Forem: whykay 👩🏻‍💻🐈🏳️‍🌈 (she/her)

My Creative Learning Journey

whykay 👩🏻‍💻🐈🏳️‍🌈 (she/her) — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:04 +0000

This is a submission for the 2026 WeCoded Challenge: Echoes of Experience

Come with me and you′ll be
In a world of pure imagination
Take a look and you'll see
Into your imagination
We′ll begin with a spin
Travelling in the world of my creation
What we'll see will defy explanation
-- Pure Imagination by Gene Wilder

It's been a hectic end of 2005 and beginning of 2026 for me. I had a choice in Fall 2025

a) A stable return to tech career with Irish Public Jobs programme (ARC) for those who haven't worked for 2+ years, and it comes with 6 months work experience and an opportunity to continue the Higher Executive Officer (HEO) role in an ICT department. It's a manager role but it's not starting from scratch. Stable, pension, but... to me stable means boring.
b) An extension to what I'm doing so far, education and outreach advocating diversity in tech, included in this extension was finding a way to make it sustainable to keep me going (and help pay the mortgage and bills). And two courses popped onto my plate, Train the Creative Trainer (2 month course with Creative Skillnet), and Creative Learning with NCAD (2 month micro-credentials course). Both pilot courses.

Guess which one I went for in this fork in the road back in October'ish time, the red or blue pill. 😆

It was (b), of course I went for the riskier but more fulfilling option. 😉

For the former, it was a whirlwind, I only had 48 hours to apply and after being accepted... to commit to the first course... yip, you read that correctly. I saw the course in a newsletter on a Wed, deadline was the next day, so I submitted my application, and wasn't expecting a reply till following week... but a day later in Friday while I was in London for a narrative game design conference (AdventureX), I got offered a place and had COB that day to accept the placement! Plus the course was starting Friday the following week. 😱

The other course with NCAD, it was pushed back from Sept 2025 to end of Jan 2026.

And guess what? When Train the Creative Trainer workshop ended on Friday, the course with NCAD started the next morning on Saturday.

It was non-stop from end of October till early March.

But, it was all worth it! It was fate TBH, the theory of being trainer with structure (and how to handle evaluations) to how to engage your cohort of learners through creative ways and activities was very refreshing. It's like a reset for me, and one of my cohorts in Creative Learning welcomed me as an art student.

A bit of context here, my parents didn't allow me to go to art college after my Learning Cert many, many moons ago... and as with all teenagers, I thought my world was ending 😆.

But currently, I think this is my mid-life crisis, going back to art college; even though it's a short course, and very experimental where many of us were facilitators and domain experts in our fields, and we helped co-design this new course. Plus I was able to try out Decker for a side note for my reflection journal. And I turned this reflection journal into the biggest zine I ever created.

Online Flipbook

heyzine.com

I was surrounded by creatives, I was the only techie in the course. I learnt about critiquing, and more about supporting each other, empathy, and feeling safe... and that's in both courses.

I feel that whenever I wanted to give feedback to other techies...

...they feel I'm attacking them and their defenses go up.

It's the complete opposite being around and working with creatives.

I hope to bring creativity, art and tech together in my near future endeavours. I'm already involved with a design thinking programme (with 3D printing) for Transition Year students in the next couple of months. I'll be doing more alt.ctrl workshops and hopefully jams (with exhibitions), art+tech collab projects, and most of my work will be with adults (although if it's with the libraries, I'll have to deal with little and not so little people, which are scary, but they do have the best ideas and inspirations).

I've still lots of TODOs, like porting my 11ty websites back to Django, tidy and re-organise my home office/maker room, finish my electronic projects, get started on DJ lessons on my DJ deck my husband bought me 2 years ago (time flies 🫣)... and figuring out this MPC thing (which I heard was sold out the day we ordered it last week). Although related to the latter, I'm looking forward to going to Superbooth (synth festival in Berlin) in May.

And more related note... we attended a local synth community group called Bloop Group's gig in town followed by their meetup. It was ah-mazing.

The gig especially with the invited Belgian guest who used art, tech (visuals) and music for a very live visceral experience. At this gig and the meetup a couple of days later, I have bumped into a cross-section of communities I'm in, tech/founder, Creative Learning, Maker, it was truly fantastic seeing this cross-section and cross-over of communities for modular synth music in a very friendly and inclusive environment.

So yeah, it's been rather an interesting last number of months with plenty to plan and do in the coming months. I want to do more zines, more coding, more creative tech, more the fun & geeky things. And of course, ways to keep myself paid to sustain these activities if I want to reach out and advocate to the community. So holler if you want to collaborate with me or if you are looking for someone to do something fun, geeky and possibly a bit weird (but good).

PyLadies Dublin x Dublin C++ Feb 2026

whykay 👩🏻‍💻🐈🏳️‍🌈 (she/her) — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 16:59:13 +0000

(Note: We didn't record the talks)
🙏 Thank you to everyone who joined us yesterday evening upstairs at Anseo.

✨ A huge thank you to Thibaud from Dublin C++ for collaborating, organising the venue with us (PyLadies Dublin).

🙌 A big welcome to Carlos Alexandre who entertained us with his talk and live Python and Blender demo, sooo many robots! 🤖

⚡️ My first time giving my lighting talk about giving lighting talks, that was fun. I'll give it again in the near future. You should try it, it's only 5 mins!

