Ruby And Rails Practice: Mike Hall Interviews Sarah Allen

Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic

Hi, I'm Mike with UGtastic here again at SCNA. I'm sitting down with Sarah Allen and Desi McAdam. They created the RailsBridge Workshop, which is, well, I'll let you describe what exactly is the RailsBridge Workshop. So, RailsBridge is a broad organization that was started by a number of Rails developers who really wanted to create the kind of community that they wanted to be a part of. Sarah May and myself started what's, as a RailsBridge project, it's the RailsBridge Open Workshops. And specifically in San Francisco, we used the Open Workshop formula to create outreach workshops to women. And the idea is we're using open source practices to apply to event organization and outreach projects. So, the, what we call recipes or cookbook for creating the event, as well as the curricula, are all open source and freely available for anybody to use for anything. And then Desi has happened to be traveling all over the world and has created instances of these workshops wherever she's been, as well as dozens or many, many other volunteers have done that all over the country and the world. What's the format?

Sarah Allen, Desi McAdam ruby and rails practice

So, the current, as you said, it's a, it's an open source thing, so it, I'm sure there's some evolution. What is the current format of a... So, the core format is a Friday night, Saturday event where on Friday all of the installation occurs. So, you have volunteers who come and help people get their machines set up because that is often the most difficult part for beginners. And it really has nothing to do with the, you know, writing code or doing... It can be a wall. The particular technology. Or get Ruby on my computer, boom. Yeah, I mean, particularly Rails is so many collections of open source packages and it's particularly hard on, you know, and it's different for each machine you're on. Once you've got Ruby and Rails installed, it's easy. And then it's different for the different technologies and, in fact, there's now a front-end workshop that doesn't have an evening install fest because everybody has a browser and a text editor and that's kind of easy. Yeah, that one's... But for the Rails workshop, that is really an important step. And then... Saturday is everybody follows the same curricula and you have at least two groups. One is for people who've never written code before and the other is for, you know, whatever degree of... Maybe they already hit Java but they never did Rails.

Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic

Exactly.

Sarah Allen, Desi McAdam ruby and rails practice

So, sometimes we'll find that people who are sysadmins are faster learning Rails than experienced programmers who maybe have done desktop applications but aren't very familiar with the commands. So, your level of experience as a coder doesn't necessarily correlate to how fast you'll learn the very first steps of Rails. So, you might have predisposed towards, "Oh, this is how we do it on the desktop. " Whereas somebody who's maybe had some scripting experience doesn't have maybe as rigorous a mindset on, "Oh, yeah, it has to be this way. " Yeah, because you'll have different learning curves for people who've done web apps so they understand HTTP versus people who've done C++. Therefore, they understand...

Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic

Right.

Sarah Allen, Desi McAdam ruby and rails practice

... object-oriented programming versus people who've done a lot of command line stuff and so they're very facile with the scripting aspects of it. So, we try to group people into like-minded experience but mostly it's depending on the size of the workshop, the grouping is flexible depending on the venue and the size and the number of volunteers and teachers you have and sometimes it's just everybody's in a room and we figure it out.

Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic

Yeah. And, Jessie, you wanted to say something?

Sarah Allen, Desi McAdam ruby and rails practice

Yeah, I was just going to say in addition to that. Typically, I try to group people based on very broad generalizations so I've programmed before, I've never programmed before or I've done some Rails but I need some more help with more advanced concepts and then split the people apart and try to get TAs that match sort of those comfort levels of teaching. And you said you've gone all over the world and done these all over. I'm just curious. I mean, literally.

Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic

When you say world, what do you mean?

