Public Lab Research note


RAILS GIRLS NAIROBI MEGA CODING EVENT

by stella | March 15, 2018 14:10 15 Mar 14:10 | #15962 | #15962

stella was awarded the Basic Barnstar by warren for their work in this research note.


Organized by : Rails Girls Nairobi Rails Girls Community

RAILS GIRLS NAIROBI MEGA CODING EVENT

  February 16th - 1400hrs to 1700hrs
  February 17th - 0800hrs  to 1700hrs

Faceook Event URL : Event Link Photos URL : Rails Girls Nairobi Twitter hashtag : #RailsGirlsNairobi #MegaCoding

Organizers Name & Email

Our Sponsors:

  • Microverse
  • Gitlab
  • Riara University
  • Google
  • Software Lab Ventures, LLC
  • Gold Avenue Music, LLC

Metrics

How many registered to attend : 100 How many turned up in total : 61 Male Attendees : 20 Female Attendees : 41

Summary:

The aim of the event was to introduce Ruby on rails to attendees and help them realize the importance of tech communities in career development. Our target audience was students from the age of 16. We also wanted to bring coaches who have experience on these technologies to come and speak to the attendees and also have a hands-on sessions with them as they start their journey on Ruby on Rails and software development in general. We managed to bring together 16 awesome coaches who use Ruby daily in building softwares and had a total of 39 beginners who wrote their first code in Ruby on Rails during our event.

Overall Objective:

We the Rails Girls Nairobi organizers, thought of organizing our first major event after completing the training of the1st cohort of the Rails Girls program which had about 6 ladies committed to the program. We needed continuity and growth to the tech community in terms of outreach and knowledge transfer to those interested in venturing into the world of programming, using Ruby as the programming language to get them started. Our major target was college students due to their flexibility in attending the scheduled meetups. The aim of the event was to introduce Ruby on Rails to attendees and help them realize the importance of tech communities in career development. The students were also introduced to open source world and be guided on how to contribute to open source projects. We had Alumna of great student opportunities such as Google Summer of Code, Outreachy, Rails Girls Summer of Code and Anita Borg also gave tips on how to get into such opportunities.

Success Highlights:

Attendee Feedback: After the event we sent out a feedback form to the attendees and coaches. Summary of the feedback was: - The event was amazing and informative - Direct involvement from the coaches helped them understand and grasp the content better. - Lightning talks such as opportunities in tech, real life tech stories, good programmer practices, version controlling were very inspiring and made them be inspired to keep continue building softwares. - The warm-up games were awesome and helped people to bond and clear their minds. They would love such events to be organized outside Nairobi.


12 Comments

I love this! Thanks for sharing StellaMaris. It looks like an incredible event.

I especially loved some of the photos you shared of it -- and the planning checklist! Would you be able to upload some more photos and the checklist so other folks can try planning an event like you did?

Thanks so much for sharing!!!

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Ah sorry I see photos are linked to! :-)

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That's cool, It looks like incredible event.

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Seems really mega event with great energy !!! Thanks for sharing @stella .

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Hi @stella !

This is really inspirational :)
Thanks for sharing .

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There was a real buzz in the chatroom from your post, @stella! I think some other members of the software contributor community may follow your example and run a local event!

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Yeah sure. I am also thinking of this kind of an event at my university. Great work @stella

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@warren awards a barnstar to stella for their awesome contribution!

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I posted this to the blog! Publiclab.org/blog

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Hi, @stella - just checking if you'd be interested in posting your checklist as a guide to others who are now hosting events, inspired by your example!

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Hi @warren, Same or different post?

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Hi, @stella - a new post, maybe? More like a "how-to" then a report-back from this one? You don't have to write anything new, but seeing an example checklist is really helpful for folks trying to plan out their own.

Awesome!!!

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