[mnicole]

Great response. At RailsGirls PDX they asked how everyone had found out about the event. I'd found out through a female dev mailing list I'm a part of, but I was really happy to learn that many - if not most - of them had been encouraged by male co-workers, friends and significant others who knew the girl had an interest in dev or just tech, but were intimidated (even by other female developers) and thus didn't take part in existing communities.