Maëlys McArdle

A Gentle Intro to Coding

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by

Maëlys McArdle
in
I concluded giving a two-part workshop at Algonquin this week to teach coding. The events were free and open to everyone. It all materialized pretty fast. Ottawa already had had a few cool events specifically for queer & trans people, including a self-defense class and all bodies swim day. What about going beyond that? What could I enable? I had coding skills, and so what about making that happen? I asked people on Facebook for their thoughts. It was well received. A post and message later, I had one friend generously grant free space at the Algonquin Pride Centre and another two graciously offer to volunteer. As an experiment, I decided to make the event open to everyone, not just queer & trans folk. Over a hundred people on Facebook said they wanted to come – far above the twenty seat capacity. A producer from CBC reached out to talk about the workshop (nothing came of it.) In the end I had to create an event on Eventbrite to manage the numbers. The people who attended the workshop seemed to like it, with almost everyone coming back for the second week. To my relief, the workshop was attended by folks largely under-represented in STEM. It was the best outcome I was hoping for when I opened it up. If you’re reading this and are interested in the material, you can view the two sets of slides here: To navigate the slides, use the right arrow (or swipe) to go to the next chapter, and use the down arrow (or swipe) to go to the next page in a chapter.