Open Source and Feelings Open Source & Feelings

Rachel Ober

Rachel Ober

Ensuring the Sustainability of Your Code Learning Community

Most great epics tell of how against all odds, our heroine champions over incredible hurdles to accomplish their dream and create a massively successful project. I'm here to tell you that the story isn't over after the happily ever after. Instead, the hard work is just beginning.

True legends don't form from one successful deploy, or one successful workshop run. Success is dictated by longevity and key points of interest.

Now that you've figured out and climbed your mountain, how are you going to keep your project alive? How can you ensure stability?

In 2013, I set out with a very manageable goal of running a RailsBridge workshop in New York City. The second part of my goal was to create a self-sustaining organization that would continue to run workshops to teach the underrepresented minorities in tech while keeping the values set by the RailsBridge founders Sarah Mei and Sarah Allen.

It's easy to run workshops, it's a lot harder to develop a healthy culture within a volunteer organization.

In this talk I will highlight key points from my two years as a RailsBridge chapter founder and go through the challenges I faced through strategies in real-time communication, documentation, and code curriculum sharing through technology.

Speaker Bio

Rachel Ober is a software engineer in Brooklyn, NY, specializing in developing in Sass, Ruby, and Ruby on Rails. She spends a lot of time learning new things in technology and loves sharing it with others.