Setting up a CoderDojo is an exciting and straight forward process. We’ve broken up this article into 3 parts.

1. A Dojo’s requirements
2. How to get these and the start up process
3. Advice and Tips

For the entire Dojo process, we can hold your hand through it, just email: startup@coderdojo.com. We have a whole network of volunteers you can get help from and ask questions to and for your first session, we’ll try get an experienced volunteer out to give a hand!

We can’t stress, just like software, just ship the first version of your CoderDojo. By just getting out there and doing it, you can evaluate resources, interest, time commitment and so on afterwards.

1. A Dojo’s requirements

CoderDojos should be free of charge and no money should change hands and this has been worked out in nearly all cases. For anything your CoderDojo needs don’t be shy go out and ask your local community and it’s leaders in business and government. CoderDojos are a no brainer when it comes to getting support from nearly any high tech business.

• Space with Internet- We suggest a local office building that has a big empty space, such as a cafeteria, that is not normally used on a weekend. (heat, light and lots of power sockets also help a lot)
• Rhythm – CoderDojo’s work well on being open on a regular basis, many Dojos run every Saturday, but this can vary based on the resources you have at hand.
• Volunteers and Mentors – you need people who will come help out, teach the sessions, help tidy up and get the space ready.
• A Champion/Co-ordinator – You need someone who will just show up week in week out to make sure that your Dojo can be relied upon to be there and be a point of contact for that Dojo!
• A Listing on Zen – Just add your Dojo to Zen, the network of Dojos and people involved.
• Above All: Be Cool – CoderDojo has just one rule and “Above All: Be Cool” that is it. Bullying, lying, wasting peoples time and so on, is uncool. Just stick by the one rule and put an emphasis on it and these problems just don’t show up.
  

• Go create a listing on Zen (http://zen.coderdojo.com), the network behind CoderDojo. You can create a listing here for your Dojo and maintain it. You can also see any nearby Dojos and get in touch. (Note your Dojo will not appear in main listing until verified, we only a hourly to daily basis check the pending Dojos, if you’re not verified after a day, contact us!)
• If possible go check out a nearby Dojo and see how it runs. Email other Dojos and ask questions about what its like running in your locale if there are preexisting Dojos near you.
• Firstly you need to set up a google discussion group (http://groups.google.com/) (eg “CoderDojo Wales”) and a twitter account (eg “@CoderDojoWales”). Interested people can easily find you, get in contact and keep in the loop this way. Have the CoderDojo logo as the profile picture, make sure you do have some text on it to illustrate your location (eg have the word “Wales” or “SF” on it like here) and be sure to follow @CoderDojo . Go back and update the Zen listing with this info.
• Next you need to find a few volunteers, Ideally if you could have at least 3 people with coding skills. 8 is normally a great number. Push message out, send out your Dojo listing on Zen and get people interested to follow the twitter account for updates and join the discussion group.  Normally if you are or get a tech person involved, they’ll have a few friends they can rope in to help mentor.
• Then you need a space, local tech business, incubators, schools/colleges are great. The space you ideally want would be relatively open plan, where you can drag and move around tables and chairs to keep a good, informal environment, staying away from the very linear classroom like layout.
• Hold a small get together of people interested in helping out, here a Q&A would be done and a more info would be given on CoderDojo.
• Next we pick a date and push it, ideally the date would be set 3 – 5 weeks from announcement depending on the amount of young people already interested.
• Try contact a fellow volunteer from a nearby Dojo and get someone out there to help with the first session. Remember, for this entire process, we can hold your hand, just email us: startup@coderdojo.com and a volunteer will help you out.
• After your first session, sit down with the mentors and volunteers, discuss how it went, time commitment, space and so on and evaluate.
• Welcome done, you did it! You are Awesome

3. Advice and Tips

• Join other Dojos discussion groups and come visit other Dojos prior, to get a feeling for the running of them! You can more information about other Dojos here. If you can’t make it out, we can set up Skype for you to see.
• Encourage all the parents or guardians to stick around, ideally any person 12 or younger would have someone responsible there for them. This stops it being used a child minding service and parents/guardians are really useful to have on hand!
• Make sure that everyone knows to help each other and if needed share their laptop – Learning how to collaborate to figure stuff out is an essential. If one person gets something before another, get them to show the other person how they did it.
• Welcome new people. Get one of the more experience people to bring them through the basics of HTML or whatever language they’re experienced in!
• Don’t stress – Some young people will come back and some won’t. Some will drop in occasionally and some will complain. Don’t worry its not for everyone just do the best you can and stay cool.
• Use free online tools to help -Get them to check out Codecademy, SitePoint, Google Uni, Mozilla Dev, Opera Dev or w3schools.com (be carefully about w3schools though, see w3fools.com)
• When faced with a question you cannot answer its often best to simply recommend google.com as its good to get young people and old to think about how to figure it out for themselves.
• Encourage collaboration – Often the best way to really learn something is to teach it and the more social interaction the better so encourage everyone to learn together and when you see someone doing something really cool get them to show it to everyone.
• Inspire creativity – Ask for suggestions of projects and challenge from everywhere. Local school needs a web page? Local charity need an app? Who better to deliver a project than a local CoderDojo
• Hack CoderDojo – CoderDojo is open source so take what works and feel free to mash it up and make it work in new ways for different stuff. Do something cool? Tell us!
• Go out, kick ass and make a difference to the lives of some young people.
• For booking systems, we recommend Eventbrite, a list of reasons for this can be found here: http://kata.coderdojo.com/index.php?title=Booking

Remember to get in touch when you’re setting up your Dojo: startup@coderdojo.com