Today is Whit Monday in Germany – a lovely, sunny public Holiday. That also means, it is one day past the Batch-1 application deadline. Still, you will find the application form to be open. Why you ask? Because recent developments allow us to accept more learners than initially anticipated! This blog post will give you all the details you need.
As you may have noticed, these last few weeks have been busy ones. We announced Hackership batch-1, hosted Taste sessions and opened the application process (deadline: June 8). We also introduced you to a topic that will receive some special attention this batch: web-based multimedia. But so far no one has really taken the time to explain what web-based multimedia actually is. This blog post makes up for that!
After months of hard work and careful preparation we are finally ready to announce the first official batch of Hackership, which will take place from July 1st till the end of September. That’s right, a full three months of hacking and learning. A special thanks goes out to Zalando who have kindly agreed to host us at their headquarters!
After the success of Hackership batch-0, I’m sure you’re all eager to find out when the first official batch of Hackership will be announced. The answer is soon, really soon. Fortunately, there’s plenty to do until then. In fact, anyone wishing to become either a learner or a coach during Hackership batch-1 can start preparing right now! How, you ask? By coming to one (or all) of our Taste of Hackership sessions.
We know from the last batch that running with Hackers-in-Residence is a great model to get into in-depth knowledge. What we didn't anticipate is how much help is required from good Generalists and experienced sparring partners in the day-to-day to ensure people don't get stuck and waste time. Many of those ways of being stuck really aren't about the specific language, framework or technology but just need a more experienced eye to look at and give the right pointers – or a little pair programming here and there. We were definitely too few people in order to help to the degree it was needed during the last batch. In order to avoid this shortage for the next batch, we'd like to invite more people to become permanent volunteer coaches with us. But first we'd like to clarify one thing.
We know it's been quite a while since Batch-0 and the OTS fundraiser took place. While we've honestly spent some of that time to recharge, because that's what you do after a huge and successful project, we've come out from this period more committed to Hackership than ever! That being said, we also understand our limits and as such won't be able to keep up with our plan of running the programme again in Q1 of 2014.
As you may already know, last night we officially concluded our experimental and entirely bootstrapped Batch-0 at Betahaus. These last six weeks have been an amazing journey of learning, with several workshops led by organisers and hackers-in-residence but also by learners themselves who, in addition, took part in daily stand-ups, reviews and demos, Q&A sessions and pair programming. The results and feedback far exceed our expectations. It’s amazing to see just how much learners can accomplish when you give them the right environment and the support they need. Hackership works. Learners learned with more motivation and drive than any of us have seen before. It has been an incredible learning experience – for all of us.
It feels like the experimental Batch-0 Hackership programme at Betahaus Berlin just got started, but it's already time to talk about our closing event. Six weeks go by faster than one would think, and the 19th of December is approaching fast. Our soon to be alumni, the learners of Batch-0, would like to present to the world on this final eve, just what they've been up to – and it's time to get the word out!