🍻 And a shout out and thanks to Edgetier for sponsoring drinks on the night, and to Anseo for being so nice and accommodating.

A few things to share (and ask):

Slides and resources: https://codeberg.org/pyladiesdublin/feb-2026-cppdub
📸 If you have any photos, please share in our photo album: https://photos.app.goo.gl/YraaDRJaYVMsawUa6
⚡️ Want to give a lightning talk? Submit it here: https://sessionize.com/pyladies-dublin-meetup
🛟 Help us inprove with some feedback: https://form.jotform.com/PyLadies/pyladiesdublin-community-feedback

(Credit: Global Goals for Sustainable Development - Image Source)

We won't have a meetup in March as it's Paddy's day, but don't forget it's International Women's Day (month) next month, there's lots of events happening, here are the diversity in tech events I've curated so far, if I'm missing any, let me know.

The Python study group are now on bi-Weekly Monday mornings, the next one is:-

🗓️ Mon Mar 2, 08:00-09:00
📍 Discord: https://discord.gg/DAqBuF4bC4
ℹ️ See our meetup for other upcoming dates

If you have any questions, want to get involved, you can email us on dublin@pyladies.com or ping us on discord.

PyLadies Dublin x Go Ireland - Cat from Scratch

whykay 👩🏻‍💻🐈🏳️‍🌈 (she/her) — Thu, 22 Jan 2026 16:56:19 +0000

🥶 We might still be in January and even with the evenings being dark right now, folks from the Python, PyLadies and Go community turned up for the special PyLadies Dublin and Go Ireland workshop on Tue Jan 20.

🎉 This was our first official PyLadies Dublin meetup of 2026 even though we did kick off 2026 with an Introduction to Python workshop two weeks ago as part of our new PyLadies Dublin Python Workshop Series.

I (Vicky) welcomed everyone, briefly talked about PyLadies Dublin's origin story, and introduced Ryan Talbot who is the organiser of Go Ireland and our workshop facilitator alongside his friend, Matt Brazel (a Go aficionado) and Michael Twomey from PyLadies Dublin was our Python support (and me as well 😬).

We also thanked our sponsors, from our kind host, The Digital Hub, who were always welcoming and helpful to the EuroPython Society who covered the cost of the room and 🍕pizzas🍕!
And a big shout out to our regular community sponsors: PSF, PyLadies and Coding Grace.

I briefly talked about the origins of PyLadies Dublin, the current team followed by diversity in tech events that are coming up soon as well as CFPs and the recent announcement of EuroPython’s new host city, Kraków in Poland this July and their current CFP. It was highlighted that Financial Aid will be available for those who need it and/or opportunities for them to volunteer and to visit/follow EuroPython for more information.

📣 One of the exciting things to announce from PyLadies Dublin is our Python Study Group sessions which will start next Tue (Jan 27) and will take place online every Tuesday (6-7PM) with a member of our team, Millena, who will be online. This is not a teaching session, think of it as a coding session including if you need help if you are stuck on something, want to work on coding exercises, so come join us on discord.

Join our Python Study Group on Discord

It was Ryan’s turn to get started introducing who will be helping him, Matt (Go) and Mick (Python).

And then what the workshop is about, the objectives and the implementation to write your own ‘cat’.

He shared blank resources to Go and Python:

And the workshoppers got stuck in with some folks pairing up and helping each other. We had 2 people trying out Go and the other 9 working on implementing their own cat in Python.

People were concentrating on coding, so it was a bit quiet.

In the midst of workshoppers whispering with each other, and organisers talking amongst themselves while keeping a watchful eye around the room in case of people looking for help, Mick wrote some helpful (with the best marker available) tips on the whiteboard.

Before Ryan wrapped up, he recommended to check out Coding Challenges by John Crickett if you are learning a new programming language, see https://codingchallenges.fyi/challenges/intro

Everyone seemed to have enjoyed the experience, and hope some of them pop by the Python study session next Tuesday. 🙂

You can find the announcements and other workshop info here: https://codeberg.org/pyladiesdublin/jan-2026-goireland-workshop

Our Next Meetups

Next Dublin C++

🗓️ March or April (TBA)
ℹ️ https://www.meetup.com/goireland

Next PyLadies Dublin

Our next PyLadies Dublin meetup will be in collaboration with Dublin C++ (upstairs at Anseo) with a talk by Carlos Alexandre on “Python + Blender: Automating Creative Workflows”.

🗓️Tuesday, Feb 24 (18:30 - 20:30)
📍Anseo Bar (Upstairs), Camden Street, D2
🎟️ https://www.meetup.com/pyladiesdublin/events/312867801

☕️Tea/Coffee Socials

And for those wondering about our ☕️Tea/Coffee Socials, we are taking a break and wait till the weather is a bit brighter and nicer to meet on a Saturday afternoon. So keep an eye out for it when it comes back, we will announce it on meetup.

Call for Participation

🎤 If you are interested in giving a short talk, a show & tell, demos, running a workshop or an activity, you can submit it to https://sessionize.com/pyladies-dublin-meetup.

