Professional Growth Activity – Module 4

Name: Jenn Clore
Activity: SheCodesOKC “Lightning Talks
Description of Activity:  The first meeting of SheCodesOKC where some wonderful women will give lightning talks on what they have been working on! 

Date(s) of Activity (also include times):

8/27/17 2:00p to 4:00p

Student Evaluation:

Why did you select this activity?

This was a Meetup geared towards women in technology fields. I am hoping to gain some connections within the group should I have some future questions on class projects or coding in general.

Would you recommend this activity for other students? Why or why not?

Absolutely. It’s important for women in STEM fields to support each other and help further our growth in the industry. The women had different specialties and insights that I think will be extremely helpful to other women students.

What did you like best about this activity?

The various types of information that was shared. Five different speakers gave vastly different presentations. I feel that there was something for everyone. Here are the topics that were shared today:

  • Preparing for an Interview
  • Hypothesis Testing
  • Factoring in Page Load Times with Active and Passive Waiting
  • Gamification
  • React Setup with Webpack

What did you like least about this activity? How would you make the activity better?

Some of it was a little over my head but I think that was to be expected and it at least provides me with a general understanding should the topics come up in the future. I think in the future, maybe it would be helpful to have a theme for the topics. For example, a series of speakers about the interview process, or a series of speakers on Bootstrap uses. It was only the first meeting, so I’m sure it would evolve over time.

What is a creative idea/concept you can take away from this experience and possibly implement into your work?

In the talk about Page Load times, I learned that Walmart had a 2% increase in conversion for every 1 sec improvement. I think this helped to further cement the importance I should put into minifying any future web designs. The speaker provides up and coming tips to advance loading times with rel functions. They are pretty new so it isn’t supported on all browsers yet, but it will be.