Virtual codebar

We won’t mention the big C word in this post, as we’ve heard it enough already but let’s say it’s kept us on our toes here at codebar. Ever since our first workshop venue canceled on us at the beginning of March we’ve had to adapt. We knew that this situation would not be over in a few weeks so we had to do something to ensure we could still help people with their coding journey.

There was one thing that was absolutely certain at the beginning — we would still run workshops for people! We know our students and coaches enjoy the regularity of our workshops, and we know with this downtime a lot would still be learning to code. So it was a no brainer for us to run virtual workshops. The big question we had was how?

We had a few conversations internally about how we could do this. We decided that using a mixture of Discord, Slack, and Zoom would allow us to continue running all of our events.

Keeping codebar going in a global crisis, pairing amazing coaches that make a big difference

— anonymous student feedback about what went well

For our virtual workshops, we are predominantly using Discord. If you are thinking of attending and are not familiar with it don’t worry, we send out a setting up document beforehand. Discord enables us to have a voice and a text channel setup for each workshop to allow for communication. There is also a workshop specific Slack channel for those who are more familiar with Slack.

This is how a typical virtual workshop is run:

1. People use Slack to check-in and organisers get in touch directly with them to double-check what they are either working on or if coaching, what technologies are comfortable helping with.
2. Everyone is then directed to our Discord server and to the relevant workshop channels, where we try to encourage a little bit of chatter during this intro time to make up for what would have under other circumstances been social time; and then the pairing takes place.
3. Our organisers make an effort to pre-pair students and coaches based on their check-in preferences and then announce the pairs and their designated Discord rooms.

It has definitely been a bit more challenging for everyone, but Discord’s screen sharing and voice features have enabled us to keep the structure very much similar to our physical workshops as we can allow for 1:1 or 1:2 pairing, whilst organisers can pop in the rooms periodically to make sure they check that everyone is doing well and help them with any Discord technical issues. For the students and coaches who have had Discord trouble, we try to have backup options available. Zoom, GMeet, and whereby have been some of the suggested and used alternatives, but overall we have had very positive feedback from attendees about our setup and we don’t think we’ll be changing it anytime soon!

Photo was taken by Brighton chapter organiser Anwen Williams of her setup during the virtual workshops

For our Monthlies, and all future one-offs, like our upcoming Intro to Data Science workshop we will use Zoom. At our first Virtual Monthlies last week we had 141 people attending on Zoom — the biggest codebar event EVER! - and we are keen to grow that number even more.

Photo was taken by Julia Studholme — Tech Marketing Lead at Simply Business

The biggest benefit to our virtual events is you can join on any day from anywhere, unlike our physical workshops where you have to be able to live in the city they take place and be able to get to the venue in time. If you can not attend your normal Thursday Norwich workshop, well that’s ok because now you can join in on the workshops happening on Wednesday. If getting to a venue is difficult for you because you have children, it’s ok, now you can join in with a workshop from the comfort of your own sofa. Reaching out to more people has always been something we’ve been striving for, and we are trying to use this as an opportunity to achieve that.

Thus, virtual workshops have lead us on a new and exciting path for codebar. Of course, once things go back to normal (and it’s safe) we will start running in-person workshops again, but now that we have the infrastructure in place for virtual workshops and we know that this enables us to cater for more people, we plan to fully take advantage of it in the long term. We are also looking for help with ongoing costs for these virtual events so please drop us an email hello@codebar.io if you want to chat about this more.

If you have already attended one of our virtual workshops and would like to give us some feedback then please do via this form. If you’ve never been able to attend codebar because of location then now if your chance 😄😄.

Stay safe and much love, the codebar team

P.S Did you know codebar is now a charity? Read more about this development in this blog post.