GitHub GitHub Presents • Passion Projects LIVE (Full Length Talks), 28 Mar 2013

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From YouTube: Passion Projects (Live) 1: Rachel Myers (RailsBridge)

Description

Part 1 of our Passion Projects series, featuring a live talk with Rachel Myers. Rachel is a Rubyist currently stationed at ModCloth, Inc. She's an open source enthusiast who volunteers with the non-profit organization Railsbridge to teach (more) women to code. She'll also be giving the keynote at RubyConf in Scotland this year.

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A

Passion projects-rachel myers], ♪, [music, playing], ♪.

A

Welcome to passion projects.. This is our first talk at github.. I want to thank you guys, all for being part of it., and I also want to thank our first speaker, rachel myers, who is amazing. she's, going to come up here and rock your faces off for lack of a better term..

A

I actually think this is the most women who have ever been ot github at one time.

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This is a really big deal for us.

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Anyway,, so thank you guys all for showing up, and if anyone you know that's not here, wants to catch it. Live, it's just..., www.passionprojects.github.com/live.

A

There's a github tweet that went out about it, too. so,! Thank you guys again and I'm just going to give the stage to rachel myers.

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So I want to start by thanking github and thanking julia especially.. So there's a lot of work that went on..

B

My co-workers are in the back: drilling me.

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okay. [laughs].

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About this series,.

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And I'm really excited to be included. thank you., so tonight,. Let me start with a quick bio..

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My name is rachel myers and if you want to talk, or argue with me after this,, you can., I exist on the internet.. I spend a lot of time drawing on my ipad and I do other things too..

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My day-to-day work is ruby...whoa...

B

Yeah...Okay...Okay.

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I forgive you. okay,, so my day-to-day work is in ruby,, rails,, javascript, and backbone..

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I also really love knowing the whole stack, though,, so I bug our ops team a lot with annoying questions. and recently,. Thanks to women who code, I started learning to make silly little ios apps.

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I've worked at modcloth for two years,.

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So it's kind of hard for me to summarize my favorite projects. broadly,, the things I've been most excited to work on have been security..

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We have a giant monorail app, so breaking that into service-oriented architecture has been great. and then I got to work a lot with mobile web experiences,, so that has been wonderful.

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so tonight,, I'm not going to talk about any of that.. I'm going talk about what I do outside of work..

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My passion is for expanding the franchise of people who program, making it easier for people to learn to program.

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I spend my mornings, my evenings,, sometimes a large chunk of my weekend doing this. really important.. I think it improves our world.. I think it improves programming, and I want to be part of that..

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There are a lot of awesome organizations that are working to make this possible,, but I volunteer with railsbridge.. So that's who I am and that's what I'm going to talk about.

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so tonight I'm going to break my talk into three main parts.

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Thank you. how I my found my way..., you guys!.

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First thing: I'm going to talk about how I found my way into programming with the help of railsbridge.

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I think that railsbridge fills a different nook than a lot of other ways that people come to programming. I'm going to talk about the organization as it evolves and how the volunteers are evolving, as well.

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And I'm going to talk about why? I think this approach is the best way to spread a love of programming..

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So I learned to program because someone pointed me to why's poignant guide to ruby..

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I don't know if anyone knows about..., I don't know. If everyone,, I know that some people know about why. why the lucky stuff?, I really loved the inane details of ruby. lots of his projects were about sparking that same love in people..

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So in my case, I read the text and worked the examples that he gave.

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and if you asked me a question about ruby that he had specifically like parroted to me,, I would parrot it back.

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What I didn't have was a larger context from what he was telling me.

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so,, I'm about to change the slide.

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This is just a warning.

B

B

So... [laughs hysterically], okay, so.

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So,, what I lacked was a larger sense of what I knew and I didn't know,, because there's no book that really tells you, "here's what I've told you..." "...and, here's all the other stuff..." "...that you'll need to do your job," right?

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so,. I in fact thought that he was joking..

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One of the first things that why has you do is make a star monkey..

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I have a slide of a star monkey.

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at some point. You'll get to see it. there, it is! okay.

B

And so,, I thought he was joking.. I thought programming was for serious and clearly star monkeys are not for serious. [male] next slide? [rachel], yeah, sure.

B

So the next thing I did was, I attended a railsbridge workshop. thanks,I've done great.

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I was absolutely terrified that I would be the dumbest person of this railsbridge workshop..

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Everyone else would know how programming worked and I would be the dumbest person there., but I didn't realize that there's nothing in the whole world embarrassing about not knowing something.. It just means that I have to learn: it. right? technical, difficulties] okay,. I can try to go without this.

B

B

When I went to railsbridge,. What I learned is that I knew a lot more than I realized I did. right?.

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I was talking to people about problems and I was reading. and what I needed was a way to connect all those dots, put all those things together..

