Answering “Is this workshop for you?” more clearly

[ultrasaurus]

Summary: Most workshop participants find that the experience is high value and surpasses their expectations; however, occasionally we get feedback that students are disappointed. In particular, we’ve heard specific recurring themes:

• We should not expect someone to become a software developer in 1 day! (We don’t, but somehow we give this impression to some people)
• We should have very narrow, focused curriculum to teach people exactly what they need to do X. (Our outreach goals and volunteer teaching approach make this impractical, and while that wouldn’t be a bad thing, teaching very specific skills is not really our focus.)

One idea, as a first step, would be to present more clearly the range of learning experiences and outcomes that we offer, in order to illustrate that we are not aiming to complete someone’s education in 1 day. If they have a very focused skill they want to learn, the workshop and community might be a part of that, but not all of that. We never want anyone to feel they have wasted their time, so we want to do a better job of presenting what we do.

Proposal: a new page: “is this workshop for you?” (linked from the top of the event page)

Please check out: draft content -- anyone with link can comment/suggest!

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Please discuss this concept (is it a good idea? do you think it would be helpful to people?), also if you like the idea, feel free to suggest other content approaches... or different words that might express this idea better.

[SteveBarnett]

The "You want to learn to code", "You want to level up", "You want to connect" three-up comes from our main tagline ("Learn to code or level up with RailsBridge!") and the general vibes of RailsBridge workshops.

I like the idea of expanding on the tagline a bit, and of emphasising that the workshops are a just a "Get started" kit, with the help of a bunch of friendly people. :)

[kplawver]

• Is this a good idea: 👏 Yes! 👏
• Would it be helpful: 👍 👍 👍

In the ~16 workshops we've done, we've only had one person walk out because of unmet expectations (and to this day, even after talking to them about where they got those expectations from, I still don't understand it) - but I think this is a great way to level-set people before they sign up.

I think the "You want to connect" section is maybe an even bigger benefit to the volunteers at events... maybe a section for "Why volunteer at RailsBridge?" would be helpful. I can think of at least half a dozen volunteers (and this is in Savannah) who've gotten jobs as a direct result of volunteering.

Other benefits for volunteering:

• Get in touch with your beginner's mind: explaining things to beginners is a great way to make sure you really understand something.
• Connect with other developers and the community: Volunteering is a great way to meet other developers in the community, network, tell funny stories, etc.
• Give back: There's a real thrill in helping someone get that first rush of "I told the computer to do a thing and it did it!" It's also a great way to meet people in your community you might not otherwise.

That's even draftier than your draft, but I really really like what you've written. I think it'll be super helpful, and cut down on some of the questions organizers get asked.

[kariabancroft]

I really like these three sections - I definitely think that this is helpful!

In the "You want to level up" section I can still see this being misinterpreted as evidence of "you will have a career in tech after this". I wonder if we can use language like "explore" and "start to learn" highlighting the more introductory nature of a one day workshop?

[lilliealbert]

I think the content here could be super helpful to some people!

We might want to have a separate issue to discuss how it would fit into Bridge Troll specifically; I'm having a hard time picturing where specifically it would live / where the link would be, and whether or not it'd be configurable on an organization / chapter / event basis, or if you're going for something that will ring true across all Bridges, @ultrasaurus.

Another thought: we could send a special confirmation email when someone RSVPs as a student to their first workshop, with this kind of text as a "you know what you signed up for, right?"

Process-wise, it might also make sense to move the text into a Gist or something that people could propose edits on, or maybe even just a Google doc for some collaborative text-editing/suggestion-making? It seems hard to collaborate on text via GitHub issue 😄

[ultrasaurus]

moved content to Google Doc and updated description -- thx @lilliealbert

In drafting the content, we were thinking about something that would be true across Bridges and Chapters.

[SteveBarnett]

@ultrasaurus How are you feeling about the state of that google doc? I'm keen to throw that (or something similar) into the copy of the RBCPT site. :)