Crossing the Canyon of Cognizance: A Shared Adventure

Talks

Pamela O. Vickers

3 talks

#mentorship

#early-career-developers

Crossing the Canyon of Cognizance: A Shared Adventure

by Pamela O. Vickers

This presentation by Pamela O. Vickers at RailsConf 2015 focuses on guiding new developers through the challenging learning stages of programming, specifically transitioning from unconscious incompetence to conscious competence. Vickers emphasizes the importance of mentorship, community support, and patience in fostering a welcoming environment for beginners in the tech industry.

Key points discussed in the presentation include:

- The Four Learning Stages:

- Unconscious incompetence: Not knowing what one doesn't know.

- Conscious incompetence: Recognizing what one doesn’t know.

- Conscious competence: Knowing how to do something consciously.

- Unconscious competence: Mastery where skills are performed automatically.

- Tenderfoot's Journey: A metaphorical character, Tenderfoot, illustrates a typical new programmer's journey across a canyon representing the learning gap.

- Utilizing Resources: New learners like Tenderfoot often feel overwhelmed with the resources available online and struggle with initial questions that may seem vague or too broad. Vickers stresses that we should help refine these questions to improve the responses they receive.

- Supportive Mentorship: The necessity for experienced developers to provide thoughtful, clear, and constructive answers to new programmers is paramount. Sharing knowledge accurately can either encourage or discourage learners.

- Community Visibility: The importance of having visible role models from diverse backgrounds in tech is highlighted to help underrepresented learners see their potential pathway in the field.

- Creating Connections: Vickers advises engaging actively within the developer community to establish relationships that can facilitate job placement and mentorship opportunities for newcomers.

Conclusions:
- The journey of learning to code is complex, and experienced developers can play a critical role in bridging the gap for new learners. Each interaction can make a significant difference in how tenderfeet feel about their progression.

- A supportive and welcoming community not only retains new developers but enhances the vibrancy and diversity of the tech industry. Honoring their journey and recognizing the challenges they face creates an encouraging environment for mutual growth and learning.

00:00:14 Do you all remember when this article was all over your Twitter timeline? People loved it, people hated it. Everyone seemed to have a strong opinion about it. Basically, Jeff Atwood was asserting that all these big efforts for everyone to learn to code are fundamentally flawed because they assume that more code in the world is inherently desirable.

00:00:40 The article implies that coding is the goal instead of addressing what the real problem is. It assumes that adding naive novices, who are not even sure they like programming, to the workforce is a net positive for the world. Moreover, it suggests that there is an easily permeable membrane between learning to program and getting paid to program professionally.

00:01:10 If you read the whole thing, some of those points hold water, but it largely reads as if there are government checkpoints making sure you've done your yearly hour of code. The last two points stood out to me because they had nothing to do with people not learning to code; they were about how we welcome new coders into the workforce or community.

00:01:53 People who understand these new learners didn’t like the post at all. If you know Zed Shaw, he either only likes things or hates things, so he wrote a blog post titled 'Please Don’t Become Anything, Especially Not a Programmer' because he dramatically disagreed with Jeff Atwood. The people who agreed with him mostly showed up in the comments.

00:02:24 Most of them probably only know about new learners in the abstract; they have only heard of 'Hour of Code' and think that’s weird, but they don’t know anyone personally. These new learners are not just drones typing meaningless words into terrible websites; they are people with ideas and life experiences. Our community will only benefit by welcoming them.

00:02:55 I am certainly not saying that everyone should learn to code, but anyone should be able to learn. How we, as more experienced people in the industry, create these new learners will shape the kind of developers they can become. They need us as much as we need them. The journey to becoming a good developer is truly a shared venture between the learners and the teachers.

00:03:33 Helping them get over the first major hurdle is key to their continued learning, and this is somewhat what it can look like. Meet Tenderfoot, our character who we will follow to see what the average experience of someone learning this challenging endeavor is like. Of course, there are different variations to this story, but I believe most people have gone through at least all these stages.

