Katia Wheeler
Software Engineer at Balance Innovations
Kansas City, Missouri, United States
Katia Wheeler (formerly Sittmann) is a Software Engineer based in Kansas City. While growing up, she was constantly at the computer, either playing a rousing game of The Sims (let’s be honest, she was putting them all in the pool and taking away the ladder) or creating new Xanga layouts. As she got older (and Xanga faded from society), she dabbled more in the .NET space and some JavaScript frameworks.
In her current role, she mostly focuses on the .NET Core backend development as well as managing the React/Redux UI on the frontend. She has also dabbled in machine learning (Skynet), iOS and Android development, and does freelance WordPress development on the side.
When she’s not coding, Katia can be found drinking massive amounts of coffee (seriously, ungodly amounts), biking, [attempting to blog](https://medium.com/@wheeler.katia), playing a video game, or simply maniacally laughing while stroking one of her two cats in an armchair.
Links
Thinking About React, Atomically
Brad Frost's Atomic Design is one of the best user interface design philosophies out there. Its simplistic approach to user interfaces encourages concise, maintainable UI elements. We can easily use Atomic Design when creating our React applications for a better developer and user experience.
Atomic Design is the concept of breaking down user interfaces into smaller, simpler elements. There are five different levels in atomic design: atoms, molecules, organism, templates, and pages. These levels are combined to make user interfaces.
React, at its core, follows Atomic Design inherently by encouraging developers to keep components as simple and as broken down as possible. From this simplicity, we can create more complex components and containers of components to create the user interfaces for our applications. Following these patterns gives us, as developers, an easy to manage (and test) ecosystem within our React applications.
During this talk, we'll dive into the roots of Atomic Design and how we can apply these design principles to our React applications.
Where Have All the Women Gone?
It can be hard to spot us. You see long, flowing hair from a distance. Slowly, they turn and you see the beard. Alas, it's not a female in tech but Jim from IT.
For women in tech, it doesn’t take long to notice that you are often the only woman in the room. So, why aren't there more women in tech?
Growing up, I always loved technology. I would be on the computer for hours, either playing a game or dabbling in HTML and CSS to make Xanga layouts before I realized what I was doing (and before I realized Xanga wasn't cool anymore). I was good with technology and it was something I enjoyed working with. When it was time for me to choose a major in college, why did no one tell me being a Computer Science major was an option?
Overall, the number of women in technology has been declining since 1991, when women held 36% of technology jobs. According to the National Center for Women & Information Technology’s By the Numbers report, in 2017 women made up 57% of the professional workforce but only 26% of the technology industry. In addition, women were twice as likely to leave their job than men in 2016. Girls Who Code reports that roughly 74% of young girls present interest in STEM fields and computer science while only 19% actually pursue a degree in these subjects. Why are young girls who show a high interest in STEM fields choosing to pursue a degree in a different field? What is happening to women once they're in STEM fields that make them want to leave?
We will dive into why the number of women in technology is declining as well as what we, as a technology community, can do to help encourage women of all ages and levels to remain in technology.
Katia Wheeler
Software Engineer at Balance Innovations
Kansas City, Missouri, United States
Links
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