B

So when I went to my first railsbridge workshop, my other students..., I went into the like the most beginning class because I didn't know any better, right?

B

they said, "are, you a beginner?", I said, "I'm a super beginner." and then I get into my class and all of my fellow students would ask questions: like, "what's, a symbol?" "it's, a lightweight string." and,, "what's, rake?" "it's, really make." "why. Don't you know that," right?, so I was really obnoxious..

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I'm sure my teachers hated me,, but it gave me this context of "here's what I know." and I don't get that any other way..

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The other thing I realized was that I had gotten this far.

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And I had this far to go, right?

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there we go. yay!.

B

Whoa. oh... [inaudible].

B

Try to figure out if I put all the content that I have need to say onto my slides, because there are only pictures., we'll see how this goes.

A

[Technician], I'm sorry [rachel], that's okay.

B

We all do the best we can. okay. > rake be</u>pedantic], oh yeah,, and also that. okay,, so I gained a greater context for what I was learning [strikes key]..

B

I have no idea what just to say: here.

B

Oh yeah,, can we say..., then we created study groups out of that. so, when I went to railsbridge.

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I realized that I had a lot more that I needed to learn, right?. I gained context for these bits. I had been learning in books., so we started putting together.

B

Study groups., if I realized that I didn't know how version control worked,, we would get together and we would learn git..

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We realized that we didn't know how testing works., so we would get together and we would study tdd.

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and we didn't understand some core computer science concepts because really, you can get started really fast in ruby and you don't have to learn. That.

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So we realized, if we're really going to do this for real,. We have to learn these things..

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So that's how I got started learning. and then, once I kind of understood.

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The material, I didn't stop going to railsbridge.. I just started helping out. so, transition. [clicks mouse].

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So every time, someone would ask a question at the railsbridge workshop,, so I started taing and teaching, right? and every time someone would ask a question,.

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I would have to like explain it and I would get a little bit better at understanding what the foundational parts of ruby were. for example, a great question about: hash. "oh. Let me go find that for you." "holy shit!, I didn't know that," right?, that's how it went. [clicks mouse button].

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So, around the time I got my first programming job,.

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My first non-internship programming, job, railsbridge, had grown to the point.

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Where the organizers of the workshops needed people to organize them, they needed meta organizers., and so I stepped into that role. broadly,. What it means to be a meta organizer at railsbridge is that you find people who want to host a workshop,. You find people who want to organize a workshop..

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You find people willing to spend their marketing budgets on beer and babysitting., so it's great..

B

So when I started doing that,, this is supposed to be a picture of san francisco.. We went from having-- I know...I'm, not that good.

B

We went from having one workshop, once a quarter in the bay area to having workshops. About,.

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I would say every month... to every, like 18 days, now.

B

How's that? is that about accurate? and we just have as many around the world. so we're having a ton of workshops.

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and when the workshops happen at the same time,, they skype with each other from across the world, and they wave at each other.. It's great.

B

So that's how I got into railsbridge., that's what railsbridge is doing. now I want to take you on a sidetrack into starfish. [clicks mouse button] so,, one of our....

B

We have two founders of railsbridge,, sarah allen and sarah may. and sarah allen read this book, "the starfish and the spider", and she asked us all to read it..

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I can't entirely recommend this book..

B

I was very frustrated by some parts of it.. If this book about "opensourcing" things had been open sourced,, I really would've submitted a lot of pull requests,, but it's not. [clicks mouse, button], so broadly,. To give away the thesis.

B

There are hierarchical organizations that rely on their leaders for the direction and their vision. [clicks mouse button]. There are, alternatively, some flat and leaderless organizations,.

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And broadly, what it means to be an open organization like this, is that the people doing the work, determine the direction of the entire organization..

B

So the best companies that want to remain innovative and profitable, find a way to combine these elements.

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That's when I get on [seallick].

B

okay., [clicks, mouse, button] okay,, so in the book,, the hierarchical organizations correspond to spiders.. Spiders are one unit that kind of knows.

B

Everything about it's web and can make decisions as like a unified...as, a unit, right?, and they can execute on that idea.

B

In my version of this story,, because I want to draw my own pictures,, there's like a leader, there's a queen bee and there are worker bees.

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and it's assumed in this model that the queen bee has all of the knowledge.

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And that the worker bees have craft and technical knowledge that they use to execute on the queen, bee's vision.

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So the queen is supposed to have a vision.

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For everything but that's...but, if you limit what you...

B

If you limit your set of decision-makers,, then you narrow the scope of the evolution for that organization that you have., [inaudible] okay., you think?, that's okay., yeah,, great.,.

C

C

What's my...?, what is happening?.

A

Oh,, I know why.

C

C

one second.

B

A flat organization., I'm just going to say, that.

C

Okay. [laughs].

B

So there are worker, bees, and worker bees have a lot of knowledge.

