Remote, safe, and still a community

After the remote experience of the pandemic years, we have decided to continue in the remote mode. So our challenge here is to find a way to maintain a sense of community while working remotely.

Different personalities, different experiences

Everyone is different. Some people really like socializing. Some people don’t like people. Everything in between exists. One interesting thing is going to be that you have much more control over the type of experience you have. In previous batches, we had in person events that we required attendance to. This created an environment where social was the default. Now it will be the opposite where isolated is the default. That’s fine for introverts and not so great for extroverts.

Both experiences will use the same technology. The difference is how you use them. So let’s talk first about the tech and then how you can use these tools to craft the type of experience that you want.

Your experience

There are a few different types of experiences that you can have with this format. A social one or a solitary one. The choice is yours but in the case that you are feeling lost or demotivated, we strongly recommend the social experience. This is how you make the friends that will help you through the course.

Experience 1: Solitary

This one is easy. If you are overqualified for the course, are super confident that you can breeze through all of the material, and are not a particularly social person then this is the one for you. You leave the auditorium room open, pay attention when presentations are up, and then just work away for the rest of the time.

If you are an introverted person that is not particularly confident in your ability to complete the course, the solitary experience will be very tempting. DON’T DO IT! This is a trap. It’s a nice, warm, safe, familiar blanket that will suffocate your chances of completing the course. This is how you end up in your own head with a nice piece of impostor syndrome eating away at your path to success. Bite the bullet and go for Experience 2.

Experience 2: Social

Send direct messages to people. Jump around to all of the specific rooms. If a technical problem appears, be proactive and collaborative in coming up with a solution. Invite someone that interests you to a private video chat. If there’s too many people in a specific room for it to be useful, create another one and invite specific people to it. You’ll spend less time on the learning material but you’ll spend more time problem solving with other people. Problem solving with people is how real relationships are built. Having relationships with people in the course are what will carry you through when you’re doubting yourself.

There are going to be technical difficulties. We are a volunteer organization and this is the fourth time we are doing this remotely. When there are problems, make it an opportunity to meet someone and treat it as an ice breaker. In doing this, you’ll make a friend or two and that friend or two will make the next 9 months so much better.

The tools

The google calendar

The source of truth for the schedule is the batch 7 google calendar. You can use the link itself directly or you can add it to your favorite calendar app.

Google Meet

We will use Google Meet for all virtual meetings.

The auditorium room

The auditorium room is the room from which all presentations will be given. This is the big room that everyone can enter when someone needs to speak to everyone else. All virtual classes will be given from this room. Link to the auditorium room will be shared on Slack before all events.

Side rooms

Side rooms are specific to SLUs, BLUs, Hackathons, and even coffee breaks. If you want to enter a side room, you can leave the auditorium and go into the side room. Easy-peasy.

Slido

We have all been in that work meeting or class where that one person forgets to mute themselves, making a huge mess of the meeting. Managing so many people in a meeting and making sure everyone gets a turn is a big challenge. To avoid confusion and give everyone a chance to clarify the presentation content or just ask more about a topic, the Q&A will make use of Slido (https://www.sli.do/).

This is a platform where you can write your own questions or vote for other people’s questions to be answered. Without any need for an account, you can access the website and introduce a slido code, which will be shared in all virtual meetings.

Slack

Slack is our communication tool during all the Academy. All important announcements will be made via Slack. This is where you can have written conversations and ask questions that don’t require an immediate response. Please note that there are channels created for each of the SLUs, BLUs, and hackathons. Be sure to post your question in the right place!

Note that we have not paid for a full Slack subscription. This is on purpose. Slack is not a place that should generate a source of truth for anything at all. Slack messages disappear after 90 days. Anything else needs to go into something official like a GitHub issue if you want it preserved.