Free Ruby on Rails Workshops » Uncategorized

September/October Outreach at Stanford

Karen Zeller — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 19:27:31 +0000

We’re planning a Ruby on Rails outreach workshop to held at Stanford University, and co-hosted by the Stanford Society of Women Engineers (SWE) in September/October of this year. SWE is open to men and women, students and community members alike, and is dedicated to promoting engineering diversity on campus and in the community.

Participating in the workshop will be a great way to connect to the broader campus and Stanford community, and gain visibility in the environment.

We’re currently looking for help: technical as well as organizational, plus corporate sponsors, to help subsidize food and drinks at the event. Sponsors will publicized to the Stanford student, staff and faculty members who are part of engineering department and SWE.

Workshops continue in 2010

Sarah Allen — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 07:40:00 +0000

On February 26th and 27th, we held a successful workshop at the Microsoft offices in downtown San Francisco, supported by EngineYard, Blazing Cloud, Pivotal Labs and a host of volunteers. This may be the last workshop led by “the Sarahs” and Ilen, and that is good news. As we approach the end of our commitment to spend one year teaching at least 200 women Ruby on Rails with the expectation that we would find 10-20 new Rubyists from that group, we find that we have accomplished more than we set out to achieve. We have taught about 300 women (and some men) Ruby on Rails. The local SF Ruby meetups routinely have 5-10 women or more. Sarah Mei recently tallied 18%, reported at SCALE 8x in her talk about moving the needle.

A critical next step is to make the workshops sustainable and we have a plan, at least for this year. We’re planning to have 3 more workshops in San Francisco, each led by a different team, supported by experienced volunteers. We have documented the process as part of the RailsBridge Open Workshop project, putting together a set of workshop recipes. The recipes are still missing a lot of info — we expect to improve the documentation as new leaders learn what we’ve forgotten to write down. We’ve also heard from people in other cities who would like to create workshops of their own, and maybe create workshops that expand on the curriculum we currently teach or branch out to Javascript or other tech.

If you would like to get involved, join the google group and let us know how you would like to help and also join the mailing list for announcements.

Rails workshop this weekend

Sarah Mei — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 02:38:06 +0000

We’ve got a few spots left in the free Ruby on Rails workshop for women at sfCUBE in San Francisco this weekend. It’s officially full, but we should be able to take most of the folks off the waitlist. If you join the waitlist but we aren’t able to accommodate you, you get priority registration for the next workshop.

Here’s this weekend’s schedule:

Friday, September 25th: 6-9pm, install everything you need
Saturday, September 26th: 10am-4pm: workshop

You should be able to attend both sessions. If you can’t make the installfest but you’re reasonably technical and think you could handle it, I can probably make an exception. Email me directly (sarah mei at gmail).

Find all the details and register at the meetup site.

July/August Workshop Wrapup

Sarah Allen — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 06:43:24 +0000

We had a great turnout at the July/August Ruby on Rails workshop at Pivotal Labs! More than forty women came out to learn Rails, and we had more than twenty volunteers to help them. The low student-to-volunteer ratio really made the classes go smoothly.

We also had several volunteers who focused on the logistics and that was a huge help. The TAs had a lot of great ideas for the curriculum that we hope to integrate next time. Also, huge thanks to TAs who took the lead as teachers at the last minute. We ended up creating a bunch of small groups which were very effective for learning. If you are interested in volunteering to help with future workshops, please susbscribe to the google group and let us know how you would like to help! We welcome people who want to help. If you have a great idea, we want to hear it, but if you have the energy and time to make it happen, that is even better.

More about the event:

Many thanks to our sponsors:

Workshop group photo by JC Dill

July/August Ruby workshop registration open!

Sarah Mei — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 04:08:11 +0000

Registration is now open for the free Ruby workshop for women that Sarah Allen and I are running at the end of July. Please RSVP soon – the last workshop filled up less than 3 days after registration opened.

LEARN ME

This is a two-day event open to total programming novices, system administrators, and developers in other languages. In other words – everyone! All the details are on the meetup pages.

RSVP yes for both Friday and Saturday to reserve your spot.
Day 1, Friday 7/31: http://www.meetup.com/sfruby/calendar/10804417
Day 2, Saturday 8/1: http://www.meetup.com/sfruby/calendar/10804438

As before, men are welcome to register as the +1 of a woman doing the workshop. So guys, I know there’s a woman somewhere in your life who you’ve always thought would make a great programmer. Recruit her and you can come along too.

The workshop includes dinner on Friday, and breakfast and lunch on Saturday. Child care and private space for nursing and/or pumping are available. Partners are welcome to stay with the kids but that’s not required.

We are looking for experienced Rails developers of all genders to volunteer at the event. This time we have a separate volunteer coordinator so that things run more smoothly. Volunteering will be fun and educational, plus it’ll be a great networking opportunity. Stay tuned for info on how to get on the volunteer list.

Ruby on Rails Workshop Dates Confirmed!

Sarah Mei — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 22:10:36 +0000

Pivotal Labs will be hosting our next workshop on July 31st and August 1st – that’s Friday evening and Saturday all day.

We expect it to fill up quickly once registration is open. Watch this space to find out when you can register, or join our low-traffic announcement-only mailing list!

Email address:

Hack Session July 1st

Sarah Mei — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 16:05:49 +0000

Join me and Sarah Allen on Wednesday, July 1st, for a hack session at Citizen Space in San Francisco.

If you haven’t been to a hack session before, make this your first! A hack session is unstructured time to work on a project or learn something new from the other attendees. Bring your laptop and a project to work on, continue the suggest-o-rama app we started at the first workshop, or find a project once you get here. Usually there are at least a few startup people hacking on something cool. Maybe you’re one of them.

We’ll probably have some impromptu presentations on whatever people seem interested in. There’s child care, and older kids with projects of their own are welcome as participants. My 4-year-old is bringing her XO and has volunteered to show anyone who asks how to play Implode.

This event is open to everyone, whether or not you attended the first workshop. Register over at the SF Ruby Meetup site. See you there!