B

About what they're doing., they don't have a great ability to stretch, to push the organization in one way or another.. Alternatively, so, starfish, don't have a centralized range.

B

It's kind of a downer.: on the other hand, it has a hidden benefit. to illustrate that,.

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There was a voracious, like,, starfish epidemic.

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Off the coast of australia that was destroying coral. and so,, the well-meaning divers of australia banded together, and they set out to kill the starfish one by one. unfortunately,. They were killing them by cutting them in half with a knife..

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This is really effective for almost every other form of life on the planet, but not for starfsh., so starfish are regenerative and if you cut them half with a knife in a couple of months,, you have two starfish..

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So these well-intention divers doubled the number of predators on the coral.

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You see the benefit right?, you don't have a brain and on the other hand, you can evolve and survive things.

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So in my world,, this just means there are a lot of worker bees.. There are no queen bees. Here, and open organizations definitely rely on certain individuals.

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For organization or for inspiration, but that's not the same thing as having a queen bee.

B

okay,, so that was my side-track into strarfish..

B

Now, I want to bring you back to railsbridge..

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So, railsbridge in its early days, was headed in a very spidery direction.

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We had two leaders and they were asking their friends to do things for them. unfortunately,. Those two leaders are full-time engineers with families, and lives., so it was like cutting starfish in half...er cutting a spider in half..

B

So this magical thing happened.

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Sarah allen read this book and she asked us all if we were doing anything for railsbridge that no one else knew how to do. If we could find someone and recruit them, and teach them what we do.

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in the sense,. She asked us all to startfish ourselves, right?. We need to grow our organization, and this is the way to do it..

B

So in my case, I showed up to meet someone who is going to organize a workshop and she immediately yelled at me for picking a...as soon as we met.

B

she wandered all over the restaurant, and she said, "I thought that might be you...." "...but. Why would you be so dumb..." "...as to pick a table without enough chairs?", and I realized, that was my starfish.

B

She was the person that I would need to help me evolve this organization., so lily is organized, and she thinks about things like three steps: ahead., I'm very good at skating on chaos., and so this thing that the book predicted really did happen, and that is,, when we starfished ourselves, we evolved as well..

B

We now have two skill sets solving all of our problems., so it was great. okay.. So that's railsbridge as as starfish..

B

This doesn't quite solve our problem. Though.

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We want just to not just affect people in the bay area., so railsbridge as an organization...

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did I go backwards?

B

okay..., so railsbridge as an organization wants to change the world.. We have this ambitious goal.. We don't just want to help women program in san francisco,.

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We want to make programming accessible to everyone all over the world.. We want to be a starting point for anyone who has this goal.. All of our curriculum is open-sourced..

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If you feel like you can contribute in this way,.

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Take what we have, make that the starting point. and go do your thing, so,. We have some scaling problems.

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Community is hard to scale..

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That's my punchline! okay.

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If I had my speaker, notes...

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okay., so, [laughs] for example...

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Every time...so, I know.

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Lots of people are: writing really fantastic books for people who want to level up as programmers.

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they're, making podcasts, they're making tutorial videos. every time you make a video,, it can scale almost infinitely..

B

It's o (1) right?, it's constant time.! You create the book at one time,. You affect lots and lots of people by [contrast]...so,. There's my punchline.

B

By contrast, every time we want to start up a railsbridge workshop,, we have to find money,. We have to find volunteers,, we have to find organizers,, we have to find a venue,.

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So it's not constant time.. It's o(n).

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every person that we want to affect,. We have to go out and get them, and we have to work for that.

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unfortunately...oh, wait. fortunately, we're an organization full of engineers, full of creative solutions for scaling..

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So we have some ideas.. Let's go back to the... to some examples..

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What are our options?] okay., so my first case study in how to scale railsbridge is look at starbucks..

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So this is the building in seattle from which all edicts come for starbucks [inaudible].

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Do you guys recognize it??

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So this is where the queen bees, live, and the queen bees have a lot of knowledge.. They know how long it should take to make every drink,. They know where the best beans are,.

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Where some beans are,.

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They know how they need to...

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...They know how every barrista needs to work for starbucks to deliver an efficient experience to all of it's over 20,000 locations around the world..

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So the barristas that we meet every day at starbucks have a lot of expertise about how to make coffee,. They know about starbucks coffee,, there's a craft that they have and they use that very efficiently deliver all of our coffee everyday..

B

So this model scales really well, right?.

B

As long as people want starbucks coffee, and want this product, this organizational style is going to be fantastic at delivering it to me. [clicks mouse].

B

So there's a queen bee here I don't remember what I'm supposed to say about it.

B

Oh, that's what I'm [inaudible].

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All my punchlines come first!. This is so dumb! okay. so,. If we lose our queen bee.

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In this model,, we hate to think what will happen, right? like we don't trust our barristas in this model without a queen bee.. This is what we get, if we lose our queen bee.

