I’m still processing all the great feedback I got after giving my talk “Crossing The Canyon Of Cognizance: A Shared Adventure”, but I wanted to get the slides posted online along with the links to the blog posts and articles I cite. (I added a few extra “suggested reading” links too for the ambitious.)

A full post on RailsConf will go here shortly. 👆

Jeff Atwood, @codinghorror, “Please Don’t Learn to Code”

Zed Shaw, @zedshaw, ”Please Don’t Become Anything, Especially Not a Programmer”

Stephanie Morillo, @radiomorillo, RubyWanKenoobie blog, “Through the Looking Glass: When Upward Mobility and Access to Tech Are a Train Stop Away”

Sarah Mei, @sarahmei, “Programming is Not Math”

Sara Simon, @sarambsimon, “Seven Months Later”

Kylie Stradley, @kyfast, “Amelia Bedelia Learns to Code”

Sasha Laundy, @SashaLaundy, “Your Brain’s API: Giving and Getting Technical Help”

Ashley Nelson-Hornstein, @ashleynh, “On Heroes”

Dominic M. Liddel, @dominicmliddell, “Lessons Learned While Working to Build Black Tech Community”

Rebecca Poulson, @rebeccapoulson, “The Junior Jump”, (link will be added when posted on Ancient City Ruby site)

Stephanie Migdalia Pi Herrera, @pi_inthecloud, “Institutional Barriers for Women of Color at Code Schools”

Suggested reading (this list might grow):

Erik Trautman, “Why Learning to Code is So Damn Hard”

Alicia Liu, @aliciatweet, “You don’t have Impostor Syndrome”

Katherine Wu, @kwugirl, “How to Be a Better Junior Developer”

David Robinson, @drob, “A Million Lines of Bad Code”

Monica F. Cox, Ph.D., @monicafcox, “Professionally Prepared but Not Pioneer Prepared”

Talk Chatter

I’d requested that everyone moved to one side of the room or the other since my slides were more important than my face. Walter’s tweet about it made me laugh!

Okay, then I actually gave the talk:

I was so touched that people had an emotional reaction to Tenderfoot’s journey. I wouldn’t have had a Tenderfoot without my wonderful coworker and friend Tam Vo. We’re working on releasing a fun Tenderfoot sticker set, so keep some 👀 out for that!