Bridge Troll

Software by RailsBridge, for all Bridges!

Guidelines for *Bridge workshops

Bridge Foundry's mission is to empower people with technology through teaching and facilitating access, enlarging the community of people who give back and teach others.

Anyone can use our open source curricula, but to use this website and promote your event as a Bridge event, you must be aligned with our mission and follow our guidelines below. You can also work with us more closely and receive additional support and resource from us. If you are interested in learning more about leading an operational chapter, see our operations guide.

All workshops hosted on Bridge Troll must:

  • Be free
  • Explicitly reach out to an underrepresented group.

This doesn't necessarily preclude members of a dominant group attending the workshop. Some past events have had the following guidelines, for example:

  • Men can come as a guest of a woman
  • People of color and their friends
  • LGBTQ folks only

Workshops that don't allow guests from outside the target demographic are totally okay, too.

Bridge Troll's Features for Organizers

Planning Your Workshop

  • Manages RSVPs for students and volunteers, including RSVP limits, automatic waitlist logic, and the ability to close RSVPs at any time.
  • Built-in student and volunteer surveys at the time of RSVP for their dietary needs, class level preference, and volunteers' technical and teaching backgrounds.
  • Aggregate dietary restrictions view for easy catering ordering.
  • Bridge Troll automatically reminds students and volunteers via email three days before the event.
  • Organizers can email all attendees, various subgroups (i.e. confirmed students, waitlisted students, just volunteers, etc.), or specific attendees.

Managing Your Workshop

  • Easy check-in page to keep track of who actually shows.
  • Organizers can designate “checkin-ers”, so anyone with a Bridge Troll account can help check people in.
  • Automatic small-group sorting with drag & drop interface so organizers can tweak class divisions based on their needs
  • Bridge Troll will email your attendees a short survey about how the workshop went.

Want to learn more about planning a workshop? We've got a cookbook for organizers with best practices, email templates, and lots of lists. Since it's a wiki, if you have something to add, all you need is a GitHub account to edit it!

Wanna help?

This project is open source! Head over to our GitHub repo to get started contributing. We love contributions from new and experienced programmers alike!