00:04:01 Her ultimate goal is to scale this mountain, but she's starting down here. She must get through multiple levels before achieving her ultimate goal, and each level represents a stage in her learning. In 1970, psychologist Noel Burch described these stages: unconscious incompetence, where you don't know what you don't know, also known as the dark and foggy forest.

00:04:34 Then there's conscious incompetence, where you know what you don’t know, referred to as the valley before the climb; conscious competence, where you know what you know, aka the steeply sloping ascent; and finally unconscious competence, where you don’t know what you know, also known as the hazy and lofty clouds.

00:05:09 Tenderfoot begins in the dark and foggy forest, level one. She can’t even see the mountain from where she is. She knows in theory that there is a mountain, probably, but it’s so dark and foggy that she can’t even tell if she’s in a cave. She must find her way out of the forest to even get to the canyon.

00:05:37 This is often where beginners first search for something like, 'How do I learn to code?' Tenderfoot has a companion named Bingle. Tenderfoot can ask Bingle any question, and Bingle will answer with whatever information it can find, but it doesn’t really have context or knowledge of Tenderfoot’s end goal.

00:06:02 So, while Bingle can be helpful, when you don’t even know what to ask, it’s not quite as useful. As Tenderfoot goes further on her journey, she’ll become more familiar with how to rely on Bingle, but early on, Bingle is almost burdensome, much like the Scarecrow from 'The Wizard of Oz'. When Tenderfoot asks Bingle how to learn to code, she receives many different conflicting answers.

00:07:05 It was difficult for me to chart my own path and figure out where to go next. So, like Raven and Dorothy, Tenderfoot must eventually pick a direction somewhat arbitrarily and just pursue it. If someone is in the middle of a dark forest trying to cross a canyon and climb a mountain, they must first get out of the forest, whether they turn right or left. Just start walking.

00:07:33 Tenderfoot is trudging through the dark forest, step by uninformed step. She eventually reaches the edge of the trees. Let’s talk a little bit more about the mountain. The mountain on the other side of the deep canyon is like most mountains; it slopes up into the clouds. We, the more experienced developers, are climbers or yodelers or whatever.

00:08:02 At different points on the mountain, the tip top is where those on level four reside—they are the unconscious competence crowd. They don’t remember climbing the mountain; in fact, they don’t even know they’re on a mountain. All they know is their life in the clouds and are quite happy that way.

00:08:37 Sometimes, one of them will wake up, stretch, and stroll down to visit the others. But these are the special people—those who can remember the path they took to get to the peak and can retrace it back down. Occasionally, they’ll go and visit. According to some learning models, they exist on the fifth stage of learning, known as reflective competence.

00:09:00 It’s likely you have worked with someone at this level in the community. They are knowledgeable and experts at their craft. They know which tools or technology to use and give good code reviews, but when it comes time to explain something more fundamental, they struggle because they’ve known their craft for so long they don't remember learning it.

00:09:30 Occasionally, you'll work with level five individuals who are the best teachers and mentors. They are thoughtful about how to explain things and are patient to allow you to catch up after they've described it.

00:09:43 Others in the community fluctuate between level two and level three: conscious incompetence and conscious competence. Many enjoy climbing and rappelling back down to climb up again. They’re learning and relearning, sometimes in groups and sometimes on their own. But these mountaineers visit the edge of the canyon fairly often to see who's on the other side.

00:10:12 If we were to pin your location somewhere on the mountain, where do you think you would be? If you feel like a junior to mid-level developer, you probably feel confused somewhere between level two and level three, cycling between conscious incompetence and conscious competence, always on a steep learning curve.

00:10:36 If you're more senior, you probably place your pin somewhere towards the top. Some of you may even have the self-awareness to realize you live among the clouds and don't remember how you got there. However, most of us should strive to be part of the level five community, able to mingle at the top with senior developers, while also making routine visits to guide others up.

00:11:03 Back to Tenderfoot: She’s rambling through a dark forest. It’s not scary, per se, but it is vast. Stephanie Maria described this feeling well when blogging about learning how to program in Ruby on Rails. She said, 'Rails isn’t easy; it’s approachable.' This realization helped her through some tough times.

