Due to pandemic, most companies became fully remote organizations. NubiSoft wasn’t an exception here. We moved from our desks to home offices and all our social interactions were happening in a virtual space. While this situation didn’t impact our ability to deliver high-quality software it caused knowledge sharing between teams to become a challenge. We needed to address this issue so we’ve started Skill Up.
The idea emerged a while ago while going from one lockdown into another. Our brand new office was getting empty and at the same time, our teams grow significantly. New employees didn’t have a chance to meet in person other team members and other co-workers. In the longer term, such a situation undermines social relations and prevents natural knowledge and experience sharing. As the pandemic was getting better, we organized our first Skill Up meeting. It’s a hybrid event during which one person is giving a deep dive into a selected topic. It can be anything, as long the author is able to present it in an interesting way. Ideally, this should be a real-life problem which given person solved or technology / framework / library he used in certain circumstances. What is worth mentioning is that the presenter doesn’t have to be a senior developer. In fact, we encourage people with less experience to share their lessons learned and invite everybody to join the discussion. This way everyone can learn new things and level up technical knowledge but at the same time polish soft-skills, which are crucial in day-to-day work in a team.
So there are only a few simple rules:
- interesting topic
- 30 – 60 min session
- everyone can attend if he/she likes
- use board, flipchart or do live coding, whatever works best
- don’t judge, rather ask “why?”
After each meeting, there is a small after-party with pizza, snacks, and drinks, where people can discuss further or just spend some time together.
In the near future, we plan to stream sessions online so see you soon on the next Skill Up!
For now, please check GitHub repositories with samples from previous meetings:
- Introduction to RTK Query – https://github.com/Migolek/NubiSoft-SkillUp-1
- Introduction to SolidJS – https://github.com/preacherxp/solidjs-skillup-intro