Announcing Side Project Academy
“Crash courses” for busy techies
Tired of promising yourself that you’ll finish that online course for your side project on the weekend at home? Starting today, developers in Jerusalem can join short “crash courses” to help you get going — as part of Side Project Club.
Side Project Academy focuses on designing courses for a busy world — short sprints that unlock new skills you can apply to your projects immediately, at a manageable time commitment, and at an affordable price.
Courses will consist of 3–5 lessons in small classes of 8–16, from field experts on advanced topics, in parallel to 4+ hands-on practice sessions.
These are not meant to compete with “career shifting” 12-week intensive bootcamps — but more like short boosts — to help you get unstuck and quickly acquire a tool to start or continue a project. We assume that you are on top of your learning, and with a small pick-me-up, can continue your learning hands-on.
The project is part of Side Project Club, where we believe that in-person meetings, hands-on practice and a supportive social environment can help accelerate learning, and make it easier to find partners for projects — or your next job. Side Project Academy is our way to help with the hard part of learning alone, especially as it gets harder and harder to find the time.
Topics for Academy courses will be selected with the community — informed by demand in our local job board, the Side Projects you’re working on, and community surveys. Like at Side Project Club, project topics can be a “side project” of your choice, instructor assignments, or helping out an NGO.
Following demand from the corporate and research community, our first course is on Python for developers, and will be run in cooperation with Workin and instructed by the highly recommended Gilad Taub.
Side Project Academy is made possible thanks to Facebook’s Community Leadership Program, who are supporting our effort to explore a sustainable way to scale both Side Project Club — our weekly hack night for developers, and Society Labs — our project to match tech volunteer with NGOs. The project is led by Mazal Nessimi and is incubated at Made in JLM.
Find out more and sign up for first the course here (hebrew).
Follow our activity and join our weekly (free, open) Side Project Nights in our Facebook group Side Project Club.