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This is unintentional, humor,, you guys.. This is great. [laughs].

B

Okay, my next example of..., so there's some things that work there well for railsbridge. I really like that. They scale so well..

B

I don't want to have a leader because that's how we end up with spiders that like feel like they're being torn in two., so we take what we can from there. wikipedia,, that's my next case study.

B

So the way that wikipedia gets.

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People to contribute, is by having a vision of collecting of all of human knowledge.

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That's exciting, and it's engaging and people want to help. sounds like railsbridge right?, so there's no head and every person just puts in what they can.

B

it's a little bit like a tributary flowing into a river.. Every person's contribution is helping the entire group of people who want to consume wikipedia.

B

Is that all I have?, this must be all I had. so,. Some of this is really great.

B

For railsbridge, right?, we want one person's contribution to benefit lots of people.. That sounds awesome..

B

I have another case. Study, alcoholics anonymous., what's interesting about this case, is that it's not like wikipedia., it's essential to the vision of alcoholics, anonymous that every group be independent and that knowledge not spread beyond the group.. The other thing that's interesting here is that the overall organization only contributes a little bit.

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To each one of these cluster of bees.

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So they have a book.

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it's distributed at cost, and that's all that the organization has done.. They have proclaimed their values, they've, given a methodology, and they back away..

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So this is a bit like silos where each organization is very independent and self-sufficient,, and that sounds fantastic.. So, let's look at example of a combination,.

B

Of combining the best parts of all these organizational styles., I have a great example,, the internets.

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Before I talk about how the internet actually works,, I'm going to talk about how people were not quite ready to understand how the internet works.

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it's hard to draw the internet, you guys.

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So...Oh! okay. so [laughs]...so in 1995,.

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A young isp netcom hired a new ceo.

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To help them fundraise., they were new., they needed money., and he was in meeting with french investors --, it's not relevant to their french,. It's kind of funny that they're french -- and over dinner, -- sorry,.

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French people in the audience --.

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So, over dinner, he tries to explain how the internet works,, what an isp is, and what their business model would be. and one of the investors just hounds him demanding an answer to this question..

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He won't let him move on until he answers this question.. The question that he has to have an answer to is, "who is the president of the internet?" right?.

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Like it doesn't enter his mind that such a large organization that seemingly works reliably doesn't have someone in charge, right?.

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And so,, our brave ceo is very determined,.

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And he tries to explain things over and over. and eventually, just to move the conversation along, so he can get to the point where he asks for money,. He says, “I am the president of the internet.”.

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So,, that's not actually how it works., so each one of these is meant to be an autonomous system.

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and the way that the internet works is that an autonomous system can peer with another system, and they can share traffic..

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They do this using the border gateway protocol,, which lets each user set. The rules for when traffic can access their network.

B

Does that make sense?

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yeah, maybe. okay, cool., so this is fantastic, right?.

B

This is great., so each one of these is very hierarchical..

B

They want to make money., they have a profit, motive. and yet,. All of these monopolistically-minded companies manage to cooperate in building something awesome., it's kind of badass, especially for someone trying to grow a global organization.

B

So,, oh yeah,, so I was going to explain.. This is an autonomous system.. It can't reach this autonomous system over there.

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Anyway,, it doesn't matter., it explained it.

B

Okay,, so those are some organizational examples. and now I want to go through those and say all of the wonderful things that I want to steal from them.

B

So from starbucks,, I want to steal its structure.. If you come to railsbridge and you say, “I want to organize a workshop,”. I want to hand you something just like starbucks says, “do. You want to be a barrista?..." "...here's how to make a cappuccino.”.

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I want to have that level of detail, so that anyone who wants to volunteer knows exactly how they can volunteer..

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If you show up to be a volunteer at a railsbridge workshop,, I want to make the best possible use of you, right?.

B

I want to be able to take what you have to give and put it to the best possible use for the organization. so, love the structure.

B

from wikipedia,. I really love that if I give something to the organization,, it benefits everybody. for example,. If I find a bug in the curriculum, which happens rarely,, then I want to be able to change it and benefit everybody..

B

What's more common is that xcode has found a new way to be a pain in the ass,, and I want to be able to fix that problem for everyone as well..

B

So that's what I want to take from wikipedia. [clicks mouse]. This is a great point to mention how you, too, can become a tributary leading.

C

To this wonderful river of knowledge.,.

B

So if you want to just use the curriculum,.

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Take the curriculum out into the world and do something with it,: here's where to get it.. If you want to improve the documentation that we have,, we have many curricula,. If you want to improve any of it,, go there. and if you want to have a workshop in your area, use, our cookbook.

B

Yeah., this is another great place to mention my second favorite repo..

B

I have to say second favorite because of the ladies in the front row..

