Five days of Pink Programming (and fun)
So we’ve packed up our Arduino starter kits up, closed our laptops, and hugged each other goodbye. I’m Rose, and here’s my take on the 5 days of Pink Programming.
We’ve had workshops where we helped each other learn Arduino, Git, Heroku, HTML, CSS and React. We’ve had fun canoeing, kayaking, swimming, riding drasines, feeding chickens and fetching eggs, juggling, slacklining, cooking vegan food, and just getting to know each other.
I’ll start with recounting our adventures from day 1 to day 5, before moving on to a general description of the quirky charm farmhouse we stayed at, and ending with why this camp is a milestone for Pink Programming.
Day 1
We arrived to a lovely lunch prepared by Myky and Phiphi: our camp’s organizers. We spent the remainder of the day playing some ice breaker games and settling in.
Day 2
We made the most of the countryside fresh air and sunshine by riding our draisines through fields, farms and a forest. We stopped for a picnic, and some cherry picking that required some serious team-work. And Myky held an Arduino workshop later that afternoon. Learning about Arduino was fascinating and we worked with it late into the evening. One of our attendees, Line, has shared her thoughts on Arduino with us. Do read about it in my previous blog– Five days of Arduino.
Day 3
Vanja, one of Pink Programming’s founders, paid us a visit and held a workshop in Git, Terminal, and Heroku. We later went out to the beach, had supper in the garden, and Line introduced us to slacklining.
Day 4
We spent the morning canoeing and kayaking out to the sea. It was a bittersweet evening since even though I looked forward to returning to the comfort of my own home, I felt as though I was just getting started and it would have been beneficial with some more days of learning and exploring in that environment.
Day 5
We spent our Friday hanging out over breakfast and lunch, packing, and cleaning up the place.
The Farmhouse
The idyllic countryside farmhouse in Klagstorp that we’re staying at has the cozy, charming and quirky vibe that one usually gets when visiting “that childhood friend’s wonderful grandmother”: the one that sits you down for cake and tea- even when you’re visibly not hungry- and then sends you home with even more baking.
With big baskets of messy yarn and yet to be finished knitting; several paintings, hand-made figurines and trinkets of horses; photographs documenting the life of a family through the decades; a yard with overgrown vines and patches of pink and red roses and wildflowers speckling the sprawling sea of green vegitation.
We quickly realized that the farmhouse we were staying at was also a horse shrine and that just added to the wonderful charm of the place.
All in all, there were 389 representations of horses at the farmhouse. A number painstakingly verified and re-verified by Amanda and Madeline.
Pink Programming’s History
Here’s a bit of Pink Programming’s history for those of you wondering what we’re all about.
With the ambition of encouraging more females to develop an interest in programming, Vanja, Tove, and Vibeke, organized what they believed to be a low-key, one-time programming camp back in August 2015.
The camp received an overwhelming amount of interest from women from all walks of life, which lead Vanja, Tove, and Vibeke to officially found a non-profit that organized female-oriented programming events in Malmö, Stockholm, and Göteborg.
This years camp was organized and managed by Myky and Phiphi. They were last year’s Pink Programming camp attendees and today play a big part in organizing and managing the Pink Programming Sundays, overseeing volunteers, and just making awesome things happen.
Ps: We’re having another camp in August: Stay tuned.
