On August 28th I presented to Laracon EU my talk about gender diversity titled: Coding Like a Girl: How teams with women gain with diversity.

My objective was to show data supporting that having women in the team is a good idea and actually a good strategy. What concerned me was in the how to approach such sensitive subject. Not everyone feel confortable in talking about that and it is hard to be totally impartial with this subject. Besides, I didn’t want to be interpreted as a feminazi.

But I was really surprised by the amount of people who stayed to see my talk! You have to understand: as a Brazilian whom never spoke in an international event before, I was very nervous, not just about my English, but about the crowd. Kayla Daniels, Frank de Jonge and Scott Wilcox definitely helped me with my cold feet (thank you all!).

And this year Laracon EU had 2 tracks in the community day, so it meant the event would have another talk in the same time as mine! I was sure no one would attend mine, I was almost talking to Shawn McCool to change me to the small room and having the other speaker to talk in the bigger room I was almost bolting out of there. Hence my surprise (and scared) face when I saw a good 70% of the people there to see me talk.

When I started talking, it was clear for the attendees that I was freaking out! BUT, I was able to get my emotions in control because I saw people’s faces, and I could see that for many of them what I was talking about was totally news, it was “I did not know it was like that” face. Probably because the majority was White Males, and other minorities were… minorities!

To see my message being listened and understood, it was incredibly joyful! It really made me happy. Although, I saw a guy sleeping in his chair…

For that incredible experience, I want to thank Laracon EU organization for bringing me there and giving me the opportunity to meet such wonderful people there! Thank you Shawn!

Links

My Slides:

My Joindin feedback: http://goo.gl/yy6lMf

P.S.: I will be giving his talk over Hangouts on Air this Thursday, September 18th, 2014, link to the event here: http://goo.gl/IwiVD8