What are monthly challenges?
These monthly challenges provide members the opportunity to learn, grow, and receive support and mentorship. There will be a theme for each month's challenge and weekly goals for the members to work on. Instructions, resources, and additional help for the challenges is provided in the #monthly-challenge channel in Slack. Along with our Maintainers, our Challenge Team Leads plan, organize, and facilitate these challenges.
Who can participate?
These challenges are available to all Virtual Coffee members. The goal is to support developers of all stages in their coding journey To become a member of Virtual Coffee, all you need to do is attend a Tuesday or Thursday Coffee and submit the form you'll receive at Coffee. After you submit the form, you will receive an invitation to join the Slack group, where you can share your progress on the challenges and ask questions.
Our challenges:
- Current Challenge: Preptember
Get your open source projects ready!
Maintainers will be reviewing their open source repos with our checklist to make sure their projects are ready for Hacktoberfest contributions, and our contributors will be looking at their favorite repos, evaluating them based on the guide, and writing good issues as needed to fulfill the criteria.
Learn more about this challenge in this blog post.
To view all of the details of this year's challenge, check out the September 2024 challenge page.
Resources and results from past challenges:
- Month of Learning
Time to learn new things!
The goal of this challenge is to learn something new, share what we have learned, and gather recommendations and resources to share with the community. During this challenge, we work on learning new dev-related things. You might deep-dive into one topic, start a small group that focuses on community learning, focus on a new topic every week, or do a little bit of everything.
Learn more about this challenge in this blog post.
To view all of the details of this year's challenge, check out the February 2024 challenge page.
Resources and results from past challenges:
- Get Job Ready
Resumes, Cover Letters, and Elevator Pitch. There's never a bad time to update your job application materials.
The goal of this challenge is to work on creating, revising, or updating your job packet materials and that elevator pitch that might get you in the door. Your resume, cover letter, and elevator pitch should work together to tell your story and represent where you are on your career journey; each piece should complement the others. This challenge emphasizes taking time to ensure they work together or get some extra feedback on what you've worked on.
To view all of the details of this year's challenge, check out the March 2024 challenge page.
Resources and results from past challenges:
- Find Your Voice
Public Speaking Challenge!
Public speaking can feel daunting, but it is a valuable skill in all aspects of life. This month, we will help you conquer your fears and become a confident, captivating speaker!
Learn more about this challenge in this blog post. And check out our Lightning Talk Guide!
To view all of the details of this year's challenge, check out the April 2024 challenge page.
Resources and results from past challenges:
- Creative Community Challenge
Let's make some space for the other parts of ourselves.
Devs are more than just the code we write. This challenge is all about embracing self-expression. Give back to yourself by indulging in something just for fun. Share the art, music, poetry, sports, games, or other hobbies that spark your joy. We spend so much time grinding away on understanding things in the tech space. Let's make some space for the other parts of ourselves. In this challenge, we encourage folks to spend time working on things that aren't necessarily code-specific or using code to improve other hobbies and outlets.
Learn more about this challenge in this blog post.
To view all of the details of this year's challenge, check out the December 2023 challenge page.
Resources and results from past challenges:
- Blogging Challenge
A Community Challenge to hit a word count goal for all our tech blogs.
Based off the NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) Challenge, this challenge is the tech take on writing and working together towards the goal while posting on our own blogs.
Learn more about this challenge in this blog post.
To view all of the details of this year's challenge, check out the November 2023 challenge page.
Resources and results from past challenges:
- Hacktoberfest
Participate in open source, learn, and have fun!
This challenge is always run during October and was our first-ever monthly challenge. We have three tracks: maintainers will provide issues labeled for Hacktoberfest, contributors will solve issues, and mentors will help contributors and maintainers be successful.
Learn more about this challenge in this blog post.
To view all of the details, including a list of VC-approved repositories to contribute to, check out the October monthly challenge page.
Resources and results from past challenges:
- Healthy Habits for Happy Devs
This month's challenge is all about nourishing our bodies, minds, and spirits so that we can become healthier developers.
The goal of this challenge is to build a new habit that will make you a healthier dev; this can be mind and body-centered (drink, move, read, meditate, rearrange your workstation) or code-centered (review your README, clean your code, refresh your GitHub repo) or both. Set the goal for yourself this month and define what successfully completing the challenge looks like. For example, it could be reviewing the README in 5 of your projects (one every week) or running 2k twice a week.
