RailsConf 2017

Panel: Ruby's Killer Feature: The Community

RailsConf 2017: Panel: Ruby's Killer Feature: The Community with Christopher Sexton, Sean Marcia, Latoya Allen, & Zuri Hunter

What makes Ruby so wonderful? The Community.

The community around Ruby is really what sets it apart, and the cornerstone of it is the small local meetups. Come learn how to get involved, help out, or step up and start a local group of your own. We will discuss how to develop and nurture the group. Share our experiences in expanding a small group to larger events like unconferences or workshops. Find out how community leaders can help everyone build a solid network, assist newbies in kick-starting their career, and most importantly ensure that everyone feels welcome and safe.

RailsConf 2017

00:00:13.340 all right good morning hopefully you all enjoy the
00:00:19.439 keynote and the break that we just had we are continuing today with our panel
00:00:25.890 stressed and really excited for this session on Ruby's killer feature I'm
00:00:32.309 going to introduce Chris who's moderator Chris is the VP of engineering at radius
00:00:37.890 Network where he builds mobile proximity tools and services he co-founded the Arlington Ruby group and helped organize
00:00:44.579 both Ruby retrocession and Ruby for good events enjoy the piano hello all right
00:00:58.800 so I'm going to go through and we'll do a quick introductions and then we'll get started
00:01:05.119 all right thank you Oh introduction hi everybody my name is Larry hunter
00:01:12.510 I am a Howard University love of computers mission systems major and I'm also the woman who code reveal rails
00:01:18.990 lead in Washington DC and I am a junior software engineer at digital globe hi
00:01:27.000 everybody my name is LaToya I am the founder of she nomads and inclusive space and tech for people who want to
00:01:33.090 travel while working remotely and I'm also a principal rails engineer at daily Coast
00:01:39.140 ok I'm Sean I am Sean my Santa hates lied to everybody now we go to Sean
00:01:47.329 that's me I'm not the Sasquatch oh yeah
00:01:54.360 I helped organize the Rubies are good and aren't you Ruby and I work for the government
00:02:02.040 government so we already introduced yourself allison introduced me no one needs to
00:02:08.729 hear me more about that one thing is we'd like to have your questions and I put some index cards in
00:02:15.570 the front two rows up here and if if you can I'd love it for people to come up
00:02:22.140 grab an index card write down a question and then you just come and hand it up to me if you'd like please feel free to do
00:02:28.890 that and we'd like to be able to go through some of those all right so the
00:02:35.910 actual panel so before we go into the questions let's get a little bit of
00:02:41.910 context so can you just probably a the
00:02:47.100 elevator pitch for one of the communities organizations that you guys
00:02:52.280 organize let's go in reverse order from from before since John's holding the microphone so so the pitch I like to
00:03:00.360 give I talked like to talk about Ruby for good and you've probably heard it and seeing people wearing the shirts
00:03:05.910 here it's a long weekend long event where we get a lot of people like us together and we help nonprofits places
00:03:13.170 that really need our skills but would never be able to afford you and me and those offer when we can tend to xalapa
00:03:21.080 so as I said before she never has a space and check for people who want to
00:03:26.220 travel while they work remotely and I think a big part of working tech is constantly working on your skill set so
00:03:31.440 we have free coding classes study groups an accountability group and we also do a
00:03:37.260 remote work and wellness retreat because I think those things are also important for us as people in tech and women who
00:03:44.850 code is the global nonprofit organization who's dedicated to creating
00:03:51.060 a community in the network for a woman in tech or woman who would love to be joint tech and for what we do depending
00:03:59.370 on the chapter but in the DC chapter what we do is we have weekly meetings across multiple subjects so Python Java
00:04:05.340 Ruby on Rails and front-end work and we host workshops talks and just basically
00:04:11.160 give a support group for women who are in that and/or in the industry and to share
00:04:16.579 our knowledge so one of the things I'd like to kind of set is originally when I
00:04:23.360 pitched the idea for this panel was I found it very intriguing folks working
00:04:29.630 in like helping with the community and you know moving along starting more
00:04:35.510 groups spinning things off encouraging people to move up we had a wonderful
