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title: Participation guidelines

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# Participation guidelines

:::danger
This book is meant to be only visible by participants that have sign up for the academy, help organize the academy or collaborate with the team. **For privacy concerns, we request from you to not share this link outside of our community.** All the lessons and knwoledge is already public in our openhardware.academy website, you are free to share that with anyone you like.
:::

The participation guidelines for the Open Hardware Academy aim to inspire participants to work on open-source projects, either as personal challenges or community-posted challenges. The primary success metrics are delivering a final project presentation and maintaining consistency in project development. A [code of conduct is provided](https://www.openhardware.academy/08_Code_of_Conduct.html) for participants to review. [Here is a final project presentation example.](https://hackmd.io/hSqwTE_VTCSzBbBvctUW_w)

**Participants are encouraged to decide on the right project:**
- If they have a project, they can proceed.
- If they need a project, guidance is available to help them find a suitable one.
- Participants can switch from their initial project choice to a challenge if they believe it's a better fit.

**Weekly cycles**
- Read a lesson and develop excercises before Friday.
- Document your exercises in your personal copy of the [template](https://hackmd.io/@Oggo2XIlRZ6wwlsXi_vc8Q/r14-DBZsh/%2Fwf4HRZ11Tmmk6l2Kxqj8Vg).
- Share them on our [weekly notes](https://hackmd.io/@Oggo2XIlRZ6wwlsXi_vc8Q/r14-DBZsh/%2FHh04T29ET7ivwDvT4S596Q) and notify also on [discord](https://discord.gg/ZRMb8CMCDJ) to let people know.
- Discuss and get inspired on Friday's together and get to meet people and their approach to a project.

:::success
**Tip**: The content of each lesson is to help you develop the exercises, focus on doing so. You can also get familiar with the whole lessons at the start if you feel you want to have the overview from the beggining.
:::

Engagement in the [chat](https://discord.com/invite/ZRMb8CMCDJ) is encouraged, where participants can introduce themselves, share their interests, and provide progress updates or ask questions. Tips for success include allocating regular, manageable time to the project and sharing progress and questions with fellow participants.

Tools provided to participants include a [this handbook for reference](https://hackmd.io/@Oggo2XIlRZ6wwlsXi_vc8Q/r14-DBZsh/%2FgdqeiJA2Sv2aFdtdNevelg), a [personal progress template](), and [weekly notes](https://hackmd.io/@Oggo2XIlRZ6wwlsXi_vc8Q/r14-DBZsh/%2FHh04T29ET7ivwDvT4S596Q) for capturing learnings during seminars. 
:::success
**Tip** : Participants are encouraged to write also before joining the meeting by bringing their exercises comments and questions to make the Friday seminars more interesting and effective.
:::
## When deciding which project to work on, as a participant you should:
- Choose a 1st choice project and a backup (plan B).
- Carefully review challenge prerequisites, materials, and deliverables to assess project suitability.
- Choose a project that aligns with your skill level, aiming to build on existing skills.
- Avoid selecting overly difficult projects with no prior knowledge.
- Reflect on your motivations and skill level, and compare these with challenge prerequisites.
- Share thoughts with program organizers and fellow participants in our discord.


:::success
**Tip** : The guiding principle is to select projects that align with participants' skill sets and learning goals, promoting a positive and productive experience in the Open Hardware Academy.
:::

### Considerations for different types of projects
Focusing on a specific subset of your project to foster forward movement can be one of the most challenging endeavors. 

- a. When projects are in the idea phase, progress towards proofs of concept, documentation of experiments, successful experiments, and failed tests is anticipated.

- b. For working prototypes, you may want to focus on optimization and adding new features to create a product that resonates with your audience.

- c. Projects with fully tested hardware, or those in the alpha phase prepared for replication, might prioritize documentation.

- d. For projects in the beta or production phase, focusing on outreach and strategies based on open source might be beneficial.

If you are a newcomer to the world of open hardware and aspire to develop maker skills, option (a) might pose a substantial challenge. Conversely, if you select a "beginner" or low-entry-level project, like some that we have highlighted, it is a sensible approach.

Should you wish to gain experience and understand what it entails to contribute to and collaborate on someone else’s project, embracing a challenge is always worthwhile. Some challenges are intermediate to advanced. If your aim is to sharpen your engineering and technically focused skills, these could be good options.

If you're zeroed in on new product development, transitioning from an idea to a prototype and beyond, introducing your new idea may be the optimal choice. However, keep in mind that this will likely require some maker skills, research and entrepenurship related skills. Alternatively, collaboration with a team where different members share these skills would also make sense.


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EXTENDED VERSION

Our main goal is to inspire you to work-out an open source project in the form of a personal challenge or a community posted challenge. 

**The success metric for participation is that you are able to achieve two things:**
- A final presentation of your project where you discuss your status and the progress you have made.
- Consistency in working towards a release. The development of exercises provided weekly helps you achieve this.

## Code of conduct
Please have a look at our code of conduct to get familiar with what we expect from participants.
https://www.openhardware.academy/08_Code_of_Conduct.html

## Getting onboard
Deciding on the right project
- If you want to work on your project you are good to go.
- We will heelp you find out which project is good for you if you don't have a project.
- If you have a project, but you figure out a challenge might be better you can also switch.

Present your self in the chat
- Let people know who you are what your interests are
- Share progress in chat or questions (this motivates you and the rest)

:::success

**Tips:**
- Allocate a bit of time each week as fixed as possible
- Don't try to work on big chunks of time, that will be overwhelming, less productive and you will learn less. (This si for learning mostly)
- Don't discard sprints when it comes to putting all together (It can happen that in the lasts weeks you do a sprint with a focus on working towards the final presentation) That is also fine and logical.
- Share progress and questions, this inspires your fellow participants.
:::

## Tools we give you and how to use them
- Use this book whenever you feel lost and specifically this page.
- Use your [personal template](https://hackmd.io/@Oggo2XIlRZ6wwlsXi_vc8Q/r14-DBZsh/%2Fwf4HRZ11Tmmk6l2Kxqj8Vg) to keep all your weekly progress in one place, this will allow you to share easily as you move along. Make a copy of it and share it in our discord to get started.
- [Weekly notes](https://hackmd.io/@Oggo2XIlRZ6wwlsXi_vc8Q/r14-DBZsh/%2FHh04T29ET7ivwDvT4S596Q) is where we capture learnings on each Friday's seminar. You can also write down in the weekly notes prior to the Friday session, or even if you cannot make it.

## Deciding which project to work on
- Chose a 1st choice and a backup project or plan B in case for whatever reason your 1st choice would not be feasible to take on.

- Read carefully through the prerequisites of the challenges. The prerequisites, material and deliverable might tell you more about the suitability of the project than the title or the subject.

- **The guiding principle is to find a project that fits your level of skill set.** 
    - It is not enough to find a project whose subject is cool, you need to be familiar with some aspect of the project, either from a domain point of view or from a technical point of view.
    - You want to build new skills on top of those you need in order to complete the project.
    - If you want to learn for example PCB making then you shouldnt select a project where basic knowledge of PCB is a prerequisite.
    - If you know the basics of PCB making you might want to take on a challenge which takes you further in PCB design. The same could well apply with digital electronics and programming.
    - Build on top of your background and the skill set you have.
    
- Avoid choosing a project that is very difficult and you know nothing about.

- Define why you want to work on a project, and try to be critical about pros and cons.
    - Try to reflect on what level you think you are and specify what experience you have. Compare it with the prerequisites posted in the challenge of choice. Be honest about it this will help you know how far you can go.
    - Share it as well with us, that could also help in making a right choice.





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