Add report on the PyLadies Snake workshop, 2019-02-02

content/2019-03-02_pyladies-snake-report.md

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+Title:  PyLadies Snake Workshop
+Date: 2019-02-12 00:00:00
+Author: Petr Viktorin
+
+> Další příspěvek v angličtině!
+> Píšu to pro širší publikum než pro naše obvyklé čtenáře (článek nakonec vyšel
+> i na blogu [community.redhat.com](https://community.redhat.com/blog/2019/02/building-snakes-to-learn-code/)).
+> A nechce se mi to překládat :)
+
+
+On Saturday, February 2, PyLadies Brno organized a “Snake workshop”.
+
+Let me first write a bit about the overall concept.
+For info about this specific event, jump to “The Saturday” below.
+
+
+## PyLadies CZ Beginners' courses
+
+[PyLadies CZ](https://pyladies.cz/) is an informal group of people that (among other things) organize
+3-month Python courses for women (mostly beginners).
+These courses have been going on for about 5 years in Brno, and have heavily
+influenced the workshop, so let me write a bit on how they're organized.
+
+The *organizers* are alumni of past courses – the very people that want to
+learn make the courses happen possible.
+They coordinate sign-ups, make sure they have a room with internet access,
+respond to questions, and so on.
+
+The *lecturer* knows the material deeply and comes to teach.
+Often, this is done by external people – often it's my role,
+and I'm not a PyLady :)
+Thanks to the organizers, the lecturer doesn't need to deal with logistics,
+registration or catering, and can focus on transferring knowledge.
+
+And then there are *coaches*, something like teaching assistants – people who
+help attendees with individual problems.
+These can be experienced programmers, or people who have gone through
+the last semester's course and are just a bit ahead.
+Most of what the coaches do is trivial: finding mismatched parentheses,
+files saved in wrong directories (or not saved at all), or typos.
+Since it's perfectly OK for a coach to not know something (they can always
+ask someone more experienced), this is a great opportunity for alumni to
+see how much they learned since *they* were complete beginners.
+And since the role needs no preparation, it's a great way for anyone to give
+a few hours back to the community.
+
+The whole thing is free for attendees, volunteer-organized, and budget-less
+(companies are happy to provide a venue with internet, and while there are
+minor expenses like sticky notes or candy for prizes, they usually aren't
+worth the paperwork to get expensed).
+It's also fully open – teaching materials are [available] to anyone to go
+through or adapt.
+This semester, PyLadies CZ are planning to run 7 forks of the beginners' course
+in 4 cities (see [pyladies.cz](https://pyladies.cz/)).
+Organization in each city is relatively independent.
+
+[available]: https://naucse.python.cz/course/pyladies/
+
+![Beginner PyLadies on the workshop, with coaches in the back]({filename}/images/snake2019-20190202_084911.jpg)
+
+
+## The Snake workshop
+
+The full-day event we had on Saturday is a relatively new addition to the
+“curriculum”.
+It's modeled after the very successful [Django Girls](https://djangogirls.org/) workshops, where attendees
+who haven't programmed before build a web application (a blog) in just one day.
+The Snake workshop has beginners make a *game* ([Snake]) in just one day.
+
+Similarly to Django Girls workshops, the Snake workshop targets complete
+beginners – prerequisites are on the level of installing Python, unzipping
+an archive or sending an e-mail.
+
+Unlike Django Girls, the Snake workshop tries to make things easier for
+everyone: organizers, teachers, and attendees. Specifically:
+
+* There are less technologies to learn: rather than Python, HTML, CSS and
+  databases, there's Python and a bit of graphics.
+* With a single lecturer rather than small coach-led groups, it's not
+  a problem if a coach doesn't show up.
+  Also, the coaches can be relative beginners.
+  (This format does introduce a single point of failure, though.)
+
+It's still impossible to learn (and remember) programming in a single day,
+so the workshop is positioned as a “pilot episode” for a regular 3-month
+course.