Learn more about this challenge in this blog post.
Resources and results from past challenges:
- Build in Public
Communicate what you're working on, show your development, and be confident and proud of any progress made.
In this challenge, we're working on creating a habit of talking about the things we're working on, a plan for continuing progress, and creating a demo for the Virtual Coffee community.
Learn more about this challenge in this blog post.
Resources and results from past challenges:
- Community Kindness
Celebrating our Community as we move into a new year of Virtual Coffee!
As we work hard to make sure this community continues to be the special and close-knit group, this challenge encourages our members to celebrate one of the things that continually makes this community so special: Kindness. Some of the ways we see this include: practicing gratitude, reaching out to support other members, mentoring, helping, giving honest and constructive feedback, and continuing to make Virtual Coffee a safe and supportive space.
To view all of the details of this month's challenge, check out the May 2024 challenge page.
Learn more about this challenge in this blog post.
Resources and results from past challenges:
- Creating Audio/Visual content
Create a community of knowledge sharing and access to learning with AV content.
For this challenge, members present their knowledge and showcase their understanding by exploring video and audio mediums for sharing knowledge, highlighting their achievements. They might do that by giving Lunch & Learns, YouTube videos, podcasts, or some other form of audio or video content they created that explores a coding-related concept--there's no length requirement. We believe this provides value by solidifying ideas, creating a resource for others, inviting personal growth through conversations sparked by sharing, and demonstrating your ability to talk through a concept.
Resources and results from past challenges:
- Pairing
Pairing is more than just coding with someone else. Pairing is about communication, teaching, learning, positive reinforcements, and growing.
Resources and results from past challenges:
- Month of Feedback
Giving and accepting meaningful and empathetic feedback.
When we care about our community members, we can offer empathetic responses that are honest and allow them to grow and to fix a problem. Sometimes these conversations are hard. But sometimes we need hard conversations to help us grow. This challenge calls members to approach each other with kindness and honesty, and allow this kind of feedback to be a regular part of our process.
Resources and results from past challenges:
- Mid-Year Check-In
Reflect. Reevaluate. Grow.
The Mid-Year Check-In challenge is designed to provide an opportunity for Virtual Coffee members to reflect on their progress, reevaluate goals, and gain clarity on their journey. Let’s pause, assess, and adjust as we reach the halfway point of the year. This challenge aims to encourage personal growth, foster connection within the community, and provide a supportive space for members to share their insights, challenges, and successes.
Learn more about this challenge in this blog post.
To view all of the details of this year's challenge, check out the June 2024 challenge page.
- New Year, New Goals
The new year offers an opportunity for a fresh start and a chance to set new goals.
In this challenge, we encourage you to setting up the goals for the year and break them into achievable goals for each month. Our Coffee Table Groups — Accountabilibuddies, Tech Interview Study Group, and The Pack Hunt — are participating in this challenge and ready to support you!
Learn more about this challenge in this blog post.
To view all of the details of this year's challenge, check out the January 2024 challenge page.
- Welcoming Community
Let's bring new friends in and give them a warm welcome!
This challenge allows you to invite a friend to join our community. However, simply inviting someone is not enough! We encourage you to warmly welcome and support our new friends and demonstrate what Virtual Coffee is truly all about - a welcoming and supportive community!
Learn more about this challenge in this blog post.
To view all of the details of this year's challenge, check out the July 2024 challenge page.
- Photography Challenge
Let's get out and about.
As programmers, we spend all day in front of the screen. At Virtual Coffee, we also value health and wellbeing. The motivation behind our August challenge is to get folks out and about and seeing the world. We will be encouraging our members to make the most of summer (in the Northern hemisphere, at least), enjoy some work / life balance and benefit from the fresh air and exercise of the great outdoors. The challenge could be completed without ever leaving the car, but to get the most out of it, leave the car for a bit and get some real fresh air and exercise. A little hint for those of you that have access to public transportation: Public transportation is a great way to see the world while someone else does the driving. It also forces you to actually get some exercise because it probably won't pick you up at your front door.
Learn more about this challenge in this blog post.
To view all of the details of this year's challenge, check out the August 2024 challenge page.