Many see meeting new people as a high-risk activity and prefer to avoid it. For students who feel like outsiders in the coding community, this is doubly true. But for students to successfully pursue coding in the long-term, they’ll need the support and encouragement of their peers, so it’s extremely important that we encourage socialization.
To reduce the discomfort for new community members, we can make it extremely clear that being social is an expected part of our events.
When we’re working as Code Evangelists, it’s important to remember that we’re playing a role. Things we might find uncomfortable, like introducing ourselves to a closed group of friends, or being unwaveringly enthusiastic, are part of our stage personality.
Being extraordinarily social requires more energy than you’re used to putting in day-to-day, but being extraordinarily social is worth the effort, because people are used to the ordinary. It also feels awkward, but our stage personality can embrace that awkwardness.
Enthusiasm and friendliness are contagious – it’s hard not to get excited when you talk to someone who’s excited and, moreover, we make it feel awkward to not match our level of enthusiasm.
The layout of a venue can have a big effect on how social students are.
At coding events like CodeDay, teams love using conference rooms as private workspaces, but this leads them to isolate themselves and creates a clique-y atmosphere during group events. If there’s enough communal space, blocking-off these rooms helps us keep everyone as part of one group.
At the same time, having too many people in one space can be overwhelming. Somewhere between 40-120 people seems to be optimal for encouraging socialization. At larger venues, with larger teams, splitting teams between large communal rooms may actually increase networking.
Putting drinks and food inconveniently far from participants, in a hang-out-friendly area of the venue, is also a great way to encourage meeting new students, as is requiring students to eat in a communal space rather than their workstations.
As people are walking in the door, we can make their first introduction a social one. If you’re running check-in, slowing down the line a bit to ask questions can be a positive – if not, standing at the door is helpful. If you have access to volunteers (or long-term community members), a helpful way to increase the amount of socialization is to host a competition to see who can introduce themselves to the largest number of people.
Here are some particular questions you can ask in just a minute to someone you’ve never met.
As we meet students, we’ll usually find many students who share similar interests who don’t already know each other. Introducing these students to each other is a great way to make it clear that this is a behavior which is encouraged.