what we want to offer Tech Ladies. Again, we are all volunteers. Definitely look forward to having some of you to lead some of these initiatives as well. Everybody have a part to play. Okay, so I'm going to quickly talk about what the study group is. So the study group is basically, I think maybe no one is here. Yeah, it's just a square near faces. So it's basically us crashing Starbucks or another cafe to learn resources that are available online together. So this is what it provides is a support network where people with you can actually ask questions with your peers if you have any and also just learn together be on the same journey with each other. So this year, there is a theme to our study group. So it's going to be full stack for the full year. So we start off with the front end early in March, I believe, and we're slowly moving backwards. So I think the next one will come in about August or September on Python. So do watch out for that. The next event type we run is the Tech Ladies Meet. So you can actually see, Meen is here today. Yeah, so the Tech Ladies Meet is a very casual round table discussion that we have where groups of women will come together and then ask questions to industry practitioners. So this again, it could be about front end developer. How do you, what does a front end developer do? How much are you paid? What's the industry like as a woman? These are the questions that you can ask to someone who is living that life and get real answers. And the last thing is the Tech Ladies Bootcamp. So this is what you're also here for. So this is actually the photo of our first Tech Ladies Bootcamp graduates. So this lady here, she is a gymnastic teacher. That's why you see that she's super flexible. And now she's actually a known influencer in the tech world. And she recently, actually just yesterday, she did a talk at a Facebook event in front of 300 people to share about her journey. It's just really amazing to see how, again, when people come together, amazing things can happen. So speaking of Tech Ladies Bootcamp, I'm now gonna pass on to Janine who will share more about the bootcamp and upcoming Bootcamp Tech Ladies 5. Janine, please. So we have, you see me plugging the microphone because we are filming this so that everyone who is not here can also understand what are different programs for them. And while he's doing that shout out to Michael Chen, he is not the AV guy. He actually runs the Junior Dev Meetup Group. He also does the Big Brunch. So he is a real, excuse me, an awesome male airline has taught two bootcamps himself and this time round is also contributing for Tech Ladies Bootcamp. So please, hit the microphone. Okay, thanks Elisha and thanks everyone for joining us today. All right, so just briefly, yes, I'm Janine. I'm the co-organiser for this year's Bootcamp. Okay, I myself, I'm actually a counting train. Okay, so I work in a social enterprise to build a capacity of nonprofits and social enterprises. Okay, and today I'm actually pretty excited, a bit nervous actually, okay. To share more about Bootcamp 5. Okay, so to put it simply, Bootcamp 5 is a 13 week part-time accelerated learning program designed for women. So it can be women like yourself who wish to be professional programmers. You can be like between 25 to 35, just a fresh grad or mid-career switches or returning moms to work. And you're interested in software-related jobs and internships. So in general, Bootcamp participants will form teams. So this year we'll have two teams and you'll be guided by industry experts, aka our coaches, whom we'll introduce later. And you'll build a web solution for the nonprofits. And we're partnering with two this year whom we'll introduce later. So historically, we have successfully ran four iterations in the past four years of Bootcamp. This will be the fifth year, hence Bootcamp 5. And in total, we have trained 36 women and 12 of the ladies have gotten technical internships or have been hired as junior software engineers. And this is some of the portfolio. Some of the products were built for some of the nonprofits. So for example, for HCSA committee services, we've built for them a donor management system. For HOME, which is advocacy for migrant workers, we've built a case management system. And for schools related like Mountbatten Vocational School or Touch Young Arrows, we've built student management systems. So I mentioned that there'll be two teams. So each of the team will have three participants. So three times two means six participants who will work on a donor management system for the two nonprofits. Now why a donor management system? Pretty sure you are familiar with the word donor or donations. So donations are one of the main income for nonprofits and it's quite important to stay organized in terms of managing your list of donors, donations. Not only in terms of compliance like to IRAS, but also it will help strategically what sort of fundraising events to do, how to raise the donations. And more importantly, to maintain and grow the relationship with the donors. Okay, so now I would like to introduce the two nonprofits. I'd first like to introduce the first nonprofit which is Denise. So Denise is the Community Engagement Lead from Rich Community Services Society. So briefly, she aspires to be the bridging gap in helping others to support their courses meaningfully. So before joining the nonprofit sector, she was a seasoned manager in both international newspapers and magazines including Forbes, with over 10 years of local and regional experiences. So please tell me welcome Denise. I'm recording and then you have one more mic for the speaker. So do I? Hello everybody. Hi, I'm Denise and I'm really excited today to come and share with you what the Rich Community Services does. Honestly, I'm quite overwhelmed by the participants. I wasn't warned about the size of the crowd. Frankly, I was so busy today. I mean I don't really have gone through the slides. So Janine was just telling me oh, it's only five minutes. I said, okay, I tried. So anyway, just to cut the chase, just let me quickly introduce to you what's Rich Community Services and what we do. Just a little bit background, I just joined the social service sector about three years ago. I sort of like a mid-career switch. In a way, I stay home for a couple of years just to look after my local and I decided A, I think it's time. I think I've done that, did that. I want to sort of really give back to the community. So I think I'm part of what you guys are trying to do as well as the volunteering initiative as well. So I decided to take the plunge and the portion was open and I thought wow, there's actually so much to be done in the sector. So let me come to you. Okay, what's Rich Community Services? Actually, we are founded in 1998 and we are registered charitable organization. We are founded by a church and we became a member of the NCSS and then later on we got the IPC status. Why IPC? Meaning we can issue tax deduction and means that we have gone through rigorous governance and all so that donors are aware that the money are put into good use. And then of course these are the partnering agency that we work with. So we have been around for 21 years now. So our vision is touching hearts, reaching lives and here's the mission. So basically we stand for Reckoning Hope and enhancing social emotional well-being, assisting personal growth, caring for the hurting and helping the needy. Okay, so I think this is what most people like to know is who do we really serve. So on the ground