00:11:39 If we, the more experienced people, remember that this is actually the truth, it will help us when we work with others, preventing us from discouraging them when they are struggling. Tenderfoot has been asking Bingle for help with basic directions to achieve her ultimate goal.

00:12:13 She’s learning a bit of JavaScript, Python, Ruby on Rails, Mickey Mouse, and CSS. Her knapsack is getting heavy with lots of items that are mixed up—it’s just becoming a garbled mess. She tries to reach in and grab something, only to find it's the wrong one; she doesn’t even know because she doesn't know why those things are in her bag in the first place.

00:12:30 Though her input from Bingle is imperfect and indirect, she eventually finds her way to the edge of the forest. She steps out into the light and hikes up to the canyon ledge, where she sees a couple of mountaineers on the other side. She gets excited—this must be where things get easier.

00:12:54 Tenderfoot attempts to get their attention, but they don’t seem to notice her. In response, she writes a note on a paper airplane and sends it across. She says, 'Hi new friends! How do I get across this Canyon? Thanks!' and waits. We’ve all seen this, right? The uninformed question on Stack Overflow, the overeager questioner in IRC or a Slack channel.”

00:13:47 Perhaps you’ve experienced this yourself—asking something huge when trying to get initial direction, but it’s vague and too big of a question. Just think, this could be a person's first contact with the developer community; that’s really alarming.

00:14:15 A common scenario might be that Tenderfoot writes this post: 'I want to really dig into programming, but I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed. I read posts here and I’m absolutely lost in all the technical jargon. More than jargon, I’m worried about the mathematical aspects of programming. I’ve struggled throughout my educational career, including the last two years at a local college, with anything beyond advanced algebra.'

00:15:08 So much like many beginners, this person is learning JavaScript, HTML, CSS, and Python all at once. The top-voted reply is long and well-thought-out, but starts with a series of questions. It says, 'The first thing you want to do is look at yourself: do you like math? Do you enjoy logic problems? Are you good at breaking complex problems into smaller parts? If you answered yes to one or more of these, keep reading. If programming sounds like a drag, please save yourself some time and look into something else.'

00:15:51 While the well-intended reply does end with some great advice, if you’re already feeling overwhelmed, it’s not encouraging to hear. On the other hand, Sarah Mae wrote a blog post about her experience when she was first starting RailsBridge and discovered that programming is not math.

00:16:11 She wrote that people came because they wanted to learn how to make websites, and thanks to those motivations, the curriculum involved virtually no math. This realization did it for her: the adult students she worked with came from a wide range of backgrounds. People with a math background did fine, of course, but those with a strong language background often excelled.

00:16:44 She saw this curious effect again while working with high schoolers with a similar curriculum. Bilingual kids often grasped programming concepts more easily than monolingual kids. Ultimately, she figured out that programming is not math.

00:17:15 What a difference this understanding makes! So let’s try to treat every paper airplane we encounter like it's a delicate paper crane. We should craft kind, sensitive, and encouraging replies because our responses might be the first and the last that our Tenderfoot receives.

00:17:47 Tenderfoot awaits a reply and continues to read and type away, trying to learn everything without truly understanding any of it. When she receives the reply, it says simply, 'Haven't you heard of a bridge?'

00:18:14 She feels rather dumb, thinking that maybe the people on the other side aren't that enthused to help her. Another Tenderfoot Redditor once wrote a post asking why experienced programmers appear so hostile toward beginners. They said it's often assumed they haven’t done their own research, which is rarely the case.

00:18:40 For every helpful reply, there seem to be four or five useless responses aimed at calling out their perceived laziness. It's disheartening, especially when you think of it this way: if we were playing a video game, we’d lose health points for receiving replies like that.

00:19:16 Despite the frustrations that can come from such dismissive replies, there are also negative portrayals of beginners in jokes, such as 'How do I do the thing? I'm unaware of how to use Google.' This condescending tone is circulated frequently and contributes to the discrimination beginners face.

