Hacker school begins to write a book: A massive collaborative autoethnography by a maker community

Hacker School is a Manhattan-based organization that runs 12-week, tuition-free, self-directed "writers\´ retreats for programmers." With a diverse student body and a culture both rooted within and working to change the social dynamics of the maker/hacker movement, it represents a unique environment for studying informal computing education. The Hacker School community is in the early stages of a collaborative narrative autoethnography to explore and articulate their community\´s practices and dynamics. Our current industry-sponsored pilot focuses on the experiences of female Hacker School community members from non-computing backgrounds; later versions of the study will expand to include all community members. This work-in-progress paper describes the early stages of the study, including the struggle to develop a shared language and the impact of bringing theoretical frameworks from academia into an informal learning environment.