Summer Schools for enhancing WCA-team skills

[abunickabhi]

Original thread here: https://forum.worldcubeassociation.org/t/summer-schools-for-enhancing-wca-team-skills/21288


WCA has been a lot of influx of new speedcubers who are young and willing to volunteer for various roles. There are currently 13 active WCA teams which require a lot of new members! Some of the roles in the WCA teams require a good understanding of skills like coding, writing, communication, management, teamwork etc. Out of these bag of skills, I think the skills like coding and management can be trained. This is what I have in my mind to make interested speedcubers better coders and managers.

Let me take two test cases and propose two solutions for them:

1. Test case 1: An 2019 WCA ID high-school speedcuber is interested in contributing to the WCA software. He/she is yet to learn about database and web development. He/she persists and looks in the WCA GitHub for good first issue and get started. This entire process takes over 6 months and the person is still not confident in their skill and may not apply for the WST next time.

Solution 1: We organize an annual summer school like of program, where the existing WST members go over how they solved their first issue and became a part of the WST team and the skills they have pick along the way. If they have learnt programming in college and not on the job, they can design a small tutorial on how to make high-school level participant learn and be comfortable with programming.

Outcome 1: More younger speedcubers get interested. This summer school gains traction and we are able to take up more projects without ever considering the option of hiring a programmer who is not a speedcuber.

1. Test case 2: An 2019 WCA ID speedcuber from Ghana, attended 2 competitions before the pandemic hit. After the pandemic, he/she help to organize 2 competitions and now are interested to apply for becoming a delegate. They contact the regional delegate and get some input on what are the roles of a delegate and what trainee delegate and junior delegate roles are. The speedcuber is still confused about applying for becoming a delegate as they think they lack experience.

Solution 2: We have continental annual meetings where the most experienced delegate from the region hold a small guidance or training session open to everyone, where they list out the responsibilities that a new delegate has to take up, and how they can build upon their lessons every competition they successfully delegate and become a good and efficient delegate.

Outcome 2: More delegates get elected in regions where there are less past competitions like Africa or Micronesia. They are confident about conducting a competition in a new region even with limited amount of experience. Also, younger delegates can be appointed if they are trained well through the summer and display good competence through some feedback or a test at the end of the summer school.

For example, I am a part of the WAC team since the last 3 years. Over the entire time, my writing and communication skills have improved on the job. To improve further, I propose trying to hold internal sessions where we discuss on ways and methods to draft better, write better and take surveys better.