This repository holds a free collection of IT knowledge that has been created and reviewed for publication into Medium, Linkedin, and other platforms. Participants in the JustAskDavidB Coaching Program (aka GSD-IT) maintain this repository to showcase their IT compentency with hopes of improving IT literacy in non-IT communities. Highly consistent contributors have a chance to be offered paid opportunities, which includes free self-training products such as Linkedin Learning, Coursera, etc., and opportunities to work on paid projects for inDevelopme.
The JustAskDavidB Coaching Program intends to help four groups of people develop understanding of IT concepts at an accelerated rate:
Participants will work under the guidance of a coach to complete open-source initiatives, with tasks being specific to the individual's selected coaching track (e.g. Programming, DevOps, Content Strategy). When necessary, participants shall be granted access to software licenses, credentails, and information to complete tasks.
Participants can choose to receive guidance from one of three tracks:
This GSD-IT track focuses heavily on programming concepts and best practice. Git, Composer, Docker, Jetbrain IDEs, Laravel (PHP), and Flask (Python) represent some of the products and technologies used within this track.
Programming: General Tasks
Participants will work through a series of tasks meticulously designed to foster growth in programming languages (e.g., Python, Java, C++, etc.). They will tackle debugging scenarios, conditional statements, iterative programming, practice user input and output handling, and build basic user interfaces. Other tasks will include self-exploration in data structures, algorithms, version control, etc. to participate on small projects designed to allow application of newly acquired knowledge and skills.
Programming: Benefits to Participant
Consistent engagement in programming will help partcipants build a solid foundation in programming, enabling them to take on more complex challenges. Participants will also develop a portfolio of skills and work experience for the world to see!
This GSD-IT track focuses heavily on devops concepts and best practices using Amazon Web Service (AWS). Docker, Jenkins, Terraform, and AWS are just some of the products and technologies used within this track.
DevOps: General Tasks
Participants will apply fundamental concepts and utilize essentials tools such as Jenkins, Docker, and AWS. They will learn to use and create IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS products and services. Participants will explore concepts such as Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and Continous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) to complete tasks for open-source libraries. A participant may be asked to learn about containerization or orchestration tools, and then to demonstrate competency through an implementation. This has a heavy focus in security best practices, collaboration, application architecture, and documentation.
DevOps: Benefits to Participant
Consistent engagement in the DevOps track will help partcipants build a solid foundation in cloud architecture. Participants will develop skills that help solve high availability, reliability, and scalability issues within a cloud application.
This GSD-IT track focuses heavily on content development best practices in the digital space. This track uses technologies and concepts such as Squarespace, Stripe, Medium, Google Analytics, etc., to teach participants IT concepts around website development. This is done to help participants in the business administration and fine arts field better understand the role that IT plays in the content development life cycle.
Content Strategy: General Tasks
Participants on the Content Strategy track will complete tasks related to the content development for nonprofit initiatives. This will include the development of style guides, voice and tone, user personas, etc. for as outlined by inDevelopme's Content Playbook. Participants will also utilize Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Marketing (SEM) best practices to raise content engagement for JustAskDavidB and other nonprofit initiatives.
Content Strategy: Benefit to Participant
Consistent engagement in this track will establish a solid foundation in the content developemnt life cycle and general IT concepts such development environments and User Acceptance Testing (UAT). Participants will occassional have working sessions with content strategists that have 15+ years of experience in the field. These opportunities will help participants become proficient at making strategic decisions backed by research and data for the purpose of increasing content engagement.