⚙️ Want to join the team? We always looking for more help e.g. hosting any of the events, looking for speakers/venues/sponsors, facilitating workshops, building our new website, social media, and improving engagements for our local chapter (like student ambassadors).

✉️ If you want to get in touch with us, you can email dublin@pyladies.com.

💟 Here’s to a brilliant 2026 to PyLadies Dublin community, thanks to everyone's who supported us so far!

/// Vicky (PyLadies Dublin)

My 2025 year in review

whykay 👩🏻‍💻🐈🏳️‍🌈 (she/her) — Mon, 05 Jan 2026 13:53:47 +0000

🔔 My calendar notification buzzed on my phone. It's my dad's birthday today, he's passed away since 2006, and I miss him dearly. I keep it as a reminder as I get older, things like dates normally fade away and forgotten.

🗓️ And now it's 2026, I felt last year melted away and didn't feel like I achieved what I wanted, like a blink of an eye, or when you wake up from slumber, it's all foggy. I can't even remember things even from a couple of days ago.

📝 So it might be a bit late but I kept a note in Bear, I use this app to jot things down, prepare workshops/presentations, checklists, ideas, and so on.

This note is actually a list of all the things I did throughout 2025, major ones that is. It's not for showing off, but it's an acknowledgement to myself. People may not read it, that's ok, but to the future me who is reading old posts and you come across this...

"Hello! Just want to say that you did good and you still are doing well, keep it up!"

🚥 Ready? Here we go in no particular order:-

Started "Train the Creative Trainer course" (QQI certified) with Creative Skillnet (Dec 2025)
Got accepted into "Creative Learning" micro-credential course with NCAD and will be starting soon in Jan 2026
Lead of PyLadiesCon 2025 Code of Conduct team
Co-lead EuroPython FinAid 2025 team
Helped on EuroPython 2025 Code of Conduct team
Helped on DjangoConEurope 2025 Code of Conduct team
Nominated for DSF membership, and accepted the nomination
Judge at Diversity in Tech Awards in 2025
Short-listed and accepted for Public Jobs ARC programme (but withdrawn application as it's not the right time for me at the moment)
Personal story published in "Kings and Queens of the Road" book by Museum of Childhood Ireland
Co-organised irish techie quiz that brought the tech community together and raised over €2500 for The Dublin Simon Community
Ran community table promoting irish tech communities at ShipItCon 2025 and PyCon Ireland 2025
Ran zine workshop & created Makers memento zine at Dublin Maker 2025
Committee member in Cantonese in Ireland. Helped with the Dragonboat race in Carlow and mini-flowerboard workshop at Dublin Maker. Also revamping their website.
Continuing member of PSF Grants Working Group
Continuing organiser of PyLadies Dublin, onboarding new volunteers.
Ran my first ever in-house game jam with Story Toys
Coordinated Bloomsday festival event for Cantonese in Ireland
Organised and facilitated the 4th Django Girls workshop at DjangoCon Europe

And what will 2026 bring? I hope when I get certified as a trainer, and with a more creative mindset, this will help me build Coding Grace and myself to continue my pursuit and helping others.

And also make it sustainable so I can travel more to achieve more without feeling guilty to charge for what I do.
It took me over a decade to accept that it's okay to make money to sustain myself in order to help others, given that I'm not in full time employment, and I do have bills and a mortgage to pay (and no pension 🫤). I'm in my late 40s, I have to think about my future, what will happen to me in 10-20 years time when I can't afford to let all my volunteering eat away at my personal funds.

So 2026, I'm here! Let's do this! 💪

Final update - Irish Techie Quiz 2025

whykay 👩🏻‍💻🐈🏳️‍🌈 (she/her) — Sat, 03 Jan 2026 18:26:39 +0000

Happy New Year!

One final update, and thank you to everyone who donated since the last update.

whykay 👩🏻‍💻🐈🏳️‍🌈 (she/her)

Dec 23 '25

Irish Techie Table Quiz 2025 - Update

#news #community #watercooler

Comments

1 min read

💟 GoFundMe Team also donated €300! 💟

So in total:

€2,360 (GoFundMe Fundraiser) + €230 (BoI Cheque) = €2590

Thank you to everyone who donated and supported our annual Irish Techie Quiz, here's to our next one. If you want to get involved email irishgeeks@eventgeek.ie.

// Vicky, Declan and Mick

Irish Techie Table Quiz 2025 - Update

whykay 👩🏻‍💻🐈🏳️‍🌈 (she/her) — Tue, 23 Dec 2025 18:38:50 +0000

whykay 👩🏻‍💻🐈🏳️‍🌈 (she/her)

Dec 20 '25

Irish Geeks Presents Irish Techie Table Quiz 2025 @ Dogpatch Labs

#irishtechcommunity #social #community

Comments

3 min read

If you haven't read the last post👆👆👆, we raised €1620.

...but today, Dogpatch Labs informed us that they also donated €300 to the fundraiser.

And that Bank of Ireland donated a €230 cheque made directly to The Dublin Simon Community, and we can add that to our final total which is... 🥁🥁🥁

€2175

Thank you, all! We have broken the record this year (before any fund-matching).

The Irish Geeks team are going to keep the fundraising page open till the end of this month of December!

