In July, we hosted the second event in the Women’s DIY Series: Learn Together, Develop it Yourself. We were thrilled that more than 30 women from all different professions and various levels of programming experience come together in Chicago during this seven-hour workshop to learn AngularJS.
The workshop included three blocks of coding sessions, where participants worked through an AngularJS tutorial in small groups. They learned key AngularJS concepts with the help of each other and a coach. The sessions were broken up with lots of energizers and team building activities so participants could meet with other people who weren’t in their immediate group
As organizers, we can’t underscore enough the importance of learning and adapting a program. In particular, this time around we learned more about the value the Women’s DIY series provided to them.
Some highlights include:
- Participants were very glad this event was on a Saturday. They noted that a lot of technical meetups, classes and workshops were typically held after work on a weekday. This made it difficult for them to attend due to busy schedules and family obligations after work.
- They were thankful of having an event that provided an engaging environment for them to work alongside of other women. One participant noted that it was rare for her to be able to work alongside other female developers.
- It was a great workshop to accelerate their learnings. Having other participants and coaches on hand to ask questions, explain concepts, and help debug code condensed what normally takes a few weeks to learn into a few hours. They said it would have been impossible to learn at the speed they did if they were learning at home by themselves.
- One change we made from the first workshop was to shorten the event by one hour. However, we received feedback from participants that they wanted more coding time. Many participants stayed to continue learning even after the event officially ended at 4 PM.
- Above all, the most feedback we received was about the coaches. The “what went well” section of our feedback wall was filled with comments about coaches; how they were helpful, nice, patient, knowledgeable, and just plain awesome.
Just as in the first workshop, the environment was full of driven, intelligent people who were passionate about software development. This created a friendly, fast-paced atmosphere that was perfect for kick starting learning AngularJS.
Read about our first DIY event that focused on building a mobile app with Android. Join our MeetUp for news on our next event.
Disclaimer: The statements and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the positions of Thoughtworks.