A little history
In 2013, we hosted our very first event as Boston Girl Geek Dinners. Our events were designed to support and connect women+ in tech and tech-adjacent roles. Now, almost ten years later, we’re relaunching our community to be more inclusive, with the same high-quality, safe, and fun-loving atmosphere many of you know us for!
In 2017, we expanded beyond events and community, and started facilitating workshops on creating more diverse, inclusive, and equitable workplaces. We deliberately chose to focus on the workplace as the way to frame the context for our trainings. We supported those in positions of power, providing them with the skills and tools to be more compassionate and empathetic leaders. We also provided education, learning, and action steps to support anyone and everyone in moving the needle towards a more equitable and just work environment. At this point, we had rebranded as She+ Geeks Out (or SGO for short) and had two distinct aspects to the work that we did as an organization: our DEI training and our community of women+.
In March 2020, events, the primary way we connected with our community, came to a halt. Like everyone else, we transitioned to virtual. We found that people (including us!) were experiencing fatigue. Who wants to be in front of a screen more than they need to? We weren’t resourced to continue to support our community online in a consistent and meaningful way, so we put a pin in our events and focused primarily on our DEI training side as a temporary pivot, while we (and the rest of the world) figured things out
With in-person events on hold, we turned to the free version of Slack as our primary way of engaging with our community. While we have thousands of people in our SGO Slack, only a handful of you have been actively engaged with us over the past few years. This is entirely understandable, as we haven’t done a good enough job of making it work for everyone.
The future of SGO: Rise Together
Now that we’re more resourced and are building out more public programming, we’ve decided to finally bring both ‘sides of the house’ together, relaunching our community as Rise Together, which supports all who seek to create and support a more equitable workplace and world. You’ll hear more about our programming in the coming weeks and months, but in the meantime, you can view our current list of events here.
Why the change?
As part of this relaunch, we’re switching platforms– we’re excited to talk about our new online space, launching officially tomorrow, September 21st! We chose MightyNetworks, (a woman-owned company) as our platform for a variety of reasons:
- We’ll be able to open this community up to everyone while still having private spaces for affinity groups. They’ll include the following to start, with the ability to add more as needed and desired:
- Women
- BIPOC
- LGBTQIA+
- DEI Practitioners
- Hiring Managers & Recruiters
- We’ll be able to share more resources more intentionally with you – such as live events, courses, programs, and more. YAY!
- We’ll be able to connect with each other based on location and see each other’s LinkedIn profiles to connect! Now that we’re not holding events primarily in Boston, we’ve found that our community is made up of people who are finding their way here from all across the U.S., plus some international folks! (If this worries you, please note that we’ve updated our Code of Conduct to ensure people aren’t spammed; sharing location is totally optional!)
- We’re adding new moderation to our community! Each space will have a moderator or set of moderators. No one will leave your questions unanswered!
- We know that sometimes you have questions you may not feel comfortable asking in a public forum with your name attached. We’ve got you! We’ll be including a link to an anonymous form where you can ask your question or share your sticky situation, and our moderators will share so we can crowdsource support safely!
- Our jobs channel is one of the most popular channels in our Slack community. That won’t be going away, but it’ll be evolving! We’ll have a separate channel for those looking for career support and another for those who want to post jobs. We’ve also created a private space for Hiring Managers & Recruiters who will be able to share their job listings with our community while also getting support from others who are looking to hire inclusively!
We hope you join us for the next chapter in the She+ Geeks Out journey; we can’t wait to see you!