The Code Geeks poster for Sleek & Swift, a hands-on Tailwind and Shadcn workshop, August 13 2025, 2 to 4 PM in SJH 703, with a line at the bottom reading all slots have been takenMe at the front of the lab, mid-sentence, under the organizers' introduction slide listing my name and a column of job titlesA student watching the Introduction to Tailwind CSS slide on his own monitor, the same slide mirrored down the row of machines behind himMe leaning over a student's station reading her screen, two more students working at the machines beside her

2025-08-13

The slots were gone before I said anything

workshop students frontend tailwind codegeeks

Registration closed a day early

The poster went up the day before with a line across the bottom saying all slots had been taken. A free hands-on workshop, two hours, one lab with a fixed number of chairs. I would love to read something into that. Mostly it means Code Geeks did their job.

Still the good version of a problem. Nobody in that room was there for an attendance sheet.

The two hours

The organizers opened with an introduction slide carrying my name and a column of job titles under it, which is a generous way to describe a man who has mostly failed to say no to things.

Then Tailwind, on every machine at once. The slide in the photos above puts it plainly: a utility-first framework, small ready-made styles you compose in the markup instead of writing your own. Then shadcn/ui, the component half of the same idea.

Then the part that made it a workshop instead of a talk. Everyone building on their own machine, me walking the lab and reading screens over shoulders. That is the whole reason to book a room with computers in it.

Written up a year late

I build in vanilla HTML and CSS now, and I argue about it in public. In August 2025 I had none of that to defend, which probably made me a better guest.

This is going up a year to the day after it happened, so I am not going to invent exchanges I do not remember. What I have is the poster, the photos, and the shape of the afternoon.

I also do not know what stuck. The last photo below is the room lined up at the end, every monitor in front of them showing the QR code for the post-evaluation form. That form went to the organizers, which is the correct place for it. So I know how the two hours felt from the front of the lab. The people who know how they landed were the ones sitting down.

Thank you to Code Geeks, the student organization for the computing programs at Holy Angel University, for the invitation. They picked the topic, booked the lab, filled it a day early, and handled every part of the afternoon that was not me talking. Getting a room of students to give up a Wednesday for a workshop is harder than giving the workshop, and they had already done it before I arrived.

The photos and the recap video above are Kyle Payawal's work, not mine.

On video

Me sitting at the instructor station with the projector beside me, laughing at something off camera Watch the Code Geeks recap of the workshop on Facebook

The rest of the roll

The whole room lined up at the end, every monitor in the foreground showing the post-evaluation form QR code
The whole room lined up at the end, every monitor in the foreground showing the post-evaluation form QR code