Virtual Coffee, November 2024 - Blogging Challenge!

Hey Friends!

We’re ready to write! Last month we went all in on Hacktoberfest and open-sourced our VC Community Docs! Community members came together to maintain, contribute, and mentor to and for each other, all aligned on the goals of open-source empowerment and building community.

And now we want to take some time as we approach the year’s end to write some thoughts. Our learning, our aspirations, our takeaways, our lessons. We believe that everyone has a story to tell and an audience that needs to hear that story.

📆 What's happening at Virtual Coffee

September Recap

💡Monthly Theme & Challenge: Hacktober!

Every year since 2020, we’ve tried to get involved in some way with the Hacktoberfest initiative. Virtual Coffee aligns with the spirit and ethos of open source and tries every year to be an accessible avenue to learning, supporting, and tending to open-source projects. Shoutout to all the folks who participated in another successful hacktoberfest!

November is the time to write!

💡Monthly Theme & Challenge: 50k words!

This month, we're working together to blog 50,000 words! Based off the NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) Challenge, we'll be doing the tech and non-tech take on writing and working together towards the goal while posting on our own blogs.

Get those blog posts up!

How to Participate

Once you've written and published your content, add your entry to our VC NaNoWriMo entry form!

What kind of content counts towards the challenge?

Any tech-related or non-tech blog posts, articles, or novels published in November! For tech-related posts, feel free to include code samples in your word count totals (if it's a word and you wrote it, we'll count it 😊).

While we love good documentation here at Virtual Coffee, README docs, or anything else you would typically consider documentation, it doesn't count for this challenge.

What if I'm not confident about my writing?

We all start somewhere. The more you practice, the better you'll get. We have volunteers willing to proofread and give you feedback on your writing. Just put a link to your draft in the #monthly-challenge or #content-creation channel and ask for the help you need.

What if I don't know what to write about?

We've got you covered with extensive topic lists in this discussion and this discussion.

And remember, we're always here to help ❤️

Find more resources, and see past challenges on our monthly challenge page!

☕🪑 Coffee Table Events

• Tech Interview Study Group (Mondays at 4:00 PM ET)

• Accountabilibuddies (Tuesdays at 7:00 PM ET | Thursdays at 9:00 AM ET)

• The Pack Hunt (Tandem Job Hunting) (Wednesdays at 10:00 AM ET)

• Data Structures and Algorithms (DSA) Office Hours (Wednesdays at 4:00 PM ET)

• Feelings Friday (Fridays at 8:00 PM ET)

• Frontend Friday Folks fighting CSSBattle.dev (Fridays at 11:00 AM ET)

📅 Weekly Async Events

• Mondays: Goal-setting post in #goals-and-wins

• Tuesdays: Trivia in #game-night

• Wednesdays: Midweek check-in in #general

• Fridays:

  • X (formerly Twitter) chat and gratitude post in #general

• Practical Deep Learning Study Group

☕ Official Virtual Coffee Events

• Virtual Coffee (Tuesdays at 9:00 AM ET | Thursdays at 12:00 PM ET)

• Async Twitter Chat (Weekly chat begins every Friday at 9:00 AM ET)

Note: These are the currently scheduled times for these events at the time of this publication. Please check the official VC #announcements Slack channel, or other noted channels, for any updates and links to event rooms. For the full list of events, check out our events page.

🎙️ The Podcast is Back!

• Building Relationships in Open Source

• Climbing the Contributor Ladder

• Open Sourcing a Private Repo

🆕 New Career Focus Channels Alert

We've added three new private channels — Senior+, Mid-level, Early-career — to our Slack for peer-to-peer conversation, because we know that it's good to be able to support and nurture conversations specific to your career level. If you're interested in joining the one you identify with most, DM Bekah or Meg on Slack.

🤝 Volunteering at VC

We're very excited to continue open membership with the support of our active volunteers! All our active volunteers have an invite to send out to someone interested in joining Virtual Coffee. If you're interested in joining the volunteer team, check out some the roles here!

✨ Member Content Highlights

Our members are making the internet a better place with their words and wisdom!

Articles

• CSS Masonry Catness - Alex Curtis-Slep

• 11 in 11: Concepts Learnt or Relearnt from Zero Day - Nerando Johnson

Videos

• Slots, Slots, Slots, Everybody! - Abbey Perini

🏆 Member Wins

• Not a work win, but... Big news—I made it to the final round of the NPO Concerto Competition! - Lex

• Got a PR merged today, which took me several weeks of working through! - Eddie

• I merged a big-for-me PR yesterday, the intersection points of two splines. - Cris

👀 What our members are up to

• Chris J. does a weekly post for goals of the week.

• Dominic Duffin co-hosts ArtTechChat on Twitter every Sunday at 1:00 PM ET.

• Ray Deck is co-hosting a vid-pod about low code/no code solutions on YouTube!

• Michael Jolley is streaming on twitch!

💻 Resource Highlights!

Monthly Challenge: Welcoming Community - Ayu Adiati

🏆️ Sponsors

Level Up Financial Planning helps techies like you take your financial confidence to the next level. It’s real financial planning to help you reach your goals and gain clarity on what actions you need to take now to maximize your tech career. Level Up even has a podcast where you can hear about some of the strategies he uses with his clients. Check out http://levelupfinancialplanning.com and you can get that link in our show notes.

If you're a member and you’d like to give a Lunch & Learn or Workshop, you can submit your idea here.

Have a question, suggestion, or want to nominate someone’s act of kindness or blog post? Email us at [email protected].