Duchess

Coding Dojos are inspired by the Socratic Circle, a learning method that involves questions and debate between participants and teacher, illuminating different points of views.

Come learn and practice TDD (Test-Driven Development) with FitNesse, an acceptance testing framework that enables you to communicate progress with business and customers, while improving your programming skills.

You are welcomed to join us on Friday evening, June 18, in the Amsterdam Public Library (Openbaar Bibliotheek Amsterdam) – next to Amsterdam Central Station – for a coding dojo with a focus on TDD with FitNesse.

We are very happy to have Marc Evers from QWAN and Agile Holland lead us through this dojo.

We will start at the La Place upstairs (7th floor) for food at 18:00 and will move to the meeting room (6th floor) to start at 19:00 and go until 22:00 at the latest.

We ask a voluntary 10 Euro participation fee to cover expenses.
Please sign up each attendee individually so we can track attendance.

Space is limited to 20 participants – so first come first serve!

The Amsterdam Public Library is easily accessible by public transport or car.
For those who want to drive, Parkeergarage Oosterdok is the closest parking garage.

Officiellement lancé au dernier ParisJug, le JDuchess débarque en France ! Mené par Ellene Dijoux (Xebia),  Claude Falguière (Valtech), Mathilde Lemée (freelance) et Laure Némée (Leetchi.com), le JDuchess France compte déjà 16 membres. Cela vous semble peu bien sûr au regard de l’énorme communauté de développeurs java, mais c’est un début prometteur.

Fondé par Clara Ko en Hollande, le JDuchess a pour but de permettre aux femmes du monde Java de se connaître et de se rencontrer, afin d’échanger points de vue techniques et retours d’expériences. Il est de fait important pour les développeuses junior comme moi, ou à venir, de voir que des femmes nous ont précédées dans la technique et s’y sont épanouies.

En effet le constat dressé par les Duchess est le suivant : vers ce qui correspond au milieu de la carrière « classique » d’un développeur, les femmes disparaissent du monde technique. Souvent pour s’orienter vers la qualité, la maîtrise d’ouvrage etc … Alors bien sûr, tout cela donne envie de mener l’enquête.

Pas toujours facile non plus de trouver le courage de se rendre à certains événements de la communauté, tels que Jugs, Bar Camp et CodingDojo. L’envie est là mais la liste des participants ou les photos des précédentes sessions où l’on ne voit que des messieurs intimident quelque peu … et à tort, puisque nous nous apercevons vite que nous sommes les bienvenues !

D’où  la nécessité de se constituer en réseau social, de pouvoir se tenir informées des réunions, conférences et événements à venir, se donner rendez vous et ainsi encourager certaines femmes qui peut être n’osaient pas se montrer à nous rejoindre afin de participer bien sûr, mais aussi pourquoi pas, d’animer ces événements !

Pour nous rejoindre ou suivre notre actualité, vous pourrez nous retrouver sur Twitter, sur le groupe LinkedIn ou encore sur le site jduchess.org. Et surtout n’oubliez pas d’en parler à vos collègues !

Today, we are launching a new website – Duchess Community, a social networking site that enables members to connect with each other across the globe.

Features of Duchess Community include:

• Friend Connections
• Rich Profiles
• Activity Streams
• Private Messaging
• Groups
• Forums
• Blogging
• Multilingual Enabled

Each Duchess Chapter is set up as a group, but topic-related groups can be created by any logged in user. Forums can be accessed through groups or through the forum directory.

We are launching with an international audience in mind by enabling the site to be multilingual. For the launch, the site is set up to be displayed in Dutch, French, and Brazilian Portuguese. We are currently working with volunteers to complete the translations and enable more languages. Let us know if you can help.

All users from our old site have been migrated to the new Duchess Community site. If you are already a member, please log in and update your profile. Feel free to browse around the site and let us know what you think via twitter or email: duchess(at)jduchess(dot)org. We appreciate your feedback and suggestions.

Source: http://blog.xebia.fr/2010/03/03/creation-de-jduchess-en-france/

Please join me in a warm welcome to Duchess France – the newest addition to the Duchess Community.

After meeting a few ladies from Paris at Devoxx 2009, the events have been set in motion to create Duchess France. Duchess France is our first chapter outside of the Netherlands and is the first step in globally connecting women in Java technology.

Rough Translation:
What we wish for jDuchess is to build a community where women who work with Java can connect with each other and share their experiences and points of view. We want to build a social network to make women more visible in the Java community, and to enable them to participate at events like the Paris JUG, and other events and conferences. And perhaps also become a speaker and present at these events.

You can get in contact with Duchess France via Twitter, Google Group and LinkedIn. For more info, please contact ellene(dot)dijoux(at)jduchess(dot)org.

So we’ve already heard some talks by people who might be considered gurus in our line of work. But we all have our own stories to tell as well. They might not fill up two hours and they might not have the same level of quality. That doesn’t mean we don’t want to hear those stories as well. Stories on how you struggled with some technique or framework that promised to be oh so easy to work with. Stories on how some particular company was succeeding where nobody else did, or about how horribly they failed. Anything you think might be worth sharing with us.
The presentation doesn’t have to be long, anywhere in between fifteen minutes and half an hour will do. We’ll follow it up with room for discussion and have about two to three presentations in a meeting, depending on the date we’ll hold it on. And if there is not enough discussion to fill up the entire meeting? (Unlikely as it seems.) We’ll simply discuss other things over a drink.
If you think you have a much longer presentation, then of course those are welcome too, but we’ll probably pick another date for it, so you’ll have the entire meeting for yourself.
So let us know if you have anything you’d like to talk about. Please just post comments to this post in the following format if you have anything, so we can append it to this post.

Host – Subject – Level*
Linda van der Pal – Starting with Maven – Beginner

* Possible levels are Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced

P.S. We don’t have a location just yet, but it will be somewhere in the Netherlands

We are very happy to announce Duchess finally has become a foundation.

This will enable us to make our organization more professional and will help us organizing more events. We will very soon inform you about our plans for 2009.