00:19:54 Though fortunately, Tenderfoot's response is just smug, not aggressive. Another paper airplane arrives with a message asking, 'Are you asking how to build a bridge?' While this response is slightly better, it still leaves much to be desired in terms of help.

00:20:29 So what could Tenderfoot do better when writing her own paper airplane messages? Stack Overflow has a guide to asking good questions. The main points are: the Golden Rule—imagine you’re the one trying to answer the question; provide sufficient context like tool version numbers and database types; frame the problem well by stating your smaller and larger goals; avoid the XY Problem, focusing on the solution instead of the problem; and include relevant sample code.

00:21:07 Take time to write thoughtfully and articulately. While Stack Overflow doesn't specify, it’s also important to keep these points in mind when providing the perfect answer to others. Imagine you’re receiving the answer: provide enough context and frame it well, including your thought process in arriving at the proposed solution.

00:21:46 Provide sample code and data when relevant, don’t include everything, and again, take time to ensure your message is well articulate. A recent talk by Sacha Lamy about giving and receiving technical help highlights good practices for asking questions. For example, 'My current understanding is this; I expect to see this action here, but instead am facing this issue—what’s going on?'

00:22:12 Tenderfoot takes a moment before composing her next paper airplane message. This time she writes: 'Hello! I've just discovered this canyon, and I would like to cross it. I don't know how wide or deep it is, but I see some of you have made it across. Can you tell me what you did to get there? I want to build a bridge but am unsure of what materials to use.'

00:22:53 She lists the items she has and sends her new paper airplane back across. This time her message is a bit more helpful, saying, 'Hi Tenderfoot! Crossing the canyon is super easy. All you need to do is grab your foo, and then bar the bass. Just make sure you don’t misplace the bar, or else the foo will possess!'

00:23:21 Have you ever heard the phrase 'drinking from the fire hose'? Much like Tenderfoot, it’s easy to get lost as a new learner while absorbing all of the terminology and concepts. When you’re surrounded by so much information, you have to break it down into smaller pieces.

00:23:43 Tenderfoot is learning Ruby on Rails, which involves weaving through web concepts, operating system details, database management, deployment, command line navigation, and text editing. All of these components are important for development, but saying things like 'You just do X' can be quite disingenuous.

00:24:05 It creates feelings of confidence loss when you're overwhelmed with information. Literally, nothing about programming is easy! When we drop phrases like this from our vocabulary while helping others, it greatly improves their learning experience.

00:24:43 But does this mean we should change our vocabulary? Isn’t a string always a string? Farrah Simon, a graduate of Turing School and former art student and English major, stated that some of her biggest takeaways were about gaining fluency. She emphasized that trying to understand something without the vocabulary to discuss it coherently is a lost cause.

00:25:24 She advised, 'Pay your dues and learn the system before anything else. By building fluency, you'll allow connections to fall into place naturally. With fluency, you'll be able to do incredible things.' There is a responsibility on both sides of the canyon.

00:26:01 When mentors provide context and definitions when using programming-specific terms and ideas, they remove presumptions and provide illumination. When mentees catalog and learn new terms and acronyms, they are able to receive more specific, precise, and helpful answers.

00:26:40 Tenderfoot spends some time deciphering the latest message she received. She feels motivated by how some parts begin to make more sense, but she remains confused on a few things. The guidance stating that all she needs to do is grab her foo and then bar the bass is still perplexing.

00:27:07 Tenderfoot looks into her knapsack but realizes she doesn't have a foo available to borrow. Getting the right tools and environments set up, even for an experienced developer, can feel tedious and at times, downright impossible. Installing tools to install other tools starts to feel like installation inception.

00:27:35 Anyone who has volunteered at Install Fest like RailsBridge or RailsGirls workshops knows how challenging setups can be. Some participants have dealt with partial previous installations, double installations, delicate OS decisions, ancient machines, and even viruses.

