RailsBridge and the ecosystem of classes and courses

[Daniel Choi]

RailsBridge SF is attempting an intermediate RailsBridge curriculum this weekend.

Before we follow suit, I think it's worth taking some time to think and talk about how the RailsBridge workshop fits in the larger ecosystem of Ruby on Rails programming courses, both online and in Boston.

The RailsBridge Boston introductory workshops are definitely important and will soon be having a significant impact on the gender makeup of the Boston programming community.

The question is whether also organizing an intermediate RailsBridge workshops would also have a similar impact, or whether we should focus on perfecting, repeating, and growing the introductory workshop. We certainly have a lot of volunteer energy and power, but we don't have a unlimited supply, and we have a smaller supply than RailsBridge SF does. So maybe it would be wiser to focus on ways to for support our graduates in their post-workshop development that don't necessarily require the time, money, and energy investment of running workshop events.

These ideas could include

1. A Meetup group  that helps graduates organize their own RailsBridge graduate hackfests or study groups.
2. Encouraging alums to use this Google Group to stay in touch, ask for learning tips and advice, and job seeking advice.
3. Getting graduates involved in open source projects on GitHub that are coordinated by RailsBridge TAs and serve the dual purpose of helping the grads learn and of actually building something cool and useful. We could even have a badge that says "this is a RailsBridge learning project".

These are just my ideas. If you have some, please share them, as well as your opinion about whether we should try to run intermediate RailsBridge workshops.

Dan

[Matt Griffin]

I think the simplest things should get tried first- ie, create a Group for alumni to help each other as they teach themselves (and so some TA type people can lurk and help when people gets stuck.)

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[Daniel Choi]

That sounds sensible to me. Let's try to get something up by end of week!

[Patrick Robertson]

I think this is a somewhat huge problem space and almost everyone is struggling on how to get people from introductory into an actual member of the development communit[ies].  I'm certainly struggling to find the right mix of repetitive workshop topics and providing the basic core competencies to be considered a fully-functional Rubyist at BostonRB.

The issue is that there are a number of core competencies that need to be taught before you'd really consider a person a member of a specific development community.  Having no understanding of automated testing really excludes you from the Ruby or Rails community, having no knowledge of basic form security excludes you from the general web dev community, etc.  

There's little hope that you could get through any of those topics in an introductory weekend.  I think there are topics that are important enough to not leave for self-study if the goal is to really change the makeup of the web development and Ruby communities in Boston.  I have a feeling that's probably why SF has elected to start some more advanced workshops.

- Patrick

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[Daniel Choi]

If teaching all the intermediate stuff that is necessary to know is
impossible to do in a weekend, then maybe we should just let other
people do that. Maybe we can work out deals with Thoughtbot, Startup
School, Launch Academy, etc. Maybe they can offer tuition discounts for
RailsBridge graduates! This would be a great way for the folks who make
a business of running programming courses to support the cause of
improving gender diversity. And RailsBridge's job would be to grow
the pipeline of women who enroll in those courses.




On Wed, Nov 14, 2012 at 04:58 PM, Patrick Robertson <patricks...@gmail.com> wrote:

> from: Patrick Robertson <patricks...@gmail.com>
> date: Wed, Nov 14 04:58 PM -05:00 2012
> to: railsbr...@googlegroups.com
> reply-to: railsbr...@googlegroups.com
> subject: Re: RailsBridge and the ecosystem of classes and courses

> --

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http://danielchoi.com/software

[Matt Griffin]

Was the new group announced to attendees yet? There's only a handful of people signed up.

On Tuesday, November 13, 2012 11:28:05 AM UTC-5, Matt Griffin wrote:

I think the simplest things should get tried first- ie, create a Group for alumni to help each other as they teach themselves (and so some TA type people can lurk and help when people gets stuck.)

[Daniel Choi]

I'm not sure. Brendan or Braulio should know. But it does look like students don't seem to know about this list.

[Daniel Choi]

We could just send out invites to the RailsBridge Boston Alumni group using the Google Groups "Invite Members" feature. Just paste in the email list from the list of students from Workshops #1 and #2.

[Chris Houhoulis]

I would love to make sure we are actually reaching everyone from the
first two workshops. Did we finally include everyone in the invitation
from Dan this morning? If not, who has the email lists Dan mentioned below?

[dhchoi]

Hi Chris, I think we will email a link to the 2nd workshop recap to everyone from the past 2 workshops, and also invite them to join this list in it. The recap should be ready by Monday next week, hopefully.

Dan