+As a “pilot”, the workshop should serve these purposes:
+
+* Give people an overview of what learning programming looks like – hopefully,
+  the message is that it's fun and rewarding, but that it will require lots
+  of time.
+* Filter out people who'd drop out after the first few lessons of the course.
+* Give an overview of Python's the basic data types and building blocks,
+  which should be helpful because the 3-month course is “bottom-up” (introduces
+  elementary concepts and builds on them), so the “big picture” only reveals
+  itself near the end.
+
+[Snake]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_(video_game_genre)
+
+![See the coaches coaching!]({filename}/images/snake2019-20190202_152819.jpg)
+
+
+## The Saturday
+
+The last instance of the Snake workshop happened on Saturday, February 2nd.
+This was the 4th run so far (after the first trial for PyLadies in
+Hradec Králové in March 2018, one for PyLadies Brno in September
+2018, and one open for anyone in October 2018).
+
+For this workshop, [Red Hat] provided the venue (Plutonium & Neptunium meeting
+rooms in the TPB-C office) and food (of which there was a lot; thank you!).
+
+[Red Hat]: https://www.redhat.com/en/global/czech-republic
+
+I was the lecturer and I handled the Red Hat sponsorship.
+
+We had an almost full house – more than 39 attendees plus 8
+coaches/organizers.
+(The listed capacity of the rooms is 40, but we fit comfortably.)
+
+We spent the morning (well, until 14:00) explaining basic concepts (numbers,
+expressions, strings, functions, conditions, lists, dicts, imports, loops, …)
+and the afternoon with the game.
+Based on the feedback to date, everyone enjoyed the show.
+There were smiles throughout; the coaches were kind and helpful, and I'd say
+the attendees learned as much as they could in a day.
+
+![The importance of good ol' pen & paper]({filename}/images/snake2019-20190202_162002.jpg)
+
+Of course, nothing is perfect – and there's a lot to improve for next time.
+
+
+### What didn't work
+
+I didn't manage time well, and I'd need about 30 more minutes at the end.
+Some people were already leaving, so I rushed through the end – which didn't
+help either the attendees or the coaches.
+(For next time, I already have a plan to shuffle the materials around and
+drop 30 minutes of less interesting stuff.)
+
+Also, there was too much food in the end.
+We had a generous sponsorship from Red Hat *and* people ordered their own
+lunches.
+This one is entirely on me as the link between the sponsor and the organizers;
+next time I will coordinate better.
+
+Finally, I did not request spare laptops in time.
+Usually, Red Hat Regional IT is happy to lend a few out-of-warranty machines,
+which are very helpful when some attendee's computer stops working, turns
+out to be too slow, or has glitchy graphics.
+I forgot to request them in a reasonable time, so we didn't have them.
+Thankfully, they weren't needed – but hardware problems could have ruined the
+atmosphere of the workshop.
+
+![Not quite there yet]({filename}/images/snake2019-20190202_173055.jpg)
+
+
+### And as for me...
+
+I think I'm addicted to this workshop.
+
+It ticks the tree factors of intrinsic motivation: autonomy (deciding what
+to teach and what to leave out in a time-limited workshop),
+mastery (working on something that can always be improved) and purpose (helping
+people understand my passion, not to mention the whole “underrepresented
+minorities” thing that I'm not really going into here).
+
+I have a hard time interacting with people, and I've found that it's mostly
+because I don't think I have anything to say that would be interesting to them.
+But that disappears in front of a class, with a clear expectations of what to
+explain and a clear level of pre-requisites I can build on.
+I know a few introverts who had similar experiences as lecturers/coaches,
+and I'd recommend any geek to try teaching an *interested* audience :)
+
+Anyway, I was throroughly exhausted at the end, after ten hours of live coding.
+I think I'll wait a few months before doing this again.
+
+
+![Thanks to the sponsor & organizers]({filename}/images/snake2019-20190202_084946.jpg)
+
+Thank you to everyone involved – the organizers, the coaches,
+Red Hat GWS & BIPI, and the attendees.
+Let's do more of these!