One of the new things we wanted to do for PyCon APAC 2017 is to increase women participation in the conference, with the greater aim to reach out and increase participation of women folk into the technology sector. Up until now we the PyCon MY conferences only had 10% of women participation with no women speakers, and this is also to the fact that we do not have any connections to women-centric technology groups.

On the suggestion of Shawn, we contacted Women Who Code KL (WHCKL), and we met with Chee Yim in Nov 2016 and asked for their help.

The result of the meet was that WHC and PyCon MY will collaborate in working together to bring more workshops and training opportunities for the WHC group. These workshops will be organized by the WHC, but PyCon MY will invite trainers to train participants in python and it’s tools through topics which WHC has found having strong interests. WHC will also promote PyCon APAC 2017 to their group, and hopefully with us both working together, we’ll have more interests from the women technology groups to come and join us in PyCon APAC.

As for now, we have workshops with WHC scheduled for March, May and July. We’ll have more details and will make announcements when we have more details.

Thank you Che Yim and WHC!