How to be a perfect host - A Thank you letter to Caktus Group

March 2016 

Dear Liza, Nicole, Hao and the rest of the folks at Caktus Group,

Thank you!

Our RTP TechGirlz event at your site went perfect! The space is beautiful, the A\V beyond our expectation and even the parking was easy. Thank you to Hao for offering your space and caring for my computer mouse for almost a year. Thank you to Liza for the preparation material and the facility walk through. They are the exact details needed to be a good guest. Thank you to Nicole for your 12th hour heroism and rescuing me from my projector difficulties. You are great hosts!

Now a few words about the event: 

1. The Space: For those not in the know, The Caktus Group is a leading Django web application development firm in downtown Durham on Morris Street. The have a Tech Space and make it available to groups including Code for America, Triangle Python and now the RTP TechGirlz. The space can be classroom style with two projectors and an extra space for mingling. Did I mention the orange ... gorgeous!
2. The Event: Jason Rudolph from GitHub and I created a great introduction to version control. My end goal was to make sure when these girls got into coding situations, they had some exposure to source code management. As a bonus Jason had a lab that helped them get github accounts and then deliver a pull request through the interface. It was very simple and just complicated enough to demonstrate the value. The content exceeded my expectations.
3. The Outcome: The perfect 90 minutes of fun, education and hands on commits. In addition to 15 (check this) girls and 5 volunteers, we had two local groups observing the session. By the end the girls were looking at showcases to see what else they could do with their new super power. We hope to turn this into a proper TechGirlz TechShopz in a Box  soon under creative commons on github. [I will update this blog when that is available]

I used this song in the presentation and it seems like a good fit here. Thank you Alessia Cara for "Wild Things"

Poe's Law and Macklemore

I am a big fan of Macklemore and Ryan Lewis. That said, he is the musical version of Poe's Law.

If I only had one helmet I would give it to you and of course we would be listening to Downtown by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis.