Interview with Coraline Ada Ehmke on Artis and engineering leadership at RailsConf 2014

Hi, it’s Mike with UGtastic. I’m here at RailsConf 2014, and I’m standing here with Coraline Emke, who gave a talk called Artisans and Apprentices. Thank you very much for taking the time to speak with me. Of course. So can you tell me a little bit about your presentation? Sure. I’ve been involved with onboarding new developers, with bringing new people into our field for a number of years now, through mentorships, through training, through education, by being a teacher’s assistant. And I really think that it’s one of the most important problems that we have to solve right now as technologists, is how to bring new people into our community while preserving our community values, and making sure that they have the appropriate resources to become effective and happy with their careers. Okay, yeah, because I had worked with the talent group on it, and so I’m familiar with some of what you’re talking about. Some of those things that you’re dealing with when you’re onboarding an employee can be a huge indicator of whether they’re going to stick around. Right, and I think actually even before they come into their first job, the work that we do as a community to prepare them for entering the workforce, whether they go through a boot camp program, whether they go through a CS program, or if they’re self-taught, the way that we present ourselves to them, we establish a baseline for what our expectations for them are. I think that’s something we have to be very deliberate about. So when you say expectations, are you talking about strictly technical, or maybe cultural, or both? Absolutely both. Our culture will erode. The things that bring us to a particular open source community, whether it be Ruby or Python or what have you, is the image that the community portrays, and the way that it lives, the values that it professes to hold dear. If we’re not very deliberate about passing those values on, that culture will erode, and the things that we love about a community. So things like RailsConf having the no-harassment policy, those are important things, or maybe I’m drifting a little bit from, or I should say, are they imparting lessons to people who are apprentices or artisans coming to RailsConf and saying, wow, RailsConf has this thing, that’s obviously , even if it’s subconscious, it’s imparting that this is important. Actually, I never made that connection. I never made that connection before, but I’m really glad you bring it up, because I do work a lot with conferences and with people who work with conferences to establish good codes of conduct. What these are, in my talk, I talk about the fact that a boot camp situation where you’re paid, you don’t work for 12 weeks, and you pay them $12,000, that draws from a very privileged class of people who can afford to not have a wage for that time, who can afford $12,000, who don’t have families to support, and so on. That self-selects people who are of a privileged class, and in order to attract people who are different from the majority of software developers, people who are maybe from outside of your community, outside of your network, it’s important to signal to them that they’re welcome, and I think codes of conduct is their one mechanism by which you can signal to women and minorities and people of color and people on the LGBT spectrum that it’s a safe place and that they’re welcome and that there are consequences for people who violate the community norms. So you’re here and you’re presenting at Rails Conference, so it sounds like you do feel comfortable here and you feel like it’s giving a positive vibe. Is this something you’ve seen other conferences adopting, or is this something that maybe some conferences are kind of, I’m not going to do this because maybe I’ll upset our core audience? I absolutely have seen that play out, that discussion play out, and I took the code of conduct. I took the code of conduct pledge that Ash Dryden put together late last year. I will not speak at or attend a conference that does not have a comprehensive code of conduct, and a lot of people took that pledge. The people who disagree with it or who don’t think it’s a big deal are not the people that the code of conduct is there for. So if I’m somebody who’s working in a community and I have a youth group or a conference, what are some of the things that I can do to be more aware or ensure that I’m not even under the influence of the community? I’m unaware of them, excluding people. I mean, if I look out at my user group and it’s all a bunch of middle-aged white guys, is it just that’s the area I’m in, or am I maybe doing something that, how can I become more aware of what I’m doing and evaluate whether or not the audience is just that’s the demographic I’m in, or is there something I’m maybe doing to put up a barrier? I think that is absolutely the first step, is looking out at the people that you’re associating with, and if they all look like you, there’s a good chance that you’re suffering from it. You have established relationships with people that you’ve worked with, people that you socialize with. It’s not that you’ve done something wrong, it’s that you haven’t done all of the things that you could do to make your group inclusive and welcoming. And one of the ways you can do that is by promoting the fact that you are open and welcoming. You can reach out specifically to people that you know in the community who are people of color, who are women, who are people on the LGBT spectrum, who are not able-bodied like you are, reaching out to them and making sure that they are able-bodied. You can reach out specifically to people that you know in the community who are people of color, who are not able-bod ied like you are, reaching out to them and making sure that they are able-bodied like you are, reaching out to them and making sure that they are able-bodied. You can reach out specifically to people that you know in the community who are people of color, who are not able-bod ied like you are, reaching out to them and making sure that they are able-bodied. You can reach out specifically to people that you know in the community who are people of color, who are not able-bod ied. You can reach out specifically to people that you know in the community who are people of color, who are not able-bod ied. You can reach out specifically to people that you know in the community who are people of color, who are not able-bod ied. You can reach out specifically to people that you know in the community who are people of color, who are not able-bod ied. You can reach out specifically to people that you know in the community who are people of color, who are not able-bod ied. You can reach out specifically to people that you know in the community who are people of color, who are not able-bod ied. You can reach out specifically to people that you know in the community who are people of color, who are not able-bod ied. You can reach out specifically to people that you know in the community who are people of color, who are not able-bod ied. You can reach out specifically to people that you know in the community who are people of color, who are not able-bod ied. You can reach out specifically to people that you know in the community who are people of color, who are not able-bod ied. You can reach out specifically to people that you know in the community who are people of color, who are not able-bod ied. You can reach out specifically to people that you know in the community who are people of color, who are not able-bod ied. You can reach out specifically to people that you know in the community who are people of color, who are not able-bod ied. You can reach out specifically to people that you know in the community who are people of color, who are not able-bod ied. You can reach out specifically to people that you know in the community who are people of color, who are not able-bod ied. You can reach out specifically to people that you know in the community who are people of color, who are not able-bod ied. You can reach out specifically to people that you know in the community who are people of color, who are not able-bod ied. You can reach out specifically to people that you know in the community who are people of color, who are not able-bod ied.