RailsGirls Coaching policy

[svenfuchs]

So far I've most of the time declined to coach at RailsGirls events outside of Berlin (except Amsterdam, which was right before Euruko) because I didn't want to spend so much time on travelling.

I'm considering a new policy there:

"I might accept invitations to coach at RailsGirls workshops IF travel/accommodation expenses for at least two former participants of RailsGirls beginner workshops are covered AND they can most likely do the trip in order to coach or co-coach."

Obviously you are good candidates for trips like these (i.e. go to some other city on paid expenses in order to coach/co-coach) but I'd expect participants from other study groups to be fit enough soon, too.

What do you think?

[carlad]

Sounds good.

Sent from my iPhone

On 20/01/2013, at 18:15, Sven Fuchs notifications@github.com wrote:

So far I've most of the time declined to coach at RailsGirls events outside of Berlin (except Amsterdam, which was right before Euruko) because I didn't want to spend so much time on travelling.

I'm considering a new policy there:

"I might accept invitations to coach at RailsGirls workshops IF travel/accommodation expenses for at least two former participants of RailsGirls beginner workshops are covered AND they can most likely do the trip in order to coach or co-coach."

Obviously you are good candidates for trips like these (i.e. go to some other city on paid expenses in order to coach/co-coach) but I'd expect participants from other study groups to be fit enough soon, too.

What do you think?

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/svenfuchs/text-to-squares/issues/175.

[phenriettak]

:) that would be amazing! hmm.... good idea ;)

[keikoro]

Hiya, found my way here via Twitter and wanted to add my 2¢:

As a first-time Rails Girls event organiser (as of this weekend), I have to say I'm very glad there are people who actually love coaching at Rails Girls events so much they will happily travel elsewhere to do so without requesting anything in return.

Rodrigo from Switzerland joined us in Vienna, as did Sarah from Salzburg and Helmut from Linz. Consti, a fellow organiser, had previously coached in Poland, Munich and Zurich, Michi - and Johannes, who unfortunately had to cancel for Vienna - were also part of the Zurich coaches team. All of them were happy to get invited or suggested themselves they could come coach. <3 <3 <3 As far as I am aware, none of them asked for or expected money in return for joining these Rails Girls events. I actually know that one of these people is explicitely against asking for money for travelling elsewhere for RG. (I know you didn't ask for money for yourself, but what you are suggesting amounts to the same thing.)

In my opinion it's really cool to have people from other countries or regions join, and for me, this is also one of the things that makes a Rails Girls event special. Finding sponsoring for one such event can be effing TOUGH though, so I'd rather I could spend the money on creating a nice event for the participants than cover people's flights. (If there is any leftover money, however, I strongly believe coaches who had to travel to the event should get some for compensation. Also, RG organisers should very definitely help them find a spare bed/couch/mattress to crash on!)

Anyway, now I know whom not to ask to come to Vienna for future events. ;) (SCNR!)

[svenfuchs]

Hey @kerstin!

Thanks for the feedback :)

I don't want this to be understood as some general recommendation for others or even discouragement for people to travel to RailsGirls events for free. It didn't even occur to me that this could be understood in any such way.

Maybe I should explain a few things as a bit of context.

I have been coaching at many RailsGirls events both in Berlin and elsewhere and I run a weekly Ruby study group for RailsGirls attendees who want to deepen their understanding (actually the GitHub repository you've found is the one we use for sharing some code and discuss things on the "issues" list).

I also get invited to RailsGirls events and other community events a lot. One reason probably is that people know my name in the context of RailsGirls coaching because I tweet a lot about it, but another reason definitely also is that my name is kinda well known in the Ruby community. Thus organisers might invite me in order to increase their chances of finding sponsorships (local businesses often are more keen to sponsor if they get presented with some names they know). This is a fair thing to do, everyone benefits and there's nothing bad about this in my opinion.

But ... on the other hand ... I just do not have so much time for travelling and I am also aware of the fact that if I take one of those sponsored invitations then that means someone else, maybe less well known coach, won't get the same offer. Even though they might deserve it even more in terms of dedication or might need it more in terms of money.

Thus the idea here is that if you do offer a sponsored trip to me then I won't take it if you do not also offer the same to someone you might not have contacted, i.e. a former RailsGirls attendee who's now trying to get into coaching herself.

Again, I think this is the same fair deal. Some sponsor (or their team) might get to meet me in person, they can take a few nice pics and tweet about this (which means marketing/positive attention). And I will certainly tweet how cool they are for making this trip possible for a RailsGirls attendee to now coach.

