@dwyl Apprenticeship in Creative Technologies (ACT)

"The possibilities are numerous once we decide to act and not react."
~ George Bernard Shaw

Everything¹ you need to know about dwyl's Apprenticeship in Creative Technologies ("ACT").

¹Our aim is to capture the answers to all questions relating to the apprenticeship in this repository.
If you have any unanswered questions or anything is unclear, please open an issue!
We know this repo not perfect and we need your help to make it better.

Why?

Most companies/organisations only (want to) hire people who already have years of experience. Managers rationalise that it's too expensive and time-consuming to invest in training people who have little or zero work experience. On the surface it can be tempting to only hire experienced people for technical teams; after all someone else has paid for their past mistakes (learning). Experienced people have practiced their craft for several years, so they are more likely to get the work done faster, right? Evidence suggests it makes a lot more sense to have a mix of both experienced and people with a fresh perspective on a team.

The purpose of @dwyl's Apprenticeship is to help people gain real-world experience while developing the skills necessary to operate effectively in the creative industries. Our objective is to give people the opportunity to learn creativity, communication, teamwork and technical skills in a real world environment.

Our Hypothesis

At dwyl we hypothesize that it's more effective to train people from scratch because:

• It gives people who are new to creative tech a start they would not otherwise get.
  • Getting a start in creative tech is the hardest part. @dwyl will help you leap over the first barrier.
• People who are new tend to have a "beginners mind" and are more "teachable".
• Avoids having to unlearn bad practices (like un-tested or un-documented work!).
• Instills the habit of continuous learning early in the person's journey thus avoiding "senior syndrome" (where people feel they already know everything!)
• They are more likely to pass on their knowledge to teammates (whereas most "senior" people "hoard" their knowledge out of fear of being replaced or as a bad habit!)

What?

An apprenticeship is a system of training people who are learning how to do a job which needs special skill.
see: wikipedia.org/wiki/Apprenticeship

ACT is an intensive learning program covering several areas that are relevant to working in the creative industries. Some of the skills are "life skills" that are essential for operating effectively both as an individual and as a member of a team in any organisation. Other skills are technical and specific to a particular role in a team. We encourage everyone to learn the fundamentals in all skills before choosing their preferred ones to master.

Some of the skills include:

1. Personal Effectiveness

@dwyl's mission is to "Empower people to maximise effectiveness, creativity and happiness."
Maiximizing your personal effectiveness is the first step toward achieving your potential. Our App - which you will contribute to during your ACT - is designed to help you build and track the habits necessary for creative excellence. There are many ways you can contribute way more than designing UX or writing code! For now simply focus on the fact that you will be improving your personal effectiveness in a systematic way. You will be tracking and managing your time and energy to ensure you are applying yourself and working on the tasks that actually move you toward your goal(s).

2. Creativity

Creativity is the use of imagination or ideas to create something. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creativity
Creativity is central to everything we do @dwyl and we are all constantly being creative. There are many ways of being creative, the first step is simply to think that you can be creative! If you already feel that you are creative and want a chance to develop your ideas and creative skills, please contact us! We need creative people who want to make things!

If you are stuck thinking you are not creative, we suggest dwyl/learn-creativity as a starting point.

3. Communication

One of the most valuable transferrable skills anyone can learn and apply to any area of their life/work is communication.

• Asking questions! If you aren't asking questions you aren't learning. It's really that simple.
• Writing - capturing everything you learn. Enhancing/improving/editing @dwyl's extensive library of learning guides and tutorials.
• Sharing what you are thinking especially when you see an area for improvement!
• Informing your teammates of what you are working on by consistently updating the task tracker (e.g: with update comments on a GitHub issue) has multiple benefits which compound over time.
• Visual communication including graphics and video.
• Language For any work / contribution or even communication should be used English.

4. Collaboration

How to work with other people in a team both in-person and remote. This is an incredibly valuable transferrable life skill that everyone should master. See: https://github.com/dwyl/remote-working

5. UX/Design Thinking

You don't have to label yourself as a "designer" or go to college for 4 years in order to think like a designer. You just have to observe the world and think: "is this user-friendly?"

There are plenty of examples of both good and bad design around us. You have the opportunity to improve the world and the experience of your fellow humans through design. What can be more exciting than that?

Read:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_thinking
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User-centered_design
• https://uxplanet.org/user-centered-design-process-and-benefits-fd9e431eb5a9
• https://99percentinvisible.org/article/norman-doors-dont-know-whether-push-pull-blame-design/

6. Code

“Everybody should learn to program a computer,
because it teaches you how to think.” ~ Steve Jobs

We think everyone should learn how to (read/write/understand) code because it teaches you to think systematically and break down problems into small chunks.

@dwyl we write code to make useful things for real people.

We do not expect all the people doing the Apprenticeship to write code for their career. But technology and code are at the centre of what we do @dwyl (as well as the world we live in) and we have found that knowing how to code is an essential skill to working effectively here.

“Whether you want to uncover the secrets of the universe, or you just want to pursue a career in the 21st century, basic computer programming is an essential skill to learn.” ~ Stephen Hawking

Who?

Anyone over 18 years old² who has either not worked in creative tech before and wants to get started, or people who have worked in tech and want to explore a different path.

