Abstract
Hello and welcome to the Ruby Book Club! We’re delighted you could join us.
We’re picking up where we left off in ‘99 Bottles of OOP' — looking at the rules for refactoring code effectively.
But the real agenda is observing the book club itself. What keeps people engaged in the process? When discussion stalls, what tricks can we use to keep it going? By examining these questions, we’ll learn how to run our own book clubs and finally start learning from our books.
As always, it’s OK if you haven’t done the reading. At the Ruby Book Club, we make sure that everyone is on the same page!
Details
This talk will be an interactive role-playing session. I’ll serve as the host of a weekly Ruby book club, and the audience will act as book club participants.
We’ll explore a section of Sandi Metz and Katrina Owen’s ‘99 Bottles of OOP’.Throughout the talk, I’ll switch out of character in order to observe lessons and ideas for being part of a successful technical book club. Some examples of the lessons are below under the ‘Book Club Lessons’ heading.
I’ll ask for audience participation throughout the talk, with specific approaches to be discussed. I’d like to experiment with Ernie Miller’s Venture presentation tool, which allows people to answer questions from their phone or laptop. Here’s a demonstration: https://youtu.be/kJkJ_dRAAzQ?t=4m.
I’ll work with the conference organisers and my speaking mentor to develop an interaction model that flows. I’ll also plan for scenarios where the audience are not keen to participate; these will include having plants in the audience or having a version of the talk that doesn’t require anyone to answer questions.
Here is a proposed outline for a talk that explores sections 3.6-3.8 of Sandi Metz and Katrina Owen’s ‘99 Bottles of OOP’:
Introduction
Book Club Lessons
Book time
Book Club Lessons
Wrap up
Book Club Lessons
Broader conclusions (weaved in throughout and at the end)
Being part of a book club is an incredibly effective way to learn about new technical concepts.
Establishing a reliable schedule for reading and discussion keeps the exercise fun and helps you cover a lot of material.
Book clubs help you to focus on small chunks each week, with the discussion format providing additional review that aids long-term learning.
Pitch
As developers, we’re always on the quest to be better. We also buy a lot of books that we never read. This talk will inspire the audience to dust off the books they’ve had for years, get together with friends and colleagues, and finally start learning.
I’ve used this interactive talk format before, and I think it could be effective here. Actual participation sparks richer learning. Through experiencing a mock book club, the audience will observe real book club dynamics and learn how to make them fun and productive.
Bio
Nadia co-founded Ignition Works in order to find fun and sustainable ways to build worthwhile software products. She has taught good engineering practices through pair programming at Pivotal Labs and Pivotal Cloud Foundry. She originally learnt to code at Makers Academy and she runs the Ruby Book Club podcast in her spare time.