Rails Girls Kenya: Mega Workshop 2
Description
On 7th March 2020 which happened to be International Women’s Day(*this was intentional*)
Rails Girls Nairobi and Rails Girls Mombasa which forms Rails Girls Kenya came together to bring a one day workshop that aimed to have more ladies join tech by introducing Ruby on Rails to the attendees and helping them realize the importance of tech communities in career development. This is with the intent of building diversity in the Tech Industry in Kenya that is currently male dominated. Gents were also welcomed with the recommendation of bringing two ladies along :wink:
Registrations and Installations
We had sent out setup instructions for attendees a week before to get them setup before the event. So on the d-day it was just the coaches helping out blocked fellows(mostly Windows-using fellows ) as registrations were going on. We also had some stickers for early birds.
Intro
We got started with a 5-min talk from each of our sponsors’ representatives. They told us what they do, what problem they are solving with their technologies and also why they choose to support Rails Girls Kenya. Their banners also graced our event
Getty Orawo(one of the coaches) did an intro to Object Oriented Programming and Ruby and got the audience excited for the breakout session.
Breakout Hands on Sessions
Our breakout sessions consist of a coach and 4–5 attendees. The attendees are matched based on their level of programming experience. This session’s main idea is to “show spark, personality and keep in mind the big picture. Explain, repeat and always tie what you’re telling into a larger context.” This is one of the philosophies of the breakout sessions as defined in the Rails Girls organization guidelines, which is the umbrella organization of these two chapters(RG Nairobi and RG Mombasa). This is the main session in all of our events and consists of at least 3 hours
During the breakout session, the coaches did simple explanations as they built the applications, even with the cost of accuracy. We avoided talking about all underlying concepts. Just tried to answer questions when they arose, or move on if they were too hard or out of scope. Basically the coaches aim was to show how to get stuff done. The argument is, one has to learn how to build web applications before learning how to do it well. During this session the coaches also share how they got into tech and allow the team members to ask questions about the industry.
This time our breakout sessions had a twist. Each team was building an interesting application and they had a 5-min to present in the afternoon what they learnt. We had 3-coaches and 1 organizer as judges.
“The event was well planned and well executed. We had so much fun learning as we competed. It takes working together to learn together and I think that was the best thing about Rails Girls Kenya Megacoding event” said Dan Kat one of the attendees and a long-time member
Project Presentations and Awards
After lunch break, we gave the teams 30 mins to finalize their applications and discuss the presentation. We then had a 4-min presentation from each team. We had a panel of 4 judges who asked them questions to gauge their understanding. The judging criteria was based on their understanding ofhow the application works, the different components and their effort to improve the default scaffold design
The winning teams and exceptional individuals were presented with their awards
Lightning Talks
We have a rule of making lightning talks as short as possible. We find these makes the audience listen to every word, the coaches make the talk as short as possible and straight to the point. This time we minimized it to a max of 3-min each and they made use of every second.
Catherine Chepkurui gave a talk on how to leverage opensource for experience and skills development. She also talked about open source paid opportunities like Rails Girls Summer of Code, Google Summer of code and Outreachy. Hannah Masila told us how she became interested in tech and how she grew in her career to be working with top clients like Github under Andela. KAMAL OGUDAH discussed on “what next”. How the attendees can make use of what they learnt, importance of tech communities in career growth and how to find help if stuck.
“From the Rails Girls megacoding event, I learnt that there are many opportunities for ladies out there in the tech world. It just requires determination, and practice.” Says Kimberly Msabeni, one of our attendees.
Coaches
Here is what Winnie who is a first time coach had to say about the event.
“Being a first time coach for a Ruby on Rails event, I enjoyed being a coach at Rails Girls. We were two coaches with 5 learners and that made it easier for us to break down the project to the learners. During the breakout sessions, I loved the fact that the team I was working with was diverse and had strong listening skills. After explaining to them the project at hand, they took the initiative to come up with the approach they were to use while working collaboratively on it.
The learners were excited to learn and this was satisfying to see them build a basic app which equipped them with foundation knowledge on Ruby on Rails. After we had completed working on the application, we shared with the team some feedback from the breakout session and shared with them more resources on Ruby on Rails.” said Winnie Rotich. She was also kind and honest enough to offer positive criticism and concerns during retrospective with the coaches that will keep in mind during our next event :)
Organizers
The event was an awesome collaboration these great ladies who worked tirelessly, replying to emails, brainstorming, designing the posters and booking vendors etc..I remember us being in a meeting three weeks to the event and we didn’t have any cent in our account only but the determination kept us going and they were ready to dig into our pockets to make sure the event happened.
Our Generous Sponsors
This is the first time the workshop was fully funded by companies and organizations with local presence and we can’t fail to recognize that. We are so grateful to these four sponsors who made the event possible
Ona: helps you make better informed decisions using your data
Sokowatch enables informal retailers to order products at anytime via SMS or mobile app, and receive free same-day delivery to their store.
Riara University provides holistic education to enable student realize their full potential and develop social and moral values which will underpin their actions through life.
Twiga Foods links farmers and vendors to fair, trusted, modern markets. Providing a complete supply chain in Kenya for quality produce in urban areas.
We would like to challenge other start-ups to follow Ona, Sokowatch and Twiga examples and start supporting tech communities because developers grow from these communities and they in turn need developers.
We cannot fail to recognized the presence of Sokowatch C.E.O who showed up for the workshop, gave an overview of Sokowatch’s mission and joined us as one of our coaches for the breakout session as he is a Ruby developer :)
Fun Times
