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!

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!

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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.

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

Linda, Elise, and Clara meet at the Masters of Java
and decide to create Duchess

December 2007

Monique joins us on the Duchess NL board

Duchess becomes a JUG

January 2008

Duchess Agile Event

Speaker: Michael Franken from and
Sponsored by: Februrary 2008

Duchess Website Launched

Clara and Linda speak at FOSDEM 2008

June 2008

Clara and Linda speak at JBoss Benelux User Group

at September 2008

Duchess Spring Event

Topic:
Speaker: Arjen Poutsma from
Sponsored by: October 2008

Duchess Groovy & Grails Event

Topic:
Speaker: Maarten Hoppen from and Sponsored by: December 2008

Duchess becomes a foundation

Duchess surpasses 100 members

Duchess BOF at Devoxx 2008

March 2009

Duchess joins the JCP

May 2009

Duchess Portal Event

Topic:
Speaker: Marco Beelen from and Sponsored by:

Regina and Lucia joins us on the Duchess NL board

March 2010

Duchess Community Website Launched

Duchess welcomes Duchess France

April 2010

Ania joins us on the Duchess NL board

June 2010

Duchess Coding Dojo – TDD and FitNesse

Topic:
Speaker: Marc Evers from and September 2010

Duchess Coding Dojo 2 – More TDD Practice

Sponsored by: September 20
(upcoming)

Duchess BOF at JavaOne

November 18
(upcoming)

Duchess BOF at Devoxx

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