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Getting Involved With The Manchester Tech Start Up Community - Dinal's Story

Written on Tuesday, 7th April 2020.

Meet Dinal, having just moved back to Manchester she couldn't wait to see what the tech community had to offer. Shocked by the gender imbalances, Dinal is embarking on a mission to help bring more women into tech and show female students what the Manchester tech landscape looks like. 

Getting Involved With The Manchester Tech Start Up Community - Dinal's Story

I first dipped my toe into this new world at a SheSaysMCR event last year at SpacePortX. I was shocked by a number of things: how welcoming everyone was, how interesting the people were and how much they aligned with my own mind-set. I got in touch with the girls afterwards (who are incredible by the way) and wrote a blog about my initiative to encourage more girls to take on Computer Science and since then things have only gone up. I'll be speaking at the next SheSaysMCR event myself and from April will be holding a monthly event bringing together technical women.

I've worked in Technology for over four years and last September, I took time out to start developing coding skills. Most recently I've managed to build an Android app, a Java application and two websites. However, what I repeatedly noticed was that I was a in a minority. If you think about your own working environment and the number of female developers, the situation is probably the same and it needs to change.

Becoming a part of this community has provided me with an environment which revolves around positivity and persistence. Being able to come down to SpacePortX as well as Drinkabout on a regular basis, has meant that not only are more people hearing about what I'm trying to change but are actively becoming involved, helping and supporting more than I could have imagined. As you'll have heard on numerous occasions, Manchester is a pretty amazing place to be in right now and I'm hugely excited about the impact that I can make here.

Interested in speaking to Dinal about her projects? You can contact her here and here.

We'd love to hear more about your stories in Manchester's tech community, if you're interested in writing a SpacePortX blog, contact us on [email protected].

Written on: Tuesday, 7th April 2020
About the author:
Vim
Arsenal fan, techie and MJ dancer.
You can find Vim sitting in SpacePort, eating cake or doing the running man in some recently bought sneakers. She's known for organising SheSaysMCR and wants to see more women in Manchester's Tech Community.