we actually really look out for the low income, needy and vulnerable individual families and then the underprivileged children and then at least youth. Couples that lost trust in marriages and stuck in fractured family relationship and of late with the Asian population we also seen a lot more poor, socially isolated, helpless, seniors and their caregivers. And of course now what's trending is actually mental health issues and we're really receiving a lot more cases that comes through our door experiencing anxiety and depressive disorder and alarming rate is actually the trend is getting younger. There are more and more young people coming through a door saying that I'm done with my life. That kind of stuff, okay? So okay I'm just really going to quickly go through this. So the strategy trust basically we want to strengthen vulnerable families and individual to help them to achieve independence, stability and resilience and of course for the youth we hope to navigate them towards positive self-image and realising their potential. So we also believe in building enduring marriages for couples so that they can nurture better education and of course for the seniors we are really practising in terms of getting them to be active ageing and also a proper support system for the caregivers because right now we are not really looking at just a low income seniors but generally seniors as a community as well. So basically just quickly run through we have six community touch points and we break into this main four pillars which is the family the counselling, the youth service so these are a little bit of some of the stuff that we do with the programs that we run in each of the services so these are the numbers we have reached out to last year so as you can see the big numbers was the counselling and the youth and actually these two pillars are non-funded programs mainly we don't receive any government funding for these two services that we run basically we rely very heavily on donation and corporate sponsorship as well so yeah but senior part in the past we used not to have money from the government as well but of late they are putting in more money and championing because they know the ageing population is where their needs are really emerging. So overall last year we have we have reached out to we have touched actually we have basically these are individual lives that came through our doors and how we have helped them 30,000 lives and we also depend on volunteers to help us to run summer programs to help us raise funds yeah so now probably I'll just go through a bit of the problems that why we need tech ladies to help us because like myself in my role I run I look after the fundraising I have to raise about 1.5 million to 2 million a year and we have 60 stuff annual turnover is about 6 million so we are considered mid-sized but you can see based on 60 stuff pretty under-resourced right so I not only take after the fundraising I look after corporate communication and many other things so so honestly don't mention system is something that we have always wanted to look into it but we just don't have the resources or rather the money to plunge into getting a system and even getting a system I don't have the resources to even manage a system so it's always been like ah yeah these are the things that we want to do but we never really get to do it so when tech ladies also contacted us and said oh perfect timing and of course it's free so we will grab anything that it's free I mean we are very prudent because we want to be very responsible for donation that comes through so we are always very cautious about how we spend our money as well so currently problem face we even lack a very basic donor system we don't even have one we basically just excel worksheet and we got a lot of entries like anonymous anonymous so it's like who are they so basically I'm facing a problem because we really lack of the resources now of course right now we really do a very simple methods was to extract our donor's record from the IPC which links to IRAS basically if you give us let's say you donate to reach and you say you want a tax deduction so we enter your NRIC number or your organization UN number it goes to IRAS and then you get the 250% tax deductible of your taxable income so please donate okay so basically what we do with IPC actually provide rest symbol system you can just enter the period that you want to extract whoever has given donated to you to the organization and we can pull up and the string of a lot of different numbers that just come out so you just make sense of it and you just have to and it's very simple because for IRAS to issue tax deduction I just need your NRIC or your UN number I don't have your name I don't even your gender I don't even have anything else so it's kind of hard for us to understand who our donors and today I just actually with my teammate we just completed looking at the past 3 years sadly to say we are actually experiencing a decline in terms of the donors number of donors means you need individual donors as well as general donations so it only tells me that we are not doing enough to engage this donors because people just say oh I give you do you even say thank you okay I give you a receipt and that's it but I don't know who you are so I kind of feel that this is something that is quite timely that we need to resolve this so basically we really lack of basic information we don't even know I mean sometimes even donor they say oh it's very retiree they say decided that okay I think I have this money on the donate but I since I'm not working I give my tax deduction to my son or to someone else and you just give that person NRIC number and that's it so actually this person that received the tax will only reflect an IPC I don't know who is my donor you realise that I mean so you can see how complex and difficult that we are facing so we end up realising having very limited engagement and nurturing relationship donors and over time I'm sure people will start dropping off because you never really bother to engage them yeah so currently our goals are as of now we have about unique donors about 600 right now and the pool is really reducing in size everybody is really the pie of donation is everybody is just really really vying for it so our objective is really to increase the current base of our unique donors as well as to establish a user friendly database with very intentional views like knowing if I can pull out this person the history of giving is there a specific pack cause he likes he may be very into senior it could be youth at least and all that kind of thing to understand a little bit more about what they like and of course knowing how they come to know about reach and of course even birth date I thought was very important because I thought there is something that I could at least say happy birthday to my donor so and of course the system we hope that it enables us to do some donor tracking reports so that we know I mean numbers can't fake and I think with a donor tracking report we can realise how far we are from hitting our fundraising goals and how are we going to engage each of them intentionally with the system that's what I hope to achieve and as well as to establish some kind of automated system like churning out some appeal letter and they can just send it to them or maybe we have some stories that came out from the ground we want to just tell donors that hey these are the good work that you know thank you for donation you know this is the story that came out