B

My second favorite repo in the world is ops. School., I'm really excited about this., just like railsbridge wants to create engineers, they're, trying to create operation. Engineers, engineers. and I'm super excited, because this weekend, they're going to have their first workshop, where they teach the curriculum that everyone's been contributing to for a while., so yay! github.com/opsschool/curriculum] okay, and from alcoholics anonymous,.

B

I want to steal the independence.

B

And self-sufficiency., so, even though we have this curriculum that everyone can contribute to, every place that we have a workshop.

B

Still needs to find venues, still needs to find volunteers, still needs to find organizers., and so, despite all of our best efforts,, despite lots of generosity from everywhere around the world,, every place that has a workshop needs to be somewhat self-sufficient..

B

This is the coolest part., so from the internet,. I want to steal the ability for lots of independent groups to be able to talk to each other, to share what's best in what they've learned in every organization, and to share that back with everybody else.

B

it's kind of awesome. okay,. So those are some ideas for how we can scale., let's bring it back. [clicks mouse].

B

This is a book --, so remember when I was like, “the other book was kind of meh,”.

B

This book is fantastic.. It spends ten pages on the creation story of unix pipes.

B

They have their values in the right place..

B

So there's this great quote., I'm going to read it to you, even if they say, “never return, read from your slides.” “much of the history, ..." "...of computer programming..." "...can be seen as the effort..." "...to expand. The franchise -- " "...to, make it easier..." "...for more people to program.”, and when you read the book, that really comes through., there's fortran., there's cobol. both of these started up --.

B

These were our first higher level languages, and they started off because they said, “it simply is fucking. Hard..." "we should make it easier for people.".

B

"We should have a higher-level language.”. What we ended up doing was making it easier for the professional programmers to program, and we didn't really bring people in..

B

So I want to end with a story of someone here, actually, who is bringing in,.

B

Is like carrying out that goal that people had for programming for a long time., there's a railsbridge workshop in this very space. A few months ago, and I came, and I taught.

B

and I met allison. allison- is an accountant.. She is this person that cobol was made. For. is allison here?. Am I embarrassing?? That's awesome., I can say whatever I want now.

B

Okay, so allison and I.

B

Worked through the curriculum,, the beginning curriculum,, and we called it a day.. We like high-fived., we had a beer, and then that was it.

B

and then she went home, and she kept learning.. So I ran into her at a party recently,.

B

And she told me that she is making an app to help with end-of-month accounting..

B

She is doing that exact thing that grace hopper pushed for years ago when she talked about automatic computing,, improving the way that computers and people interact. that's kind of fucking, amazing, and railsbridge is making it happen..

B

So thanks for listening.

B

I drew all my papers in paper.

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and thanks to all my co-workers, who told me what was shitty about my talks, so I made it better.

A

20 more minutes of applause for dealing with everything., so we're going to take a five-minute break,, at which point we're going to set up some fancy chairs, and we're going to do a little bit of panel discussion and open qa with all of your guys.

A

qa, q&a. there. We go. thank you, rachel, for just putting up with that shit storm and our technical team,, who is just dealing with it right, now.

A

they're, actually doing a great job.. So thank you guys all for dealing with the lulls. we'll be back in five.

A

♪ [music playing] ♪.

A

So rachel myers,. Thank you again for dealing our complicated technical situation..

A

You handled that very gracefully., so thanks. thanks.

A

a list of questions that I took down during your talk, and we can just kind of talk about them and also I heard you're a fan of whiskey.

A

a bottle of our slow, merge whiskey..

A

You guys did this? and I deliberately made yours a little taller than mine.

A

So we can do--- so cheers? yeah,, let's cheers. cheers. cheers to rachel myers. no. cheers! cheers!.

A

Awkward silence, while we drink, enjoy.

A

about the whiskey.

A

A picture of a cat on it, no?

A

yeah,, we had those labels.. This is --. I don't even know if I'm supposed to talk about this legally to be honest.

A

We had this made for employees internally.. We just basically made a label for it's like four roses. I think.

A

[audience member] cool! [julie] yeah,. It's pretty tasty.

A

That it was slow merged, in.

A

I'm going to stick with that theme..

A

My first question is: what did you do? so we started your talk with. You are a programmer, and you also teach at railsbridge, you volunteer,, and these are your passions. but like,. Where did you start? like before you were skating on chaos,.

A

What did you do before? You were programming?.

B

Was a programmer, I was a philosophy, teacher at--, [audience, member] what?.

B

So,, what that actually means is, I was taing for like.

B

First-Year undergraduate students who needed a humanities, credit.

B

I know that it's possible for some of my students to see this..

B

So if you're watching,, it's not you,, but most of my students didn't give a shit.

B

and,. It was kind of demoralizing because you spend your life reading and getting really into the details.. You don't feel like you're doing something with it, and you don't feel like most people care..

B

So I still really love philosophy.

B

It's not what I do now, because I want to feel like I'm doing a little bit: more.