00:28:09 These scenarios often arise because someone not only needs to figure out what to install, they also need to learn how to install it. Stephanie Mario and Kenobi joke that the first time some people see anything in the command line, it looks straight out of the matrix as if they've never encountered it before.

00:28:50 When everything goes well, it can be confusing; when it goes wrong, it's confounding and discouraging. Allowing our frustration to get the best of us can lead to new learners feeling ashamed.

00:29:28 So, how do we answer difficult questions like, 'How do I get my VM installed on my 1995 ThinkPad?' A terrible answer would be, 'Get a new MacBook Pro.' What about when someone says, 'I’m having issues installing something on my Windows or Linux machine?' Saying, 'Well, everything’s harder on Windows and Linux' conveys that the situation is tough and discouraging.

00:30:09 Instead of discouraging new learners, we should show them that experienced programmers, much like a cute kitten, often encounter these challenges themselves. We can teach them how we troubleshoot and how we properly read error messages. Bonus points if you have to ask someone else for help. This illustrates that these challenges are just part of the experience.

00:30:46 Back to Tenderfoot: she still doesn’t have a foo. She asks Bingle, 'Where do I get a foo?' but Bingle only offers, 'Did you mean to ask where to get some food?' Frustrated by the confusion surrounding her previous questions, she sends another message.

00:31:09 'Sorry, what is a foo? I can't seem to find one—sorry to ask so many questions.' The reply she gets is, 'Oh goodness, a foo! I'm going to say in Norv, have a great day!' Here we have Tenderfoot wasting precious daylight hours hunting for a foo when she actually needed a North.

00:31:54 When we offer tutorials with outdated information, or assume that someone is using a UNIX shell, we can cause much mental confusion. Being careful with the information we share with new learners is common courtesy and essential.

00:32:30 If we give half answers to questions, we can mislead new learners for indefinite amounts of time. If you missed Kylie Strad Lee’s talk yesterday, I encourage you to watch it. She discussed common mistakes that, with more openness, we could help prevent beginners from making.

00:32:59 Checking in when possible can help avoid frustrations. Just by asking, 'Did that work for you?' we might save them hours of confusion. Now, armed with new, accurate information, Tenderfoot uses Bingle to correctly identify and find a North.

00:33:25 Tenderfoot reviews and revises her instructions: 'Grab your North and borrow the bass.' After some help from Bingle, and a few informative searches later—'What is a bar? How do I bar?'—she carefully bars the bass.

00:33:52 She looks up and sees a single step has appeared on her side of the canyon. She waits, but nothing else happens. She’s one step closer, but it’s only one step of many. Tenderfoot timidly writes another note and sends it to her friends: 'I've successfully barred the bass! I have a step in my bridge now. Thank you so much! What do I do now to finish my bridge?'

00:34:26 Shortly, she receives a reply that says, 'Great news! Now just keep at it! You have to bar a lot of basses to complete your bridge across this canyon. See you soon!'

00:35:02 So she bars the bass again and another step appears, bars again, and another step. If we draw from the five levels of learning and psychomotor skills, we can infer that she is in the early phases—imitation, where she’s observing and patterning after someone else; and manipulation, where she’s listening to instruction and performing what she learned.

00:35:50 In Reddit, a user asks, 'Is it okay if I'm successfully going through Codecademy lessons without fully understanding some of them?' They express, 'I'm halfway through the Python course and it's not quite clicking. I find that I can follow the lessons but don't completely comprehend why it works.'

00:36:17 As Tenderfoot begins to build her bridge across the canyon of cognizance, she is gaining consciousness of her own incompetence. She recognizes quickly when she doesn't understand something. This Redditor sees that a piece of understanding is missing but can't quite identify what it is.

00:36:55 The mix of imitation and manipulation usually occurs around the halfway mark between unconscious incompetence and conscious incompetence, where the 'aha' moments start to happen. Raven Covington, another Rails Girls member, confirmed this: 'When I used Codecademy, I didn't realize how easily you can type something incorrectly and break your code.' It felt obvious once someone pointed it out.