from the ground I want to share with you kind of thing yeah yeah right thank you you got any any questions you want to ask no huh okay thank you thank you Denise yeah I hope you learn more about each social cause and interested to help out the building and donor management system and possible right coaches okay okay I would like to introduce the next non-profit which is actually a Singapore community of UN members to welcome the president of the UN Women Jojette just arrived yeah very briefly yeah Jojette also serves in the executive council since 2012 so in this role she focuses on advancing system like volunteering with us at Kaulman and Nancy Biles community so she was previously a vice president of communications in Mastercard so I would like to introduce the president of the UN Jojette yeah please welcome the president is that okay hi good evening everybody can you all hear me yes great okay well thank you very much for the invitation to be here and it's wonderful to see so many tech ladies in the audience and tech guys we have a handful of tech guys can I suggest that we give a big round of applause for the tech guys the gentlemen who are in the audience are in fact the enlightened ones guys take the cue from there okay so they are the enlightened ones the fact that they're here that means they support they believe and we need more men like that behind us next to us leading the way clearing the path for us alright so thank you gentlemen for being here and thank you ladies for giving up a nice what Thursday evening okay alright alright so I'm actually here with the Singapore committee for UN women have any of you come across our organization familiar with our logo our work oh a few hands okay this side of the room winning on that front that side not so much okay well shame on us if we haven't done a good enough job to tell you a little bit about what we do but thank you for the introduction just now so I head up the team at UN women I came from private sector in fact I've just retired I retired at the end of last year specifically because there is just so much to do in this space gender equality women's empowerment providing a voice speaking up for women and clearing the path so that women from all walks of life have a pathway to prosperity that's really our goal okay so I decided after many many many moons of you know working in both government sector it was time for me to devote my time to UN women now first I should give you a little bit a thumbnail description of what UN women is it is a national committee so under the UN they have different categories of offices so they have their headquarters which is at the UN itself in New York they have free offices they have field offices and program offices so in places like the Philippines and Thailand in Bangladesh where they do a lot of outreach work then they have another category of offices or representative offices like what we have in Singapore together with places like Japan Australia, New Zealand the UK, Germany, France Sweden all developed markets and our role in these developed markets is primarily two fold one fund raising and the second one is advocacy okay so fund raising fund raising because I should clarify that we are completely self funded we take no money from the UN and we take no money from the Singapore government either so we are completely self funded in fact what it is is that we fund raise to send money to remit money offshore to UN so that it can help fund some of their projects overseas so what we actually like to do is we stipulate which projects we would like to contribute to our donors our supporters like to know that their donations are going to very specific causes close to home close to our parish here alright, don't get me wrong there is nothing wrong with helping war strife areas there is nothing wrong with helping areas after they have experienced natural disasters the women are the worst impacted so they need the most help but for the most part the work that we do the fund raising that we do goes to support programs in this part of the world so for example last year a lot of our fund raising efforts went to help the women in Cox's Bazaar do you know where that is? Bangladesh and you might know it is maybe you don't know the name of Cox's Bazaar what you know is it is the world's largest refugee centre close to one million refugees many of whom are from Myanmar the Rohingya who have crossed over and had a traumatic experience trying to get to safety the women have seen and experienced atrocities the children have been subject to the most horrendous things UN Women has devoted a team in Bangladesh to help build what they called multi-purpose women centres which they are building several of these the idea is during the day women can go to these centres to seek counselling to seek medical help to learn a craft to get to know the community and to just get over the trauma that they have experienced we have actually been donating for the last year and this year also to this very noble cause we have also been contributing to places like Cambodia the Philippines Indonesia many of which are UN Women specific projects that deal with safety for women so how do they make cities safer for women and how do they actually use technology to do so but they also it's about life skills, it's about empowerment so our work very much encompasses the space of anti-violence sexual harassment economic empowerment and the third pillar is that of governance and leadership but as a national committee our role is primarily fundraising and advocacy that said and I pause here only because we see ourselves we have been a little bit of a hybrid here in the Singapore committee not only have we been doing the advocacy and the fundraising work we've also done some community outreach and I think this is something that might be extremely relevant and hopefully of interest to yourselves we run a program that reaches out to girls in schools here in Singapore and it's called Girls to Pioneers it's basically a STEM program the research has shown and I did this research at Mastercard for over 4 years that girls between 10 and 14 and 15 don't have a good impression of themselves in the STEM space they actually believe that the boys their male counterparts in schools are better at it are smarter and they can succeed better they also under the impression that STEM is boring STEM is not creative now this is the one that actually really got to me not creative it's an opportunity the sweet spot of getting to these girls is around 13 and 14 and the idea is to do it in school because family first and foremost are the main role models followed by the external meaning teachers aunts, uncles, media influences as they grow older we've run now for over 5 years a program called Girls to Pioneers where we reach out to the schools run camps with them fun camps, teaching them things like cryptography and algorithms but applications how are these used building a sand filter, fun stuff so by the end of the 3 hour half a day camp the girls go away saying this is really fun, I'm really smart I can do this and guess what, I want to be a data scientist I want to be a researcher I want to go into you know, physics so it's about changing perceptions we're also extending that not only to the girls in the local schools we're now reaching out to the international schools we've done some work to reach out to the madrushes because that's another area where the girls, the teachers are very very keen to have us engage with them and these girls are super bright