B

cool., that's awesome.!.

A

How many people here studied computer science in college?.

A

Wow!, that's actually a lot of people. surprised!. We have--we have a--, we have a philosophy.

A

We have a philosophy, major at github, and--.

B

With ted over drinks.

A

He's out there waiting, watching, creeping.

A

Sorry, ted. so, did you ever consider like computer programming when you were in school before college?.

B

So when I was in brownies,, one of our badges was to learn binary,.

B

And I did that. that was like the extent of it.

B

To learn binary in the brownies?.

B

Like you can translate to base 2 essentially, right?, so I would write a sentence,.

B

And then I would like translate into ones and zeroes, and then I got my badge.

B

No, I was like,. I was like, “well, that was interesting..." "...I'm, not sure what anyone..." "...does with that..." "...let's move. On,” right? so...

B

brownies could do a better job of how that relates to life. [laughs] a little bit about.

A

Open source and how it's a wonderful thing., what was your gateway drug into open, source? like,? What was your first open source project?.

B

Honestly,, my first open-source project was that I couldn't make them by default. Private,, right?

B

like and so everything I started doing like, by default. If you're poor, and you want to use github, it just becomes an open-source project.

B

So, [laughs], so I got to say it that way.

B

good business model.

B

But then,, like my first serious open-source project?, so when we would work on when like we would get together in little study groups,, we would work through examples from books.

B

and I would see someone's example and say, “well,. What if we do it, this way,” and you know, really went into depth. and so that kind of interaction was probably like. My first introduction.

B

okay. a production ready open-source project,.

C

[Julie] right.-- [rachel] right.

B

Where the standards are a little higher, hopefully., some places,, some places.

A

Awesome. well,, that's a pretty good answer.. I only have a couple more questions.. So if you guys start thinking of things that you want to ask rachel, feel free to --, you have a question. that was easy.

D

We got spiders,, we got starfish., I'm guessing railsbridge...

D

did not sarah allen, say, “be starfish” and everyone was starfish, right?

D

like it's, probably something that the organization is going to have to revisit.. Do you think that --.

D

How do you think we should --, I'm sorry if no one else cares about railsbridge,.

D

How do you think an organization like railsbridge goes from spider to starfish and then doesn't re-spider.

B

Okay., that's a great question.. Do you want to repeat it for everyone?.

A

How does an organization like railsbridge go from spider to starfish without going back to spider?

A

B

Yeah,, how do we not fall back into spider-ing?.

A

Right, yeah. okay...

B

So one,, I think that --. So it's a really great point..

B

We try to starfish, and it's been a couple of years.. We probably need to continue to spider. … er... starfish.

B

and I've been tempted to spider in my days.

B

So,, when steven [bing].

B

Wanted a conference bio,, I wanted some way to represent his contributions to the organization., so I suggested on text to several people, “hey,. How about we have a core team?" "...just see if we can be..." " ...on the core team,” right? that--[laughs], that was my idea.

B

and then I realized that's a terrible, idea, right?. So some of the things that railsbridge can do to avoid becoming a spider.

B

Are? To avoid having a core team, to continue to starfish--.

B

And by continue to starfish,, I don't want to be like,. I don't want to make it sound, easy, right? like what the means is. You find people who are as committed as they need to be like very committed, and find a way for them.

B

To contribute in a way that they can, right?, so I found lily because lily was really,. She had a clear vision of how things should happen,, and that was exactly what we needed.

B

to continue to do. That,. I think you just have to continue meeting people, and finding people, and starfishing them into like, your other starfish..

B

I don't know.. Does that answer your question?? Does that not quite answer your question?.

A

D

How do you make sure that your starfishes are happy to be starfish?.

B

Lily,, are you upset about being my starfish?.

A

The question was – wait,, what was it?, can you say that?, I'm sorry. sorry.. So I think starfishes are.

D

Super interesting,, but this whole core team thing,. What? If people make praisingcrazy contributions like steven has, and you say, “no,? You can't be on the core team..." "...because. We don't have one,”.

D

How do you then go in and say: like, “but we love you..." "...and. Thank you! So much”?.

B

Steven's here so maybe we can just say,, can we have a party or something? would that, like--? Would you feel appreciated?

B

get involved with this?.

A

So the original question- was, "how, do you know that," or "how? Do you ensure that your starfish are happy being starfish?".

B

I'm not sure,, I guess, is the ultimate answer.. That's okay., okay. okay.

A

We'll have to all work on that., that's cool., so I have another programming, question. okay., I hope you're not bored with these yet.. So there are so many different languages,.

A

And specific disciplines in programming.

A

like,, how do you--.

B

I think it's really common for,.

A

New learners to just be kind of overwhelmed, especially if they don't immediately click with something., there's like they're, not getting that immediate satisfaction,, they get overwhelmed with it, and they kind of just shut down, and they're like, “no, programming is not for me.”. So how do you pick the language??

