Removing Barriers: Ascend Project Post Mortem
summary
Six weeks of paid immersion funded by Mozilla, with laptops, food and stipends, yields concrete outcomes: 20 enrolled, 18 complete, about 15 fix at least one bug during the program, several land internships (Urban Airship, Mozilla OPW, AgileBits), and participants ship QA scripts, Python test automation, JavaScript and CSS fixes and contributions to Fjord and webmaker. The program teaches command‑line git, dev environments and mentoring practices, proves cohort building and confidence work, but budgeting, space and targeted outreach to marginalized groups need redesign for repeatability.
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chapters (22)
- 0:00Introduction
- 2:10Amanda Holub
- 2:38Adam McCoyer
- 3:23Becky Scheffler
- 3:47Barbara Miller
- 5:13Yeni
- 6:02What skills did you send
- 7:07What skills did you learn
- 7:55Git
- 9:06Code School
- 11:38Teaching is hard
- 13:37Meet Virginia
- 17:59Learning to Teach
- 20:17No Agenda
- 22:12How did you define success
- 24:31Personal success
- 25:27What fascinated you about the program
- 26:24What would be a successful program
- 29:44Interview with Jessica before ascend
- 32:04Interview with Julie after ascend
- 33:36Community
- 34:10PieLadies
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