but because they have this extensive curriculum of MOE, academics plus religious studies it's a long long day so they, it's hard for them they don't have a lot of time for these external activities so if we bring it to them and we've done one or two of them with them and they're so bright, they catch on and you can see the eyes just light up when they get it so it's very very encouraging and the fourth area that we're starting to go into the fourth target group is that of homeschooled girls and you're probably thinking how many of them in Singapore, right? a growing number we know of somewhere between 60 or 70 girls alone who are homeschooled in the community and it is growing and them, they and their parents are very keen that the girls have some social interaction and this program allows them to do so so many of them have actually been undergoing our program many of them are now asking what's next it's all fine and good that you run a half a day program but don't stop there, what's next so we're very keen to extend our program in extension here we're talking about visits to corporates we're taking from, by the way these camps are anywhere from 80 girls to 500 girls alright so that's pretty large it's like army logistics trying to work through it but then we take a smaller group as they grow a little older, we break them up into smaller groups and we take them out to visit corporates to do, to have a little bit of fun at their R&D centers their design hubs, their innovation centers right and have them listen to women technologists, engineers heads of research about what their work is the challenges but also what the rewards are and we want them to look at these women as role models so you remember earlier on but the research looking for role models we want these women to be the role models so we're going to expand that even more so phase 3 that was phase 2 phase 3 we're looking at mentorship where we will look at some high potential girls select them up, do a pilot program of a couple of schools and a couple of corporates where we will match one-on-one women in these organizations with some of these girls age about 15, 16, 17 to help guide them and say okay what do you want to learn are you doing the right things expose them bring them to events expose them to write readings lectures things like that so there's lots of work to be done and we're hoping that this mentorship program extends to internships that's the natural extension because the girls need obviously the opportunity so we've got lots and lots of things going on we're looking to have volunteers we're looking obviously to get support from yourselves you're the prime audience here for this coming from the space yourself but in addition to that and that's why we're here today anything that Denise has said I second we need that too whatever you're building for Denise can I don't bang please please okay because I think we all face the same issues we want to be able to track better it's about governance it's about tracking it's about transparency it's about tightening our processes up not just because the government requires us to do so the Commissioner of Charities has already indicated that they want to see a tightening up of all the internal operational processes we have to stay ahead of that we have to Denise I'm sure you agree and part of it is the CRM program is being able to track where the donations are coming from who's giving it to us so that we can better target accordingly we can do better reports to be able to then feed it back to our sponsors and our donors and our supporters but not just from a donor perspective we look at donors and Denise you might do the same not just in contributions of donations of cash but of time the volunteers so the same system we would love to be able to have this in parallel track monitor and provide insights for a volunteer management program too so if there is a solution out there with you ladies and gentlemen I think we would be so grateful for that we're in dire need obviously but you know and the work we believe in the work that we do and we hope that you'll come along for that journey too I'm here for the rest of the evening feel free to ask questions thank you thanks very much I hope that was okay thank you so much alright well Jenny is clipping, I shall tell you all jokes I'm just kidding I'm not faster save me alright we'll just make it here I thought we were making the rich pun I thought we were making the pun okay now how many of you are even more interested hello oh we have questions alright the tech ladies program again because we are not in real today so we can do whatever we want when it comes to the age it really goes back to those songs from our community that we really want to help more enter the industry and if you look at one of your friends we're not here to compete we're here to help one another and that's why I did sort of a little focus we help women support them so girls watching companies they have very good hands because it's cool when help you when you are full time full time you can also so that's why we don't have a hard age we want to help people and then mine I just hope what then we can do okay I'm ready okay save me I thought she was going to make the pun joke yeah okay I'm still going to tell the pun sorry to interrupt have the NGO reach okay anyway let's continue so yes we need to build we need to help the NGOs build the donor management system but how is it possible so now I would like to introduce the team, the village who's going to help you all alright so first up okay I think you already know me and Elisha already so we are the bootcamp organisers I'm going to start from right to left so I'd like to introduce our technical Michael do a quick intro hi my name is Michael I've been in software for about 10 last years in various capacities both as an individual contributor in small companies as well as medium sized companies as a consultant in personal labs helping clients build applications and we can agile way and right now as a technician in my company in the company I'm working in there is a busy staff tech we guys are like parking the SG it's kind of like the camp we built that we're not me the team around us not me but basically we do our best to help I've been a coach in the technical camp for quite a few times also helped the next batch of ladies going through this to do your best and to help deliver a great product for the NGOs that were helping I hope to help the coaches in delivering this effectively and also make it sustainable such that even after the bootcamp the experiences you learn from here will also help you in your future career in tech or when you collaborate with other techies around you go ahead thank you alright, thank you now I'd like to introduce the coaches I'm going to go to the nearest one first which is Sheldon there's so much more to say that's a brief intro just say your name what engine do you have so we can check so I'm a software engineer by trade I work on frontend web so mostly you exercise user interfaces interactions and stuff like that so I've been I've been working for seven years since I graduated I changed the text up I mostly sell to the I don't have comprehensive resource and I've been working at agencies local startups and currently at NQC links and I hope to be able to go somewhere here thank you okay, next one I need to chop a bit name what you got there specialization, okay Rina hi, I'm Rina I've been in the industry for a while I started out as a developer but now I'm an engineering