For every woman Kristen Womack meets entering the tech industry, she says comes across another on the way out. A joke has it that tech conferences are a great place for women to use the bat
hroom, as there’s never a line.
“A lot of people say there aren’t women in the pipeline, and that’s why there aren’t women in tech,” said Womack, a former developer with Best Buy and Lead Pages. “No. …This is not a pipeline problem. Maybe women leaving tech is the problem.”
With her eye as much on community as technology, Womack is leading a two-day coding and product development competition this weekend at American Public Media’s Glen Nelson Center in downtown St. Paul’s Osborn370 building, the former Ecolab Tower.
Hack-a-thons are not uncommon in the coding world, but what makes “Hack the Gap” — hackthegap.com — different is that it is organized by women and for women, though gender-fluid participants are welcome. The sold-out event, now in its fifth year, will draw 90 female programmers, developers and designers.
Teams of women will work from 7:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. on projects they brainstorm on the spot and resume early Sunday. In the afternoon, they’ll present their product for “Demo Day,” making them eligible for six prizes.
Tickets to Demo Day are $10, and a team picked by the audience as a crowd favorite will pocket the proceeds.
In the past, Womack has seen teams produce a meditation app for students, and a mouth guard that measures both the number of hits to the head and their intensity, a way to track possible concussions during athletic events.
“They’re building a prototype of what this product could be — it’s a working prototype,” Womack said. “They do it all in a weekend. They don’t have any code written before they come. They don’t even know each other before they come.”
A NERD’S SPORTS TOURNAMENT, BUT FRIENDLIER
Womack promises “a different experience than your traditional hack-a-thon. This is like the nerd’s sports tournament. … (But) we designed it to be a little more of a friendly competition, so you get a little more out of it even if you don’t win.”
“We really try to make the events geared to a culture of self-care and continued learning,” Womack said.
Hack-the-Gap provides the teams five meals and on-site mentors. There’s no overnight coding allowed, and no sleeping on the floor. The $25 entry fee is waived upon request, no questions asked. On Demo Day, childcare is free.
Compared to most male-dominated tech competitions, that’s a bit different.
“There are a lot of women who have dropped out of tech because of their experiences — they’re the only woman on their team, the only woman in their computer science class,” Womack said. “(At Hack the Gap), you are bonded to someone in a new way.”
Previous participant Jasmine Russell went on to start Monicat Data, which is currently participating in the St. Paul-based Lunar Startups accelerator. Caroline Karanja went on to launch the company 26 Letters, Inc., an online learning platform for workplaces.
This is the first year that Hack the Gap has landed in St. Paul by invite of St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter and Sharon Kennedy Vickers, the city’s chief information officer. Other major backers include Twilio, Target, Bust Out Solutions, Branch, and DevOps MSP, which in the past has given each participant a ticket to its tech conference, a roughly $300 value.