00:04:41.270 panel discussion on the first day about getting involved in the community and how you can do that this is a little bit
00:04:48.520 more focused on the next step you're already involved in the community or you're participating in the community
00:04:54.470 and how can you step up and organize or if you're organizing how can you evolve
00:05:00.470 the group's you're in spin out new groups and basically build up the
00:05:06.470 infrastructure that we as Rubeus have to rely on so with that the first thing I'd
00:05:13.340 like to talk about is member engagement and so the my first question is just how
00:05:20.270 do you get consistent members in the organizations that that you help with
00:05:28.090 for what little code we get consistent members is of course you start with
00:05:33.320 feedback when we first get the ladies on board so we like to figure out what topics they're interested in whether
00:05:40.190 along with topic specifically for our case Ruby on Rails also the content like we tried to like
00:05:47.510 put forth like the best content whatsoever so we start we're going to really really hone a lot into the
00:05:54.830 beginners so we all as we all were once beginners so we all think of the things that beginners would like to know or
00:06:01.280 don't know and just clarify it in our first time at night and then give them footsteps I
00:06:07.039 mean steps into what is the next thing that they can do to improve on this and we like go along the way with it so I
00:06:12.890 think having that constant engagement with them we use flack we leverage of
00:06:17.900 you leverage slack to the HUD represses extent but keep that constant engaging with with them outside of our events is
00:06:24.440 what it helps them come back or so it's really on like the leaf as well as the community members to keep
00:06:30.710 that going I just pay attention to what people want I notice that a lot of
00:06:36.259 people are leaving others faces because they didn't have code of conduct so I got a code of conduct or I noticed that
00:06:42.470 you know people were having problems getting jobs specifically at remote companies that would allow them to
00:06:47.630 travel which is a ton of fun so I started a job board and we started pulling in sponsors for companies that
00:06:53.900 were hiring to work in our newsletter so I think just listening to your community
00:06:59.630 and meeting their needs is super important yeah and I'd also add that you
00:07:06.139 need to make your members feel like they're part of the community engage them have have them all speak when you
00:07:11.720 have an event like like something we do at our meetup is all the all the people come we have them do an iceberg at the
00:07:18.380 beginning tell them something interesting with themselves and there's trapped and desert island what book
00:07:23.750 would they bring things like that and and and don't just like leave when the meetups over like engage the people go
00:07:30.650 go to coffee go to nearby coffee shop build community so kind of spinning off
00:07:37.370 of that how how do you encourage people to actually either present at a meet-up
00:07:44.449 or step up and lead a project or participate it but the next more higher
00:07:49.669 level so I'm a big fan of just
00:07:55.930 volleyball and telling people to do things chief in voluntold many times
00:08:03.250 like a lot of people really want to volunteer they want to but they're I
00:08:08.389 feel autumn's self-conscious and so like just sit with them it's like hey how about on this day I know you've been
00:08:14.360 working on this how about you come and give a talk in this cool don't agree scrape scrape engineering and then let
00:08:20.240 me do I think for Shino mez because our events are typically remote it's just a
00:08:28.250 really convenient way for people to contribute to the community of someone wants to come in and teach a class or lead an AMA they can do that and then if
00:08:35.779 there happened to be a bunch of people who are you know in New York one week under Mexico City or Lisbon then I'm
00:08:42.649 like yes please organize a meet up and just have it under she nomads and it works really well so I want to make it a
00:08:48.769 little more specific for a journey so you run a lot of workshops how would you
00:08:54.529 convince someone who feels like they might be too junior to lead or help
00:09:01.070 other people out encouragement like talk to them and be like hey you can do this
00:09:07.959 you can do this we can help you we can help you put together to talk and everything but I think the dish with us
00:09:15.890 they don't have they're not confident in theirs go when you actually ally they know their stuff even though they live
00:09:21.290 with ourselves as a junior and whatnot so what we do is we talk to them and like of course like I talked about over
