We spend a lot of time talking about women in tech, and how we need more of them. Well, here is a thing: the RailsBridge workshops, possibly coming to a city near you. CRAZY POPULAR. And an amazing way to bring women into the industry.

RailsBridge is a great example of How To Do It Right. The idea is, this is a conference to get women started with super-hot programming-language-of-the-day, Ruby. The conference is aimed at beginners, and welcomes both the "complete programming novice" and the "experienced developer." It's a two-day intensive course in programming in Ruby on Rails.

And IT IS FREE.

Frankly, words cannot express how awesome this is. All of it; not just the free part.

How is this conference attracting and keeping female attendees? Are they making everything pink? Do they advertise on the backs of tampon boxes? Do they have an ad where a woman is shamed for being too fat, and assert that Ruby On Rails will make you skinny, and therefore more worthy of love?

Nope. They do it simply by saying, "This is a workshop aimed at getting more women into the Ruby On Rails community." Tada! CONFERENCE HUGELY OVERBOOKED. In fact, the first few workshops proved so popular that the creators, Sarah Mei and Sarah Allen, have propagated the conference out to other locations, other cities, other dates. This thing is huge, and it warms my heart to see it.

If you were wondering, men are "welcome to attend as the +1 of a woman who's taking the class." This both allows men to participate in the classes (no exclusion here) and ensures a gender balance of at least 50/50. And presumably being the +1 of a female attendee will help curb any "fox in the henhouse" fantasies some guys might have of attending the conference in order to hit on all the ladies.

What the RailsBridge success does is demonstrate that a lot of women do want to get into Ruby On Rails. But maybe they aren't sure where to start, or they feel weird taking a "regular" class where they will probably be the only female. Maybe they find it a little daunting, the prospect of teaching themselves a whole new thing. Plenty of people do it, but let's be honest - it's not the easiest way.

Sarah Mei says she decided to start the RailsBridge workshops because she had "spent a lot of time thinking and talking and reading about the gender imbalance in computing." And she decided to do something about it.

So far the RailsBridge Open Workshop project "has trained almost 600 people, nearly 500 of them women" in five     cities. Eight workshops are planned for 2011 in San Francisco, Chicago, and Seattle. You can read more about the project here on their website. And please, think about attending! Or forwarding the info to a woman who can, or being a corporate sponsor, or hosting your own. This is an amazing project, and it just goes to show you what a difference one person can make.