Learning is what makes us craftsmen. I want to intensify that already rewarding exercise. First, by energizing the activity of learning, and second, by reinforcing the knowledge and skills that we acquired. Learning within a team of like minded researchers achieves first objective. Presenting and explaining your newly acquired knowledge to fellow craftsmen takes care of the second. This is the purpose of IT Craftsmen Learning Club.

We will get together periodically. Besides participating in debates, there are two ways you can maximize your gain from our meetings:

This is how you take advantage of two instruments facilitating your progress: team research and knowledge reinforcement.

Team Research

None of us lack motivation to learn. That energy comes from inside, fueled by passion for our craft. And it adds-up when you learn in a team. Prospect of sharing your discoveries with like minded peers works magic on concentrating and energizing your mind. When you study a subject and know people that are eager to learn it too, you become focused and alert in search for gems of knowledge to share with them.

Besides sharing your findings, research team makes a great forum to ask questions when you get stuck. Also, seeing what other researchers find interesting or important or confusing gives you additional perspectives on the topic.

An insightful sentence you have just read in a book. An exemplary peace of code you spotted. An innovative technology you heard about. A helpful research paper you came across. Just to mention few examples of what you might want to share as a finding.

Knowledge reinforcement

That feeling when you try to explain what you know and get lost for words. We all been there. Until you structure your thoughts into presentable and concise form you cannot be sure you know the subject. It is likely you only think you know it. Trust me, I am constantly going through that kind of disillusionment while writing this text. To quote Leslie Lamport:

If you think without writing, you only think you’re thinking. Leslie Lamport

To present your findings you have to compile your thoughts into a linear logical progression. This exercise leaves a deeper imprint in your mind. It makes that knowledge truly yours and gives you confidence in the subject.

The goal of learning is skill acquisition. To turn your subject knowledge into a problem solving skill you have to see why and when to apply it. Seeing uses of your newly acquired knowledge means you integrated it with a wider context of our craft in your mind. That process of integration is called understanding.

Just as presenting your findings is an exercise to reinforce subjects’ content in your head. Explaining subjects’ meaning is a great exercise to reinforce your understanding of it. According to Einstein:

If you can’t explain it to a six year old, you don’t understand it yourself.* Albert Einstein

For our purposes a less ambitious goal of explaining it to fellow craftsmen will do the trick. Their feedback and questions will give you a chance to deepen your understanding.

Giving examples of your subjects’ use with pros and cons and describing its purpose is a good way to explain its meaning.

Our clubs’ curriculum

Now that you know how to harness the benefits of learning in a company of passionated comrades, lets discus what kind of subjects IT craftsman should be studying.

To be an IT craftsman means to be skillful in solving problems by means of information technology. So anything that improves that skill is worth our attention. Pool of domains for our subjects is broad, including but not limited to:

Roughly, all our study domains can be categorized by one of two ways it makes us stronger IT craftsmen: It either makes us more effective problem solvers, or it makes us more efficient with IT tools. Agility, dev-ops, Business Analysis are few examples of first category.

Those are areas of our interest, it shows what our club is about. But a study domain is too broad and abstract to make an inspiring research subject. We need more concrete study items around which we can group into research teams.

Few examples of study items you might want to introduce in our meetings:

Our team research platform

To facilitate your teams’ collaboration online, whenever you discover a study item of your interest, create a new topic in our clubs’ team research platform. Make clear what study item you are researching and tag it with a proper study domain category. Our platform is public, so anybody interested in your topic can team-up with you.

And with this, the stage is yours. Let the learning commence!

Summary

Our club gives you two instruments to facilitate your learning progress: Team Research and Knowledge Reinforcement.

Learning with a team of like minded peers energizes and concentrates your mind. Prospect of sharing with them turns peaces of information that you gather on your research subject into findings. Joy of sharing those findings boosts your motivation to learn. You become more focused on the subject in search of them.

To reinforce the knowledge you accrued so far on a subject, make a short presentation of it.

When you present your subject to fellow craftsmen you have to take their perspective of a learner again. You have to guide them step-by-step to assimilate the subject. Compiling your knowledge into this linear progression is an exercise that reinforces it in your mind. To reinforce your understanding of the subject, explain its purpose in your presentation. Give examples, describe use cases with pros and cons and show alternative approaches.

To be an IT Craftsman means to be skillful in solving problems by means of information technology. Anything that makes us more effective problem solvers or more efficient with IT tools is worth studying in our club.

*To be fare, Einstein was hanging out with some smart six year olds.
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