manager at Schneider Electric so I manage a lot of applications across EJ Pacific and East Africa so I'm very passionate about STEM and engineering especially for women so this is my first engagement with tech ladies I'm very happy to be one of the coaches here hoping to work with some of you and develop a kick ass domain management system for the engineers I am Laasili I am a developer by day and a trainer by night so I started my own company about two years ago doing software development and currently I'm also a trainer in some of the institutes in Singapore so I hope to meet all of you in the bootcamp thank you the two are Brian and Shane okay moving on to bed let's move on to the product list will be helping us scope the product features and work closely with the two non-profits Schneider here hi, I am Schneider I have been working in the product industry for about 7 years maybe financial services being a little bit of consulting as well and now I've hardly been working in SPS with the product manager looking forward to an exciting journey with all of you thank you hi everyone, I am Manny here I am in my computer science degree of U.S. lab so right now I am working at APS for dimension in Tata communications so I think this is a wonderful opportunity I really am jealous of you because I don't have this opportunity before when I was young so I hope I won't crack this opportunity and get to know with us thank you the other one would be wait a minute hi, my name is Wayman so I am the U.I. UX designer I have volunteered for a while now and I was also part of the donor app so one thing I want to say is that it's really very individual even though it sounds like you won't want the same thing we will customize one product for you based on what your priorities are because you all might have different ones I am currently a UX designer at Pivotal but actually I spent the first 6 years of my life as an illustrator in the games industry so if I can make a career stage you can make a career stage too and I am learning the job in the industry so far sorry I need to cut short the introduction a bit so I am just going to quickly introduce the other UX you have Kate there say hi then we have the others Aleem and Perley so we will move on moving on to the serious details so for bootcamp batch 5 we are going to focus on javascript and the bootcamp period will be from 19 October to 25 January there will be a 2 week break for you to go for your Christmas holidays the commitment we are expecting is about 15 hours a week that means every Saturday for about 5 hours 1 to 6pm you will be guided by the coaches and then throughout the rest of the week you can take about 10 plus hours at your own pace to build a product and do your own self study as well so there will be a participation fee of about $550 so the fees will go back to fund the 10 ladies events that will have throughout the year if you need full scholarship do let me or Elisha know so for the weekly bootcamp session you will get to work with the coaches to build the donor management application so you can choose to work on front end or back end code and pair programming means coach and participant that's the pair programming it's hiding in courage there will be level up workshops so regular coding workshops to help you build your foundations alright most important part how to get into the bootcamp so you need to fill out an online application form which will be releasing tomorrow on Friday and you need to complete a technical task and this is the timeline not to worry we will have all these details on the web page also so the timeline so today we have the info session and tomorrow applications are open and you can start preparing your technical tasks which I think Michael will go through a bit later and I know it might be a bit overwhelming so we have three pre-boot camps on 31st August, 7th September and 14th September to help you go through some of the basics like JavaScript, ReactJS and take note that very important applications close on 29th September this is also when you need to submit your technical tasks alright and we will try to finalize the participants by 11 October you might be called up for interview as well maybe to find out more information and also about the app you build alright and of course then we will kick off the bootcamp on 19 October, all the way to January and in February hopefully we will successfully hand off the product and training for the two non-profits and then we can party in February or March okay now this is the part I have no idea what to talk about so handing over to Michael cool are you really excited about this alright awesome so for the technical tasks on top of filling up the application form we would like you to also show us what you can do in terms of coding and building something to show us what you can do build a simple application show us what you have learned in the past and what your skill level is so there are two tasks you can choose from you can choose either one, you don't have to do both just one I will do one of the tasks is very front end focused basically you will be building a visual web application which hopefully you can use it use React.js built it it has to be a dynamic website because we feel that the application that we are building for the NGOs will require us to do a lot of backend calls API calls and all that stuff so for this we would like you to also make an API call to some online service that will tell us some things that change over the throughout the day for example in this case we would like you to make a call to a weather forecast like data.gov so it changes every day and tells you the weather forecast in Singapore it has a two hour forecast so it's up to your creativity to come out with some visual representation of that information so you can easily put it in Google Maps with some nice pictures or just put it in a table form it's as simple as that so we would like you to also show us a little bit more about yourself in the web page so basically it will be a web application website using React.js you should actually have these three things which is a page that tells us more about you a page that makes a call to the API and show us the data that you have collected from the data.gov weather forecast and as well as some navigation bar where we can see we can navigate into it too so very simple that's what you can do you will check out later I will show you a link to a github report where you will also include some things you can do to earn some brownie points to show us what you have learned in doing the workshop so that's the front end focus one the back end focus one is a bit more of API so basically you will be building a simple API that will be returning us a JSON text file basically tell us what is the basically you will build a JSON API that will show us the distance between travel on a bus route between two bus stops so we will provide you a JSON database which we can use to then compile and come up with a back end API so basically the API should take in the bus stop number the bus stop code that got off with how many of you have actually used bus la or sg but next bus or bus le so you will use something similar that will provide you the back end data to do all this so basically show us what you can do there are also some brownie points you can learn from doing this so here you can download this you can go to this of this github repo we will show you more information about that so there is a QR code here just take a snap a picture of this that is the URL