Duchess
Globally Connecting Women in Java Technology

On the first of November, some Indonesian girls launched Duchess Indonesia! I was lucky because I was here! For me it was a wonderful experience. I met some girls with awesome motivation and enthousiasm!
All started when I got in touch with Frans Thamura (from Indonesian JUG and Meruvian). As I was doing a world trip I contacted Frans to propose him a talk about Design Patterns. Frans invited me and my co geek-trotter, Cyril, to do this talk in Jakarta, and as he knew that I was involved in Duchess Network, he told me that in his school Meruvian, a lot of women are involved.

Meruvian Foundation is a non-profit organization located in Jakarta, focused on Java and OpenSource. This Scool was founded by Frans Thamura, teaching computer science and Java to young people between 16 and 21 years old. “Meruvian is dedicated to develop people skill to filling the skillset of people to get a global standard and bring influence to their ecosystem. We facilitate the efforts of private sector entities to support the development of national education through their CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) programs by managing their CSR funds. We also provide Human Resource Development to close the gap between industries and educations, which stronger in this millenium.”

So, I started to exchange with some ladies, Mila Yuliani, Netoya (Nety) Ozora and Senja Ananda, all from Meruvian. They explained to me that they were very motivated to launch a Duchess Indonesian group. And they managed everything with a strong efficiency, they opened two websites : a facebook account and Duchess Indonesia website. And they organized by themselves a very great event for the launching Duchess Indonesia in Gunadarma University.

For the lauchning, Cyril and me were welcomed by the president of the University, a charming woman! And we met all the staff of the University (specially Adang Suhendra, I Made Wiryana and Hanum Putri) and Meruvian people of course! We started the morning together with Cyril (in front of 180 people) doing a talk about our experience about being a Java developer in Europe. Then, Frans, Mila and Senja did some interested talks about Meruvian and their brillant experience and Meruvian expertise. Another person, Faisal Yusman, spoke about his Java experience.

At the end, it was the Duchess Indonesia launching with a nice video-clip! Mila explained the aim of Duchess Indonesia : connecting Indonesian women in Java Technology. Their mission is to promote women in this sector and to provide a platform through which women can connect with each other and get involved in the greater Java community. They want to organize workshops and social events, participate in existing Java User Group and connect with each other online and offline at Java Conferences around the world. Mila said that they welcome all women who are interested in Java technology, including developers, architects, testers, business analysts, managers and others. “We believe that women have an essential role to play in the future of IT as it evolves in the global economy. Join us and help make Duchess into something great !!”. After the launching, in the afternoon, Cyril and I did our workshop about Design Patterns and we did the same talk the next day in front of other students in computing. We were surprised about one thing : there is a lot of women students in Indonesia (more than 50%). In Europe with the sad example of Devoxx where only 5% of attendees are women (read this interesting feedback by Claude Falguière, a Duchess France leader, about Devoxx and women), we should follow the example of Indonesia!

I hope all the best for Duchess Indonesia. And congratulations for Mila, Nety and Senja!

Duchess leaders, Regina ten Bruggencate and Clara Ko, representing Duchess at JavaOne.
Interview by Yolande Poirier, Oracle Community Outreach Manager.

Last august, Stella and Edwidge, two new African Duchesses, created a new group of Duchess : Duchess Africa. Their goal is to enable African women’s access to careers in computer science in general, and why not in Java development. In Africa, few girls go to school, let alone access to scientific studies, so there are very few female computer engineers. Stella Avit Barbour and Edwidge Louise Dogny are beginners in Java. It all started this summer when Agnes Crépet, a Duchess France, has decided to be a Java trainer for few weeks as volunteer in Lomé (Togo). Stella and Edwidge were among the students. Agnes spoke about the network of Duchess. Edwidge and Stella have been thinking that it would be very interesting to create a group of Duchess in Africa and particularly in West Africa. The training were held in Togo, but Stella and Edwidge are Ivorian and live in Abidjan.

