{"id":9981,"date":"2013-09-04T17:47:58","date_gmt":"2013-09-04T21:47:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/webmakerblog.wpengine.com\/?p=9981"},"modified":"2019-02-26T12:42:15","modified_gmt":"2019-02-26T20:42:15","slug":"babymaker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/foundation-archive\/mozilla-learning\/babymaker\/","title":{"rendered":"Babymaker party in Toronto"},"content":{"rendered":"

Throwing a Maker Party<\/a> can be a little intimidating. Some people wonder if their coding skills are strong enough, while others worry about managing the details that help an event run smoothly. Even the pros can get a little nervous, as we learned on this week’s community call <\/a>when Webmaker’s very own Cassie McDaniel<\/a> filled us in on a Maker Party she recently hosted in Toronto.
\n\"BabyMaker
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\nCassie is Webmaker’s user experience lead. She makes sure that when you visit webmaker.org<\/a>, things look good and\u2014more importantly\u2014that they work the way you want them to. It’s safe to say that Cassie is pretty handy with a computer and yet when it came to hosting a Maker Party, she started to doubt her own skills:
\n“Being a designer, I had never taught anything technical or code-related before. I did a lot of research so I could answer questions if necessary, although I didn’t end up needing to. The questions were very basic and I was well-equipped to answer them. It always seems worse in your head, doesn’t it?”<\/em>
\nCassie decided to focus her event around a personal theme that’s quite meaningful to her: babies. She’s currently 8 months pregnant and thought it would be fun to invite other parents-to-be (along with grandmas, grandpas, aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters\u2026) to learn how to remix and create baby-related web pages with HTML and CSS.
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Cassie teaching at the Babymaker party\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Photo @britburger<\/p><\/div>
\n“I decided to do something close to my heart. Making it a personal theme was part of the fun.”<\/em>
\nParticipants at the Babymaker event learned basic webmaking by creating their own baby and child-themed websites:
\n\"Homecoming<\/a>
\n\"Happy<\/a>
\nCassie recruited several people to help her at the event, which ended up being one of the best parts of the experience:
\n“My husband took event photos and one of the mentors had never helped out at a workshop before. That was actually really cool. It was an opportunity for lots of people to try out new things: not just the participants but the mentors, too.”<\/em>
\nCheck out Cassie’s beautiful birth announcement. Click on the image below and hit the Remix button in the top right corner to alter it and make it your own.
\n\"Birth<\/a>
\nInspired? There’s still time to host your own Maker Party. Choose a theme that’s meaningful to you, invite a few friends over and spend a couple hours mucking around on Thimble<\/a>. Like Cassie, you might be surprised by what you learn:
\n“Focusing on remixing a make using Thimble made the process of teaching code easy. I’ve always heard that teaching was a great way to learn but I’ve never experienced it firsthand like I did with this event”<\/em><\/p>\n

Get Involved:<\/h4>\n