RailsBridge April 2017 @ Instacart Volunteer/Student Retro + Action Items

[Jane]

Note: This was already sent to the event volunteers, posting here to create a more public/permanent record.

This workshop in general went extremely well and we had extremely engaged volunteers and students. :)

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Post retro action items that will get looped into a bigger potential project of updating the organizer cookbook so the next RailsBridge rolls even better.

- Always make sure ac will be on for workshop day (it was at Instacart, thanks!)
- Set up a system of signage and make sure name/pronoun tags are around
- Be more explicit about start times and especially deadlines for arrival
- Keep an eye we stay at the right volunteer/student ration (usually do so far!)
- Have volunteer huddle checklist of what to cover during said huddle which includes (fast!) intros of everyone and their level of experience
- Manage and keep an eye on what breakfast/lunch is being ordered. Make sure at least yogurt is available at breakfast, etc. (bummer about that, I had thought they were doing sandwich bar)
- Manage and keep an eye on childcare more as well, that was huge bummer to not have
- Remove teaching slides (eg what the internet is) from intro talk, let teachers handle that as appropriate
- Add check av in rooms to setup guide
- If two groups of the same level, create system for them to huddle and decide how to shake out into groups based on finer understanding of level and/or focus of study


Volunteer retro:

Good
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- student to teacher ratio
- centrally located
- wifi
- awesome students
- ac was on big thanks!

Meh
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- orange could have been put into thoughtful groups since there were two classes

Not so good
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- carrot had loose cables, room was unusable
- breakfast and lunch didn't really address dietary requirements, very starchy
- no signage
- Name tags late, no cute carrot nametags
- Early morning what to do and when, more explicit info about when to arrive
- Official introductions during volunteer huddle


Student retro:

Gabe Berke-Williams led the student retros (thanks!) and got this stellar feedback below.

What worked:
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* Lots of waitlist people got in
* Knowledgeable teachers (esp Jane, Dom, Angela)
* The levels (blue/green/etc) worked very well
* Student/instructor ratio was good
* Installfest (even when people ran through instructions from home,
without coming in on Friday!) was very effective
* Good amount of time commitment
* Gabe (meeee) was very welcoming of off-topic questions
* All women
* Flexible curriculum, so people could ask questions, speed up, slow
down, etc
* Saturday is a good day - if it were e.g. 2 hours/day on Tuesday
nights, people wouldn't be able to come
* Happy to have job opportunities at lunch
* Got even more out of it than expected out of the testing class
* Strong wifi
* Volunteers' sheer enthusiasm for Ruby came through
* It's free!
* People were happy that food was provided, so they didn't have to split
up at lunch and could mingle with others

What was meh:
---------------------------------
* Multiple people asked for a 2-day (Saturday _and_ Sunday) class
* Would be nice to have a jobs board in Bridgetroll so people can post
and reply jobs rather than having to meet up at lunch
* Childcare wasn't available and people didn't find out until Friday
* Would like to have Rails example apps to see what's possible to build
with Rails
* Orange level: would like better high-level context so they have an
overview of where they're going
* Would like to see best practices for advanced students; how do people
structure real-world apps?
* Elevators were locked until 9am
* Would like to know when they actually _have_ to arrive (8:50? 9?
9:30); what's the hard deadline for arrival?

What could be improved:
---------------------------------
* Nothing; whenever I started writing things in this column (like the
lack of childcare), students specifically asked me to move it to the
merely "meh" column. Which is great!