00:09:29.089 you know the stuff that they want to cover and just like guide em Lynette and then hopefully push them to the next
00:09:34.459 level in setting a date and promoting it for them to come through so a similar
00:09:39.980 question for Sean so it would be for good one of the problems is finding people that can lead projects is is
00:09:46.520 there a good way to take somebody who might feel like they're under-qualified and encourage them into that sort of
00:09:52.730 role yeah definitely like something we've started doing is we've like if you're a junior or you don't think you
00:09:59.000 have the skills and if you're here you have the skills so company the project but we'll we'll find someone more senior
00:10:04.520 in the community a casino developer and pair them up and say hey this is your senior mentor and they will they will
00:10:10.790 guide you through the process if you have any questions and anything at all come to them and they'll help you out
00:10:18.250 excellent um so I kind of like to change the topic a little bit so Latoya you mentioned the code of
00:10:26.480 conduct so how important is it or is there any specific language or points
00:10:34.370 that need to be made about a code of conduct when working with the community
00:10:39.440 like this yeah I think there's two things number one have one number two enforce it when people are acting up or
00:10:47.360 playing games you need to remove them from your community I think it's really important to provide a safe space
00:10:53.240 for people and I think Ruby in general does like a great job at that but I would love to see more communities
00:10:58.970 really step up and have a code of conduct but also enforce it so as as any
00:11:07.550 of you had any specific times when you had to actually deal with a conflict in
00:11:12.860 your organization how was that resolved
00:11:19.089 specific names would be best
00:11:24.610 well so far since we started we've actually had like a really great
00:11:30.050 community everybody with respectful to each other but we did recently have an
00:11:35.240 incident and what how we handle that it was like absolutely phenomenal to it
00:11:40.570 firstly we thought we should have something like you know a strike system a three-strike system so if this is your
00:11:47.149 like you know first offense and everything we talked to that person and it's like hey we would like for you to
00:11:54.380 not do that here's the reason why this is our code of conduct you know you want to keep this as a positive open relaxed
00:12:01.310 community because you know that would scare people away and if they repeat it again we just removed like yield and
00:12:08.420 remind them that's the third time around we like put them on probation and like keep them away and then like explain why
00:12:15.829 but the key thing is for us is to reach out to the individual to let them know like this is not okay here's how we can
00:12:24.079 like work with each other you're misunderstood let's look like to have this conversation but it really is like
00:12:31.430 to have I realized that it's really good to have like a not just oh you're out the community immediately but more of
00:12:37.190 like a strike system or just give them a chance I'm sorry so one of the questions
00:12:42.950 that the counter-arguments I've heard sometimes is we don't need more rules
00:12:48.709 why don't we just be nice or be polite to folks would you have a counter to
00:12:56.200 somebody making a statement I mean I would say people have been fighting for equality in tech for over 50 years so
00:13:03.199 obviously we haven't figured out how to play nice and when they're ready to do that then you can maybe have that discussion wood
00:13:08.730 until them I think that's the least like not having something not having a framework for people to reference is
00:13:15.570 like the least important part of that discussion I think I agree all right so
00:13:27.540 changing changing a to more diversity and culture so just in general how do
00:13:33.630 you encourage diversity in the organizations I'm black so I literally
00:13:42.120 just show up you know it's really not a problem for us I think when we first
00:13:47.610 started she nomads we really wanted to make sure that everyone was either already a part of an underrepresented group in tech or an ally to that group
00:13:55.970 and I think because of that we turned off a lot of people and our growth was very small but it ended up serving us
00:14:02.280 really well because we don't have those issues and it's been a really great experience we actually just had a
00:14:10.500 conversation about this like the leadership team of our Meetup and we recognized that we're not the most
