How to run the Practice Party

What to do:

• Before

• During

What to do before the practice party:

1. Send an email to everyone who registered interest in going to the practice party

2. Purchase snacks if your practise party will be in-person

Sending an email

• Go to Campaign Monitor 

• Press the Create button at the top right to create a new email campaign

• Select Campaign and then Email (default setting)

• In the Subject section, put something like GPN Sydney Term 1 Practice Party

• In the From section, put your node name e.g. GPN Sydney as the Sender name and the email address will be your node’s email address e.g. sydney@girlsprogramming.network.

• For the To section, select Import Subscribers, give it a name and then select Continue to import.

  • TODO: add link to How to add/remove emails from subscriber list doc

• Next, press the Design Email button on the right of the screen, select reuse a past email and use the search bar to find one with “practice party” in the title. Ideally use a previous one for your node but if this is the first time your node is doing a practice party, you can select one from any other node. 

• Update any details as relevant e.g. term number, location, content topic, contact details

• Once you’ve finished making all the required changes, Select Save & Next at the top right of the screen to save your changes 

What to do during the practice party:

• Go through what GPN is and the general structure of the day

  • •  Sample slides can be found here: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/14nwDFi1jaCJgmyXuKlUsje2qe8ZzyBZ8FTWDjt3v7ww/edit?usp=sharing

• Do some icebreakers/Introductions

  • What’s your name

  • What do you do (uni/work etc.)

  • What is your involvement with GPN  (If it’s their first time at GPN, everyone does a big Woo! to welcome them)

  • What is your favourite dessert

  If a tutor arrives after the introductions have been done, also get them to answer these questions.

• The content for the upcoming workshop should already be updated on the Squarespace so the workshop link should be given to the tutors e.g girlsprogramming.network/sydney-workshop This way, they can see what the students will be seeing and navigate to one of the rooms and the content for that room. If the Squarespace hasn’t been updated with the upcoming term’s content, you can send them a link to the beginner, intermediate, or advanced pages. 

• Tutors will go through the activitites of the workshop content, as if they were a student. Provide any help as needed and make the atmosphere similar to how it should be on the day (just generally nice, and friendly). 

  • Optional: do a tour of the building/facilities where the GPN event will take place. This is especially important if the practice party is being done online or in a different building from where the actual workshop will take place

• You should encourage tutors to take breaks. This can be done by mandating snack and stretch breaks so no-one gets too bogged down in the code, especially the newer tutors or tutors that are less confident in coding. It will also mean that the snacks are being eaten!