FEDucation + Carbon Design System = Exponential Learning
FEDucation is a global continuing education effort sponsored by FED@IBM, a community of practice supporting front-end development at IBM. FEDucation has been ongoing since 2015 and conducted more than 100 sessions.
Earlier this year, IBM’s Carbon Design System team announced the release of a learning series coined Developer Essentials. FED@IBM paired up with the Carbon team to facilitate the delivery of the sessions and face-to-face learning opportunities. We created a 5-week series, focusing on Carbon’s React components, and opened it up for registration. When the series began in late May, more than 1,000 developers were registered.
FEDucation has always been conducted as an internal event, and past lessons were broadcast to participants with WebEx Meetings. Because IBM Carbon Design System is open source, we opted for a live stream on Carbon’s YouTube channel to broadcast the introductory sessions (recordings of these sessions are available on the Developer Essentials playlist).
Switching to YouTube was not without its technical difficulties, but broadcasting FEDucation out in the open was refreshing, and we plan to release more FEDucation sessions externally soon!
Leveraging local branches
FED@IBM launched its first local branches in Böblingen, Germany, and Austin, Texas, in early 2018. In the short time between then and now, the community has grown to 21 global branches with Beijing, China and Bangalore, India having onboarded most recently.
Local branch leaders hold regular face-to-face meetups in their locations to share knowledge, tools, code and practice. We asked these local branch leaders to facilitate lab sessions for the series, and they jumped in to help out! Lab sessions were held in most of the local branch locations with more than 200 IBM developers gathering each week to work through each step of the series. Not only did these branch leaders facilitate these peer learning sessions, they also reviewed and approved each attendee’s 5 pull requests. And, in true community fashion, one of the branch leaders has begun working on a Vue version of the learning series.
Digital Credential + Carbon swag
Upon completion of all 5 steps of the IBM Carbon Design System Developer Essentials series, participants can apply for a digital credential or a badge. Additionally, for a limited time and with limited availability, Carbon swag. More than 200 badges have already been issued.
Psst — since the tutorial has been released on Carbon’s website, anyone can go through the series, earn a badge and (in some locations) some Carbon swag. But hurry — Carbon swag is only available for a limited time!
Kelly Churchill is a Software Development Manager at IBM and FED@IBM Program Lead based in Austin, Texas. The above article is personal and does not necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.