00:14:17.760 diverse group and one of the things where we're going to do is we're going to add more organizer and start meet up
00:14:23.040 more people of different but they look like us so when people come into the meetup and they see the person running
00:14:28.530 it looks like them they're more inclined to to stay and take part forever than
00:14:33.540 people who just look like us for wasn't a code right clear these all women but
00:14:41.190 we do come from very different diverse backgrounds one thing we we've been like
00:14:47.190 really noticing or like trades we keep in mind is like the area of where we host our meetups as well as certain
00:14:54.240 barriers that would prevent a third particular group of women from attending so that would be like you know people
00:15:00.300 from different economic backgrounds who don't really have a car and they need
00:15:05.460 like public transportation to get to our to our to our locations so we try to you
00:15:10.860 know put together events or talk to workshops that will eliminate those
00:15:16.230 barriers for those people for those women who haven't the type of backgrounds and like
00:15:21.760 hopefully could see you having that like diverse background there so Sean since
00:15:30.540 Ruby for good isn't aimed specifically at a group that might be
00:15:38.020 underrepresented it's much more of a general thing are there any steps that you take to encourage the diversity
00:15:45.370 other than you know organizers that might not look the same no definitely definitely and you know before
00:15:51.460 registration opens I'm always reaching out to two diverse groups and if you
00:15:57.970 come to me for good you'll notice that it doesn't look like a typical technology events we have a very diverse
00:16:05.380 like this year I guess not including sponsor tickets because we have no control of who those go to you but 44%
00:16:12.040 of the I guess 56% is male and 44% is female so it's a pretty good mix for a
00:16:19.720 tech event so are there any specific support for anybody are there specific
00:16:28.170 suggestions for if so somebody here is a meetup organizer and they like to become encourage more diversity what's a
00:16:36.280 concrete example of something that you can do that would help encourage that I
00:16:43.440 feel like um if you see somebody that's like you know doesn't really typically
00:16:49.540 each other events like reach out and talk to them and try to bring them under your wing or on board with what you're
00:16:56.320 trying to do it I like we need to like talk to them and it feels like they're more included even though they're like
00:17:01.750 oh why you're talking to me I just want to look around see what you're doing but I feel like if you reach out to them and
00:17:08.050 doesn't know like hey I see you I would like more people like you to come to our event that will really help encourage
00:17:14.260 them make it a little bit more comfortable and like change the whole dynamic so there's your feet up so I'm
00:17:21.370 going to chime in even though the moderator not supposed to but specifically about this panel I wanted
00:17:27.699 to find a you know somebody that was in a white dude like myself
00:17:33.700 and the way we went about that was I talked to Allison who helps with the
00:17:40.850 conference and I knew that she had connections and kind of like Marco was saying the keynote you know I know
00:17:46.190 person the new person and that that was able to come through in in the end I was
00:17:51.350 super psyched and happier with how the panel turned out and then what would
00:17:57.530 have happened if I would have just gone out and tried to find somebody by myself so I think relying on those connections
00:18:02.960 is is a good go-to okay so we talked about diversity of the people inside the
00:18:08.930 meetup I think there's also a important thing about diversity of meetups or
00:18:15.890 groups that you're involved in how do you encourage your members to kind of expand out to other parts of the
00:18:22.970 community or things that you're not even necessarily involved in um we usually like organize the meetups to crash other
00:18:30.920 meetups okay but that's a way of how we do it like say I think I think it was
00:18:38.720 Arlington or I think there is something amitabh not too long ago that we decided
00:18:45.500 to like area instead of like having our own little ones let's go in a tent there is images show up in a group and we do
00:18:51.650 the same thing for a DC tech events too like a whole bunch of ladies women who code would come to the event independent
00:18:57.770 and hopefully that like encouraged into so comfortable an environment where they don't have to come with us
00:19:02.810 but that's my way like trying to branch out outside of just the women code
