Since I help organize conferences and events, I thought it would be interesting to attend the session.
Things that Worked Well or Not / Made You Feel More/Less Included (Small Group Discussion)
- planning/schedule – clear schedule, what to bring, clear goal / purpose
- team / relationship building – prepared
- make it fun / social – examples: badges, social events
- open ended problems, problems with different levels of skill level, disciplines
- outreach / promotion / marketing – to reach new people, pre-event outreach
- refreshments – coffee, good food
- attitude – keep smiling, failure is OK
- IT – wifi, power, good documentation, backup
- mentoring – opportunity for one-on-one
- opportunity – child care, low cost
- post-event – reporting/sharing, social media contacts
Discussion Points (Large Group)
- all skill levels is welcome – offer training, need non-coders e.g. designers, users, communications, multiple parts: needs/brainstorming & coding/prototyping
- outreach – hour by hour schedule, what to expect, what to bring, prioritizing reaching out to groups that don’t normally attend, number of tickets to specific groups/diversity can help ensure diversity or have a free form what you want to learn
- mission/purpose – have a mission statement and plan around it
- follow up – report what’s been done, share learning materials before and after event, writing questions on post-it notes right before breaks, social media lists
- building trust / relationships – pre-event, icebreakers
- attitude – process is more important than the results, have fun
- code of conduct – clear path to resolving an issue, intent matters less than impact, more welcoming than negative language (codeofconduct.tool, 18F, geek feminism, Ada Initiative)
For more techladyhackathon.org