at the bottom which will provide you with more details about the technical task so have you all got this great awesome so next up so in order to help you pick up the skills needed to accomplish the technical task we are also going to be doing some pre bootcamp workshops the pre bootcamp workshop is open to everyone so you can attend this and basically in three workshops we will try to teach you the basics about building an application so the first workshop will be on 31st of august where we will be teaching you a little bit about html and css the second workshop on 7th of September we will be talking about building a basic web application with javascript and Node.js and then third one we will actually deep dive into React.js which is a web front-end framework we understand that there is also going to be some difficulties for some of you who might have who need to install software first we do need to install software development tools that will be used for building the application so we will have an install fest where you would like to come you have problems of course in the that you took a photo of earlier there is a link to the pre-regarded software that you need to install on your machine on your laptop to attend the workshops you have problems installing the software do come for the install fest it will help you with the installation of the software so the software should work on both windows and macintoshes so you encourage to bring your laptop along with you for this and that's all I have yeah so now gone to Q&A but before that just wanted to do a quick shout out that we are looking for a venue sponsors so a place like this where food can easily cost us about $3,000 so any big cast okay so we are still looking for a venue for the install fest the first pre-bookend the actual bookend and code cleaning so I am here please let me know don't worry okay now Q&A is everyone done? so I tell more bad jokes I am going to tell I am going to tell more bad jokes no one is going to ask questions I am a business thank you thank the audience for my bad jokes so so what we also write can you repeat the question for the recording so the question is about what percentage of the bootcamp will be about writing code and how many percentage of it will be about UX so the way that we are organizing this is that the UX team and the product team will go ahead and basically work with NGOs and work with NGOs first to figure out what is the product requirement what are the screens like what kind of UX they like to have for the people who are using the application so by the time the bootcamp actually starts you will have a kind of like pretty much fully baked UX user journey basically the user stories and what kind of the how the user journey will be like using the application you are coming in you will just be focusing on the technical implementation of the screens as well as user interfaces of course there is also when you as you are developing the application you can also give feedback the UX and the product people will be around where you can give feedback to them about hey I think this screen maybe we could instead of doing it in 5 pages you can do it in 1 page things like this you can suggest and of course we can make a discussion and see and talk to the NGO and figure out whether that actually makes sense there is some flexibility there but of course everyday we want to deliver something that works for the NGOs so yes there will be some aspect of UX that you will get to experience during the bootcamp you can also hold my mic like a wrapper because apparently it helps with the volume so anyway if you look at the team slide again it's a lot of people because some of them are actually leading the team and for example Waiman she is the UI UX lead and we have Kate who is the UI UX assistant so Kate does not currently have any UI UX experience so through contributing a skill she will be shadowing Waiman in order to fulfill the UI UX aspect of that so we are also open to this kind of shadowing stuff if you are curious to learn alright next question over there so when it comes to the technical tasks right so I saw that the front end and the back end must I do both or do I choose one and also it has to be in Java Street right so I can't do like I can't do like for example that the front end tasks we better react yes and then the back end I do it in Java so can I do that or it has to be like Java Street by using express so you are only required to do one of the technical tasks you want to do both sure you can try I'm not going to stop you we also want to consolidate on one programming language for the product that we are building because I think there are some synergies in having the teams work together because both teams are co-located in the same same premise as we are doing in bootcamp so it's actually quite it's much better if both teams are actually using the same language then the teams can also then share knowledge and help each other and encourage each other and then we can also focus on providing level up workshops that can help you build up your fundamentals I think we want to focus on one language because I think in 12 weeks or 30 weeks to do this it's a part time thing I think if you try to squeeze one and one language on you it will probably be very taxing so we want to focus on one language for both the front end and the back end in this case we are focusing on JavaScript which is JavaScript on the front end and Node.js on the back end which is still JavaScript we discussed on front end and back end we discussed on the front end we discussed on the front end we discussed on the front end we discussed on the front end we discussed on the front end we discussed on the front end that's a very good question the question is about what about the quality assurance as well as the maintenance of the project after the product has been delivered so for quality assurance we also want to encourage candidates and participants to use TDD test driven development before we write the code there will be unit tests which are low level tests and the integration test which will be more like browser automation tests and all that stuff to make sure that we are delivering a quality code we also have some linters that we will implement to make sure that the coding quality is fine and we will also automate continuous integration that will be implemented to make sure that we are delivering a code that is working before it is in terms of the continued maintenance of the application the projects will be support an open source report and anyone who has access to who knows how, who has an understanding of the code can continue to maintain it or help make pull requests and I think it's something we have not fully discussed with NGOs it could also end up having some of the candidates take up a maintenance contract even it's something that we could clearly discuss but then again that's beyond the scope of this bootcamp so the bootcamp is to build the application first and what happens after that we will have to see how the NGOs feel about the application whether it really solves their problem if it really does solve their problem it could be an enhancement that we could do but then again that's outside the scope of the bootcamp sure can I just ask you as a cap on the number of installed that you are going to take in for the camp itself right the question is about the cap but is there like an intake size? right the intake size because we also have a limited number of coaches so what we are going to do is we are going to