🎶 Cos "All I Want for Christmas Is You!", donate now if haven't already, every little helps. And let's make it "the Most Wonderful Time of the Year!". 🙏
And "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas"!🎶

Donate to Dublin Simon Community

Irish Geeks Presents Irish Techie Table Quiz 2025 @ Dogpatch Labs

whykay 👩🏻‍💻🐈🏳️‍🌈 (she/her) — Sat, 20 Dec 2025 14:54:07 +0000

Wow, thank you and well done to everyone who came to the Irish Techie Quiz on Tuesday (Dec 16).

We have raised €1620 so far for our fundraiser to The Dublin Simon Community, we will keep our GoFundMe page open till Christmas day, so help spread the word and keep the donations coming in, every little helps.
Also we are €19 short of what was raised last year before the match-fund!

Donate to Dublin Simon Community

The team of volunteers this year were:

Vicky Twomey-Lee (Coding Grace, PyLadies Dublin, GameCraft)
Declan McGrath (Ruby Ireland, Dublin Elixir)
Michael Twomey (Coding Grace, PyLadies Dublin, GameCraft)
Jill Drennon (Dogpatch Labs)
Conor Burke (Dogpatch Labs)
And the rest of the Dogpatch Labs team who helped on the night with all the logistics and operations

🫶 To all our community partners who helped us spread the word about the event, making this special annual meet-up of meet-ups possible, thank you!

🫶 And a big thanks to the following sponsors for spreading the festive cheer and providing their support for our Irish Techie Quiz

Dogpatch Labs: for jumping in at the last minute to host our event, providing food and drink as well as some surprise raffle prizes.
GreyScout: 🥇 1st prize (5 x €50 vouchers)
Stack and Co.: 🥈 2nd prize (5 x €20 vouchers)
tcube: 🥉 3rd prize (5 x €10 vouchers)

✨ This year’s team names:-

0x1
AI Quartet
Controlled Opposition
Gallifrey
Go hard or go home!/ Double G
Gradient
Head of house
Pandora
Password123!
Quicklists
Rhycon
Solana Super Team
Team
Team 7
Thunderkitties
Tux
Ulysses

Congrats to the winning teams!

🥁 The biggest tie-breakers we ever had in Quiz history

We have never had such a huge tie-breaker, 5 teams for 3rd place! And a tie-breaker for 1st and 2nd place after that!
Let us know if you got your team name wrong below - irishgeeks@eventgeek.ie

🥇 1st - Team

🥈 2nd Place - Quicklists

🥉 3rd Place - Solana Super Team

🔔 And a reminder, the donation page is still open, we will be closing it on Christmas Day.

Donate to Dublin Simon Community

Here's the link to share: https://www.gofundme.com/f/christmas-with-dogpatch-labs-irish-tech-community

Media

📸 If you have any photos, please add them to our Flickr group:

Flickr: The Irish Geeks Pool

We are a bunch of tech events organisers based in Ireland and every so often we bring all our members together for fun in a geeky way. ti.to/irishgeeks/

flickr.com

🙏 And thank you to Rishikesh Vyas for the kind words. 🥰

#irishtech #techcommunity #dublinlinuxcommunity #irishgeeks #tablequiz #christmasvibes #softwaredevelopement | Rishikesh Vyas

Had a fantastic time at the Irish Techie Table Quiz 2025, my very first tech table quiz experience. From science and tech to current news and pop culture, every round came with a overwhelming dose of cheer all wrapped up in proper Christmas spirit 🎅🎄 It was great to see the Irish tech community come together for laughs, friendly competition, and a meaningful cause. Huge appreciation to the organisers Dublin Linux Community along with Irish Geeks and fellow quiz champions Declan Mc Grath, Michael Twomey and Vicky Twomey-Lee and Dogpatch Labs for hosting such a warm, festive evening and a chance to wrap up the year with purpose, people, and good cheers 🎁 #IrishTech #TechCommunity #DublinLinuxCommunity #IrishGeeks #TableQuiz #ChristmasVibes #SoftwareDevelopement

linkedin.com

Finally...

🎄🎉 See you all next year, and wishing you all Season’s Greetings and a Happy New Year!

/// Vicky (@whykay), Declan and Mick (@micktwomey)

Supporting one another is needed more than ever

whykay 👩🏻‍💻🐈🏳️‍🌈 (she/her) — Fri, 28 Mar 2025 23:11:40 +0000

This is a submission for the WeCoded Challenge: Echoes of Experience

I didn't participate in SheCoded the past couple of years, but I want to participate this year because it's important and... reasons. 😣

Last year I've posted about the global diversity in tech organisations that shut down last year (Women Who Code and Girls In Tech), and it's not getting any easier this year.

First it was Women Who Code and now Girls in Tech

whykay 👩🏻‍💻🐈🏳️‍🌈 (she/her) ・ Jul 9 '24

#diversityintech #womenwhocode

With so many people responding to me publicly and privately on how they can support Coding Grace (a small Irish non-profit), I wrote another LinkedIn post to thank everyone and suggested ways to help us.

