<div dir="ltr"><div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px">Dear Linux Australia Council,</div><div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px"><br></div><div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px">
Nigel Rausch, whom I've been working with in organising the first Rails Girls event in Brisbane, mentioned that it may be possible to apply for a grant from the Linux Australia Council towards the sponsorship of this event.</div>
<div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px"><br></div><div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px">I have been working closely with Nigel and a number of others in the Brisbane Ruby community in putting together an event that has a number of aims, including: (a) encouraging women to participate in a workshop that will introduce many to programming for the first time, in an open and supportive environment; (b) promoting diversity by bringing together programming beginners, as well as advanced female programmers, across a wide range of demographics and socio-economic backgrounds across SEQ, whilst being supported by experienced RoR mentors, and (c) strengthening the Ruby community, and more generally the developer community, in SEQ/Brisbane.</div>
<div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px"><br></div><div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px">We have a number of local development businesses supporting this initiative, plus several sponsors, one of which is Red Hat. Red Hat are kindly sponsoring the provision of 50 USBs which will contain a Fedora image of the Rails environment to assist with installs on the first evening.</div>
<div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px"><br></div><div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px">The Rails Girls workshop will take place at River City Labs on 24 & 25 May. Link as follows:</div>
<div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px"><br></div><div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px"><a href="http://railsgirls.com/brisbane" target="_blank">http://railsgirls.com/brisbane</a><br></div>
<div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px"><br></div><div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px">The response so far has been quite overwhelming. We "sold out" our initial allotment of 50 participant tickets without any real marketing push and have released another 10 tickets in case some can't make it. We'll have at least 10 mentors across the weekend plus a number of other Rails Girls guests.</div>
<div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px"><br></div><div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px">As this is a non-profit event, RCL have agreed to host the event for free and are providing food and drink on Friday night (to name just a little of the support they've offered/provided). We have been looking for sponsors to support the provision of food and drink for Saturday. So far we have a commitment from Brisbane Marketing of $500. We estimate that we'll need a budget of around $1000 (looking at pizzas, snacks, alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages for 60-70) for Saturday.</div>
<div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px"><br></div><div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px">I am therefore seeking Council's consideration to provide the balance (or more - happy to return any unused funds).</div>
<div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px"><br></div><div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px">Myself or Nigel would be more than happy to discuss the event in more detail.</div><div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px">
<br></div><div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px">Regards,</div><div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px"><br></div><div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px">Robert</div></div>