Lessons from 2021: Building the World I Want to Live In Through Mentorship and Allyship

I know, I know. It’s February now, isn’t my end of year blog post a bit late? True, but some important things happened in 2021 that are worth mentioning, so here goes ….

As we’re entering the third year of the global pandemic, a common theme that a lot of folks feel is hopelessness. A lot of things feel out of our control. I too have felt discouraged. But I’ve also been fortunate to not have contracted COVID yet (being vaxxed and boosted might have helped 🙂 ), or lost anyone close to me to COVID. I certainly don’t want to dismiss the trauma that many people have experienced over the past two years. Rather, what I’ve tried to do myself in this time is to focus on changing the things that I can control, instead of focusing on the things I cannot control. Understanding that every person’s situation is different, I encourage you to make a positive change in whatever area of your life you can control.

What I Learned Teaching An Online Open Source Workshop (During a Pandemic)

We’re living in a unique time right now, trying to build community while social distancing and fighting the world-wide COVID-19 pandemic.  A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to teach an open source workshop to the Women Who Code Mobile track community. This might have been just another online event, when I first signed up to put it together 2 months ago before the quarantines started, but it quickly turned into something so much more ….. Over 260 people registered for the webinar, over 100 actually joined, and the Slack channel for the workshop had 73 members …. By the time it was all over, I had merged / closed 20 pull requests.

Android Developer? Help SimplyE Promote Information Equality

Note: The Android position listed in this blog post is no longer open. But feel free to continue reading to learn more about SimplyE! 🙂

For the past five months, I’ve been working as an iOS Developer on the SimplyE reader app, the e-book reader app for the New York Public Library. Originally developed for the New York Public Library, SimplyE is expanding, and will work with many other libraries over the next few years, which is an exciting development. In order to meet the needs of our growing user base, we are in need of an intermediate level Android Developer. Do you want to know how SimplyE helps people and how you can be a part of that? Keep reading! (no pun intended 🙂 )