Rails Girls Nairobi Mega Coding Event
Our aim was to introduce Ruby on Rails to attendees and help them consider 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 (totalling 61 participants) who wrote their first code in Ruby on Rails during our event.
The Rails Girls Nairobi organizers thought of organizing our first major event after completing the training of the 1st 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.
The feedback from our attendees was overwhelmingly positive 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
Logistics/Planning Eight weeks out [x] Selected date and location of our event, in a way that it didnât conflict with other community events and holidays [x] Identified the expected number of participants [x] Identified appropriate venue and room for the event [x] Looked for coaches [x] Looked for appropriate funding organizations and send emails requesting for funds Seven weeks out [x] Created invitation link and made it available for application to interested participants [x] Conducted walk through inspection of the venue [x] Looked for coaches dinner hotel Four weeks out [x] Ordered and designed appropriate marketing materials for our event that included T-shirts, stickers and posters [x] Distributed the posters to the venue for marketing purposes [x] Decided on Menu and made arrangement for refreshments to be served [x] Identified the appropriate topics to be discussed on the event day Three weeks ahead [x] Sent invitation email to all applicants [x] Sent a remind email to funding organizations [x] Confirmed reservations and arrangements for the venue and catering [x] Confirmed our coaches and made hotel and transport arrangements Two weeks ahead [x] Made follow-up calls to invitation by reminding coaches to invite friends [x] Confirmed directions to the event location [x] Confirmed directions, location and made reservations for the coachesâ dinner One week ahead [x] Send a reminder email to all applicants indicating the venue, location and event schedule [x] Made last offer to invite friends [x] Confirmed the speakers are will be attending and sent schedules for various talks to the speakers [x] Confirmed coaches dinner hotel and menu [x] Organised for the delivery of marketing materials i.e T-shirts and stickers The event
Day 1: 16th February - Did installations: Installing Ruby on Rails on the attendees computers with help from the coaches and organizers. - Interaction session: Knowing each other and snacking. - Had coaches dinner: Coaches interacted during dinner, planned about the next dayâs events and what was expected of them. Day 2: 17th February Activities done on the second day include: - Early bird swag: The attendees were greeted with the eventâs t-shirt and sponsors marketing materials to the participants as they came in. - Attendees registration. - Checked in coaches to make sure each one of them is up to speed with the dayâs activities. - Introduction to Ruby on Rails - Word from sponsors. - Lightning talks. - Warm-up games. - Tea and Lunch. - Workshops: Attendees divided into groups of three and each group assigned to a coach to guide on building first simple application in Ruby on Rails - Tech stories. - Contemplating on thing learned and solving challenges in groups - Cake cutting. Here is a link to the detailed schedule for the event After the Event [x] Cleared all debts from the event. [x] Sent a thank you note to the attendees and coaches along with a feedback form on the event for thoughts on the event. [x] Made follow up calls to participants inviting them to our bi-weekly Rails Girls meetups. [x] Began planning for the bi-weekly weekend meetups. [x] Added all the attendees to our slack channel for communication and to keep the community alive. Many thanks to our sponsors (Microverse, Gitlab, Riara University, Google, Software Lab Ventures LLC, Gold Avenue Music LLC, The Ad Factory) & volunteers!