Pamela O Vickers - Big Nerd Ranch Tue, 19 Oct 2021 17:46:48 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.5.5 dotRB: Getting Plugged In at a Wireless-less Conference https://bignerdranch.com/blog/dotrb-getting-plugged-in-at-a-wireless-less-conference/ https://bignerdranch.com/blog/dotrb-getting-plugged-in-at-a-wireless-less-conference/#respond Wed, 23 Oct 2013 20:58:35 +0000 https://nerdranchighq.wpengine.com/blog/dotrb-getting-plugged-in-at-a-wireless-less-conference/ Last week, I got to attend a tech conference... without internet access. I was lucky enough to go to dotRB, a unique Ruby conference, and I loved the format, approach and experience.

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Last week, I got to attend a tech conference… without internet access.

dotrb logo

I was lucky enough to go to dotRB, a unique Ruby conference, and I loved the format, approach and experience.

A different approach

dotRB’s goal is to offer brief, TED-talk-quality talks in a scenic settingwithout providing internet access to the attendees. During the first session, I sat on the top terrace level. Looking out over all the lower terraces and the opera level without seeing lots of bright screens and hearing the rapid typing of the conference-goers was such a neat contrast from other Ruby events I’ve attended. Instead of tweeting about the speakers and the talks, everyone was actually absorbing the presentations. And given the historic setting, a wireless-less conference seemed only natural.

The twenty minutes slated for each speaker ensured that no time in the talk was wasted; this isn’t to say that we didn’t hear about velociraptors from George Brocklehurst or deadly “cookie” recipes from Konstantin Haase, but I found that each speaker was very purposeful in the material he or she covered. As a listener, my curiosity was piqued repeatedly, and I was given enough information to begin informed research of my own. Each speaker had time to either cover an idea in a full and broad way, or to cover one facet of an idea in a deep way; this led to a nice medley of approaches and topics. It felt like a proper variety show.

Two of my favorite talks could not have been more different. The first was by George Brocklehurst and featured a live coding session that showed how to include good “unixy” error handling and documentation when running Ruby programs in the console; his goal was to present an interface good enough to illicit the famed exclamation “It’s a unix system; I know this!”

The other was from Erik Michaels-Ober, who outlined the history of the technological leaps from the Big Bang to the invention of language, of written word, of paper, of the printing press, of the telegraph—all the way to Twitter. He reminded us that each tool required the invention of a prior tool, and challenged us to continue building the tools of today, because the tools of the future depend on them.

For those who want to hear about a range of subjects deemed interesting by some of our accomplished peers, dotRB is for you. It was a great opportunity to learn together—fully engaged.

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The Two X Factor https://bignerdranch.com/blog/the-two-x-factor/ https://bignerdranch.com/blog/the-two-x-factor/#respond Mon, 17 Sep 2012 12:00:00 +0000 https://nerdranchighq.wpengine.com/blog/the-two-x-factor/

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Last weekend, I participated in Rails Girls, an event that introduces women to development in Ruby on Rails. This particular event was held in Washington D.C., a hotbed for the tech industry.

As a Rails Girls DC coach, I cheered on the girls as they worked through building a web application, and lent a hand when a little help was needed. There were several other coaches, and more significantly, several other female coaches. While I anticipated enjoying Rails Girls DC, I didn’t expect that I would be so encouraged and excited by working with others at the event.

Enjoying what you do

Toward the end of the second day, two other women coaches and I gave a short presentation on different aspects of being a developer (and why we love it!). The common message from all three talks was this: Enjoying what you do is crucial to a life well lived, and doing development allows us the flexibility to base our decisions on the life we want, not on the life our career allows us to have.

I think we would each freely admit that being a woman in the development realm isn’t easy, and it’s no secret that we are largely outnumbered. I don’t feel that my day-to-day work experience is impaired by this, but there are definitely moments when I am more aware of my gender than my abilities. With new clients, I sometimes feel I have to go above and beyond what a male developer would have to accomplish in order to prove my competency. Once I gain the client’s trust, this imbalance dissipates, but it’s a tough undertaking at what is already one of the most challenging parts of a project’s lifespan.

There are a lot of articles and efforts to “get more women in the tech industry,” and while I think the intentions are good, I think they often miss the true issue. My goal in volunteering and promoting events like Rails Girls is not to simply beef up the number of female developers; I don’t feel we should be on a recruiting mission. My concern is more that this skewed ratio highlights the fact that there are many women who are missing out on enjoying a career in development.

Want to attend a Rails Girls event or be a coach?

To help women throughout the Southeast explore the possibility of becoming developers, Highgroove is planning a Rails Girls event at our office. It will begin Friday, November 30th, when we’ll host an installation party to get all the participants set up with a Rails environment. Then, on Saturday, we’ll go through the curriculum and show the attendees a world where they can see themselves being successful, challenged, supported–and most importantly–happy.

If you or someone you know would like to volunteer at or attend Rails Girls ATL, please follow @railsgirlsatl on twitter and watch closely for the launch of railsgirls.com/atl. We’ll start accepting applications soon!

Image credit: Lynn Wallenstein

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Open-Source Hack Night https://bignerdranch.com/blog/open-source-hack-night/ https://bignerdranch.com/blog/open-source-hack-night/#respond Mon, 19 Mar 2012 11:00:00 +0000 https://nerdranchighq.wpengine.com/blog/open-source-hack-night/

Last night at the Highgroove Studios office, we held the March edition of Hack Night, our monthly social coding gathering. We focused on starting, polishing, and/or discussing open source projects ranging from the super useful to the super silly (beer is always provided at our hack nights…)

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Last night at the Highgroove Studios office, we held the March edition of Hack Night, our monthly social coding gathering. We focused on starting, polishing, and/or discussing open source projects ranging from the super useful to the super silly (beer is always provided at our hack nights…)

While CBQ hacked away at some Rails documentation using docrails, others were busy building and even releasing other tools.