00:19:08.120 organization so like even though we're
00:19:15.260 Ruby meetup like we like one thing we do is we we encourage other other disciplines to come give talks are meet
00:19:21.410 up maybe talk about licks ER talk about one of the 600 JavaScript frameworks or
00:19:27.560 something because then you know they people come they get introduced to to these different things and and a lot of
00:19:33.140 times it's like an organizer a member of these army Epsilon they give them the resources to then go take part
00:19:40.510 I absolutely love linking up with other
00:19:45.580 meetup organizers and just combining and doing events I don't think I do it enough actually I tried to do it
00:19:50.620 quarterly but for example we linked up with Chicago PI ladies and we did an
00:19:57.130 event with them called a hundred days of commits and we had them come in and teach a class for us to you on building
00:20:03.040 Twitter BOTS which was really cool so I think just joining forces is a great
00:20:08.710 thing so I definitely you know there's a
00:20:17.799 certain amount of overlap between different meetups or maybe similar meetups within the same geographic area
00:20:25.020 so a couple of us are from DC and we have an amazing tech community there
00:20:31.140 however I remember it was something like six years ago this month I'm just
00:20:37.030 guessing that Arlington Ruby was started which you know there was already DC v
00:20:42.870 rug Ruby users group and there was Nova rock and so Arlington is kind of both of
00:20:51.130 those so obviously Li Shan was vindictive trying to take away from both DC and
00:20:57.100 Nova and crush them and take over the whole area how do you feel like how did
00:21:04.720 you feel when wrestling on Rails started and decided to do the same thing to Arlington Ruby I I was I was happy when
00:21:13.990 Reston launched their their interior Meetup I'm joking no no is like I was happy
00:21:22.480 like it's just shows the communities growing there's there's more people and like I was really excited cuz like more
00:21:29.080 talks like more chance for me to learn and just more people coming in the community and like in the reason we
00:21:34.720 started we started Arlington Ruby was like DC Ruby at the time was was always full people couldn't get in and so we
00:21:41.260 were like well let's just you know start around we all live in Arlington if we don't we didn't live in the district and so just made sense so 30 I know that
00:21:49.450 there are some very similar groups in DC also doing things do you feel like that more
00:21:58.900 options or is better of course of course there's certain topics that they were
00:22:04.660 probably covered that we don't get a chance to cover so the more options the better so we get like the ladies explore
00:22:11.200 what they want to like be interested in but yeah the more options the better and
00:22:16.450 obviously literally you want to be the only online I'm going to be only online meetup yes forever also travel ever for
00:22:23.919 anything no I mean it's the same thing for me especially I would love more help
00:22:29.830 actually there's so many people that are like on the other side of the planet who wanted
00:22:35.290 do things and I'm sleeping at that time or vice versa so like I would love to be able to say hey I have these like ten
00:22:41.830 users on your side of the world here you go the reason I you know I'm asking these
00:22:49.120 hilarious ly worded questions is just want to impress upon the folks here that
00:22:54.520 as organizers were thrilled when somebody else opens up next door doing the exact same thing it's the more
00:23:01.450 groups the better and the more we build out the community it's going to be slightly different for different people and they'll just click with other folks
00:23:08.530 and then they can work together right now there's lots of overlap as you know with Arlington Ruby in Silver Spring
00:23:16.270 Ruby in the DC rug and rest on Rails and then you know it can all come together for local conferences and other events
00:23:23.070 crashing meetups which is fantastic super fun yeah so if you're like
00:23:28.780 thinking I'd like to do this because I really don't want to drive for 20 minutes to go to meet up you should start one and highly encourage that all
00:23:38.620 right so I have a let me go through a couple of questions so I want to start
00:23:44.350 with Latoya so she nomads is online
00:23:50.860 virtual meetup but somehow you ended up doing a co-located event where you
00:23:59.110 brought a lot of people to Mexico how did that come about so when I first
00:24:04.720 started traveling or working remotely I didn't I found that I couldn't find community right it's like if I'm in New