have 3 participants per NGO so basically a total of 6 participants that's the cap that we have right now I think it's because we also have about 6 coaches we also want to give each of the candidates participants enough quality time that they can build and learn something effectively alright last question anyone? last question okay what is the amount we are going to attend the sessions will it be recorded through the pre-bootcamp session to be recorded? the question is about whether the pre-boot camps will be recorded the answer is yes who's going to record it? me my team of volunteers so we will be recording all the pre-boot camps sessions and you cannot make it for the pre-boot camp sessions you can basically watch the videos and the source code and the materials that we will be using for the pre-boot camp will also be made available you will follow that link that we gave you earlier I'll put all the links to all the materials over there as well including the slides and the sample codes alright sounds good thank you Michael up next I am going to talk to you about the inaugural mentorship program this is for recording I have no juice that's killing me tell a joke lapel okay can you hear me oh yeah you can hear me alright so back to the really colorful slide here as mentioned earlier the boot camp is ready for a woman who wants to invest a lot of time so we are here to help all of you to get the education you need to enter the industry but after you have all the technical skills what's next you got to find a job or actually use those skills that you have learned in a very meaningful way but how you say it's kind of like doing my own show now but all of you are entertained I know that so but how through mentorship letting people who are already in the industry to help you to give you the advice the soft skills that's so important to helping you kickstart and grow your career the tech ladies mentorship is a three months program to provide you with the career guidance so this is not technical there's no coding involved it's purely for soft skills career guidance and you will be prepared individually with a mentor so we want to keep it really really personal that's why we keep it individually oh thank you so who is this for? so this is for a woman with the skills the technical skills and they are ready to use their skills in their career so these are people for existing technical skills they are ready to apply for internship or jobs so it's a very action oriented mentorship it's not like I feel bad can you like tell give me some wisdom of the day you know that's not the program for you this is more for people who really needs the help to take action and enter the industry so because we know that there are also people who just got in especially if you don't have a strong technical background you just got in the industry it takes some time to really have you know you have be stable in your career that's why we are this mentorship program will also take up take junior developers people with less than two years of relevant experience in their field and just because and just for we want to have a good match we are narrowing down to software engineers product managers and UIUX web designers right so again this is very action oriented say it with me action oriented okay that failed let's cut that off right so when you come in here you would have a very clear goal of what you want to achieve like for example in three months time I want to have a job in three months time I will have gone to 20 coding interviews in three months time I'll have a reputation in the tech industry that's something that what we want to have so again action oriented so what is going to be again one one mentorship for three months and over the three months will like you to meet your mentor on a bi-weekly basis because that's how you can give an item two weeks later will see how you are progressing towards your goal so these meetings it can take place in person or online because the mentors that we have so far the mentors that we want are actually pretty experienced and ago busy but that's great that's kind of people that we want and part of the program will like the mentees to participate in a written interview for a tech ladies blog of which I will then the hell all of you so that is great because it helps you raise your profile and of course write a technical article or an article that showcase your expertise again this helps you to kick start your presence and your reputation in the in the industry and it's very important in our industry it's not about who you know but who knows you and the good thing is that a lot of medium are now like open to everyone right you can start your own blog you can talk to Li Yan and she has her own blog as well like just tech ladies over there okay and now the topics that we are focusing on these are the three again because we want to make sure that there's a good match between the mentors and the people that are helping so it's becoming job ready tech coding, interview prep charting your path in your career path in the tech industry and also building your network in tech now as you remember we can recharge for this mentorship program we will charge as well we don't do tech ladies for money it doesn't pay us at all in fact we sometimes donate our own money so that's why but in order to help us not become actually broke so that's why if you can contribute with your money, contribute with your money if you can't contribute with your time and sponsors like that can really help us to lighten the load so all of your funds actually go back to tech ladies for the dinner you had, thank the women who have been through the bootcamp so the only sort of caveat the difference is that for the mentorship program it's a fully refundable $200 it's the first time we run a bootcamp it's also fully refundable so the first time we're doing mentorship program it's fully refundable it's refundable upon a contingent of you participating everything that you're supposed to unless your mentor go missing of which I'll rest in conversation with the mentor speaking of mentors I'll need the script so these are the three mentors me? me? right so we're definitely still looking for more mentors and hopefully to have at least 10 to 12 pairs at the end of the day so these are the three confirmed mentors first all the way on the left is Melanie she can help you with all topics and she has been a senior leader with over 20 years of experience in consulting, financial services and technology and she currently managed the APEC for Facebook's business integrity team so super awesome, super senior leader, she has mentored product managers, software engineers and UI UX designers so she can do everything, she's amazing then in the middle we have our male ally Andrew who is currently the CTO of Straits Interactive and he actually has a chemistry degree but he's a self taught engineer and started a few startups of which one has now successfully exited so might be rich cut that part out over the recording yeah so he can also help you to figure out what sort of text you should be using what are some of the tools that people are hiring for okay and then that's me so I am not technical yeah so I am not technical I'm the founder of Tech Ladies and during the day I am the developer programs manager for Facebook so I like to say that I'm neither a developer nor a programmer, just a developer programs manager anyway moving on so I would love to give back to my community as well as a mentor so the niche that I can focus is really