  • Roughly an hour into hacking, Andy announced a new release of the zonebie gem, written by him and Patrick, which is a gem that runs Rails/ActiveSupport tests in a random timezone to spot pesky bugs.

  • Steven and Andy, seeing the need for a lighter-weight delegator than what is found in Ruby’s standard library, hatched the idea for and released the first iteration of DumbDelegator.

  • Will released Bootlace, a gem for bootstrapping Ruby applications.

  • Jonathan released Yamldiff, a gem that prints out a list of missing keys for two yaml files.

We want to continue honing our own skills while bettering the development community through continual projects. Some of the results of our efforts are, we feel, pretty sweet.

All-in-all, we had a pretty productive open source hack night. We were super excited to have Jonathan, Greggory, and Ben (along with other Hack Night guests) join in the fun, set up some github accounts, and eat some pizza with us.

Are there any of our open source projects that you can fork and improve? What other projects should Highgroovers consider next? Jump in and get fork’n!

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Maintaining Clients (keeping everyone happy) https://bignerdranch.com/blog/maintaining-clients-keeping-everyone-happy/ https://bignerdranch.com/blog/maintaining-clients-keeping-everyone-happy/#respond Mon, 23 Jan 2012 12:00:00 +0000 https://nerdranchighq.wpengine.com/blog/maintaining-clients-keeping-everyone-happy/

Far too often there exists a chasm between the client paying for and the developer working on a particular project. One party has a longterm vision; a vision that will ultimately impact his/her financial future. The other party has a much closer view of the project, which creates the risk of getting tunnel visioned. The client worries about when the project will be completed; the developer worries about how the project will be completed. When this happens, communication becomes difficult and frustration builds. How can this be avoided?

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Far too often there exists a chasm between the client paying for and the developer working on a particular project. One party has a longterm vision; a vision that will ultimately impact his/her financial future. The other party has a much closer view of the project, which creates the risk of getting tunnel visioned. The client worries about when the project will be completed; the developer worries about how the project will be completed. When this happens, communication becomes difficult and frustration builds. How can this be avoided?

At Highgroove, we know that there is no replacement for good communication. This perhaps requires a bit more work from our clients than they might initially anticipate, but by maintaining frequent contact, we prevent frustration and confusion from creeping into the process. By keeping our clients actively involved (i.e. forcing them to accept/reject stories in Pivotal Tracker), they know exactly where the project stands and what work remains. This helps the project stay on track and gives us, the developers, quick feedback about whether or not the work being done is acceptable.

When we are able to maintain this level of communication with our clients, we can develop a comfortable working relationship that allows us to honestly question features or approaches that would complicate projects and potentially delay launching. At Highgroove, we earnestly want our clients’ projects to succeed. We hope that our clients choose us not for only our technical skill, but our dedication to giving them the best version of their vision. By striving to cultivate a successful working relationship, we go beyond maintaining happy clients: we promote successful enterprises.

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Accept/Reject as you go! https://bignerdranch.com/blog/accept-reject-as-you-go/ https://bignerdranch.com/blog/accept-reject-as-you-go/#respond Tue, 03 Jan 2012 12:00:00 +0000 https://nerdranchighq.wpengine.com/blog/accept-reject-as-you-go/

At Highgroove, we like forward momentum. This means that we know that every delivery cannot be perfect, so instead of worrying about perfection, we worry about progress.

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At Highgroove, we like forward momentum. This means that we know that every delivery cannot be perfect, so instead of worrying about perfection, we worry about progress.

By tracking stories in Pivotal Tracker, we have an easy interface to shoot stories back and forth with our clients. As each story is delivered, the client can either accept or reject it. Acceptance allows us to move on to other stories; rejection requires us to restart the story.

But unlike in some other situations, this rejection does not send us crying into a bathroom stall, diary in hand. In fact, this rejection simply helps refine what the story should actually accomplish.

Sometimes clients seem a bit hesitant to reject a story, opting to instead leave a comment that informs us that while they expected to send an email when they clicked “send email,” the system actually logged them out of the site completely. Then the client will proceed to accept the story based on the fact that the button did in fact do something. This helps no one! Reject this!

The constant feedback of accept/reject keeps a developer on track and on pace. When we are waiting for feedback on prior stories, the stories we work on in the meantime lack certainty. We depend on the process to produce and progress.

Acceptance feels great! …when it is for the right reasons. But the important part is not whether you check “yes” or “no” but that you send the note back before class ends!

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(New) Team Work https://bignerdranch.com/blog/new-team-work/ https://bignerdranch.com/blog/new-team-work/#respond Mon, 21 Nov 2011 12:00:00 +0000 https://nerdranchighq.wpengine.com/blog/new-team-work/

Team Huddle

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Team Huddle

The first couple of weeks in a new position for a new company is usually peppered with stressful stretches of striving to become useful and relevant mixed with hours of boredom working on a project of little importance. At Highgroove, we are immediately thrown into the mix and are expected to perform.

Jason F. and I shared a start date. We reveled in our goodie bags filled with organic candy and stickers, fiddled with the settings on our new Macbook Pros, and giggled (at least I did) over how much caffeine I was consuming from our office’s Espresso machine.

Then we got to work. I met with my client, talked about what he expected for our first iteration, then was released to make it happen. Harsh reality has never been so pleasant. Where in many environments, asking questions feels discouraged to avoid cause for doubt of your abilities, at Highgroove, not asking soon enough is more discouraged. The team at Highgroove is more than eager to not only answer quick questions, but savor the more difficult ones. Even as a new member, my time is valued by the whole team; they want me to succeed with them. And because of that, I will.

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