So on last August 13th, at the session of Togo JUG at the Lomé Catholic University, Stella and Edwidge (see photos) launched the group Duchess Africa. Agnes was speaker of this session of Togo JUG, with Cyril Lacôte. They proposed two talks: one on Design Patterns and another on agility. Between the two talks, Stella and Edwidge have presented their motivations about this group. Unfortunately only few girls attended that day. But Stella and Edwidge are in contact with some motivated girls, even if they are not Java experts! You should know that there are not so many software developers in West Africa. As Horacio,  TogoJUG leader, explained this very well to Agnes and Cyril, during the recording of the last Cast-IT podcast (in French!): computer engineers are more likely to work on maintenance of the system or operation than software development. Decision-makers in IT management services still prefer to buy third-party software than to develop their own solutions! This explains why there are so few developers in West Africa (in Java or any other languages​​), even if mobility is tremendously growing (perhaps things can change)! This does not undermine the motivation of Africans! They are willing to travel many kilometers to attend conferences. They were more than fifty ones in this session of Togo JUG, on a Saturday morning! And hundreds of them journeyed for several days to attend JCertif, the biggest Java Community Conference in Central Africa in Brazzaville, Congo!

The slides of Duchess Africa launch:

Women in Java: An Unconference

Date: Thursday, November 17, 2011
Time: 19:00 to 20:00
Location: Metropolis Antwerp

Join us for a Duchess Birds-of-a-Feather Session at Devoxx 2011.
Come and meet Anna Gos and Regina ten Bruggencate to discuss topics relevant to women in the Java world.
We will run this as an unconference, so bring your topics to discuss!

Women in Java: An Unconference

Date: Monday, October 3, 2011
Time: 19:00 to 19:45
Location: The Divisidero Room at Parc 55 Hotel

Join us for a Duchess Birds-of-a-Feather Session at JavaOne 2011.
Come and meet Regina ten Bruggencate and Clara Ko to discuss topics relevant to women in the Java world.
We will run this as an unconference, so bring your topics to discuss!

The long overdue upgrade of this site to the latest WordPress (3.1.3) and BuddyPress (1.2.8) is finally complete.

I am currently using the default BuddyPress theme.

Over the next few weeks, more local sites will be re-enabled after making necessary adjustments due to the upgrade.
Site owners will be contacted to assist in this process.

Also look forward to new features that are now possible.

Any comments or suggestions for the site are always welcomed.
Please report any problems to duchess[at]jduchess.org.

This blog entry is on Oracle Technology Network @ http://blogs.oracle.com/java/2010/11/the_duchess_at_devoxx.html

The Duchess, a “Women in Java” organization, had a great one-hour Bird of a Feather (BoF) yesterday. In addition to having a great logo, the organization provides a platform for women to connect, learn about technology and build regional chapters. The session started with an overview of the Duchess organization and the Duchess France. The French chapter, a dynamic group, recounted over its impressive list of activities: creation of women events around JUG monthly meetings, the co-organization of conferences, organization of Java certification classes and the creation of new groups in France. All this in just the last 9 months since their creation!

Participants were mostly women, with one-third men. Both men and women expressed their options freely. Some of the topics were: the prejudices of women in IT at the workplace, in some countries women have trouble to join the workforce after a long maternity leave, women lack assertiveness to promote themselves and the change of dynamics in diverse teams.

Big thanks to Yolande Poirier, Oracle Community Outreach Manager, for giving us the exposure that we needed at JavaOne. Being interviewed was nerve-wracking but very educational. Through numerous fruitful discussions with community leaders and Java gurus, we have refined our message and are working on a flyer to help explain our mission, vision, and overall message. Love to hear from Duchesses everywhere on their ideas of important issues affecting women in IT today.

The first day at javaone has just finished. It started with the community sunday. We talked with other JUG leaders about topics like how to get more members active in the JUGs. How to finance the JUG and how to record your sessions. The session was made up into discusions in smaller groups and a large part at the end where all the results were discussed. We got allote of positive reactions and some people that want to start chapters in their own country.

In the evening there was the much hyped keynote session with Larry. Before Larry took the stage some other people from Oracle talked some and handed out some trophies. And there was some talks from HP. Larry was proceded by a short movie about the Americas cup (sailing competition) which was won by the USA in a boat sponsored by Oracle. In his talk for over more than an hour he mentioned Java twice and the JVM once.
Turned out that all the JavaOne attendees were rejected at the primairy location of the keynote and sent to the Hilton to watch the keynote on the bigscreens there. I think we got the better deal as we got to have free food and drink and we got to talk during the ‘boring’ keynote.

After this we had a short meeting with Yolande to discuse our session for tomorrow and our interview.

We will get back to you with day 2