A

How did you pick ruby? or how did you, you know,? Is it --? It can't be solely based on organizations like railsbridge, right? like there needs to be like a different avenue.

B

It can totally be based on organizations like railsbridge,, but that won't be my answer.

C

So I got into programming ruby.

B

Because of why. like, there's a very like direct connection. like,, this was my first book.. This book seemed accessible, and I just like decided I'm just going like power through this book and try to learn. It. right?, like after you put so much into learning one language,, there's like I was disincentivised to go. Try to do python immediately..

B

I went to like finish ruby through and feel like. I understood that.

B

And like how you choose your first language,, I think, is very accidental.

A

A lot to do with like trends? like,, I know like, ruby on rails and like, webstart apps,, it's like very popular right now so like,. I'm not saying. That's specifically like why a few of us have chosen it,, but like do you think that has a big impact?.

B

It must have a big impact., [julie] right. yeah.-- [rachel] right?, like the more --. So ruby was terrific,, a terrific starting language for me, because so much of the community.

B

Is invested in building up projects for people to learn., so there was never a shortage of projects, of cones, of like exercise.

B

To the reader. right?, there were always many of those for me,. So many that, like I always felt like, “oh,, I have to do three more today..." "...because. There were these..." "...eight new repos that showed up today.”.

B

So I would say, like it's accidental,, but ruby made it very easy for me.

A

Gateway language,, you would say?

A

exactly. cool.. Do I have any other questions from you. Guys? yeah?.

C

Very short. and it's just--, I'm not familiar with railsbridge,.

A

And I kind of wanted to know kind of the scope or the size of the organization, so you know approximately how many people are involved in the project?.

B

That's part of being a flat organization. Is that we're really bad-- it's a little bit like alcoholics, anonymous, right--, to have a chapter of-- oh, wait.. Do you want to repeat? sorry.

A

So I think one of our audience members wants to know what the scale of railsbridge actually is, like, the number of people, right? [julie ann horwath]. I think it's at-- [audience member] ball park. ball park.

A

Rachel does not have these tattooed on her forearm.. I'm looking at her right. Now, turns out.

B

So part of being like alcoholics anonymous in addition, to-- never mind,, I'm not going to make a bad joke--.

B

Is that we're not good at sending information back to headquarters, as it were.? So we started to get better at that,, but we still have about four years of data. That's missing.!

B

So it's hard to estimate.

B

What we can say is like what the rsvp limit generally is like on average and then do multiplication for the workshops that we know about. and like at this point,.

B

It's something like 100,000 people.

B

wait,. What is it? lily,, you're here.

D

In san francisco have ever attended a workshop as a student or volunteer. [rachel] is that true?-- [lily] but, [rachel] okay. [lily], that's other cities. but, that doesn't include--, that's just except for media,, doesn't include all the other cities that we have workshops in, so it might be more like 8,000.

D

and like organizers,,.

A

The number of organizers just.

D

Not participants.-- [lily], like ten.

D

Not really ten,, like 50.

B

It's not very many. lily and I like work in different organizations.

A

Not the greatest starfish.

B

So the correct answer: is we don't know.

B

People have gone on.

D

To become ruby developers like yourself from having gone to this organization?.

A

Have gone on to become ruby developers from this organization?, I have only anecdotal knowledge of this.

B

Because we're bad at sending information back up the hierarchy, because it's not a hierarchy.

B

The people that I kind of, like moved with when I was going through railsbridge, are almost now all engineers, and that's entirely anecdotal., and it's about like the people who I was around.

B

So I can say there are at least 10 of us, right?.

A

Than I've ever worked with at any company, so that's a pretty good number. I would say., so I have one more question., it's kind of a big one. I'll. Let you think. I'll, maybe let you drink on it..

A

So one of the reasons that I started passion projects was to get github-- get github,. That's such a hard thing to say-- get github more involved in sort of these grassroot efforts with not just women, but also in teaching and learning.

A

and like there are a ton of people at github who volunteer with railsbridge, and rails girls and a couple other organizations, but on a grander scale,. What can github do to make it easier to learn to program?.

B

So,, I think github is particularly well-positioned to minimize, like the costs.

B

That you pay to get into programming because you go to github like as soon as you have written your first like three lines of code, you want to like start posting,, and you want to show your friends.

B

I think, well,.

B

There are tons of good answers. and in this particular audience,, it's like I'm, not the most expert on what github can do. like. I have some things that people can do and all organizations can do or like.

B

Giving engineers the time to like spend time, mentoring, right?.

B

Those kinds of projects.

B

when you have projects that bring more people in,, and I don't mean to make it even about women exclusively,, I mean to say all forms of diversity,.

B

Like that's a huge step like to show people, to sit down with people and work through problems, the way that you would work through them shows people that they can work through those problems in the same way. [julie], that's awesome.--, [rachel], so yeah.