First it was Women Who Code and now Girls in Tech | Vicky Twomey-Lee

🫨 The news of the recent closures of global organisations like #WomenWhoCode and #GirlsInTech have sent shockwaves through tech communities worldwide, and it had made me wonder about Coding Grace, a small not-for-profit Irish volunteer-led organisation. How would Coding Grace survive in such a difficult environment. We run a lean organisation but there is lean, and then there is impossible. After the last post I made in the aftermath of Girls in Tech news, I got many supportive replies from various people. It has taken me some time to get back to everyone who has reached out about supporting Coding Grace, and asked what are our needs? https://lnkd.in/eycQ8PAd 🙏 First and foremost, thank you to everyone who contacted me privately and publicly. It was so heart-warming to see the community being there especially when things are rough right now across the board. 🧐 What are our needs? We had a recent team meeting to talk and sound out ideas about this. In terms of finance, the base needs are expenses which includes accountant fees (our biggest cost), and bank fees. In terms of people, there are two sources of help we are looking for: - People who might be interested in joining us as a committee member, to have fresh ideas on what we can do and help the community with - Volunteers to help with social media, find fab speakers, newsletter, events, conferences, etc.; we can set up a subcommittee so it doesn’t fall on one person Not only will we be grateful for your time helping us - you’ll also get full credit for your efforts to make Coding Grace better in our public comms. And if time isn't on your side, you can still support us through monetary donations to our Open Collective. You will be acknowledged in our newsletter if you are a regular contributor. https://lnkd.in/eTKPgiEr TL;DR You can help us by volunteering and/or monetary donations. Thank you so much for your time reading this. If you have further questions, drop me an email and I am also happy to jump on a call or meet you over tea/coffee: contact@codinggrace.com #IrishTechCommunity #DiversityInTech #Community #GettingInvolved #ThursdayThoughts

linkedin.com

But then a couple of months later, Ada Lovelace Day (non-profit based in UK who also supported events around the world) announced their closure! 😢

Ada Lovelace Day | LinkedIn | Vicky Twomey-Lee

💔This is heartbreaking to hear about Ada Lovelace Day's closure. 🙏This is important for me to say, I want to personally thank 🐋Thomas Shaw 🐋and ShipItCon,…

linkedin.com

It's heartbreaking that all organisations have the support of the community and yet multi-many-$$$€€€ companies haven't supported via donations, or in recent cases from those that did... pulled funding altogether.

Case in point, here's another recent newsletter (March 2025) I received that is asking for help to raise funds, another org called Reinvented. I discovered them via a friend who bought their physical STEM magazine (it was a maker edition). I've support it on and off, e.g. buying magazines, and donated to their launching women in stem minifigs to space event.

The thing is, the newsletter was Reinvented organisation asking to help fundraise $40k so they can continue activities like hands-on STEM activities and publications of the physical magazines, and admin costs through the rest of 2025. This is due to their major sponsors pulling funds! 😢
Read Reinvent's Newsletter

So... what can we do?

How do we keep enabling opportunities for under-represented communities of all ages to explore STEAM (Science, Tech, Engineering, Art, Maths)?

If you can, support the organisations that are still there by:-

Sharing their initiatives, call to actions, call for participations, donating directly, sponsoring initiatives, etc. (If you can think of more, share in comments below.)
Attending and/or getting involved with activities and events.
Connecting people from your network, or seeking out folks to help connect people to expand your/their network

We are not alone even though we think we are isolated. Don't silo ourselves, collaborate with others.

Being part of the grassroots tech community here in Ireland, we (volunteer event organisers) are always trying to find ways to improve our tools.

Here's an example for organisers running events on zero/tight budget... finding alternatives to meetup.com (not a great tool, and very expensive for zero-budget community events). I'm involved trying out Mobilizon (e.g. creating account, added groups, events, etc), while others are working on the admin and setting up the backend. But they are open to local community organisers to try it out.

Davey: "Hey folks, we've set up a test instance of Mobili…" - mastodon.ie

Hey folks, we've set up a test instance of Mobilizon to see what people think of it. Have a go and see if it makes sense. I did make a quick intro to it in a video here: https://vimeo.com/1063862661/b62e20280c?share=copy Quirk for inviting members: they need to be on Mobilizon already, in this case the server is not federated with anything, so they will need to be signed up on the same server. Do you put on events and do you think this is worth trying? https://events.daoine.eu/ #mastodaoine @masto_ie_support@a.gup.pe

mastodon.ie

It's by the same folks who set up the Irish Mastodon instance called mastodon.ie and you can find out all about them and also support by donating to their Open Collective: https://mastodon.ie/about
If you want to find out more what the Irish community are up to, check out #mastodaoine -- "daoine" means "people" in Irish.

One personal example: I am helping with organising Django Girls Dublin Workshop that will be held at the upcoming DjangoCon Europe. It's DjangoCon Europe's first time to Dublin, and I'm super excited to run the free workshop again with new faces from areas locally and afar internationally. And I'm also involved in their Code of Conduct team, but first time working with their organisers and community. So helping where I can as Dub's my local stomping ground. 😎

Another personal example: I'm involved with Financial Aid and Code of Conduct teams for EuroPython, and I won't be there in-person, it will be in Prague this year. It's a great way to for me to help, share my past knowledge, improve processes, and meet new people.

And in all these communities, you find everyone trying their best to be inclusive as possible, and with continuous improvements to make it accessible and sustainable.

