intro to react, with nextjs
put together a 1.5 hour workshop to teach React as part of nwHacks 2024's pre-hackathon workshop series.
my chief goal with this workshop was to take all participants that know a bit of html/js and teach them skills to go from an empty vscode to deploying their own web app, independently and quickly. I wanted the workshop to be actually helpful for their hackathon project. I wanted the concepts to be taught with sufficient depth (but not too much to be fatiguing) so that the 1.5 hours of teaching unlocks hundreds of hours of practice.
Stackblitz was used so we didn't have to deal with "node isn't working on my computer" time drains, and NextJS was used so participants could quickly deploy the app (via Vercel). This allowed us to maximize time for participants to learn, apply, debug, and repeat.
Due to snow shutting down campus we weren't able to host the workshop in-person as planned, yet well over 100 people showed up (and stayed until the end!) virtually