It is a meta-project and a meeting about helping you grow!
We believe that one of the most efficient ways to grow technical expertise is by doing “pet projects”. These are projects where the end goal is not to provide some value to a customer for monetary gain, but to:
improve your skills
try out new technology or
create something worthy to put on display on GitHub or your resume
Unlike regular “projects”, these have a low commitment and a short lifetime - just like hamsters! If you think you’ve fiddled enough with a new library, your GitHub repo looks good, or you just lost interest in your idea, feel free to start something else - no hard feelings.
Doing projects together is much more fun than doing them alone. So, we meet up once in three weeks to share our progress and ideas, and to support each other. These meetings are highly informal - we just sit down in a circle and talk. If you have a rough draft of a project, or you have an open-ended question (“how do I start working in DS field“), that’s the right place to start a conversation. Other than pitching your ideas, you may ask project leaders about their projects and join someone. Often we conduct on-spot master-classes where one person shares his knowledge on a specific field or guides us through a scientific paper. Sometimes speakers at conferences use these meetings to polish their presentations, which is also welcomed. These events are planned in advance only for online meetings.
How you spend time between these meetings is up to you, but we have a Telegram chat where you can share your progress, ask questions, or help your teammates.
Pet Project history
This project began in 2019's February. We started gathering in Moscow every other week, but soon the format gained traction, and soon we opened branches in other cities and even other countries.
While pet projects are “designed to die”, there are some examples of ongoing projects which participated in the meetings. Notable examples are Punch To Face and Geoopt.
How to join?
Just find us at #ods_pet_projects slack channel, or @ods_pet_projects (Telegram chat is more active), and write about your project, or things you'd like to learn! You will be surprised how many there are people that have similar needs and willing to discuss your ideas. Just talk to them - and you will start doing the project together.