There's going to be many challenges, and this is not a happy post, but step-by-step, shoulder-to-shoulder, we can inch our way past uncertainties, find novel ways to support each other and keep opportunities open for under-represented and underserved communities.

On a side note, I'm porting diversityintech.fyi which was written in 11ty to Django. (I know!!! I'm actually coding again! 🫢😜)

Previously I actually ported it to 11ty as a covid project from Django. 🙃

Wee update to my Diversity in Tech and Events Listings 11ty site

whykay 👩🏻‍💻🐈🏳️‍🌈 (she/her) ・ Feb 28 '21

#11ty #diversityintech #irishtechcommunity #community

After a few years, I am very over the static generated site, and maintaining all those YAML files; I just want to have a nice default admin panel and add stuff. No muss or fuss.

And no, I haven't logged my dev from porting it back to Django, it's not very interesting, but it's nice to code in-between all my volunteering initiatives.

DjangoGirls Dublin @ DjangoCon Europe 2025

whykay 👩🏻‍💻🐈🏳️‍🌈 (she/her) — Wed, 19 Feb 2025 18:09:06 +0000

🙌 It was a few years since our last DjangoGirls Dublin workshop, and we are back!

💟 DjangoCon Europe are in Dublin this year (April 23 - 27) and they will be hosting the free DjangoGirls Workshop during their sprints/workshop weekend.

🗓️ Sat April 26, 2025
📍 Talbot Stillorgan Hotel, Dublin
Applications closes: March 29, 2025 (Midnight, Irish Time)

DjangoCon Europe tickets are also on sale. Check their conference page for more info. The team are working on talk selection, and schedule will be announced soon.

More info

PyLadies Dublin Coding Quiz Challenge Night (Feb 2025)

whykay 👩🏻‍💻🐈🏳️‍🌈 (she/her) — Wed, 19 Feb 2025 17:47:06 +0000

Our first PyLadies Dublin meetup of 2025, and it was time to shake off those cobwebs as springtime and longer days are upon us.

💟 Thanks for joining us at PyLadies Dublin recently. Congrats to everyone participating and to the winning team, it was so hard to choose, they were all brilliant. And to Mick as our judge.

🙏 A big thanks to JP Morgan for hosting us and providing refreshments (and prizes for the winning team).

Cáit Ní Cheallacháin on LinkedIn: It was such an honour to host the wonderful PyLadies in JP Morgan Dublin…

It was such an honour to host the wonderful PyLadies in JP Morgan Dublin this evening. 💕 We hosted a Coding Challenge where the teams created Word Scrambles…

linkedin.com

📢 Here are the announcements which includes upcoming events from the meetup: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/e/2PACX-1vS5PCknTraTr60O4Sb6UaFdjFmfkDEyyhT3fXFfz7Y1UThH9RbsfQPynW7hQfnBwnm-zgboCYGzldIO/pub?start=false&loop=false&delayms=3000

The github repo is open to the teams who participated and anyone who want to share their answers to the challenges:

https://github.com/pyladiesdublin/feb-codingquiz-2025

Note: There’s no prizes now the event is over.

🔔 A reminder from Angus who mentioned where JP Morgan will be at later this year:

Dublin Tech Summit¹
Diversity in Tech Awards²

We don’t have our usual meetup in March but we would like to have a more casual one in a café on a Saturday afternoon.

👀 Keep an eye on Meetup³ & LinkedIn⁴. We are also on Facebook⁵, Instagram⁶ and Mastodon⁷.

For those who are interested in hackathons, check out Techstars Startup Weekend Women Dublin (Fri, 21 Mar - Sun, 23 Mar), details and registration: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/techstars-startup-weekend-women-dublin-tickets-984024964157

🗓️ Other general and diversity in tech events around Ireland and Northern Ireland can be found at https://diversityintech.fyi/events - if you have anything to add, let me know.

💼 Folks I was talking to about advice on getting into various roles in tech, this hot-off-the-press salary guide might be of help in your research: https://cdn.sanity.io/files/oxlo3vns/production/332ccbad04e7c11e9ce96570c46af48d0bde883b.pdf (via ninedots.io)

🤝 If you want to get involved, or have an idea/activity for us, want to support our events, drop us an email at dublin@pyladies.com.

Till we meet again at our next event.

Thanks,
-- Vicky (@whykay) & Mick (@micktwomey), PyLadies Dublin

P.S. Note that we will remove the meetup event as requested by our host, if you have any questions/feedback, please email dublin@pyladies.com.

Pop into Dublin GameCraft 2025!

whykay 👩🏻‍💻🐈🏳️‍🌈 (she/her) — Tue, 18 Feb 2025 12:45:05 +0000

The last time we ran Dublin GameCraft was in 2019! And we are back at St Laurence’s Church at TU Dublin. Big thanks to Bryan Duggan for organising the venue and catering!

Big thanks to everyone who came along!

Here are the announcements from the morning: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/e/2PACX-1vQzcpHn-gs8mnFSjJZraviOj0n4ho_la_1NUJXLc8Zac8n6s4rjZoWHp4p0a4CHo9BLEMcJT2uqQIsU/pub?start=false&loop=false&delayms=3000

The day was packed full of excitement, and there were some quiet moments when folks are brainstorming and trying out physical prototypes and digital platforms. But mostly people enjoyed themselves, which is what we hoped. With people from different backgrounds, some first-timers, returning faces, it was such a fun-filled day.

