Voyage-3 Prep — Overview of what you need to know
Voyage-3 invites go out November 27th, & the remote dev teams will launch on December 1st.
A NEW CODING VOYAGE IS UPON US! Hundreds of people from 50+ countries shall come together to collaborate, learn and build together!
Review our standards and practices so that you can be familiar with important topics like the Autobot & milestones, the Elon-Musk-bot, communication guidelines and how NOT to make your team-mates angry.
Table of Contents
- Why the Chingu Voyage cohort exists [1 min]
- Schedule [1 min]
- Standards + The Builder’s Pledge [3 min]
- Essential skills to learn before you start [10–200 min]
- Extras — Links, a few featured teams in Voyage-3 [1 min]
Why does the Chingu-Voyage cohort exist?
The Chingu-Voyage cohort exists to give motivated learners a community, an environment and wild challenges to accelerate their skills, create impact, and build a glorious portfolio and experience to get a job.
Why is this important?
There are more people learning to code (and competing for jobs) than ever before. On top of that, how many times have we all seen entry level job ads that require previous developer experience?
The Voyage cohort is a way to gain that experience while also leveling-up your skills (both technical and soft).
Put simply: the Voyage cohort is where people build projects to reach their coding goals. Put even more simply:
We build to learn.
Note: it’s possible that dates may change slightly.
NOVEMBER 18— Prep Packet goes out
NOVEMEBER 27— Voyage-3 invites go out
NOVEMBER 27- 30— People joining in and getting settled
DECEMBER 1—100+ Remote Dev Teams Launched
DECEMBER 9— Act 1 due-date
Sprints will continue until the project is finished.
January 20 — MVP due (minimum viable project)
The final due date is relative to the project — some projects may take more time to complete. That is okay.
Communication Schedule
To support teams and help automate the admissions for future Voyages, we’ve added “standup checkins” 1–2 times a week (depending on the team).
It takes 2 minutes and extremely simple but can help keep teams accountable, focused, and to discover issues early.
If teams don’t communicate, they fail. If you don’t think you will be able to answer the following 3 questions twice a week, this Voyage may not be right for you (please let us know).
Here is what a standup looks like:
What I did in the last 3 days?
What I’m working on in the next 3 days?
Is there anything blocking my path? (ex. I need to lear x, I don’t understand y)
Chingu is a Meritocracy
No one has to pay money to get this experience.
What does this mean?
This means the only currency in Chingu is a hunger to learn and excitement to work with others. And what you actually contribute to building.
Enthusiasm, Industriousness, and Kindness.
The people who overcome challenges (whether it be learning new technologies, navigating git/github, or learning to work in teams) will find success here. And then they will find themselves unlocking even bigger opportunities in the future (in the form of being recruited for projects, being placed with other proven members, etc.)
Regardless of your level, if you’ve been accepted it means we believe you have what it takes. But it takes work — a lot of work to learn and succeed and finish remote dev projects.
Your performance in this Voyage will dictate your future opportunities in Chingu (ex. when we see someone had team-mates leave and still completed a project, they deserve to be placed with legends in the next cohort who are as determined as them).
Standards + The Builder’s Pledge
We’ve launched hundreds of remote team projects and there is a formula for successful teams.
Every successful team has dependable people, an openness to learn, and consistent communication.
We’ve launched hundreds of team-projects and looked at what practices the successful teams did. Those practices (seen below) are now our standards.
All members are expected to do a check-in twice a week
Don’t be evil (thanks Google).
Don’t think I need to explain this. We’ve had people from 115 different countries from all kinds of backgrounds you can imagine. Everyone shares the same goals and is here to improve their lives through coding. :)
We will remove people who are being disruptive to the community.
Sign the Builder’s Pledge
Before starting, you’ll have to sign the Builder’s Pledge, which is basically an Accountability Pledge. This cohort can be a jetpack for your learning and career, but you need to be accountable and be able to count on your team for it to go smoothly.
The Builder’s Pledge should be sent in your Prep-Packet email. Be sure to sign it before the cohort begins.
If you aren’t determined to learn, be challenged and make it through despite the odds, the Voyage might not be the place for you.
AUTOBOT — your remote dev team’s own project guide
Say hello to your team’s special guide during your Code Voyage, Autobot.
Autobot is a next-level collaboration tool built-in house by a wordsmith-of-code by the name of Vampiire. Autobot is improving all the time so it may change a bit during your Voyage. :)
Here is a rough sketch of the team project process (it’ll make more sense when you’re inside)
Note: when the cohort launches you’ll get a document that shows in detail what each milestone is, including any resources we have for that milestone, any examples of the milestone from former teams and due dates for each Act.
Autobot’s Standups
Because team communication is so important, we’re working on tools that’ll help teams succeed. One of those tools is Autobot’s standup feature.
The feature is not polished at the time of writing (we aren’t joking when we say we’re continuously improving ;p) but here is a mockup of what we have now:
Learn these skills before you start
There are some skills that are like magic keys that’ll allow you to get the most out of your Voyage-2 experience.
1. Learn the basics of how to code collaboratively.
Using Git/github effectively is an essential skill for any developer now. For anyone new to a Chingu Build-2-Learn (B2L) project, this will probably be the biggest skill you learn (regardless of what your team builds). It’s that important.
Learn the foundations of Git/Github on DevGaido.
Learn the basics of how to collaborate with Git.
Note: you don’t have to have 10000 hours in using github, but knowing the basics is a must. You and your team will work together to figure out the details when you start. Navigating challenges around git/github are going to be numerous no matter what so don’t worry too much — just embrace the challenges as they come. :)
2. The Power of Soft-Skills
Learning soft-skills is like picking up a super-power. Your whole life changes when you earn them.
Here’s a list of some essential Soft-skill principles.
(Quick note: Warren Buffet once did a course centred around the principles in that link. The certificate he got from that little course is the only one he has hanging in his office — not his university degrees. He credits learning soft-skills with changing his life early in his career.)
There are some larger projects that will be brought over from Chingu to continue the adventure.
These are all projects that either already are or aim to create create impact and value for others. These are all projects built by people like you, hungry learners with coding goals.
Our ultimate Moonshot mission is to facilitate teams to create impact, and eventually to help ambitious coders go from trying to get jobs via building projects to creating jobs via building products.
A few articles from past Voyagers
Sarah’s article (tier-3)
Eun’s article (tier-2)
Ziggysauce’s article.(tier-2)
The Chingu Developer Network — an opportunity launcher/jetpack for developers and remote teams
This project is bananas and aims to help Chingu reach it’s larger goal of creating a global collaboration symphony using our various collaboration tools, growing membership, real-time collaboration metrics, and a rambunctious hunger to learn.
It’ll automate most of what is currently done manually and allow people to connect and collaborate in a whole new level!
Dev-gaido —tailored learning paths for developers!
Co/ment — a mentoring/mentee matching tool. Find the perfect guide for your coding journey
Alexandria — a full-stack web-dev library of resources
Coders-of-the-World — the stories of people coding across the globe
Nonprofits
These days we’ve got anywhere from 2–4 nonprofit projects ongoing at any given time and they are something we want to continue to do so keep your eyes out for opportunities there.
That’s it, you’re all set!
Have fun preparing for the Voyage-3 cohort! We’ve got some big improvements we’re excited to try out and optimize so that we can continue to give people better opportunities to level-up!
If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out.
I can’t wait for the 27th!!!!