00:24:11.030 York or something there's a ton of meetups I can go and meet people and I just found that a lot of people who are
00:24:17.030 having we're having the same problem you know it's like you want to get out of the US and work somewhere else where
00:24:22.790 it's cheap and the food hello Mexicans it's just amazing right so you want to go and have that experience and still be
00:24:28.880 able to get your work done how do you find community so I kept going down to Mexico City and then I kept trying to
00:24:34.730 convince my friend to working remotely to come with me they kept saying no so finally I said you know what screw you
00:24:40.280 guys I'm just going to like throw a website up and see if anyone wants to sign up or no one showed up and then
00:24:45.980 like a ton of people ended up applying which was great and then I ended up hiring a yoga instructor who taught us
00:24:51.950 yoga like twice a day and we got to explore this amazing culture and get to
00:24:57.260 know each other and we all worked as well so so did you find there was a lot of value in that actual co-located
00:25:03.620 FaceTime absolutely I feel like I've gotten to know them a lot better and it's just energizes the community I
00:25:10.220 think as well so this is for Sean so
00:25:16.480 originally you've organized a ruby retro session and somehow you were able to
00:25:22.550 parlay that into Ruby for good so first can you kind of give a little background of what Ruby retro session is and how
00:25:29.420 you use that to evolve into a much more complicated thing to organize sure
00:25:35.090 so retrocession it's a one-day unconference so which means we just all get together Dave we decide what the
00:25:41.480 topics are going to be and then we just talk about it and it's a lot of fun it's great for community building and quite
00:25:48.020 sure how that evolved into Ruby for good like something to do with my kind of efficient brain and like hating
00:25:53.360 inefficiencies because you talk to me like you know work with nonprofits or meet nonprofits and you hear about like
00:25:58.850 the horrible way they're doing things and we you know software developers we have this amazing building to help and
00:26:05.270 it doesn't require us to do much it's like just for how little a little help they need and so that's kind of like hey
00:26:13.850 we can help these people and probably a little bit of guilt in there too because you know as software developers we have
00:26:19.460 it pretty good we make a lot of money and everyone's turning those jobs but not everyone is
00:26:25.080 so lucky so Suri
00:26:32.490 I'm kind of curious what the secret sauce is and taking someone that's like
00:26:37.890 a total beginner and helping them through all the way to like getting their first job secret sauce is sugar
00:26:45.530 spice and everything nice I'm kidding honestly it's really encouragement and
00:26:52.860 boosting their confidence so really figure out what they really want to do
00:26:58.860 did you want to do front-end or back-end or you know did you want to do for Ruby on Rails and then from there just guide
00:27:05.790 them check in on them is fully almost like you know a micro mentorship going on so you got like 100% like it in your
00:27:13.890 face every week but just like doing checkups to figure out like where they are they come across any issues and just
00:27:20.370 really guide them question and encourage them and then like hasn't come out to warm it up have them actually become a
00:27:27.570 Ruby on Rails lead so so far we've like have people who become leaps within
00:27:33.720 women who code who started off like coming from a defender sri or who started off as like self-taught on
00:27:39.090 developers and we watch them grow we watch and give their talks and everything and we courage them and then
00:27:45.600 from that point on they're able to build that confidence ed in like they assert
00:27:50.940 applied to jobs and then so they're finally in the industry but I think when you bring them more involved in the
00:27:57.450 community it helps really put them to the next level with Intertek career or get into the tech industry so really
00:28:06.330 just having that constant connection monitoring you know encouragement the
00:28:11.760 network like really the network really helped us out a lot to help bring them into the next level so that's our fruit
00:28:18.990 solace so about a sugar and spice everything nice so it seems like you get a fair amount of control over there
00:28:25.920 beginners you help them level up you can you can kind of help them to become a lead and get more
00:28:31.740 technically savvy but that last step is really hard going from you know or even
00:28:39.450 just getting the interview and then you know starting the job and and the the
