codebar in Cambridge
codebar began out of recognition that there is a shortage of women, LGBTQ, and people belonging to underrepresented ethnic groups in tech. To help bridge the gap a non-profit initiative was formed that facilitates the growth of a diverse tech community by running regular programming workshops in England. There are 3 large chapters in London and smaller chapters in Brighton, Birmingham and Manchester.
The workshops are safe environments with coaches agreeing to a code of conduct before teaching that ensures everyone is treated with respect and we approach coding in way that tries not to be daunting or scary.
Our students come from a variety of backgrounds, some want to become developers and others would simply like to learn the basics of coding in a supportive and social environment. We currently teach HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Git usage and Python, with an aim to expand into other languages at a later point.
I’ve been helping coordinating Cambridge’s chapter since March this year. Currently we meet about once a month at the Cambridge Makespace http://makespace.org / on Wednesday evenings for pizza and social meet up before I pair students off in either 1:1 or 1:2 ratio (e.g 1 coach, 2 students.). The coach and student agree to a structure of what they want to learn on the day. Sometimes is can be as simple as providing advice in tricky part of application or website the student is creating or teaching a series of lessons / tutorials featured on the codebar.io site.
Coaching can be daunting at first especially if students may be completely new to programming concepts. I’ve found it rewarding because it forces you to explain concepts or ideas out of your normal comfort zone of technical people but to a broader demographic who may or may not have experience .
Recently ARM has begun sponsoring our sessions with the aim of supporting diversity in a wider landscape. We are currently accepting new students that fit the diversity criteria (http://codebar.io/student-guide) and coaches from any background*.
If your interested in coaching please sign up at codebar.io
*But we really need Ruby coaches at the moment.
