World Book Day: The year with Book Club in WWCode London!

World Book Day is celebrated annually to promote reading, publishing, and copyright. For Women Who Code London, it was a chance to celebrate the power of books in shaping the minds of individuals, particularly in the tech industry. 

Throughout the 2022-2023 season, WWCode London actively developed its book club events by reading several leadership and technical books. We're happy to share our list of books and what we learned from them.

First on the list is Erin Meyer's "The Culture Map." This book taught us how much culture can affect the behaviour of our colleagues and what difficulties they have to overcome if they meet models significantly different from the workplace in their country. During the session we delved deeper into how the ideas of the Culture Map helped us to build trust and better relationships with our colleagues. It was an eye-opener and gave us insights into how culture affects interactions in the workplace.

Next was Susan Cain's "Quiet". This book is essential not only to read for introverts, but also for managers and leaders who want to learn more about introverts. It helps recognize introverts and find the conditions to allow them to thrive and grow in their careers. As a group of professionals in the tech industry, it's essential to create a work environment conducive to our colleagues' diverse personalities.

Fran Hauser's "The Myth of the Nice Girl" gives another view on the power of being likeable in your workplace and breaks up common stereotypes of being benevolent. During our discussion, we discussed the disadvantages and advantages of being nice to our colleagues for more than two hours. We found many strategies and learned excellent advice from each other, which made us rethink how we approach our interactions with our colleagues.

Robert C. Martin's "Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship" is a classic guide on clean code and antipatterns in building coding blocks. As a tech community, we couldn't pass by coding books this year. This book helped us prove our view on the code base in our code reviews, and it allowed us to improve our coding standards.

Reed Hastings and Erin Meyer's "No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention" gave us outstanding business models that Netflix applied in their company. It teaches a lot about team processes and provides another view on results. We took some strategies from it and started to use them in our workplace, which led to significant improvements in our team's productivity.

Lastly, Michael T. Nygard's "Release It! Design and Deploy Production-Ready Software" allowed senior engineers to share their experiences with others during our discussion. We've prepared this session to be full of insights and new valuable material that our members started to apply in their workplaces. This book provided valuable insights into the technical aspects of software development, which our team found immensely helpful.

In conclusion, the power of books in shaping our minds is undeniable. WWCode London's book club events are a testament to how we can learn a lot from reading books and sharing our thoughts and ideas. We learned about culture, personality types, coding standards, business models, and technical aspects of software development through the books we read. These learnings have improved our team's productivity and shaped our minds in ways that will continue to impact our lives and careers positively.

If you'd like to join WWCode London's Book Club, you're more than welcome to join. #book