Codebar Brighton

There’s been a whole series of events going on in Brighton this month under the banner of Spring Forward:

Spring Forward is a month-long celebration of the role of women in digital culture and runs throughout March in parallel with Women’s History Month.

Luckily for me, a lot of the events have been happening at 68 Middle Street—home of Clearleft—so I’ve been taking full advantage of as many as I can (also, if I go to an event that means that Tessa doesn’t have to stick around every night of the week to lock up afterwards). Charlotte has been going to even more.

I managed to get to Tech In Ten—run by She Codes Brighton—which was great, but I missed out on Pixels and Prosecco by Press Fire To Win which sounded like it was a lot of fun. And there are more events still to come, like She Says and Ladies That UX.

What’s great about Spring Forward events like She Codes, 300 Seconds, She Says, and Ladies That UX is that they aren’t one-offs; they’re happening all-year round, along with other great regular Brighton events like Async and UX Brighton.

And then there’s Codebar. I had heard about Codebar before, but Spring Forward was the first chance I had to get stuck in—it was being hosted at 68 Middle Street, so I said I’d stick around to lock up afterwards. I’m so glad I did. It was great!

In a nutshell, Codebar offers a chance for people who are under-represented in the world of programming and technology to get some free training by pairing them with tutors who volunteer their time. I offered to help out anyone who was learning HTML and CSS (after tamping down the inevitable inner voice of imposter syndrome that was asking “who are you to be teaching anyone anything?”).

I really, really enjoyed it. It was so nice to meet people from outside the world of web design and development. It was also a terrific reminder that the act of making websites is something that everybody should be able to participate in. This is for everyone.

Codebar Brighton takes place once a week, changing up the venue on rotation. As you can imagine, it takes a lot of work to maintain that momentum. It’s thanks to the tireless efforts of the seemingl indefatigable Ruby programmers Rosa and Dot that it’s such a great success. I am in their debt.

‘It’s a caring environment’: how codebar is building a diverse tech community | New faces of tech | The Guardian

A profile of Codebar Brighton, with words of wisdom from Alice and Cassie.

CSS and SVG animation workshop by codebarbrighton

There were two days of Codebar workshopping on the weekend as part of the Brighton Digital Festival. Cassie talked people through this terrific CSS animation tutorial, making this nifty Brighton-based piece.  

1 month in to my first developer role – Zara – Medium

I love seeing people go from Codebar to full-time dev work. It’s no surprise in Zara’s case—she’s an excellent front-end developer.

Career-change coder: how Siri got into programming - with the help of codebar - The Unit

Before leaving Brighton to head back to Sweden, Siri describes how Codebar helped her get started with front-end development:

I went along every week to work on my site, and was overwhelmed by the support and dedication of the mentors. Seeing the talented and diverse programmers in action made me re-think my preconceptions, and I soon realised that anyone can learn to code, from a 68-year-old retired teacher, to a twenty-seven-year-old female career-changer like me.

Less Bro-gramming: Net Natives host and sponsor Codebar | Net Natives

An excellent potted history from Cassie on women in computing.

NASA’s “Keypunch girls” would work in cramped rows translating programming instructions onto paper pads, whilst the machine operators would sit in comfort, feeding the code decks through card readers and enjoying the esteem of the end result (I imagine it a bit like Mad Men, but with more sexism and astronauts).