00:28:45.059 terror that can sometimes go through people's minds they feel like they're jumping into this big commitment how do
00:28:51.419 you handle that food really is like a constant reminder to let them know we
00:28:56.580 are here for you if you need to vent if you need to talk about like your first day or the interview process we are here
00:29:03.120 like this is what women who coat was for like we are you're here for you to
00:29:08.130 communicate to really puts up your confidence be your cheerleaders actually so that's how like we really like tackle
00:29:15.299 that and all what else is really like tackle that part um I really went blank
00:29:24.140 Latoya did you have a summer do you ever work with that first interview so the
00:29:30.659 interesting thing is that I think because we're so focused on people who
00:29:36.960 work in tech who can travel we get a lot of mid and senior and like director level people in our community so when
00:29:42.809 the new people come in I don't have to do much work to be perfectly honest I can kind of sit back and we have a lot
00:29:48.120 of people that are often willing to help them mentor on the fly I mean you can
00:29:53.190 you know screen share you can use team X to SSH into somebody's computer and we definitely encourage that so so Shawn I
00:30:02.340 know it at Arlington Ruby we've definitely had folks walk in the door and they said I don't know if I'm even supposed to be here and we've watched
00:30:08.610 them move all the way up just in watching those folks do you think there's something specific that
00:30:14.399 organizers should be doing to help or or encourage those people definitely
00:30:20.159 mentorship trying to find members mentors try to like to just encourage
00:30:26.880 them and just be there for them like one thing one thing I know a lot of the organizers of our Meetup we do is we do
00:30:33.000 a lot of marketing videos with the people I probably do one one or two a month with different junior people
00:30:39.059 before they're going to vote for their first interview of a second so just like help with any weekend so
00:30:45.700 changing changing gears a little bit to talk to mentorship which was fantastic segue thanks Sean so how do you go about
00:30:54.909 finding people to be mentors John so so
00:31:03.940 news can talk about mentorship so I have two so the first thing about mentorship is like it is a relationship and you
00:31:09.669 have to understand that and maybe it'll work maybe it won't because it's two personalities and and I was I was
00:31:16.269 talking to my mentee and she said to me she said I knew Riverbend mentor for me
00:31:21.669 because all the great advice he'd given me and I've given great advice and she she clarified and I wrote them down
00:31:28.149 because I want to share them at some point and advice I have given us don't be nervous about speaking at
00:31:33.639 railsconf just get drunk first that seven year old lady at the nonprofit
00:31:38.980 you're you work at is bugging you to spider when interviewing tell whoever's
00:31:48.190 interviewing you that your good luck to hire you tell them how every person who hasn't hired hired you had a house fire
00:31:54.639 afterwards so obviously I there's a particular sense of humor and we match
00:32:01.029 up but but yeah so it is a relationship and you need to find the right person so
00:32:09.269 as far as mentorship goes I would not be here if it weren't for mentorship I dropped out of college twice and I was
00:32:16.000 bartending until five in the morning when I started to learn how to code and I was like lost for a year and then I
00:32:21.909 ended up getting a mentoring shift at a company called a slight and I was able to take a lot of the good things that
00:32:27.760 came out of that program I think and kind of implement them and I think just because of my experience I'm just always
00:32:33.760 willing to help people who want to learn so I think finding other people who have who for some reason want to help to
00:32:40.330 learn is a big health code of we are
00:32:45.610 still trying to figure out like a nice formal process in doing this but more so
00:32:51.250 I think it's more like people don't know that
00:32:56.370 like that person actually my mentor but like I haven't told them yet but I do go
00:33:02.190 to them for questions I do go to them for like you know some advice on something but I think for us leads what we do is
00:33:11.159 like we reach out to them afterwards like after events and see like hey would
00:33:17.460 you like to you know have one-on-one discussions in regards to you know whatever you're interested with in the field and I've done that like several
00:33:23.760 times have a FaceTime my FaceTime yeah Skype Google hangout and I just talk
