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Table of Contents

Lead Organizers

Time commitment: substantial, 40 hours or more per workshop. Organizing starts ~5-6 weeks before a workshop.

One or two per workshop. Two is recommended: odds are one of you will have heavy work demands at any point during preparation. A second organizer lets you balance the load.

The lead organizer's main job is to assign all the other roles to trustworthy people and to make sure everyone does their job in timely fasion. Keep in regular contact with all the volunteer organizers to see how everything is proceeding. If there is a problem or a bottleneck somewhere, intervene to help out.

Email inquiries

Time commitment: 30 minutes per week, ongoing

You will get access to the RailsBridge Boston email account. The person in charge of admissions will respond to admission-related emails. But your job is to answer the other ones until the date of the workshop.

Social media

Time commitment: minimal

We have a Twitter account: @RailsBridgeBos.

Responsibilities:

  • Announce the opening of registration - work with registration person
  • Announce the posting of our workshop recap - work with recap person
  • Monitor feed in case of questions

Workshop MC

Time commitment: the full workshop, additional prep at your discretion

Bring enthusiasm and conviction.

Keep an eye on time - allow for flexibility, but also make sure we're moving along.

Photography

Time commitment: part or all of the workshop; selecting && emailing photos afterward

Curriculum

  • Oversee updates and improvements to the RailsBridge web-based curriculum.
  • Coordinate a full walk-through of the curriculum on each platform with the TAs.
  • Pay particular attention to the versions of all software used.

Teaching Staff

  • Recruit around 25-30 awesome teaching assistants, and people to give all the mini-lectures.
  • Give the TAs tips on how to do their job well.
  • Tell them to prep by going through the Saturday curriculum.

e-books and Giveaways

Time commitment: ~2 hours, 1-2 weeks before the workshop

O'Reilly has supported us in the past by providing free e-book giveaways to our workshop attendees and TAs.

  • Contact O'Reilly to ask if they can offer free e-book selections again. Get contact info for O'Reilly from a workshop organizer. Points to include in the email:

    • introduce yourself
    • it's for RailsBridge Boston - give them the workshop dates, and that we expect 90 students + 30 TAs
    • ask if they can offer free e-books again
    • a big thank you. They've been very generous.
    • cc the email to railsbridgeboston@gmail.com - our mail archive helps us have more continuity between events

  • O'Reilly will provide instructions for how students can request an e-book. They will set up a code for the event.

  • Work with the post-workshop survey coordinator to add this to the confirmation page:

Visit http://oreilly.com/go/ebookrequest and follow the instructions, you can choose any title from their entire collection. Note that you need to have an account with oreilly.com in order to fill out the form. In the field "Event where you won the book" enter:

... and fill in the event code O'Reilly gave us.

Sponsorships

  • Contact potential sponsors at least 1 month in advance.
  • Reach out to companies who've sponsored in the past first.
  • Reach out to other companies who've never sponsored before. They don't have to be a Ruby or Rails shop, and you can show them our prospectus for more details.
  • Write a "thank you" email after the workshop.

Other notes:

  • thoughtbot is an ongoing sponsor. This means there's no need to ask them for sponsorship each time, but we should give Chad Pytel the heads up when a workshop is coming.
  • The thoughtbot sponsorship includes paying for childcare and providing discount coupons for Upcase. The coupon gives each student a free month of Upcase.
    • Upcase is guided learning from thoughtbot, where students get access to everything thoughtbot teaches, including workshops, forums, screencasts, and more.

Venue

Time commitment: 3-4 hours, find and book 4-6 months in advance and then follow-up closer to workshop dates

See How-To: Venue

Catering

Time commitment: 3-4 hours, check for dietary restrictions, find caterers, place orders

See How-To: Catering

Registration

Time commitment: ~20 hours, starting 3 weeks before the workshop, plus be present Friday night

  • Set up an EventBrite event (~1 hour total)
  • While registration is open, check the Gmail account for questions and keep an eye on registration. ( ~1 hour/day the week registration opens, ~30 minutes/day after the workshop fills, ~5 hours the week before the workshop managing wait list and final emails)
  • During the week of the workshop, manage email, registration/waitlist, and coordinate with the catering/venue and childcare coordinators.
  • On Friday, you'll check people in with the Eventbrite as they arrive. It's best to have 2 or 3 people do check-in.

There's a detailed [How To: Registration](./How To: Registration.md) page.

Childcare

Thanks for volunteering to do childcare! It will be your job to book a sitter (or more than one) so that parents can come to the workshop for free. You'll handle finding sitters, communicating between the sitter and the parents, paying the sitter (you'll be reimbursed), and generally keeping everything around childcare flowing smoothly.

Registration provides a list with the names, phone numbers, and email addresses of the students interested in getting childcare.

Registration should also explain how it works:

  • We use UrbanSitter, where one or more sitters come to our venue to watch the children at no cost to the parents.
  • thoughtbot will pay for childcare but they need a receipt. If you can, pay for the sitter yourself and we can get a reimbursement afterwards. If you're not comfortable with that, please ask about getting RailsBridge to pay up front.

The week of the event you will book the sitters

Keep in mind that this is a pretty tight timeline to make sure parents can get back to you with childcare needs and book a sitter so you'll need to make sure you're on top of this.

On the week of the workshop, confirm they still need childcare as they may have changed their plans.

  • To book a sitter you'll need:
    • the RailsBridge UrbanSitter login (in 1Password)
    • the number of children who need childcare (get this from the registration coordinator)
  • visit UrbanSitter, log in, and start booking a sitter
  • You can pick a sitter explicitly or post the job to the sitter community. Posing to the wider community is the recommended approach because we got about 20 responses within a couple of days.
  • We aim for about $20/hour for a sitter.
  • Keep in touch with that sitter during the process so they know what to expect (how to get in the venue, when meals are, any special child needs, or anything else)
  • Greet the sitter at the start of the event and help them get setup in their space
  • Check in with them periodically during the event to see if they need anything (food, supplies, etc)
  • Afterward, UrbanSitter will give you a bill that you can pay. Save that bill as a PDF to send to thoughtbot. You can send that PDF to someone who works at thoughtbot and they can start the reimbursement process for you.

Thank you thoughtbot, you're are awesome!

Feedback survey and post-workshop email

  • Create a survey via Google Forms and share it with the organizers.
  • Send an email to the workshop attendees with a link to the survey.

When we send the survey, we need to write a very important letter: we motivate the graduates to keep learning and getting involved, we thank the sponsors, etc.

Post-workshop blog post/write-up

Write an article reviewing the workshop.

Content to include:

  • photos
  • feedback from survey
  • a "thank you" to your sponsors

You can see some examples here: