Cincinnati Web Tech Study Group - Week 1

The first Cincinnati Web Tech Study group met this Saturday. The response to
this course has been tremendous. We opened up 25 slots and sold out within the
first week or so. The initial plan for this group is to go through the
Stanford 142 course in web development using Ruby and Rails for which the
lecture videos and project assignments have generously been made available
online. This week’s assignment was to watch the videos which cover HTML and
CSS. The format our in person meetings is to allow students to work through
the exercises together and learn from one another, with several more
experienced developers there to help out as needed.

It’s almost a cliche that the best way to learn is by teaching, and even
though I didn’t “teach” in the formal lecturey sense of the word, I learned a
lot. I consider myself competent with HTML and CSS, but by no means an expert
front end designer/developer. Digging into the exercises with the students was
a great way for me to relearn stuff I’ve forgotten or didn’t ever learn to
begin with. CSS is one of those things that, to be honest, I find it often to
be somewhat capricious in it’s rules and difficult for my “wanting things to
make sense” brain to retain. So practicing is certainly good for me in an “eat
your vegetables” kind of way. Also, I like vegetables.

I’m always amazed at both the challenge and reward of helping people learn
this stuff whenever I’m involved in something like this. As developers it’s so
easy to take knowledge for granted. It’s only by really working one on one
with someone brand new that you can appreciate all the skills and knowledge
that go into being a web developer. And it’s really inspiring to see so many
people jumping in to the challenge.

The long term vision for this group and beyond (whatever that means!) is to be
a place where anyone who’s committed to taking on the challenge will find a
group of enthusiastic people slightly farther down the road who want to help
in any way possible. I think it could be the beginning of something big.

Lastly, but not lastly, we’ve had a couple people drop out for various
reasons, so a few more slots have opened up. If you’re intrigued and want to
join us, it’s not too late!