00:33:28.919 with them and figure out like hey what are your goals like what do you want to do let's you know try to meet every two
00:33:34.799 three weeks on like whatever subject or whether for whatever project that you want to do and I can help hold you
00:33:42.059 accountable for it and we can work through this and any questions that you have like I'm here for you so really
00:33:47.450 taking like our extra time outside of just organizing our meetups and reaching
00:33:52.799 out to our members to help monitor them and like give them like advice is like
00:33:58.500 one of our informal ways of like doing our mentorship cycle so one more quick
00:34:03.779 question about mentorship and then I'd like to open it up to audience questions
00:34:09.050 so do you hope to always have a mentor
00:34:14.389 of course I will be do I hope to always have a mentor yeah yeah absolutely I
00:34:20.790 have so many unofficial Mentors um Jenny Hendry was one of mine Rae Hightower I don't think even realize
00:34:27.510 that he's in my mentor for like five years and I'm always looking to you know
00:34:32.580 grow and expand myself and I think the only way that you can do that is through mentorship definitely definitely I hope
00:34:40.109 I always have one for the rest of my life right yes everything she said
00:34:45.649 actually of course yes I hope to have mentors also hope to like have mentors
00:34:53.790 across different realms in industry or different topics like not misplay always
00:34:59.339 in tech but you know a career mentor or someone on like life but the I think for
00:35:07.410 me like what I would like to and I'm sure everybody would like to work on is getting mentors with different tricks and trades so it really
00:35:14.020 will give you like well-rounded advice and a well-rounded guide on navigating
00:35:19.720 or wherever you're going great so we have about five minutes left I thought one person take a card did you have
00:35:27.130 question so the question is how
00:35:34.990 important are the meetups to maintain a community and keeping connected well in
00:35:40.480 this context what is a Mita like are you talking about meetup comm actual events
00:35:46.210 I think they're really important I think they're the foundation so is it kind of
00:35:52.510 actual that's like as opposed to a conference okay I think that in-person
00:36:00.220 like stuff really really truly goes a long long way I think that's like really
00:36:07.360 fundamental because it really you see the first thing Tudor facing we can read body language a lot better as opposed to
00:36:13.930 you know doing district text honestly by the way we just play is basically close to it 90% of communication so the
00:36:21.960 physical location part is like super super important and it really helps out
00:36:27.310 with everything yeah definitely and helps sort of you can create
00:36:32.890 opportunities for mentorship like how have new people bring bring code samples or bring code that they're working on
00:36:38.170 them that they need help like we always encourage our new members to like hey if you're stuck on something bring it and
00:36:43.630 someone will help you and oftentimes persons is helping them that will blossom into a mentorship situation
00:36:51.000 don't add to that really quick since everything to do or 90% of what you do is remote I will say that like for us a
00:36:57.220 meet-up might be there's a bunch of people online on Saturday asking questions about github why don't we just
00:37:02.920 do a giant github review then there's like 10 people that are just doing it then and I feel that works really well
00:37:08.500 for us
00:37:26.170 coming up in my community so just to repeat the question that is how can
00:37:31.760 people join a more global or remote community and be involved in that yeah
00:37:41.170 so I think when people come into the community I try to welcome them personally ask them a couple of
00:37:47.150 questions as you try to get people to do introductions and I just talk to them a little bit and see like what we can do
00:37:52.730 to help them feel a sense of community if they're looking for anything specific and I since everything's online like I
00:37:59.029 said before the turnaround time is really quick they're like I need help with my resume okay then like let's
00:38:04.670 throw something on the calendar for next month or next week so Ruby for good has
00:38:11.359 done remote leads you'd say a little bit about that yes so in the past years
00:38:17.869 we've like one of the teams or will will do one team or will get a remote lead and have a remote team and we're
00:38:23.690 debating doing it this year too so if that's something really appealing to you come find us efforts I think we have
00:38:30.950 time for one more question anybody all right great thank you so much for coming