Planning our first event

[jasonrhodes]

These nodeschool.io events sound great and I'd love to bring them to Baltimore on a regular basis. If you have thoughts or ideas on how to go about this, feel free to jump in and help out.

Things I'll be figuring out over the next month as we prepare for our first event:

• A venue
  • Collaborative table space
  • Seats for anywhere from 20 to 50 people (totally guessing here)
  • Reliable wi-fi
  • Availablility for about a 3 hour time slot (flexible on when, see below)
• A time
  • Probably needs to be about 3 hours
  • Do people prefer something like a Wednesday from 6:30-9:30 or a Saturday from 1-4?
• Mentors
  • Do you know node on any level? Please volunteer to come and help others work through the workshop! All you need to do is run through the Learn You Node workshop at home and then come and be available when others have questions. If you're interested, let me know with a comment here or tweet at twitter/@bmorenodeschool

We'll most likely be doing Learn You Node to start out, and possibly a more advanced one if enough people show up who already know node basics.

[joshbroton]

Jason, we're running a NodeSchool in Sioux Falls and we learned a couple of valuable lessons along the way:

1. Make sure you have 10/1 attendee/mentor ratio. We didn't the first time and it was a bit rough running around helping people get Node and NodeSchool working on their systems, and answering questions about idiomatic Node.
2. Speaking of, see if you can get people to try and Node and NodeSchool before they come. A lot of Windows users had some issues with npm that were easy to work through, but ended up taking 20+ minutes at the start.
3. A basic understanding of programming constructs is important. I made the mistake of misrepresenting it to a couple of people who wanted to learn JavaScript. It's not for them.
4. learnyounode took me 3ish hours to work through, even after writing node full-time for a few months.
5. So many people didn't finish learnyounode that we're running a second learnyounode session to reinforce the basics before we continue on.
6. Not surprisingly, the people that got the most out of it were pairing, especially if they weren't already familiar with JavaScript.

[hackygolucky]

Howdy @jasonrhodes !! This is super exciting. I jumped on this thread from the nodeschool/discussions. Whenever we consider doing events like this and because of our organizers' backgrounds, we tend to hope for a good amount of new programmers/new to JS, too. Word of caution--the current workshops aren't super newbie friendly. We're talking about building an Intro to JS workshop, but no one has stepped up yet(It would be serious brownie points for whoever does!). If you're new to programming, the command line itself can be a pretty intimidating thing. That said, nodeschool is also a ton of fun and an incredible way to get people hooked!

I might suggest making sure you have as many mentors as you can muster. If they aren't super comfortable mentoring for node specifically, maybe they can help focus on the new programmers and general JavaScript. Make sure to have some resources on-hand outside of nodeschool.io that that newbies could use if they find nodeschool too difficult or need a refresher.

[jasonrhodes]

@joshbroton awesome tips. I'm going to try to pack the room with mentors, even people who may not know node super well but are at least familiar with the CLI and/or Javascript so that we are as equipped as possible to help people at any level get something out of it, as @hackygolucky suggests.

@hackygolucky thanks! The current plan is to do "Learn You Node" at every event, and introduce a second parallel workshop for more advanced attendees later, so that we're always equipped to help beginners but still provide a way for people to move onto the more advanced topics.

I had heard that beginners were leaving feeling like they learned a lot even if they didn't know the CLI/node when they came, but I wonder if that's hasn't been as true for others.

I may hit both of you up later as we get things rolling, if I run into other procedural or strategy questions. Thanks again!

[angeliquejw]

Hi, Jason, thanks for pointing me to this convo.

So, for Girl Develop It Baltimore, the places we have gotten contacts and/or offers from that meet your needs include:

• Betamore: Capacity of up to 40. However, it's not free; the space costs $20/hr if it's after hours or on the weekend to cover the cost of security/opening the building.
• AOL/Advertising.com: Definitely has the capacity, not sure if/when they charge for the space or if it's open on weekends (but I'm finding that out now for my own purposes and will update). Bonus: Parking!
• New ETC building: Have a variety of different spaces, probably could hold up to 50 in certain layouts.

All these spaces have chairs and tables. AOL has the best electrical outlet situation, I believe. If you want a specific intro to any/all of these space coordinators, let me know!

[sclarson]

I'm the other organizer of the Sioux Falls events. In our first event we had a standard classroom table layout(all facing the same direction). We're going to flip tables around next event so that rows people are face one another to see if that helps spur collaboration. We're also going to push people to pair more strongly that we did the first time.

The intro to JS workshop @hackygolucky is talking about(and @joshbroton/myself have discussed) would be SUPER helpful for a lot of the devs new to javascript. I would almost plan on Learnyounode taking more than 1 three hour session while people get used to async(the biggest hurdle for many).

If anyone wants to start working talking about "what" the Intro to JS needs to cover, I'd love to get involved.

[jasonrhodes]

@sclarson I'd be interested in working on an intro to JS workshop. If you want, we can start another issue here to discuss initial plans?

[jasonrhodes]

@angeliquejw If you can put me in touch with someone at AOL/Advertising.com re: that space, I think I'll start there and see if they have availability for a weekend. I have two other places in mind that I'm checking into next week, in the Charles Village area roughly.

If anyone else has space ideas, let us know.

[angeliquejw]

Jason, sending you an email with that info.

Also, as to JS 101, I wanted to point out that Girl Develop It has all of its core curriculum online (and on GitHub!) and are released under a CC BY-NC license. See here for more info and slides : http://www.girldevelopit.com/materials This may provide a good jumping off point for y'all, especially since we specialize in a newbie audience. :) (Also note that the materials on GitHub are more recently updated some changes/corrections have been made there that are not reflected in the online slides.)

[hackygolucky]

It would be interesting to try and condense down the JS101 from GDI into a
nodeschool workshopper. They seem to go a bit shorter, but I can't see why
the 101 couldn't be a meaty intro to jump into all of the other fun!

On Fri, Mar 14, 2014 at 8:52 AM, Angelique notifications@github.com wrote:

Jason, sending you an email with that info.

Also, as to JS 101, I wanted to point out that Girl Develop It has all of
its core curriculum online (and on GitHub!) and are released under a CC
BY-NC license. See here for more info and slides :
http://www.girldevelopit.com/materials This may provide a good jumping
off point for y'all, especially since we specialize in a newbie audience.
:) (Also note that the materials on GitHub are more recently updated some
changes/corrections have been made there that are not reflected in the
online slides.)

Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com//issues/1#issuecomment-37663441
.

[jasonrhodes]

I think this is a great path to go down and I'm super interested in getting this started. Have you all seen this from @maxogden? http://jsforcats.com/

Something we should think about integrating with or building on, too, maybe. /cc @hackygolucky @angeliquejw @sclarson

[jasonrhodes]

Alright, @hackygolucky @angeliquejw @sclarson moving the intro to JS discussion to #2

[shawngrimes]

@jasonrhodes I'm the Director of Technology at the Digital Harbor Foundation. I'm not sure if you are familiar with us but we are non-profit that took over one of the abandoned city rec centers. We have a space that would meet all of your neeeds. It can easily accommodate 50+ people, with WiFi, tables and even 15 laptops that could be used during the event. All of our tables are on wheels and can be moved into any configuration.

Our afterschool programs run 3pm-6pm so your event would have to be after 6pm during the week but weekends are pretty open. We are in the Fed Hill area and actually have a parking lot available to visitors. Feel free to contact me directly if you want to work something out. P.S. we don't charge to hold events either.

I would love to get some of our youth interested in programming to attend as well.

[jasonrhodes]

@shawngrimes This sounds like it could be perfect. I'm about to get a few big emails sent out to gauge some more interest and then try to find a time that works for people. I think it's going to almost certainly be on a weekend afternoon in May—does that cause any red flags from the start? If not, once I get the email out and start receiving people's interest, I'll get in touch with you about next steps for getting on the books at your place and seeing if I want to come down in advance to see what we'll be working with.

I appreciate you reaching out! Thanks a lot!

[shawngrimes]

@jasonrhodes I'm happy to help. The space is ideal for helping out with community tech events and I love to help things like this succeed. I'm also happy to help promote it (even if it's not at our space) if you send me 140 character tweets you want shared. May is pretty busy but here's what we have open in May right now as far as weekends go:
Sunday, May 4th
Saturday, May 10th
Sunday, May 11th
Sunday, May 18th

And just looking forward a bit, these are open in June:
Sunday, June 1
Saturday, June 7
Sunday, June 8 (but there is a festival in Fed Hill this day so traffic might be bad)
Saturday, June 14
Sunday, June 15

[jasonrhodes]

@shawngrimes I'm working on putting together a list of mentors I can count on for the event and finding a day from your list that works for all of them and myself. I think Sun May 4 and Sun June 1 are front runners right now, possibly Sat June 7. I'm unavailable 5/10 and 5/18 and 5/11 is Mother's Day.

I'll be in touch soon!

[jasonrhodes]

@shawngrimes sent you an email about 5/4, I think we're all set on our end but I had a few questions about the venue. Once we officially have that space booked, we'll be ready to announce and open registration!