The theme was “POP” and was announced at after 10am, although we forgot to announce it on social media for those who couldn’t make it!

We had 8 games made on the day. It was a mix of digital and table-top games. The digital games were made on Godot, Unity, Pico-8 and Playdate.

Pop-pop!

I (Vicky) manage to create a mini-game in Pico-8 where you pop bubbles as fast as you can before the time runs out. Think Wario-ware-like games.

https://whykay.itch.io/gamecraft25-pop

Pop your Bubble

Mick was having a go playing with the Playdate’s SDK and made a breathing in-and-out game using the crank

https://micktwomey.itch.io/pop-your-bubble

Pop

Kasper, who runs Cork Game Dev Group, made a tower-popping-balloons game with Donal, it was made in Godot.

https://arnklit.itch.io/pop-gamecraft-feb-2025

Bubble Merchant

Here’s another game made in Godot, try and not go bankrupt selling your carbonised creations.

https://ledeyes.itch.io/bubble-merchant

Other games that haven’t uploaded yet

Pop the bubble

Dice-rolling game for 2-players. Each has 3 x D12 dies and you only roll 1 dice at a time. You try and pop the bubble, there’s a score to reach for each bubble. Each player gets to roll 3 times each. During their go, if you accumulate a score equal or larger than the bubble points, then the player wins. If not, keep going until a player pops all the bubbles.

Pop the watermelon

This game was created in Godot. When it was playtested after the jam ended, it was played via a phone app, and it was 4-players (it can be more). You basically choose to snip a number of rubber bands, go to the shop and buy a pump to pump up the watermelon, and even skip your turn (only 1 for the whole game). If it doesn’t pop on your go, you get a point. Once someone selects their option and hands the phone to you, keep an eye to see if the watermelon is about to burst. Good luck! I (Vicky), went big and chose the biggest number… POP!

Pop

This is a rhythm dancing game but with the alt.ctrl (source) - it’s made with Unity. Lots of fun and laughs.

Check out their wee mascot IRL as well.

XR Pop

Bryan and Darren’s game! He explains it better than I can via his LinkedIn post:

[...]created a pass-through MR game where you use a slingshot to pop alien-shaped balloons created by a weird, golden musical instrument powered by a hand crank. We used hashtag#FOSS: hashtag#Godot, hashtag#Blender, hashtag#Audacity and XR Toolkit and got most of the mechanics working within the time and everyone got to try it out! Looking forward to polishing our game and releasing it in the coming days!

Looking forward to see all the rest of the games on itch. 🤩

In the meantime, check out and play the games uploaded so far (more hopefully coming soon): https://itch.io/jam/dublin-gamecraft-2025

📚 Game Resources Doc

We also have a games resources doc, and it’s a live doc. If you have anything that’s useful to add, please let us know: info@gamecraft.it
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LjO_VMTTE0WsAw-OjRRmj1Vl4qJFj7D3wbrqtz1JA3s/edit?usp=sharing

Upcoming Events

🤔 And to answer when our next will be...

...normally we have another one at the end of the year, but it all depends on the venue. Ideas welcomed, some suggested Microsoft Garage, The Digital Hub, Baseline.

💬 Join our discord for chats, sharing laffs, and find out when more GameCrafts are coming up as well as other community and games events are happening: https://discord.gg/kvEfKFvC22

🙏 Again, thanks to all who came along and hope to see you again at the next one! Let’s bring more people from different backgrounds and see what we can make together!

-- Vicky, Mick and Bryan

🎄Have Yourself a Quizzy Little Christmas🎄 writeup

whykay 👩🏻‍💻🐈🏳️‍🌈 (she/her) — Tue, 10 Dec 2024 17:18:11 +0000

Have yourself a QUIZZY little Christmas
Let your heart be light
Next year all our troubles will be out of sight

After last year's Irish Geeks Techie Quiz comeback (write-up below) and one of the largest amount raised for four charities, we were back again!

Season's Geekings Irish Techie Quiz - The aftermath

whykay 👩🏻‍💻🐈🏳️‍🌈 (she/her) ・ Dec 5 '23

#community #irishtechcommunity

This year we focused on one charity. We have been raising funds for the Dublin Simon Community since our first quiz all those years back.

🙌 We want to say thank you to everyone who participated and involved in one of our largest Irish Tech Quiz so far.

The team of volunteer organisers this year:

Vicky Twomey-Lee (Coding Grace, PyLadies Dublin, GameCraft)
Declan McGrath (Ruby Ireland)
Michael Twomey (Coding Grace, PyLadies Dublin, GameCraft)
Colette Byrne (Workday)
Carolina Cobo (Codú/GDG Dublin/Women TechMakers)
Niall Maher (Codú)

🫶 To all our community partners who helped us spread the word about the event, making this special annual meet-up of meet-ups possible, thank you!

💟 And of course, a big shoutout to our host, Workday. They have been supporting our event for many years.

💶 That evening, we raised €1,639 (double of what was raised last year), all before match-funding from Workday of their staff donations.

As of Thu Dec 12, we have raised €1,674, plus Workday's match funding of staff donations of €1,141... the overall total raised so far is €2,815! 🎉

This will make a difference to many this winter, we appreciate the donations big or small.

