Crash-Course for Building Web Applications with Ruby on Rails Comes to New Orleans

Rails Girls is a Ruby on Rails coding course created to help women build their ideas. Linda Liukas and Karri Saarinen founded the event-driven company just over three years ago to “empower girls to build the capacity and acquire the tools to conquer the last online frontier.”

Rails GirlsNew Orleans WIT, in partnership with Iconoclast Labs, and sponsored by iSeatz, Revelry Labs, and Federated Sample, will be hosting New Orleans’ first Rails Girls workshop event next month (February 7-9).

The highly recommended, two-day workshop is suggested for those who are new to programming and Ruby on Rails, but is open to all ages and experience levels (despite the name, men are welcome too!). Only 15 spaces are available for the course so apply now.

New Orleans WIT founder Torrie Adams said the story behind the local Rails Girls event is more or less a nice, typical New Orleans story. She described the growing interest for Rails Girls in New Orleans after she was put in touch with Gant Laborde, who was also interested in the course. “I was looking for options for coding workshops for the WIT group and I wrote into Rails Girls to get information about doing one of their weekend workshops. They wrote back and said that someone else had also inquired a few months back and put me in touch,” explained Adams.

Laborde and Adams, in true New Orleans fashion, had previously met at a local networking event. From there they decided to partner to bring the event to New Orleans for the first time. “Our hope is that this workshop introduces women to programming in a comfortable environment, and that maybe some of them fall in love with it and become a part of the local Ruby community,” said Adams. “We’ve already gotten some applications in and I’m happy to see a good representation of women, as well as a handful of men, and a few school-age girls.”

One woman has already expressed excitement about the event. She said, “I love learning new things and decided to pursue a career in technology. This workshop is the stepping stone to getting where I want to be professionally and I would be honored to attend.”

Interested parties can apply here and coaches who want to teach can apply here. More information about Rails Girls New Orleans is available here.