Expectations

I learned that even after 4-7 years on the job, many developers just don’t get the opporutnity to learn much about the foundations of working in the terminal or writing bash scripts. It was eye-opening. There were 2 attendees that took it upon themselves to learn shell scripting, but my expectations were too high.

So I learned that I can’t make any assumptions about the attendees of the workshop. Better yet, I should poll the incoming people to see where their skills are so that I can customize the experience for each group.

Collaboration

I also learned that having a fun, collabortive potion of the session is something to keep. They all enjoyed exploring, discussing, failing and learning together, just like software development beginner students do. I just need to make it perfectly clear that they should immediately start sharing screens, research and ideate together and that it’s not an individual task.

Just as important as the technical competencies that are gained, the networking opporutnities to meet new people, have fun, and make friends is a critical outcome of these workshops. That’s why I chose to do it this way instead of just making more videos.

A Tad More Guidance

When the group project started, there was some initial confusion about needed to be done, so I got feedback and immediately updated the content to be more explicit and provide some guidance, if necessary.

Thanks

Thank you Kimmy, Raf, Dan, Val, Josh, and Mac for trusting me and being the first alpha testers.