00:37:51 She figured it out by asking someone at a weekend Install Fest, where she simply missed inserting a comma. Eric Michaels is spot-on when he discusses the importance of repetition on this journey. In his book, 'Learn Code the Hard Way,' he emphasizes perseverance: 'Keep at it, and if you hit a study drill you can't do, or a lesson that you don’t understand, skip it and come back to it later. Just keep going!'

00:38:38 The funny thing about programming is that when you start, you often won't understand anything. It doesn't matter how strange it all seems; it’s like learning a human language – there will be struggles to grasp what symbols mean and how they fit into the puzzle. But one day, 'bang!', your brain will 'snap' and you'll suddenly get it.

00:39:18 Tenderfoot’s process of repetition may feel lonely, but it’s something she will have to discover on her own. She will have her own 'aha' moments and 'dumb' moments. And she’s counting on the idea, 'Now I get it from Jeff Shaw!'

00:39:44 With each of these 'aha' and 'dumb' moments, she is inching her way across the canyon, learning what she has to learn—the ABCs of programming. After building her foundational understanding, she will begin to learn how to read code. And once she’s mastering that, she’ll be halfway up the mountain.

00:40:24 Tenderfoot moves from a stage of imitation and manipulation into developing precision, where she can reproduce her skills with accuracy and independently perform her tasks. With her head down, focusing on all the basses she has to bar, she steadily advances across the bridge.

00:41:01 In her knapsack, she carries vocabulary, tools, resources, and the ability to ask better questions. She also has people on the other side who can answer her paper airplane messages. Finally, she can see the mountain in the distance—a tangible goal.

00:41:33 Tenderfoot will keep working on barring the bass, and by the time she reaches the other side, she will have more informed questions. 'What happens if I pass the bar? How serious is the bass? I know I need a North, but what if I used a fail?' She might not fully understand the answers, but those complexities lie ahead in the next phase of her learning.

00:42:11 As she prepares to take her first step onto the safer, brighter side of the canyon, she recognizes the challenges in her future will be different. She will have peers, meaning more community to learn with, but also competition, as most developers wrestle with the question of 'How do I get hired with my new skill?'

00:42:58 Senior developers need to be meticulous with the advice they give; it needs to be actionable and practical, not theoretical. A former coworker of mine recounted how she was told to tackle all the Project Euler problems and start a company just to add 'CTO' on her résumé.

00:43:36 I've seen other junior developers attend local Ruby meetups to ask how to get hired. They coded a lot, participated in hackathons, but still struggled to find jobs—a frustrating reality. To simply suggest 'write lots of code and attend hack events' feels incomplete.

00:44:12 This approach lacks insight into what it means for a company to hire a junior developer. Undertaking project Euler problems and attending hack events merely constitutes busywork when devoid of building genuine relationships with companies.

00:44:48 Rebecca Paulson, a new developer at Kickstarter, articulately explained that companies willing to hire juniors are prepared to take risks. To be the candidate they choose to take a chance on, personal connections are crucial. So, how can junior developers forge these connections?

00:45:23 My advice is to not just write a lot of code. Get involved in the developer community—really involved! Help the meetup organizers set up and clean up. Volunteer to give talks, even lightning talks, and volunteer at events.

00:46:06 This way, you'll hear about internship and junior position opportunities before others do. Plus, you’ll have colleagues to give you references, advice, and encouragement. Steering new developers towards communities rather than just networks helps them find their footing and discover companies that nurture their skills.

00:46:34 When hiring teams can envision you as a person and potential teammate, rather than merely a random résumé, they are more inclined to find your spot on their team. Rebecca Paulson delivered another informative talk on what companies can do to prepare for junior developers.

00:47:15 Given the meaningful connections already established with those on the other side of the canyon, I feel optimistic about Tenderfoot’s prospects. There's a significant excitement surrounding this process.

00:48:00 However, if the canyon of cognizance were a board game, we would soon add the pioneer expansion pack! Tenderfoot will have to accomplish all of these tasks without any help from those on the other side of the canyon.