building your influence in Tech because because I sound a bit picy as I brag about myself but I am legit so Elisha was featured on various media such as the Straits Times Her World, E27 Business Times and High Net Worth She has also been invited by the government of New South Wales government of Thailand and government of Malaysia to speak about entrepreneurship and community building she got one more sentence but I think I will save all of you or do you want to hear say she has spoken internationally at Slush Singapore at Google Women Techmakers Magic Academy Symposium Rubikov Malaysia and Picon Thailand just to name a few anyway I'm famous hashtag yeah so I can help you be your influence in terms of like as someone who is currently not in the tech industry what are some of the things that you can do to be a personal brand and how can you really make an impact in that way alright important dates tomorrow there's a lot of things happening tomorrow because I'm currently swarms up like I cannot finish the application so tomorrow so right now we are actually doing it for the mentorship because we want to make sure there is a good match we are actually doing it cyclically so we have some mentors we also have some potential mentees and based on the profile the mentees will find the right kind of mentors so far and hopefully don't drive myself crazy but at about 12th September we will close all the application for mentors and mentees of which then we will start interviewing like who are the people we really want to invest in and help support the next three months so thereafter maybe end September we will have one speed networking event because sometimes you really got to like invite with your mentor and mentee so that's why I want to give people the opportunity to come and meet the mentors and the mentees and of which then we can see where they are going to be who is going to match with who so it's almost like a it's like tinder it's like tinder for networking so you have to like your mentor to swipe you you also swipe your mentor then match then okay okay and then once all that like matching is done the tinder ring is done then we will have a mentorship kickoff where everybody will meet your mentor again in person if you have money you can buy wine if not then we will buy root beer then early October we will have the actual that's when we will kick off the mentorship and then it's on the mentor it's on the mentees who will proactively reach out to your mentor and say hey let's catch up on this day this day and this is the things that I want to talk about again action oriented the mid-November we probably want to do like a networking session where everybody meets I think by January we can also hop back with the graduates of the bootcamp session to have like a mega party if you want more information go to this group also Sanity these will bring you to our Facebook group which is usually the first place that I post anything because mailing lists take some time to write so Facebook's faster okay any questions about the mentorship program is it good or bad when there's like no questions okay it seems like it's an either the bootcamp or the mentor so you can't do books at the same time yeah so the question it seems like it's either bootcamp or mentorship which is absolutely correct it's designed that way because the bootcamp and the mentorship are designed to serve women in different phases of their journey into tech so for the bootcamp typically people who have very minimal programming skills and want to really have this intensive program that help them learn technical skills and create real products but for the mentorship we are expecting people to already have this technical skills that that you would have learned in a bootcamp and the mentorship will help you to give you the soft skills that you need in order to successfully enter the industry so like a finishing touch to the bootcamp so in that way we cover the entire journey for women who wants to enter the industry your question do you want to speak to them okay that anyone else any other questions no? okay so we can actually end on time oh sorry go for it all questions are good so if I don't know where am I can I just apply for open web I really like your attitude she was like do I need to do front end and back end can I do both can I wet both bootcamp and mentorship answer is yes do it yeah me if you you seem to have a little bit of technical skills if you feel like you are ready to go for to really enter the industry get a job there why not just feel that application form is free to apply yeah any other questions okay go for it ah yes so oh okay that's a good question so actually for the again in terms of the mentor and mentee selection is on a iterative basis it's based on like what what kind of mentees who are interested in this program then I would just go and source for the mentors who would who would be able to support this woman so for now in because I want to have more streamlined so it's easier to find the right kind of mentors that's why I only keep it to product managers software engineers and web designers having said that I know that data science is really hard in fact I have one of my data scientists colleague at Facebook who is interested to participate as a mentor and I told her the same thing it depends on what type of mentees and then I will be able to see if I can have you involved in this in this program so TLDR apply first then we will see what happens don't but don't know you want to be mentor I am a native mentor say everything I do then don't do okay any other questions? if not I am here obviously or you can just email me I'll probably send all of you the decks that we use today as well okay moving swiftly on and we have come to the end of the tech ladies info session bootcamp 5 and mentorship please for more information go to this URL join the facebook group please join facebook group is free and more people use facebook I am just kidding so the study group and the meetups usually will post an event on the facebook group and for any updates on the book and mentorship we will go to our facebook group first so do join us if not then we have to email you can also and last thing shout out shout out we are always looking for volunteers and sponsors especially venue because renting a co-working space for the time that we want can set us easily $2,000 per event so please where's Sarah so the microsoft host is already gone it's not we can track her in until she like hosts more stuff just kidding she has been super super helpful so yeah we are always looking for coaches and mentors both technical and non-technical as well people to help with partner partnerships is sponsorship so please help us get more money more resources also help us to engage with the community and marketing etc sponsors give me cash pldr okay so we love to have all of you to do us a favor because we are always improving ourselves to see what are some things that resonate with you what are some things that don't resonate with you are the jokes funny or maybe like stop telling jokes so please take a photo of this QR code it's just a very very very short survey yeah and that's all thank you so much for joining us I hope it's super super helpful for you okay so we have this place until about 9 30 there about so please free free the mingle ask questions all of us we are wearing a tech news t-shirt part of the team some of the coaches are also out here on the front so please thank you so much for joining us goodnight hi hi thanks for your