Web Development And Frontend Practice: Mike Hall Interviews Carl Erickson | SCNA 2012
🚀 Dive into the world of web development with Carl Erickson! 🌐 He shares the story of BitCamp, a program designed to engage middle school girls in tech. 🎨 Learn how collaboration and communication skills are crucial in the tech industry. 💻 Don't miss out! 🛠️ #TechForGirls #BitCamp #WebDevelopment #Collaboration #Communication #CTA https://just3ws.github.io/interviews/carl-erickson-software-craftsmanship-north-america-2012
The Interviewer
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
The Guest
Carl Erickson
web development and frontend practice
The Conversation
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Hi, it's Mike again here with UGtastic at SCNA. I'm sitting down with Carl Erickson who is the CEO of Atomic Object, singular, not plural, and he's working on a project called BitCamp where he's working with middle school girls so that way eventually they can become part of the tech community. Can you tell me a little bit more about what is exactly BitCamp? Sure.
Carl Erickson
web development and frontend practice
The first time we did BitCamp was in 2006, Michael, and we did it because we recognized there were very few women who are studying computer science and then therefore very few women in the field as software developers. We wanted to try to do something about that, but as a university professor before I started Atomic, I recognized that when you start thinking about that issue in freshman of college year, that's too late. And so we wanted to go back earlier and we wanted to start getting girls excited and showing them what's possible and what a life of being a programmer is like, a work life of being a programmer, but when they're still young enough to not sort of have made up their mind that they can't do that or they're not interested in that or that's boring or unexciting or whatever. Yeah, it's and that seems to be middle school. They seem to get turned off somewhere around middle school. Yeah, it's I from from females in my family that I've spoken with, they think that it's it's kind of boys thing that it's it's just sitting down and looking at a computer all day and it's so much more than no collaboration. Right, right, right. It's a solo sport and you put your little headphones in and you go into your little cubicle and they throw food over there and out comes code.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Carl Erickson
web development and frontend practice
And our office environment is so much the antithesis of that and our projects are so team oriented that honestly collaboration and communication are at least as important, those skills, as software development skills. So I suspect if anything women might actually have a natural advantage in that kind of environment. So with working with the young girls, is there a difference in the approach that you have working with with young females versus young males? So we've never done anything. We've never done anything with middle school kids. My daughter at the time was 14. And so I know I knew about 14 year old girls, but we haven't done anything formally teaching wise. And I've never taught that kids that young. So what we didn't we decided that we wanted to try to give them a little bit of an overview and you know, I was a professor. So I had this perspective on some hands on exercises, some simulations, some, some doing practical things as well as some lecture. And we put, put BitCamp together out of one a one day experience with plenty of snacks and lunch and you know, some fun in between. We didn't tailor it one way or other gender wise. And we tried to appeal to lots of different ways of learning. And we made darn sure that they were paired up when they were working together. So it was very collaborative.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
So like what kind of exercises were they doing?
Carl Erickson
web development and frontend practice
I mean, uh, was there something that was more, uh, well, actually without leading into any kind of topic, but what kind of exercises were you having the children to do? Well, so we, we really wanted, we were focusing on the web and we really wanted them to have a basic understanding of what the web was and how it worked. And so of course we were going to do some HTML and CSS and some lightweight JavaScript, a little bit of backend stuff. Um, but I also wanted them to have an appreciation when they clicked, you know, the return key to send an HTTP GET request.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Like what happened there? How did those packets flow across the net and where did they go and what came back?
Carl Erickson
web development and frontend practice
So we did this little simulation on the floor with, with, uh, with the girls in chairs as packets. And we pushed them around through the network and showed how that worked and how we did, uh, uh, uh, uh, So making it real. Making it real. A response was assembled. We had the little, you know, HTTP response chopped up into pieces of paper and then we handed them out and we reassembled it at the backend and trying to get it to be a little more physical. It's an interesting thing that we're in a, probably the first time in human history where a machine is completely turned, uh, opaque. Oh yeah. Incredible complexity is hidden behind that simple little keystroke.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Carl Erickson
web development and frontend practice
And I wanted to give them an appreciation of that. And, uh, so one of the things, so, cause we're, you know, we're looking at the idea of community and females at conferences, you know, usually are, are isolated or, or, well, I would not say at least very much the minority, uh, right now. Is there been any, um, um, and sometimes they're met with a little bit of hostility, a little bit of misogyny when they, when, when women make, make a complaint about that or make some kind of observation that, Hey, you know, what's going on and trying to figure that out. Has there been any, uh, uh, negative reaction towards what you're doing, trying to work with children saying, Hey, why are you working with girls? Why don't you just. No, I have not heard that.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Okay.
Carl Erickson
web development and frontend practice
I think we have a lot to be embarrassed about in our industry for this, for this very reason.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Okay.
Carl Erickson
web development and frontend practice
But in this case, I haven't heard any, any sort of pushback. Now, after we ran it in 2006, uh, we had a steady trickle of people saying, Hey, when are you going to do it again? I want my child to go through it.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Carl Erickson
web development and frontend practice
And some of those were girls and some of those were boys. Mm-hmm. So I had requests for everybody.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Okay.
Carl Erickson
web development and frontend practice
There's definitely interest there. We, the last time we ran it was in a few months ago in Detroit, in our new office there. We partnered with the Detroit Public Schools. Mm-hmm. Oakland University. Oakland University provided, um, students, most of them were women, to help, uh, mentor and teach. And, uh, the students who participated on DPS, you know, some of them didn't have a computer at home to register. We had to register them over the phone. Some of them took a bus to get to our office. It was a, it was a really, uh, much different, uh, socioeconomic demographic than the first time we ran it in 2006.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Right. Yeah.
Carl Erickson
web development and frontend practice
And that, that kind of brings up the concept of the, the digital divide. You know, the, the accessibility to those, those technology. And did you, was there any difference that you saw between, um, children who had computers at home and their ability to learn and adapt to the technology?
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Or maybe something that you, maybe had to help kids that might not have been exposed?
Carl Erickson
web development and frontend practice
It seemed like all the, all the girls, even the ones that did not have computers at home, were exposed through libraries or schools. Mm-hmm. So, no, we did not notice a difference.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Okay.
Carl Erickson
web development and frontend practice
So, yeah, they, they knew what a mouse and a computer was and all that. Absolutely. Okay, great.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Well, thank you very much for the work that you're doing. It's really great. And, uh, thanks for sitting down with me. Yeah, you're welcome. Enjoyed it. Enjoy.