00:48:45 This time, Tenderfoot is the first to find her way to a forest, stumble to the ledge of the canyon, and figure out how to get across. But when she looks across, she doesn’t see anyone on the other side—no friendly faces or helpers who can show her the way.

00:49:22 She lacks the confidence to take that step, thinking that if no one else has crossed, why should she believe she can? What does this experience look like in real life? It likely resembles existing gender and racial breakdowns in technical job positions.

00:50:10 These disparities feel even more pronounced when Tenderfoot finds herself in one or multiple underrepresented categories. It’s likely she won’t find someone on the other side to serve as a beacon of success—no one she recognizes as a potential representation of herself.

00:50:52 Stephani Magdala Herrera articulated the importance of seeing familiar faces early in the learning process. She stated, 'Prospective and current students need to see people like them in interview rooms and classroom podiums. They need to know that at every level of these organizations—boardrooms, HR—there are women of color who can understand and advocate for their needs.'

00:51:40 The value of this kind of presence is immeasurable, and it's still all too rare. Many established pioneers are working hard to improve this. The founder of the coding organization Black Coding Matter, Dominic Gladel, leads efforts to demonstrate that there is indeed a community of black workers within the technology industry.

00:52:29 After experiencing the loneliness of seeing no one on the other side of the canyon for so long, imagine the joy Tenderfoot feels when someone finally appears! If that individual becomes recognizable and relatable, it could be a profound moment for her.

00:53:14 Ashley Nelson Hornstein wrote a blog post about her newly discovered hero, Auntie Jean Easley—an African-American computer programmer who contributed to the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (later NASA) from the 1950s to the 1980s. Ashley learned about Auntie Jean on Twitter and felt compelled to share her story with other women of color.

00:54:03 Having visible examples of people who look like her in elite professional fields is empowering. Their mere existence proves that there’s an achievable path in their field. Ashley discussed Auntie Jean's legacy with her friends and even met Dr. Yvonne Cagle, a NASA astronaut.

00:54:34 When Ashley showed Dr. Cagle a picture of Auntie Jean, Dr. Cagle demonstrated a tangible, emotional response. Auntie Jean Easley was a pioneer; she navigated the forest and crossed the canyon. But since she was not visible, Dr. Cagle had to become a pioneer herself to forge her own path to becoming an astronaut.

00:55:23 So, what can our community do to enhance visibility and support our tenderfeet? It’s essential to create supportive environments and events that help members of underrepresented groups see themselves in technology.

00:55:55 Routes and events like CodeMo and Rails Girls, Rails Bridge, and many others assist new learners in finding familiar faces. These smaller focus groups can act as beacons, visible across the canyon. Just this week, our Atlanta community hosted a RailsBridge workshop with 25 volunteers and 50 students.

00:56:42 This was a fantastic experience, notably because there were no tornadoes, but more importantly, many of our volunteers were once RailsBridge or Rails Girls students themselves. Now, many of them are full-time developers or pursuing internships.

00:57:25 That’s just within our own little Atlanta community! And yes, we did get a discount on the cake due to a misspelling with 'Rails Girls'—but I'm glad we could sort it out.

00:58:12 So hopefully, more pioneering tenderfeet can send paper airplanes to someone they identify with. Let’s reflect on who we are lifting up and making visible in our communities. In your local developer community, what events are you funding and helping to promote?

00:59:00 Are we, from our mountain of competence, sending the right messages to new members of our community, whether they are pioneers or not? Each message we craft, whether in person or online, should recognize the difficulty of the journey they have undertaken.

00:59:50 Through each thoughtfully composed message and interaction, we help tenderfeet bridge that treacherous canyon and overcome the first significant hurdle on their learning path. With each bridge built in this community, we grow; we gain traveling companions with unique experiences and skills.

01:00:32 The upcoming obstacles we may face might be entirely new for both you and me, but they could be something familiar to our new companions as well. Together, we can solve new and exciting problems as we make our way.

RailsConf 2015