About The Author
Pranati Bagchi is an educator and founder of The Lavender Spaceship Project, Singapore’s 1st STEM learning platform for young girls. She is also the Youth Initiatives Lead at Girls in Tech, SG.
An introduction to Python for everyone and anyone
What an amazing turnout for our 3-day virtual workshop that we organized in collaboration with Red Hat, the world’s leading provider of open source solutions. This introductory workshop was led by Harish Pillay (pictured below in action), the Community Architecture and Leadership Head of Red Hat Asia-Pacific and three amazing co-facilitators Li Ming Tsai, Siva Shunmug and JJ Ng. A big thank you to the entire team of Red Hat who made this amazing event possible.
Let’s face it – coding is not exclusively for software professionals anymore. In this dynamic world where technology is rapidly taking a centre stage in most fields, this skill now spans across multiple professions. Working professionals are expected to apply their coding and technological knowhow to work more effectively and smartly.
According an article by Fast Company, coding jobs are growing faster than the market average and half of all programming openings are now in industries outside of technology.
I am trying to pick up what I can when it comes to IT skills, to stay relevant for the next few years. This is another small step forward to something new, perhaps moving from non-IT into IT related field 🙂 – Yasmeen
The Workshop Rundown: 3 days of immersion into Python coding for Journalism
Journalism is a profession where you can apply Python coding skills to collect, analyse and manipulate data. Before the workshop, the participants received tips, readings and assignments to lay the foundation for the workshop. Over the course of 3 days, the participants learned:
- Basics of Python programming using Jupyter Notebook, a platform that is used to create and share documents that contain live code.
- Data collection from a website in context of a journalism scenario.
- Data analysis using one of the most effective data manipulation tools called Pandas library.
This workshop has inspired me to learn and understand more 🙂 – Zaida
Getting some feedback: In conversation with Priyanka Beswal
Priyanka, founder of a Singapore based e-commerce company and design studio, attended this workshop and shared her views and main takeaways with us below. Ellybean studio is a design boutique that brings your story to life. Build brands and celebrate moments with us. Thank you Priyanka for taking the time to share your experience as a first time coder!
Why did you decide to attend this workshop?
I’ve always thought coding is like a super ability and great skill to have, and the workshop seemed like a great way to get a basic understanding and a perfect way to dip my toes in the water.
It was also great timing and pricing, as with the current situation and having so much time at home I was looking for ways to use my time productively and up-skill!
How was your learning experience? 
It was good! I think the pre-workshop materials and the first session were definitely a bit intimidating, but by the second session things made more sense and I had more context around it. I’m sure coding is a very deep and technically intense subject, so this was a great starting point. It really helped having Red Hat co-facilitators in separate Telegram groups (pictured here) to reach out to. They were ready on stand-by in case we ran into any technical trouble or weren’t able to keep up with the session.
What are some of your key takeaways?
Coding may be intimidating, but I think patience & practice are the key!
Also understanding the logic behind the commands and code makes it a lot easier, and I definitely feel more comfortable looking at the code than I did at the start of the week. Sometimes you just need to get the basics to feel confident enough to experiment on your own.
What advice do you have for working women out there who want to enhance their tech skills?
I think this is a great time to up-skill and learn, and online workshops like these make it so accessible that it is definitely worth a shot! Plus, skills like learning to code or any other tech skills are a great asset to have and will definitely go a long way in making you more employable or even help in building your own business in the case of entrepreneurs!
Anything else you would like to add something before we end?
Just a big thank you to Red Hat & Girls In Tech for organizing this and for extending such a valuable skill to us all!
We couldn’t agree more with Priyanka. Our Girls in Tech community is always very excited to see all these girls and women taking charge of their future by enhancing their technical skills to keep abreast of the latest developments and trends in the industry. We hope to see some of you are our upcoming (virtual) events too!