🛟 The donation page is still open till Jan 3rd 2025
Donate to Dublin Simon Community

🙏 Please also share to your colleagues and friends: https://www.idonate.ie/fundraiser/irishgeeks-quiz-2024

🥰 We appreciated that people were just as competitive, even without prizes. The reason was we felt that if corporations want to contribute to the techie quiz, we would rather the money that goes into prizes be a donation directly to Dublin Simon Community via our donation page.

Here are this year’s team names:-

\tUNDEFEATED!
0x1
503 Answers Unavailable
BOBBY;; DROP TABLE PARTICIPANTS;--
Computer Says No
CTRLC
Dub|Sec is on Fire!!
Happy Penguins
Heap, Heap, Array!
Iconix
Latin@X
Risky Scripts
Taking a Quizz
Team 17
Team Coily
Team Marco
Team: Kebab
The Art Smellers 🎨
The Randoms
Titicaca Team
TOFT
Twerkday
White Paper
Wibbly Wobbly Wonders
XOR

🫶 We'd like to thank the teams who shared their wonderful artwork with us. Big shout out to Team: Kebab! ❤️

Winners

Congrats to the winning teams!

🫣 It was very close this year (that CAPTCHA question made a difference), and we have no tie-breakers ( we can safely keep that tie-breaker question for next time).

For those who are curious, CAPTCHA itself is an acronym, and we asked what does it stand for, with a “hint”: “T” is for Turing.

0x1 - 29.5 points

Photo: Niall Maher

XOR - 29 points

Photo: Niall Maher

503 Answers Unavailable - 28 points

Photo: Niall Maher

Next year all our troubles will be out of sight

🙇 Thank you all for your patience in registration, but the twinkling silver-lining, people got a chance to chat to each other from various community groups (even if you are not in a community group, that was cool as well), and next year we hope to improve on this with feedback.

✉️ If there’s anything else, let us know via irishgeeks@eventgeek.ie.

📢 The donation page is still open till Jan 3rd 2025

Donate to Dublin Simon Community

OR please share to your colleagues and friends, thanks in advance: https://www.idonate.ie/fundraiser/irishgeeks-quiz-2024

🎄🎉 See you all next year, and wishing you all Season’s Greetings and a Happy New Year!

Forem: whykay 👩🏻‍💻🐈🏳️‍🌈 (she/her)

My Creative Learning Journey

PyLadies Dublin x Dublin C++ Feb 2026

PyLadies Dublin x Go Ireland - Cat from Scratch

Our Next Meetups

Next Dublin C++

Next PyLadies Dublin

☕️Tea/Coffee Socials

Call for Participation

My 2025 year in review

Final update - Irish Techie Quiz 2025

💟 GoFundMe Team also donated €300! 💟

So in total:

Irish Techie Table Quiz 2025 - Update

€2175

Irish Geeks Presents Irish Techie Table Quiz 2025 @ Dogpatch Labs

🫶 To all our community partners who helped us spread the word about the event, making this special annual meet-up of meet-ups possible, thank you!

🫶 And a big thanks to the following sponsors for spreading the festive cheer and providing their support for our Irish Techie Quiz

✨ This year’s team names:-

Congrats to the winning teams!

🥁 The biggest tie-breakers we ever had in Quiz history

🥇 1st - Team

🥈 2nd Place - Quicklists

🥉 3rd Place - Solana Super Team

🔔 And a reminder, the donation page is still open, we will be closing it on Christmas Day.

Media

Finally...

Supporting one another is needed more than ever

First it was Women Who Code and now Girls in Tech

whykay 👩🏻‍💻🐈🏳️‍🌈 (she/her) ・ Jul 9 '24

Wee update to my Diversity in Tech and Events Listings 11ty site

whykay 👩🏻‍💻🐈🏳️‍🌈 (she/her) ・ Feb 28 '21

DjangoGirls Dublin @ DjangoCon Europe 2025

PyLadies Dublin Coding Quiz Challenge Night (Feb 2025)

Pop into Dublin GameCraft 2025!

Pop-pop!

Pop your Bubble

Pop

Bubble Merchant

Other games that haven’t uploaded yet

Pop the bubble

Pop the watermelon

Pop

XR Pop

📚 Game Resources Doc

Upcoming Events

Cat Making Games: Making Games Sound @ Mayfair Library (Kilkenny)

Galway Game Dev @ CREW

AniMates #8 @ The Belfast Barge

The Games Co-Op: Game Set March!

FÍS Games Summit 2025

🤔 And to answer when our next will be...

🎄Have Yourself a Quizzy Little Christmas🎄 writeup

Season's Geekings Irish Techie Quiz - The aftermath

whykay 👩🏻‍💻🐈🏳️‍🌈 (she/her) ・ Dec 5 '23

As of Thu Dec 12, we have raised €1,674, plus Workday's match funding of staff donations of €1,141... the overall total raised so far is €2,815! 🎉

Winners

0x1 - 29.5 points

Photo: Niall Maher

XOR - 29 points

Photo: Niall Maher

503 Answers Unavailable - 28 points

Photo: Niall Maher

📢 The donation page is still open till Jan 3rd 2025