How did it go?

The name of the organization is the Girls Coding club and the meetup was held virtually and on a website platform called gather.town. I always thought that everyone used Zoom for meetings so I wasn’t familiar with gather.town and it was a bit difficult figuring it out.

The meeting was informational, I learned a few things from the meeting.The organizers were very helpful and kept our coding levels in mind when explaining things about coding to us. One of the participants asked the organizer where they could seek additional help for coding and the organizer recommended stack overflow.

I got lost often during the meeting because some participants are more advanced in coding so they would talk about data and coding stuff that I didn’t understand so it was hard for me to follow.

What did you learn?

What I mostly learned from this meeting is the potential sources I can use for reference in my future project. For example, the organizer showed us stack overflow and how to use it. Stack overflow is a website where coders can go to answer or ask questions about coding (from assistance on debugging to learning about certain codes and what they did do to your code).

I also learned that you can run code on your own computer without using coding websites so I was surprised because I thought you need programs to do that. The organizers also introduced us to a python data analysis software called pandas.

Would you find value in this kind of event after class?

Probably. I learned new softwares in this meeting that can potentially be useful for my career track. In addition, you meet other participants with different levels in coding that can answer any questions about coding. However, since I am a beginner, I had some difficulty keeping up with other participants, but it’s fine because I learned some helpful advice from them about data analysis such as models.

In addition, you get to share and receive knowledge with other people with different levels in coding, which can be benefical to both of us and perhaps helps us learn faster.

How was the experience different from your expectations?

I was expecting to meet on zoom but instead we attended the meeting on gather. I wasn’t sure how it worked but the meeting setup was kind of cute because you can customize avatars and move them around. Also, the meeting takes place in a virual room that kind of looks like a library or classroom (I can’t honestly remember).

Also, I was expecting this meeting to be like a lecture where participants would just listen and follow along with the organizer as they did coding. However, the meeting was more like a open discussion meaning that participants can chime in to answer or ask questions whenever they want. The open discussion allowed us to receive more information and give us a space to share our knowledge and to to get an opportunity to voice our confusion and learn something new.

Could you see yourself becoming a member of a professional community like this in the future?

Probably not, but maybe I’ll attend coding meetings sometime in the future, but mostly to listen to coding tips and watch participants share some coding tips. I am not much of an active participant, I prefer to listen and watch then talk during meetings so if I were to become a member I probably wouldn’t contribute much unless it’s to ask a question about coding or to share some advice if it’s something I might have knowledge or experience in.