The apprenticeship is for self-motivated people who are eager to learn fast and make things!
If you are not already motivated to learn independently, please do not apply to ACT until you learn to apply yourself.

²The reason for minimum age for ACT is simple: we don't want anyone quitting (regular) school, running away from home and showing up on our doorstep! We encourage anyone/everyone under age 18 to start their creative tech learning journey as soon as possible! But definitely "stay in school" and learn everything you can, because life is much easier if you tick the box of "school" first and do it well. If you are still in high school and feel that your creativity is not being rewarded, don't worry or lose hope, it will be soon enough!

How?

Prerequisites

• Read (and "star") this repo to show you have (have read) and are interested in the apprenticeship.
• Read (and "star") https://github.com/dwyl/start-here to show you agree with @dwyl's mission, manifesto and values.
• Read (and "star") the dwyl contributing guide: https://github.com/dwyl/contributing to confirm that you have read and understood our "team workflow".
• Answer the questions see: start-here/questions.md
• Contribute to a dwyl project or tutorial(s) and show us you're putting your reading into practice with https://github.com/dwyl?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=learn (a Pull Request with an improvement to the learning materials). See: What is a "Previous Contribution" question/answer below.

Apply!

Send us an email: hello@dwyl.com with the subject: "Apprenticeship". Describe why you want to join our Apprenticeship program and include a link to your GitHub profile. We will take it from there.

Frequently Asked Questions & Answers!

Q: How long is a day?

asked by @ZooeyMiller in #2

You should aim to spend 6 hours per day on deep work.¹ You are responsible for managing/tracking your time. Divide your time between learning, researching, writing, coding, editing and other creative work. Aim to start your day no later than 08:50 GMT so that you are always "on time" for the daily morning meeting.

If you are prefer to start earlier, do it! Some of us start our day at 06:00 so we get 3h of focus time before 09:00! Just let someone know you are available/online and remember to track your time so you don't over-work.

Six hours either sounds like little (if you are used to working 12h per day at a minimum wage job), or a lot if you have attempted to focus without distractions for 6 hours. You are not expected to work continuously for 6 hours. You are expected to keep track of your time.

¹If you haven't yet read the book Deep Work by Cal Newport make it a priority to read it and understand all the concepts before starting the ACT.

Q: How to Communicate?

1. GitHub - GitHub is our single source of truth. We have a strong preference for communicating via GitHub. This ensures that anyone can see what everyone else is learning or working on and can help when we get stuck. If in doubt, open an issue in the repository you are working on.

2. Daily Standup Meetings - We have a daily standup meeting at 09:00 each day of the work week (Monday - Friday)
   Everyone attends via Zoom video conference: https://zoom.us/j/3371337133
   Join the call at 08:59.
   We also have another standup meeting at 17:00 which aims to know how the work day went.
   It should be mentioned again the issue you were working on and what progress you have made, if you have finished mention the pull request you opened.
   Again join the call at 16:59.
   

We keep our individual updates brief. The point is just to describe in a few words what you worked on the previous day and what your plan is for today. We mention an issue number and project name e.g:
"Yesterday I worked on Autocomplete issue #224. I realised that there is more work to do before Autocomplete can work, so today I am working on Basic tagging #245"

If you are stuck with the task you are currently working on, make that clear by writing a comment in the issue you are working on and draw people's attention to it in the standup.

If for any reason you are unable to attend the daily standup, send a message with your update on the @dwyl Signal channel.

3. Signal - We use signal messenger https://signal.org to coordinate and ask "logistical" questions. Signal is ephemeral so we never use it to ask technical questions, those are always asked/answered on GitHub so that they're indexed by Google and thus helpful to everyone.

Q: How long is the apprenticeship?

asked by @ZooeyMiller in #2

Initially for 8 weeks.
Progress should be reviewed weekly. (we need a system for this ...)

More details in the Apprenticeship Agreement.

Q: What is a "Previous Contribution" to a @dwyl Project?

Contribution to a dwyl project can range from:

• Asking a question (seeking clarification) in a GitHub Issue and opening a PR to add the answer/clarification to the relevant readme.
• Answering a question on an existing issue.
• Reporting a bug/issue on one of our projects or tutorials and
• Creating a Pull Request that fixes the bug/issue you reported and or adds the question/answer to a relevant readme.

Q: What are the Potential Outcomes of the Apprenticeship?

There are four potential outcomes ranging from disappointment to delight.

1. Nothing - people who do not put in the daily effort will inevitably have no outcome.
   This is just a fact: “Nothing will work unless you do.” ~ Maya Angelou
   Do not fall into the trap of doing nothing and expecting miracles. Ask questions every day. Learn continuously and share your knowledge. Trust that persistence is the key to success.

2. Job with another org/company (recommendation from @dwyl) - once you are confident in your skills and have a portfolio of work, we encourage everyone to apply for a job that you want to do.

3. Job with @dwyl - If you consistently go the extra mile to share what you learn, ask/answer questions and contribute to the @dwyl projects/product, you will be invited to become a core team member. For now just focus on learning and sharing what you learn.

4. Start Up - If you decide that you want to work on a particular idea/company/product, discuss it with us!

Got Questions?

If you have any questions which have not been answered here, please ask!