A Room of Our Own

Welcome

Inspiration

The cancellation of Grace Hopper Celebration 2026 made the need for a lasting community feel especially urgent. When a gathering that means so much to women in computing disappears, where do those conversations, connections, and opportunities go?

This project grew out of our frustration with an environment where support for DEI feels increasingly precarious and women's rights are once again treated as up for debate. We wanted to create a perpetual space for women in tech: somewhere to find support, share knowledge, and build together year-round, beyond a single conference or an institution's changing priorities.

Virginia Woolf wrote about the importance of having a room of one's own: the space and independence to create. We wanted to bring that idea into technology. What does a room of your own look like when what you want to write is code?

For us, it looks like a place where you can ask questions, find a mentor, meet someone who shares your interests, and start building before you have everything figured out. It also means having access to the tools you need, even if you cannot buy them yourself.

Inspired by Girls Hoo Hack and the community at UVA, we built A Room of Our Own, a women-centered, gender-inclusive space for people in tech to create opportunities together.

If we're not given a seat at the table, we'll build our own room.

What it does

A Room of Our Own connects the people, conversations, ideas, and resources that help a community grow.

Rooms: Create a talk, workshop, coworking session, or ongoing chatroom about a computer science topic. Meet in person, virtually, or both. Members can RSVP, chat, and request to help run a room as a collaborator, with host approval.
Connections: Discover potential mentors and collaborators through Hinge-inspired profiles with photos, personal prompts, skills, and interests. Send likes, form mutual connections, and start a direct conversation. Clicking someone's name or avatar opens their profile.
Build together: Post project ideas, search for topics and skills, and find people to build with. Hardware projects can suggest relevant items from the community's sharing shelf and link to learning resources.
Share resources: Lend or give away electronics, tools, computing equipment, and materials. Members can search listings and manage borrowing requests, returns, and pickups. Sharing makes projects more accessible while encouraging people to reuse what the community already has.

Interest-based recommendations help members discover relevant people, rooms, and resources. A community board brings those opportunities together, while reporting, blocking, and visibility controls give members more control over their experience.

How we built it

We built the frontend with React, TypeScript, and Vite, using React Router for navigation, TanStack Query for server data, and React Hook Form with Zod for form validation. Our backend uses Django and Django REST Framework to manage accounts, profiles, rooms, connections, messages, projects, and resource requests.

The app uses session authentication and CSRF protection, with backend permission checks for ownership, private meeting links, and member interactions. Local development uses SQLite; the deployment configuration supports PostgreSQL and S3 media storage. Docker packages the frontend and backend, with Gunicorn and WhiteNoise serving the application.

We also added a Tiger Data integration for resource-sharing activity. When enabled on a compatible database, it stores events in a TimescaleDB hypertable and uses a continuous aggregate to summarize daily activity. The sharing shelf displays activity counters to make reuse visible.

Recommendations currently use interests, skills, and keyword matching. Room conversations refresh through polling and support replies, editing, and deletion.

Visually, we wanted the site to feel personal and inviting. Purple, door imagery, Polaroid-style photos, and a vintage Macintosh on the About page connect the experience to the idea of having a space to create.

Challenges we ran into

One challenge was connecting several features without making the app feel like several unrelated products. We gave each area a clear purpose: connections introduce people, rooms bring them into conversations, projects give them something to build, and resource sharing helps them get started.

We also had to refine layouts for laptop use. Moving navigation, search, and filters into sidebars made browsing easier while preserving the expressive profile cards at the center of Connections.

The technical challenge was keeping interactions consistent across the interface and backend: collaborator approval, borrowing status changes, profile visibility, and chat permissions all needed clear rules. Animation accessibility was another consideration, including respecting reduced-motion preferences.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We're proud of turning a literary inspiration into a working community experience with a recognizable visual identity.

The strongest part is how the features connect. Someone can discover a room, meet a potential collaborator, find a project, and borrow equipment to help build it. Resource sharing makes sustainability part of participating in the community, with an emphasis on reuse rather than buying something new for every idea.

We're also proud of the details that make participation more approachable: personal profile prompts, searchable discovery, clickable member identities, host-approved collaboration, and room conversations that continue beyond a scheduled event.

What we learned

We learned that building a community platform involves much more than adding ways to communicate. People need to understand where to go, what they can do there, and how to return to the relationships they have started.

Working across React and Django reinforced the importance of keeping form validation, API behavior, permissions, and database changes aligned. We also learned how much small design decisions matter: readable text, aligned fields, clear navigation, and predictable links can make an ambitious product feel approachable.

Most of all, we learned to prioritize depth. Improving the conversations and connections already in the app is more valuable right now than adding another entire social feed.

What's next for A Room of Our Own

Our immediate priorities are more reliable incoming DM updates, notifications for important interactions, and a persistent unread inbox so people can easily return to conversations.

We also want to test the experience with students and campus organizations, improve recommendations through their feedback, and better understand how the sharing shelf helps people access equipment and reuse materials. Over time, we hope to support more campus communities and community-led events.

Our goal is for every woman in tech to have access to a room of her own, and the opportunity to open its doors to others.