Building a new clubhouse
Skillcrush is a soon-to-launch online learning community for female creatives, thinkers and makers.
We believe that learning needs to be rebooted. For far too long, the road to tech mastery has been laden with text-ridden manuals that inexplicably manage to explain nothing in a short 1,000 pages. Or, worse, tutorials that drone on in a language that is inaccessible, dry, humorless or just plain scary. We think this is tragic—so we’re serving up our tech learning with heaping teaspoon of fun.
We set out to create a place where we could get women to flash their sweet smiles and nod in agreement that tech is amazingly intuitive, fabulous and fun as they followed us unwittingly down a path toward digital enlightenment!
Oh wait, that sounds a bit like a cult (which is, undoubtedly, a great way to make money on the web, but not really us).
So what are we doing then? Essentially, we’re hoping to build a community of ladies like you who are interested in finding new ways to master the skills that you need to create lovely digital design, make intuitive and useful products, and bend the web to your will.
We know that creating shockingly beautiful web apps can be serious fun; that figuring out how to set up and run an ad server can be incredibly empowering; and that dressing up and playing with the world wide web can help spark your inner girl. We want to make sure that other ladies are in the loop too.
We hope to do this by referencing the things that we love to do—like creating exquisite design, cooking delicious treats, mixing snaptastic cocktails, and building beautiful websites—as we experiment with new and more accessible ways to present technology.
So what does this mean? Well, you likely won’t find too many references to robots or obscure video game heroes or Legos or Settlers of Catan. It’s not that we don’t love these things; we’re just not leading with them.
We’re using a language that we—and, hopefully, you—can relate to.
We believe that coding can be a great adventure. Creating amazing design can bring joy. And, more women need to be makers, not just consumers, of great web products.
A few things:
- We’re a work in progress—for the next several weeks we will be working to build a site that is both fun and feminine. We’re not perfect, though, so we expect that they’ll be some bumps along the way. Bear with us and please share with us the good, bad and ugly feedback you have about the site. We aim to please!
- We will be rolling things out slowly. Our newsletter, “30 Days to a Web Savvier You,” is meant to give you a taste of things to come. We are working behind the scenes to create a series of tutorials, guides, games, and interactive features that will help you get your tech on. This takes a bit of time—so, be patient with us.
- We believe that people can use the web to create many amazing things—from blogs to ecommerce sites to new technologies that we can’t even imagine yet. We will provide you info on a range of topics that will help you talk like a tech pro; customize your blog design; make money with online ads; design your own website; or code your own app.
Our goal is to get you to embrace tech and start building. The web is a playground-welcome to our club!
So, who are we?
Adda is a front-end developer and ruby newbie, wannabe student, and lover of Hall & Oates videos on YouTube. We can’t fault her for the last one, but we really don’t understand the obsession.
Kate loves unabashedly girly design and isn’t afraid to fly her fem flag while watching over every misplaced pixel on the page. She is a design geek, problem solver, and proud mother to Jubilee, Skillcrush’s resident canine. She lives by Milton Glaser’s credo “just enough is more.”
Soma is the voice behind the tutorials and runs the Brooklyn Brainery in his nonexistent free time.
Jennifer makes sure that everyone takes their tech vitamins, grabs an occasional nap, and finds a bit of balance as we launch. She’s also working on building out partnerships with other fab content creators and sponsors, so if you’ve got something you’d like to share, whether cash or content, email her.
We’d love to hear from you! Please email us with suggestions or just to say hi!
