@tjg: how did it go?

@martinklepsch: I'm writing a retro, the kind that would’ve helped me know what to expect. Was really effective, at least in my group. My coworker discovered she enjoys programming. (Didn’t need fancy graphics or anything; making programs in Light Table was intrinsically interesting to her.) Far too many men at the podium addressing women though. And the first person giving a demo was a man... with women holding cakes trailing behind him. facepalm. In my retro I analyzed why I failed to speak up, and what I did to make up for it.

(Usual institutional outcomes of men organizing women...)

@tjg: cool to hear that people were interested

It can only get better next time!

Yeah, definitely!

Well, assuming that we ensure that it does.

@tjg: >And the first person giving a demo was a man... with women holding cakes trailing behind him.

ouch, that hurts to read...

can only imagine how painful/awkward that was to see

It’s been very difficult to get the workshops all started without "too many men at the podium" given that is exactly the problem we’re trying to fix — we need to get more women into the community, in order to have more women at the podium.

In several places we’ve reached out to local RailsBridge and similar groups to at least bring in women as TAs and to lead the material where we can find those who feel comfortable doing that.

Bit of a chicken and an egg situation.

Once you’ve got your first one or two workshops complete in a given area, it becomes much easier to find recruit from previous students. But those first few workshops are often very painful in that area 😞

We did a lot of outreach in SF before our first workshop to try to bring in women who’d be willing to TA. Unfortunately, because we tried so hard to get women TAs into the first workshop, when we did the second workshop, pretty much everyone on our list of TAs were men and I don’t remember whether we were able to find any women who were available to TA that time. It’s gotten easier since then.

@seancorfield: Thanks for the in-depth info! Hope our discussions in the Solingen ClojureBridge mailing lists will be good... [fingers crossed]

I think one of the areas in which we’ve done poorly so far is following up with students and keeping them engaged post-workshop to encourage them to keep doing Clojure… Not sure of how best to tackle that tho’...

@seancorfield: Follow-up is something we're discussing too. We have a somewhat sketchy plan, involving repetition, going through material we had to skip, and the world bank web app.

Maybe make it a bit like a mathematical society, sending people occasional amusements where they program some Quil thing in a browser, and share their solutions?

Just a random idea.