Task Challenges

Virtual Coffee's Task Challenges are created/aggregated by VC members to help other VC members gain practical experience in how to use their learned skills in real-world scenarios.

Benefits

These task challenges will greatly benefit the entire Virtual Coffee community by providing members with opportunities to up-skill in select technologies and tools through practical, real-world scenarios.

For Task Challenge Posters

• Share Expertise: Contribute your knowledge and experience to help others grow.
• Community Contribution: Play a pivotal role in fostering a learning environment.
• Mentorship: Guide and mentor fellow members through their learning journey.

For Task Challenge Takers

• Practical Experience: Engage with challenges modeled after real-world scenarios, providing applicable experience.
• Skill Development: Build and enhance your skill set with hands-on tasks.
• Team Building: Review peers' code and give targeted, helpful feedback.
• Portfolio Expansion: Create a portfolio of practical projects to showcase your abilities to potential employers.
• Feedback and Improvement: Receive constructive feedback from experienced professionals to refine your skills.

For the VC Community

• Collaborative Learning: Foster a supportive environment where members can learn from each other.
• Professional Growth: Prepare members for real-world roles in the tech industry through realistic challenges.
• Enhanced Resources: Build a repository of valuable resources and completed challenges for ongoing learning and reference.

Unlike abstract problem-solving platforms like LeetCode and Codewars, these challenges are grounded in real-world applications, making them immensely beneficial for professional development and practical learning.

Table of Contents

• Adding Your Experience
• Posting a New Task Challenge
• Task Challenge Skill Levels Tracks
• Working on a Task Challenge
• Who Do You Go To for Help?
• Submitting Your Task Challenge
• Going Further
• Author
• Honorable Mentions
• Code of Conduct

Adding Your Experience

As a VC member currently (or formerly) active in the professional tech industry, this is the opportunity to share your expertise with others. To do so, fork the repository and create a branch called add-member-experience. Navigate to the Member Experience Directory and add your name, level of expertise, role(s), and each role's tasks to the document. Then, make a pull request back to the main project.

By doing this, you are signaling to other members that you are open for conversation about your experience. If you so choose, you can post a challenge (or multiple challenges) related to one or more of your listed tasks.

Caution

You should not post any proprietary data or company-specific tasks. Focus only on transferable tools, technologies, etc.

Posting a New Task Challenge

As a VC member with real-world experience, you may want to post a task challenge. To do this, create a fork of the repository with a new branch titled add-<challenge-name>-challenge. Begin by creating a new file called task-challenges/<challenge-name>.md. Then, link your task challenge document under the appropriate heading in the Task Challenges Directory.

Your document should explain the goal(s) of the task challenge and what prerequisites are needed to get started. It should give clear instructions on what technologies are/are not allowed and what deliverables are expected upon completion of the challenge. If there are any optional or bonus tasks, those should be clearly noted as such.

This document should also list…

• the VC member who posted the task challenge (you!)
• the challenge source/author
• the skill level this challenge is targeting
• any VC members currently working on the task challenge
• any VC members who have successfully completed the task challenge, including a link to their fork of the repo

See _example-task-challenge.md for an example.

Important

You do not have to create the task challenge from scratch, however, you must have completed it before posting it as you will be responsible for giving final feedback to VC members who attempt your challenge.

Task Challenge Skill Levels Tracks

We will divide task challenges into beginner, intermediate, and advanced levels. Challenges can be multi-part, increasing in difficulty the further along you go.

• Beginner Task Challenges: for a person learning to code
• Intermediate Task Challenges: with a focus on the working professional and building up skills
• Advanced Task Challenges: for seniors who want a challenge

Working on a Task Challenge

As a VC member looking to build your skills, you may want to try several task challenges. To work on a task challenge, create your own fork of the repository and a new branch titled add-challenge-participant. Add your name under the Members Attempting section of the task challenge document, and send a pull request back to the main repo.

Who Do You Go To for Help?

There are several avenues of help available to VC members who take on a task challenge. The following is the order in which you should seek out help:

1. If there are other VC members currently attempting the task challenge, partner up with them on any help you need or any questions you may have.
2. If any VC members have successfully completed the challenge, review supplemental resources they created after completing the task challenge (if any) and reach out to them with questions.
3. If you are the first person to attempt the task challenge, communicate any questions you have to the VC member who posted the challenge and reach out to them directly for help.

Submitting Your Task Challenge

Unless you are the first person to attempt the task challenge, you will be required to have another VC member peer review your work before submitting your final solution to the challenge poster. If there are other VC members currently attempting the task challenge, you should pair up and peer review each other's work. If there are no other members currently attempting the task challenge, ask a member who has successfully completed it to review your work.

After your solution has been peer reviewed and necessary changes are made, you may proceed to submit it to the challenge originator for final analysis and feedback. Once you receive your feedback from the challenge poster and are told you've successfully completed it, you may create a new pull request to move your name in the task challenge document from the Members Attempting section to the Members Completed section!

Going Further

There are a few more ideas for what we can do after a VC member has completed a task challenge. These are completely optional and open to change.

1. The challenge originator can provide task challenge participants with a list of resources and/or topics to follow up on and expand their new-found knowledge.
2. The challenge completer can create a resource of their own covering what they just learned. Options include but are not limited to: blog posts, videos/live streams, Twitter spaces, social media posts, podcasts, etc. We would want to link them in the repository, but they can be shared outside the community as well.

Author

Arvind

Honorable Mentions

I would like to extend my gratitude to Meg Gutshall for helping me present this idea to the Virtual Coffee community and in helping and guiding me through the proposal. It all wouldn't be possible without your help, Meg. Thanks a lot for everything.