A

To be kind of like a second part,, but I'm assuming that's something you look for in a company, you want to work for.. My next questions, was, when you were looking at companies and you joined modcloth, like what are the attributes of a company that you look for?.

B

So, when I joined modcloth,, they told me,. When I talked to the recruiter,, they said we're 80% women as a company., and I didn't ask the follow-up question, how many women are on your engineering team?.

B

I just assumed, right? [laughs] there were none.. I was the first one. and now I ask much harder. Questions.

B

Like now, we have a terrific team.

B

On the team that I work with every day., we are 50% women,, which is fantastic.

B

They're in the back. they're, enjoying the applause right, now.

B

And so like we're very good at holding our company accountable., we work with our cto to make sure that the way that we're presenting ourselves to the world maximizes like.

B

The good candidates that we're getting in.- I guess that's how you say: it.

A

Well, thank you, rachel.. Do you guys have any more questions.? I know I missed someone. yeah?.

C

Have you seen among the starfish any plans for more prolonged interaction.

C

With railsbridge? railsbridge is amazing for building.

B

Enthusiasm over two days,.

C

Not getting the snowball rolling., have you seen anybody try to engage over months?.

B

Yeah, that's--oh, go ahead. sorry..

B

Have you seen any long, term--.

A

I don't know: what's a good word for that--like, [male attendee] continued study. [julie], continued learning.

A

Or continued studying through railsbridge specifically?.

B

So sometimes people will spontaneously create study groups.. Another thing that I have to say is women, who code is great at forming long term study groups, so the person who runs the ruby.

B

and is it ruby, specific or ruby on rails?.

B

So ruby tuesdays is the women who code group that does like an ongoing,. Every single tuesday, they'll have a meet up where they work on their rails project..

B

They also have ones for ios and javascript., I'm probably leaving others out..

B

So that's one example., that's women-specific in the way that railsbridge is like -- oh, and it came off rails ridge., that's awesome., I didn't know that.

B

it's good to have all the starfish in the room in a talk like this.

A

Awesome. any more questions? yeah?.

B

To learn how to program,: when was the kind of transition, when you felt comfortable enough that you wanted to enter in the professional team?.

A

So it was...the question was what was the point at which you felt comfortable in like going on an interviews and entering the professional world of programming?.

B

So I was working examples.

B

Kind of on my own, and I would go to a lot of meetups, because that was another way to get a sense of where I stand and what I need to learn after this.. And I guess the short answer is.

B

I never felt that way..

B

I felt that way. Long after I had been doing it.

A

They know everything because the thing about technology is it moves so quickly, and everything changes so fast., like I don't think it's like everyone is ever going to like, "okay, we're done., we're done.. We don't have to learn. Anymore." like,, you're, always constantly having to learn or you're going to get behind..

A

So it's really hard to feel comfortable. [Julie], like,, yeah, [rachel] right.

B

Just a quick side: track. there was justice breyer who was on charlie rose like years ago,, and he was talking about trying to encourage his son, who didn't want to do his homework. and he said, “oh,. You should get used to this..." "...because if you're, really smart..." "...and, you work really hard..." "...and you're, pretty lucky," "...you can do this...", "...for the rest of your life.” right?

B

and that's what it's like to be programmer, right?. If you get good at learning, you're going to get to do this for the rest of your life, and that's what you're aiming for.

A

Yeah,, there's a really great quote.. I don't know where this comes. From, but “learn to learn.” is basically like the way, like teaching yourself to be resourceful is probably like the best gift. You can give yourself. and kind of that's job security..

A

That's what that is.

B

And then I have one story about how I started., and that is I was at a meet up, and sarah allen, before she had started. Railsbridge,.

B

Said, “you know I find it really. Hard..." "...to find junior people to hire..." "...like. If you have a great junior person...".

B

"...I would love to pair with them..." "...in my spare time.”, and I was sitting in the back, I said,, I just shouted out. Obnoxiously, “I would pair with you for free..." "...if. You want to do that some time.”, and so she brought me in to interview, and she's like, “well, you're, definitely going to be..." "...pairing with me for free..." "...but. You can, if you want.” so yes., that's how I got into it.

B

And then I worked there for free for a long time. and then I became like the real intern, and then I like, moved on. and at every step I always feel like I'm jumping a little bit ahead of where I really belong, but,, oh well,, so it goes.

A

All right., thank you guys so much for coming. Out.

B

We're actually having-- [rachel] thank you!.

A

Sorry, melissa, don't get too excited., so we're actually throwing a drink up nearby at the alchemist, I think, is the name of the bar, and they look like they have really good cocktails and they're free, because they're on github.

A

so come help. Me spend our money and celebrate you guys all coming out for our first talk.

A

♪ [music playing] ♪.

C

Projects, rachel myers].