[Events] RailsBridge event braindump

[Asheesh Laroia]

On Sat, 5 Feb 2011, Karen Rustad wrote:

>> Also, how much freedom did you have in what to work on? Once you followed
>> the http://www.wiki.devchix.com/index.php?title=Rails_3_Curriculumtutorial, did you then throw away the thing you made and start on a project
>> of your own?
>
>
> The only project we worked on at the workshop was the tutorial
> project--that, plus background info, plus answering all the various
> questions/curiosities people had (plus breaks) took the entire time we had
> available. There wasn't a freeform hacking session. I'm pretty sure that was
> the case for everybody. People did discuss apps they were building or wanted
> to build during off-time when we were chatting, but there wasn't any work
> being done on them at the workshop. It would've been cool to have had a
> hackathon--I would've enjoyed that--but I don't think it could've been fit
> in--even as it was, people were pretty tired by the end (though they did
> perk up at the afterparty).

Interesting. That's good to know; I think we were aiming for having a 
tutorial session and then a hack session. I think we were going to bite 
off more than we could chew.

Other Boston people: thoughts?

> Maybe if I go to the meeting on Wednesday, that'll be what happens then?

*nod*

>> I guess one other question: the event has been advertised as having 
>> child care in the past. Did they have it, and what did it logistically 
>> mean? (I imagine it's just, "You find someone willing to play with 
>> children, and find the kids and that person a room", but maybe there's 
>> more to it -- maybe it's important to rotate people in and out, for 
>> example, or to split up the kids into age groups, or ...?) (Or maybe 
>> they didn't need it this time because the attendees happened not to 
>> bring any kids.)
>
> I noticed one lady brought her (slightly older; age 8-9?) daughter to 
> the event. She wasn't in my section, though, so I don't know if her 
> daughter went to class with her or if there was child care during 
> classtime.

Interesting. I guess we should talk to the organizers of the SF one if 
we're going to learn more about how they handle it.

For us, it sounds like something we'll figure out when we ask the 
participants what age children (if any) they are planning to bring.

> Another instructor I talked to was mainly concerned with making SF Ruby 
> and the developer community as a whole more diverse--he works for 
> ModCloth, which is RoR-based. Given the focus of the company, there's 
> lots of ladies working in all of the departments...*except* the dev 
> team. No female coders there. He thought that was criminal, and hoped 
> that teaching at this sort of event might help.

Good to hear that sort of thing happening.

> That same instructor also mentioned that he felt strongly that the 
> curricular emphasis on best practices was important--that if you start 
> out in Ruby, doing things like tests and m-v-c separation and whatnot 
> right from the start, you get good habits, whereas if you start out in 
> (his example) PHP, you tend to become a sloppy cowboy coder and need 
> eventual re-education. (I won't say if I agree or not, but that was his 
> take on things.)

I think it's a reasonable idea that teaching good practices helps people 
see how to apply those elsewhere. I try to refrain from making strong 
statements, so I won't say more. (-:

> Tidbits of wisdom? Hm... The instructor I ate lunch with told me that 
> there's a ridiculous shortage of Ruby devs in SF, so if you want a job, 
> especially a hip startup job, that's *the* thing to learn.

Yeah -- and it's quite true of Django/Python stuff, too.

> Also, as I mentioned in IRC: "I was talking to one of the volunteers and 
> she said that she thought the most important aspect of the event wasn't 
> really any of the material itself, but simply that every person there 
> demonstrably had a full RoR development setup working on their computer 
> now. Like, almost in those words. She saw that as the biggest hurdle." 
> Forget actually learning to write things with it. Because all that setup 
> is the hardest thing for an individual to do on your own--yet it's 
> impossible to start without it. (She said this, completely unprompted, 
> and bells went off in my head along the lines of "This is why the 
> buildhelper is important, dammit!" :) )

Yes!

You and we and she and I are going to push the world past this, because we 
all see it this way.

(-:,

-- Asheesh.

-- 
You will remember something that you should not have forgotten.