[Events] hello everyone

[Daniel Choi]

On Wed, Jun 06, 2012 at 01:45 PM, Asheesh Laroia <lists at asheesh.org> wrote:

> I'll conclude a few things from this:
> 
> * Jessica's plan that people should try running project nights
>   before they dive into an outreach workshop seems to be quite
>   reasonable!

Yes! This sequence is working great for us. Project Night seemed easier
to do since there was already an established, but not well-attended
monthly Ruby Hack Night.  We gave that a big makeover and turned it into
a very beginner-friendly Boston Ruby Project Night. The resulting
attendance was triple what it was formerly.  And we had to turn people
away, unfortunately, because of the space constraints.

A successful project night under our belt is giving us a lot of
confidence in planning the workshop.

> * Giving talks is not only fun, but probably a good idea. (:

Yes! Your PyCon 2012 presentation was pivotal.

> Dan, I'm curious if you can write a little bit about the fact
> that Boston.rb renamed the "Hack night" to a "Project night."
> Did you guys change anything in particular about the hack night
> other than the name? (And what sort of feedback did you get about
> the name change?)

At our first organizational outreach meeting, quite a few people
reported that to non-programmers, newbies, and novices, the word "hack"
is vague, confusing, and maybe slightly anti-social. But everyone
understands was a "project" is, and to most people a project is
something fun, productive, collaborative, and creative.  No one among us
had any special attachment to the word "hack," so we chucked it and
adopted "project night" in a heartbeat.  Again, we were following Boston
Python here, and we quickly appreciated the advantages of changing the
name of the event.

It wasn't just a name change though. We changed the whole organization
and tone of Hack Night. We had a beginners' corner for the first time,
along with experienced Rubyists volunteers available to give help. And
we had an excellent emcee who went the whole nine yards to make damn
sure that everyone felt welcome and included! 

We got no specific feedback about the name change. That's probably
because most of the people who came last night didn't even know that
BostonRB had been hosting "hack nights" previously!

Dan