We hope to teach trans, genderqueer, or otherwise gender-variant folks computer programming and software engineering skills. The class is entirely free, and we will provide all the equipment you'll need to succeed at it.

Why programming? It's an active field, especially in the SF Bay Area. Plenty of tech companies in San Francisco are actively hiring for software engineers. It's also generally a pretty decent job to have; "software developer" was rated second in US News and World Report's Best Jobs of 2012 article. The software industry also happens to be relatively trans friendly. It's not like you can completely avoid bigotry in any industry, but software tends to put a little less emphasis on normativity than most office jobs, which helps. The big players such as Microsoft and Google even tend to have trans-inclusive health care plans.

Over the course of a year, we will teach you how to program in Python along with basic Linux skills, software engineering methodology, and software design. At the end of the year, you will be presented with a certification that you completed the program that you can put on your résumé. We will also work to help to place you in industry internships or full-time positions if you are interested (internships in software tend to pay a decent wage).

Transcode will run similarly to a night class at college. We plan to have two classes a week, about 90 minutes each, with about 10 hours of work per week outside of class. A lot of time out of class sounds like a large commitment, but becoming a good programmer is much more about practice than about having somebody talk at you in a classroom setting.