From Amanda at Griffith Uni
- Sometimes people have trouble identifying us as a group at the cafe. We use a poster but I'm considering investing in a flag.
- We tried doing short 10min classes in the first few hacky hours, however they did not work at all. People became dissengaged very quickly. We found keeping the classes and the hacky hours separate best.
- Rubber Ducky theory : Sometimes when clients are getting tangled up in their code/problems, we tell them to talk to a 'rubber ducky' or an inanimate object and walk through their problems (I also offer them to email me). I tell them to go through each step to where they got to and each issue or error message they got. This helps them sometimes to solve it themselves as they haven't taken a step back and got lost in the rabbit hole of solutions.
- Its important to teach people where to find help themselves. Introduce them to Stack Exchange. Teach them not to be afraid of the error messages (A lot of new people see a error message and being uncertain of using a new technology, instantly become afraid) Teaching people that there is a lot of useful information in an error message and that they can google them to see how other people have solved them is often a good lesson
- It takes a critical mass to carry it from a helpdesk outside to a community engaged experience. I've noticed once you start getting 7-8 attendees, it starts to get that momentum