Wow. No way.
That’s the feeling I had today when the Coder’s Club officially ended. Well, I was done with it at least. Soon I will be gone, off to UC Santa Cruz to “Do the Right Thing” and get a degree. I feel pulled in two directions about leaving: its “Right” but there’s so much else that I do not want to leave behind here.
But enough with that, as I have a deeper hungering to share my experience of the Coder’s Club. Not the coder’s club as it was in the immediate experience, but the Coder’s Club I had envisioned.
I had first glimpsed the coder’s club two semesters ago as a silent observer of a talk on virtual machines. I arrived late and it was a bit of an intimidating space, as technical talks with a roomful of other silent observers often are. Despite the then coder’s club president’s best efforts to share his enthusiasm by catching me as I tried to creep out the back door, I left feeling unconnected to the club. I had never been a part of a club before so thats why I felt so awkward, I told myself. Whatever the reason was, I stayed through the activity of the day and left immediately after due to perceived awkwardness of having to gulp talk with people.
I did end up becoming friends with the president, and this lead me to stick around the next semester. This time, It was almost exclusively a group of friends that I knew from other classes and so was quite comfortable in that small circle of nerds that met every week. We mostly just sat around and talked, as friends do, and were not very welcoming to newcomers. Not that we were mean to any of those poor souls who stumbled into our classroom who maybe shyly asked “are you Coders?” or more likely just leaving the room after a few seconds of bumbling around. But we did very little to share our laughter with them. I don’t think we had any visions at this point, mostly it was just “us.”
If the Coder’s Club values Inclusiveness, then active vigilance is required by those who “are in.” There are 1000 reasons a student may for not showing up or returning to club meetings, so lets not be one of them. More then just not being a reason, Coders should strive to reach out and embrace those students who are interested in what we do. Katherine has mentioned having someone (in my words) “stand guard” at the door to actively introduce the new comers to the space and the people. This is merely one way that our value of Inclusiveness must radiate from our actions. Designing of the space and activities must also radiate Inclusiveness. Try getting rid of the awful practice of having chairs face the front of the room, and instead leave only enough chairs to accommodate the estimated amount of attendee’s and arrange them in a circle. For an activity, consider my thoughts on the “Think, Pair, Share” activity (thanks, Asheesh!). In my own experience as a first time attendee, having club activities helps familiarize newcomers to the unfamiliar faces and provides incentive for returning to the club week after week.
This last semester may have been the last semester, if I had not become president. The previous coder’s club president had left the coder’s club without finding time to assign anyone the task of running the club next semester. Attendance had stopped well before the end of the semester among the ~5 of us that showed up anyhow. If it was not for Katherine, the original founder who still keeps an eye on the club, reaching out on the forums, the coder’s club may have petered out.
Did the coders club become the Coder’s Club when I first signed the paperwork to become “President?” Did it happen in one of those countless hours planning the next days activities, or when I decided to help bring Open Hatch to CCSF? No, these are merely symptoms of a much deeper compulsion. I had a Vision. I knew what I wanted to build up in this world, and the Coder’s Club would be my tool. I found the Coder’s Club can be used for a wide variety of purposes, and each helped me bring my Vision one step closer to reality.
The Coder’s Club is a label. For whatever reason, when people see “Sincerely, CCSF Coders Club” at the bottom of an email, they are much more likely to respond to requests with an agreeableness not normally reserved for Random College Student. They may not see my Vision, but they see the label and have a host of assumptions about who we are as individuals and what we do. One example was our tour of Double Fine (side note: totally epic!). Double Fine was willing to help the Coders Club because they “knew” us (though, it did help I knew the Lead Programmer there from prior meet ups). Another example is how we raise $500.00 every semester we run the Open Hatch event from San Francisco city government. These groups trust us and our mission, even though they don’t know us as individuals.
The Coder’s Club is a part of CCSF. Space is not cheap in San Francisco, and neither are the projectors, chairs, janitorial services and utilities the school provides us. Money is available as well, despite my previous disappointment on the hurdles to receiving the money. The money is not a lot (and can’t be spent in all the ways we wish it could), but its something to get us started! Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, the school provides us a community to reach out too. Advertising is mostly reserved for those who are a part of CCSF, so we are able to advertise to a huge community of potentially like minded people.
These properties of the Coder’s Club are strongest when combined. For example, We have often found our most successful advertisement campaigns to be through teacher announcements. Teachers are not obligated to help the Coders Club advertise, but our label goes farther then who we are as individuals and so they help us. Recognizing these properties and their power when combined early on helped me see how I could found my Vision in this world.
The people behind the Coder’s Club are even more important then the properties of the Coder’s Club. I needed help to see the Vision come to reality, and so I turned towards the lady who started the club originally: Katherine.
Katherine is and continues to be the life force behind the Coders Club. She was an indispensable resource for planning the big events and helped kick start the club with the Peer Advising event we hold in the beginning of every semester. This is usually our big recruitment event for the semester, and we get great attendance rates thanks to in class teacher announcements.
But these students did not stick around much, it seemed, semester after semester. How do I infect people with my Vision? How can I get them too see what I see? I think before even these questions is to share with them my excitement. My Energy. I believed that if I infused as much Energy as possible into the Coders Club, that others could not help but be attracted to it. Keeping in line with my value of Inclusiveness, I created activities that encouraged student involvement and were accessible by anyone interested in technology: the Lightning Talk and Coding Challenges. I created an agenda to answer that ever-present question of “yea that sounds cool, but what does the Coders Club do?” I created a flyer and recruited a previous coders club member to help me post them around school.
And people started showing up. Then the people who showed up, came back. Soon we had regular attendee’s, and they were excited about what the club was doing. We have, I am proud to say, over 15 lightning talks with 10 of them being recorded - most of them not by me! When I told a friend about the “coding challenges” I put together, she was shocked that people actually were, in her words, “doing homework” for the club. It hardly felt like work when we all would sit around and review the ingenious solutions various coders would present, laughing as the light bulbs went on in their head and they understood what was going on beneath the surface of those white screens with black text.
The Vision has been the driving force behind all this work. The playing of the Coder’s Club strengths as a school club and the Energy I put in to kick-start the whole process is pointless without some, well, point. What was the point?
At first I almost stated the point, the Vision, was something high and mighty. I almost said I wanted to change the world and do Right in the world. But I think this is not my Vision. I think what caused my Vision was my own selfishness. I find in my life that I rarely have others who I can share my nerd-ness with in some other context besides a job. Computers have and probably always will be a place I can go to explore fantastical worlds made up of nothing less than magic that causes the ghosts inside this machine to dance and play before my mind. I wanted to find other eager explorers of this magical world, and unlock its mysteries with them. The people were not tool’s to that end, they are the end!
Leaving the Coder’s Club will be hard. Other clubs have other Visions, but I hope I can find the contingent that cares about my Vision the same way this Coder’s Club did!
