Rethink how we approach students/market outselves

[ErikBjare]

We (me, @exoji2e, @Powersource) talked to @bjornregnell today and had a very fruitful discussion about how we should approach students and present ourselves in an appealing way such that we can more effectively accomplish our goals.

When presenting ourselves to the D1 students, there were 4 issues:

• 4-5 students asked Björn something along the lines of: "Do you need to know Python to be in Code@LTH"
  • I don't know why they thought this, but it's obviously something we need to think about.
• I said something along the lines: "We trust Björn that Scala is great, but Python is easier to get things done in."
  • @bjornregnell was tired of the language-wars type rhethoric, I get that. I should rather have presented it along the lines of "Python is another great language that is popular and easy to learn, and complements Scala well in a lot of ways."
  • One student apparently asked Björn "Is Python better than Scala?"
• I made an off-the-cuff remark that Git wasn't in the intro course, which Björn (rightfully) thought was unnecessary public criticism of the course.
  • For discussion on the issue, see When will git be a mandatory part of the course? lunduniversity/introprog#112
• Måns said something like: "We want to encourage students to program in their spare time"
  • They don't care about what we want, they want to know how we can help them.
  • It does not really encompass all we want to accomplish. We want students to work on their own projects, learn new things, discuss interesting ideas in programming with each other, and work together to build great things.

In the past, we've also had a question from a lecturer, in front of students, if you "need to have been programming since you were 12". We need to get over this in some way.

The website also needs some rework to align with the updates we'll make.

There is also a broader discussion to be had here about diversity and such, but let's start with the points above.

[exoji2e]

I'm still not really happy with "We want students to work on their own projects, learn new things, discuss interesting ideas in programming with each other, and work together to build great things.", it still says "We want".

What about selling the feeling like this:
"Code@LTH provides a place where you can learn new things, discuss interesting ideas in programming and work together to build great things."

However this pitch doesn't say that much about what we do. So usually it's probably a good idea to fill in with something like:
"We mostly organize events that include inspirational talks and workshops but also more specific events like programming competitions and ethic-pubs."