Sarah Allen, Desi McAdam ruby and rails practice

Well, so I've done quite a few in the United States and I've done one in Singapore and I've helped out with one in Chile and I can't remember everywhere else but it's really easy to, once you've seen one run and you have a desire to do them, it's really not very difficult if you, you know, ping the mailing list, everybody will tell you what the latest, you know, we just ran one last weekend and this is what we ran into. We've already done pull requests, update the documentation, you know, et cetera, et cetera. So everybody's super helpful. And there's some really nice side effects that come from that. A lot of people who don't really know anything about the workshops go to our instructions for how to install Rails because, you know, a new version of this or that comes out and the install instructions change but because now there are workshops happening several times a month in lots of different places, those are updated by the volunteers and they're different volunteers every time so it isn't as much of a challenge. So it's not as much of a challenge. So it's not as much of a challenge. It's not as much of a challenge. It's not as much of a challenge. It's not as much of a challenge. It's not as much of a challenge. It's also kind of becoming a documentation unto itself, not just a script for how to do these classes but also, hey, I just need to set up Rails. Yes. Yeah, there's a lot of different things that come out of it and, you know, educational resources and set up resources and different things. So that's a pretty neat side effect of the community. And I do want to ask about the social aspect. The way I understand is the legend is that Sarah Allen and Sarah May were -- they were at a conference and they didn't see a lot of other women.

Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic

Did you realize that you were the only two women and hundreds of people?

Sarah Allen, Desi McAdam ruby and rails practice

And you wanted to create something that would help bring -- Yeah, so the stats are we were at a conference where there were 200 people and six women.

Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic

So that's 3% which is reflective of -- or is it 2%?

Sarah Allen, Desi McAdam ruby and rails practice

Well, in any case, it's around the number of women in open source which is much, much smaller than the number of women in the corporate world doing programming. And I came more from companies -- Right. -- which were -- Right. -- less involved with open source where I felt that there were not very many women -- Right. -- but there were more women -- Yeah. -- than I saw in the Ruby community. And I've been meaning to learn Ruby for three years before I had started learning Ruby in 2008.

Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic

Right.

Sarah Allen, Desi McAdam ruby and rails practice

And so I thought -- and I still believe it's true that there are more women programmers in the Bay Area than there are Ruby programmers.

Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic

Really? Therefore, if there's 20% of programmers are women overall -- Why aren't 20% of Ruby developers?

Sarah Allen, Desi McAdam ruby and rails practice

No, it's actually more -- we have a bigger opportunity than that. Oh, okay. Because Ruby is a small language. So therefore, if we just convert some of the existing programmers to know Ruby -- Right. -- then it would be easy to actually get 50%. And in any of the new languages, I think we have a real big opportunity to do that because in any specific community, we can change the ratio much easier because it's smaller than just, you know, the boil in the ocean problem.

Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic

Right.

Sarah Allen, Desi McAdam ruby and rails practice

And I also heard that in startups, it's also a boys club culture as well. And with Ginny, I did an interview with Ginny a few months ago, and she described it as when a startup happens, it's usually some friends that get together and they start the startup. And then they hire people like them from their own network.

Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic

Is that something that you've seen in the startup world where it tends to be male-dominated companies?

Sarah Allen, Desi McAdam ruby and rails practice

Well, statistically, tech founders are 2 to 3% women. And I think that a lot of that -- there is a culture in the United States that is where men have the networks and men see those kinds of opportunities as available to them for whatever reason. But I do think that the social dynamics of creating situations -- where women and men and people of all colors and creeds can get together and learn together -- then we forge those networks where, by example, people see that what you happen to look like, the words you use, your background doesn't dictate that you are more or less capable of doing these technical things. And when somebody walks into a RailsBridge workshop, they can't tell by looking at somebody whether they're an expert programmer or very successful in their career or unemployed. And all of these things are not correlated with each other, and they're not correlated with how we look. And so that's really exciting to me that I hope it will bring that change broadly. But in any case, we are seeing it as absolutely fundamental. Absolutely making those changes in pockets. And I think that we need to overcome this problem one person at a time, one mentor at a time. Climbing seats all over so that way eventually these communities can -- Well, I think that we're talking about -- changing the ratio is a "boil in the ocean" kind of problem. However, since we've proven that this template can be fairly easily reproduced by anyone -- I like to think that we can "boil the ocean" by making every tenth molecule a heater.

Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic

Okay.

Sarah Allen, Desi McAdam ruby and rails practice

But basically, planning the seats so that way it can at least distribute these ideas beyond a small community and basically -- Yeah, and we're seeing this happen in Ruby, JavaScript -- Python. Python, Scala. Oh, yeah.

Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic

So are all of these RailsBridge -- well, RailsBridge is, by definition, Rails, right?

Sarah Allen, Desi McAdam ruby and rails practice

But have you done these for -- Well, RailsBridge was created -- the name Rails was a little controversial when we were naming it, but we felt that it was coming out of Rails developers. But the Teaching Kids project has always taught -- has never taught Rails.

Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic

Right.

Sarah Allen, Desi McAdam ruby and rails practice

However, the Python folks felt like it would alienate their community to call it RailsBridge. So they called it PyStar because there was already a PyBridge something. But now we're creating an umbrella organization. And there's an umbrella organization that will be able to support all of these different -- Okay. So that way you don't have the bias that, "Well, I don't want to do that. I don't like Rails. " Yeah. It's -- do you have a -- well, I won't make you say the name now because I'm sure it might change. But it's recognizing the fact that we're software developers.

Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic

Yeah.

Sarah Allen, Desi McAdam ruby and rails practice

Not Rails.

Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic

Yeah.

Sarah Allen, Desi McAdam ruby and rails practice

And I think most of us are doing Rails right now.

Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic

Right.

Sarah Allen, Desi McAdam ruby and rails practice

And five years from now, we'll be doing something else. Right now being the operative word there.

Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic

Yeah.

Sarah Allen, Desi McAdam ruby and rails practice

It might change. Everything changes. And with going into a conference and -- have you been seeing, since you've started doing this, more women at conferences and more diversity? I mean, SCNA I think is an excellent conference. I have. I've noticed a big difference actually.

Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic

Yeah.

Sarah Allen, Desi McAdam ruby and rails practice

And I think that part of it is that the women in the -- some women in the community who weren't coming out to events because they felt alienated have started to come out more. And then the new people in the community have connections to people already in the community. The other thing that has happened in parallel is a lot of the event organizers have realized that they need to take initiative to change how they ask for speakers to create a diversity among speakers. And if we have more women speakers, then it's less alienating to have -- for women to come to the event. They feel like there are role models and mentors for them. And it's easier to look at a group of 20 people. And if you see yourself represented, then you feel like, hey, that could be me. Recently I learned about a picture that was very popular in the Obama administration of when Obama first took office, he was meeting with some people. And there were some children there. I'm not exactly sure the context why they were there. But one of the little boys, he was black. And he just said very partly, he said -- he asked this question. They couldn't hear what he said. And he asked him to speak up. And he said, I just want to know if your hair feels like mine. And the photographer got this amazing picture that was very candid. And it was the president leaning down and this little boy touching his head. And what was so inspiring about that is that it was -- here's this generation now seeing somebody like them in a position of authority and responsibility. And are you saying that seeing women speaking and running these conferences, running these organizations says to the women, there's people like you doing this?

Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic

Yeah.

Sarah Allen, Desi McAdam ruby and rails practice

I think that there is this myth in our industry that there are no women.

Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic

Right.

Sarah Allen, Desi McAdam ruby and rails practice

That somehow women are less interested or less capable because as evidenced by their being so few. And I've talked to women who have been the only woman in their company. And then they start to say, well, that's just the way the industry is. Especially if you've been through two jobs like that. But the truth is, numbers-wise, there's tons of amazing technical women in our field. And the fact that historically we haven't seen them at conferences. Is a cultural artifact that is not related to their lack of existence. And so by creating diversity -- and I think we don't only have a gender diversity problem. We have diversity along many angles problem. But I think that the more that we create -- we find these people. These people who are doing technically amazing work. And they've been in the industry for 5, 10, 20 years. And we celebrate their success. The more that we draw in people. And nobody should say, oh, I can't see anybody who looks like me. I don't belong here. I mean, the dream of technology is that it's a meritocracy. That it's a great equalizer. And it's just a terrible thing that's not actually happening. And so that's what we're really trying to change. Anybody who says that women can't code or never read about Grace Hopper. To me, it's utterly ridiculous. But I do want to thank you again for sitting down with me. with the RailsBridge Outreach. Thanks. - Thank you.

Ruby And Rails Practice: Mike Hall Interviews Sarah Allen | SCNA 2012

Mike Hall

Sarah Allen, Desi McAdam

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