I do understand that finding sponsorships can be hard, and it won't be the same in every other city. But still, why would we not use the fact that potential sponsors might be keen to help when they hear a more well-known name in order to make coaching possible for more women who otherwise possibly would not have been contacted.

I'm also not saying that this needs to be a first-class travel and expensive hotel. It might very well just be a train ticket, lift ride, whatever and a couch if that's fine for everyone involved.

So, if you feel that I am putting pressure on you as an organiser then I'd like to apologize. That's not my intention, really. I'll try to clarify things more in future.

RailsGirls is still a very young movement, tremendously successful and sparkling of love and great energy. But it is also evolving. Some of the early attendees have actually followed up and learned a lot. Some are now coaching but would like to be offered more opportunities to deepen their experience. This group will grow over time. Maybe they can't always afford another trip to another city, maybe being invited and being treated as a "star guest" might be some extra motivation.

What if, in another six months or one year sponsors all around Europe know that a great sponsoring opportunity not only is to sponsor some well known Ruby coach to come over (i.e. people who already get invited so often that they just can't accept all the offers), but also know that an even better opportunity is to pay for a first-time coach's train ticket. And why should one be satisfied with a status quo where it is normal for companies to pay for white, male dudes to be offered expenses for their conference trips as speakers ... but it is not normal to invite first-time RailsGirls coaches on the same basis?

I am sure there'll be companies who are very much up to this if we tell them (I have done the crowdfunding campaign at https://love.travis-ci.org one year ago and I know how happy companies often times are when you offer a win-win thing like this).

Again, I have put this up for discussion in order to get feedback exactly like your's. Also, this is a personal thing about me, maybe a few people who are in a similar position. But I do not mean to propose this as a general policy for all coaches, all workshops, everywhere ... that's not my business, but @phenriettak and Linda's (I guess).

Thanks again for your feedback, much appreciated! It really got me thinking.

And maybe the whole thing is a bad idea all together. I'm curious where this discussion leads to and what others are thinking.

PS: Vienna has been on my list of cities where I need to visit friends for years. When I go I'll try to make sure there's a RG event around that time :) Or maybe we could just meet and have a nice coffee.

[phenriettak]

Ah! @svenfuchs you need to come to vienna when I'm there too... Or visit us up in Helsinki! I would really like to see more follow-up workshop models, different kinds, and hear how participants are doing now. So far, RG spurred off Singapore geek girls, Open tech School, and a bunch of other inititatives, but so far I only know of our Helsinki satu who is pursuing a career in programming - though I am sure in other places (there, poland, washington) there are surely other ones too!

Getting participants to coach in future sessions is also teaching the "give-back" or pay it forward culture. Highly reccomended!

I feel that all in all, very often local communities are very keen on sponsoring not only rails girls but any acts to diversify the communities. This "incentive" or possibility for organizers or participants to coach abroad is absolutely great- and we try to get some companies here in Finland to help the girls here go to other rails girls workshops too! (mostly as organizing help, but coaching or holding a lightning talk on some useful knowledge would be equally if not even more supported).

Of course, every organizer acts of free will and does as they please - inviting any coaches or anyone from elsewhere is not a must :)

But I do want more blogposts!!!! :D

Ps. commercial break: check out my kiddo project http://mehackit.org/ (still under construction)!

[svenfuchs]

Would love to meet with you and catch up :)

OpenTechSchool is fantastic! Another nice building block. I think for most attendees of RailsGirls (Berlin at least) beginners workshops it's kinda too open and broad though. You already need to know specifically that you want to deepen your, say, Git knowledge so that it makes sense to go.

In Berlin the last beginners workshop currently spawns new "project/study" groups, so we'll be at 6 of them (unless I'm mistaken). The students of my own group now all have coached, some of them twice, and Debbie will be the first to go to the workshop in another city (Frankfurt) and help organize and coach, too.

We're currently having a good discussion on the railsgirls-bln mailinglist regarding how to design that "next step after the beginners workshop" more. Having started with the project/study groups is awesome, because now we have a bunch of different groups who all started figuring out their own approach and so we can now join things and exchange.

I believe we should do something like a "Ruby Beginners Academy" next, i.e. have a set of exercises that can be shared and re-used, then have weekly meetings and (again) start out by coaches giving Ruby teachings which later can be taken over by attendees.

Next to that there are ideas about building a toolbox for building simple games in Ruby (for example), which also might be a very helpful tool for the project/study groups.

Basically, the challenge is to make that next step after the beginners workshop more efficient. Running such a group is quite a bit of work and I feel I'm not always doing the best job since I can't put unlimited time into preparing things. I also think that collaborating on this more might help each of the groups a lot.

[svenfuchs]

Wow, mehackit looks pretty cool! Signed up :)