Finding your team
Here is some information on putting together your team, including tips on finding coaches and a teammate.
Coaches
Coaches are developers who sit down with you, guide you through relevant coding steps and troubleshoot with you at regular intervals. Ideally, they are based in the same city as your team.
Where do I find coaches?
Great places to start are local learning groups or user groups relevant to the language of the project you wish to work on. The organizers of these meetups are usually happy to give you a few minutes to do a small lightning talk where you explain RGSoC, what coaching a team involves, and ask if anyone is interested in getting involved.
If you have no luck or live in an area where there are no local learning groups or user groups, ask via @RailsGirlsSoC on Twitter.
How available should my coaches be? How much should they help?
Coaches should be available to help in case you get stuck with an issue; this doesn’t necessarily have to be in person and can be done via email or a messaging app such as Slack.
The actual time investment for a coach varies from team to team. We recommend talking to your coaches and figuring out when and how often you think you’ll need them.
An important note: Start talking to potential coaches about how they communicate and how you can handle possible situations of stress and/or conflict as a team before your program starts. This will definitely help you down the road, should any tricky situations arise.
Teammate
In the process of teaming up, keep in mind that you will be working very closely during the 3 months of the program. There will be situations of stress and conflict; this is nothing bad, it happens.
However, we strongly recommend preparing for these situations by being open about yourself and offering self-reflective, constructive communication. You can expect the same from your teammate.
We also recommend establishing regular and dedicated team reflection times where you can talk about how you work together, what went well and what didn’t.
Things to consider
It might be that your future teammate has different skills to you. Talk about your skill levels and how to handle possible disparities.
Consider how individual personal situations can have an impact on your work as a team. We strongly suggest mentioning any relevant personal circumstances (which you feel comfortable to talk about), so your teammate can react considerately. This may include, for example, specific time, family or care commitments.
Be aware that people work differently and handle moments of stress in different ways. Please always be supportive of, and considerate to your teammate.
Where do I find a teammate?
Local learning groups are a great place to start. Organizers and coaches from the group may also know of someone who would be interested in applying. If you attend other groups, such as sports clubs or a study group, try asking there as well.
Another suggestion is to attend and speak to people in your local coding-related meetup groups.
If you have no luck or live in an area where there are no local learning groups or user groups, ask via @RailsGirlsSoC on Twitter. We will happily connect and retweet you.
Guidelines on tweets
When you post to Twitter, please follow the following simple guidelines. They’ll help you get the best out of our network.
- State your location in your tweet
- Mention @RailsGirlsSoC. We’ll be notified and will be able to share your tweet with our network
- Add context/give as much useful information as possible
An example of a good tweet would be:
“Looking for a coach (remote or local) for @RailsGirlsSoC; we are based in Berlin, Germany and plan to work on a Python or Ruby project!”
This contains all the information needed by someone interested in helping out: who you’re looking for, your location, and your preferred languages.
Good luck!