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Clojure Camp - 2024/2025 Plans
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What is Clojure Camp?Clojure Camp aims to offer learning experience for those currently underserved the definitive starting point for developers who want to learn Clojure.

Learning is not just about "resources", but "scaffolding" to actually get learners to learn. At Clojure Camp, this means:
- fostering a welcoming Discord community
- an emphasis on live remote events, and facilitating 1:1 pairing between students and mentors
- creating new types of resources

Our current main offerings:
- Live events
- Weekly remote mob programming sessions - (~10 attendees)
- Pairing
- 1:1 Pairing Sessions between members, facilitated by our pairing tool (over 200 sessions in 2024)
- Resources
- Curriculum Map https://currmap.clojure.camp
- Exercise Site https://exercises.clojure.camp

Since "launching" in early 2024:
Over 50 events
160 Meetup Members
185 Discord Members
All 3 of our "pre-launch" students switched careers and have started full-time programming jobs (!)

There's lots to improve in how we deliver value, both from core value delivery (helping students learn, ex. by creating a resource of Parsons problems), to more "meta"-stuff, like improving onboarding, participating, and retention.

Clojurists Together funding helped us in 2023 to "get to launch state" and create all of this infrastructure.
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Who am I?I'm Raf (https://github.com/rafd). I'm one of the core members of Clojure Camp, and have been running most of the events and building Clojure Camp tooling over the last 2 years.

Apart from being a full-time Clojure dev for the last 10 years, I have an interest in pedagogy - I worked in ed-tech at a university, designed the curriculum and taught at a bootcamp, started an education startup, and have been mentoring learners for several years.
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What's the plan?
- Create / improve resources, internal tooling and docs (see below)
- Major focus: resource map and badge system

- Involve students w/ these changes
- by pairing with them
- putting up some tasks as paid bounties
- live coding

- Continue hosting mob programming sessions

- Grow membership and participation
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ProjectTaskImproving...ImpactCode?Bounty?
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talkprepare workshop/talk for conj (project update, recuirt, and... some teaching about pedagogy)recruitmentDONE - 2024-10-25
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Topic Map
Our topic map helps students identify what to focus on, and what to skip (ex. understand the map fn asap, don't worry about transducers).
The dream goal is to "index" all clojure resources on the web and connect them to learning objectives.
https://currmap.clojure.camp/
https://github.com/clojure-camp/currmap
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topicmapcontent-centric editorcore value delivery★★★code
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topicmapgpt inferred tags and learningscode
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topicmapprefill a bunch of contentcore value deliveryyes
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BadgesWe hope to create a "Learn Clojure" version of MakerSkillTrees to add to MyCC profiles.

Two goals for badges: clarify learning goals for students, also, track progress.

Integrate with pairing tool matchmaking.
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mycc - profilemember badges / skill-treecore value delivery★★★code
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Exercise SiteOur exercise site features Exercism-style exercies, but with the hope of being more pedagogically appropriate for new learners (and less about algorithms and data-structures). For example, we currently tell learners what functions they should use to solve a problem. We hope to expand this to include Parsons-style problems ("re-arrange the following code to make it work", "fill in the blank").

https://exercises.clojure.camp/
https://github.com/clojure-camp/exercises
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exercisescode to auto-generate parsons problems (and related)core value delivery★★In Progress
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exercisesadd content from backlogcore value delivery
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exercisescode to generate broken code (small and large) that needs to be debugged
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Mob Programming
3 times a month, I host remote live mob programming sessions with beginners.
I've created a set-up where students can all connect to the same server via their browsers, and get a full Clojure editing experience.
During a session, we typically work on a small exercise (from Exercism, LeetCode, or Advent of Code).
Most notably, this provides students a way to see the entire Clojure REPL-driven workflow, and not just syntax.
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mobcontinue hosting mob programming sessions 4 times per monthcore value delivery★★
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mobexperiment w/ recording and publishing mob programming sessionscore value delivery,
recruitment		yes
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mobmentor other potential hosts★★★
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mobmob startup/shutdown scriptoperations★★codeyesDONE - 2025-02
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mobmob tooling experience extensionoperationscode
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MyCC - Pairing
Our "pairing tool" schedules students and mentors each week to pair code with each other, based on their availability and interests.
We scheduled over 100 sessions in the first half of 2024.

https://my.clojure.camp/p2p
https://github.com/clojure-camp/myclojurecamp
https://github.com/clojure-camp/pairing-scheduler-algorithm
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pairingadd pairing advice in emaillearning-experiencecode
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pairingtake spoken language, topics, skill-level into account when pairingcore value deliverycodeyesDONE - 2025-01
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pairingrefactor into three roles, per skill: beginner, intermediate, expertoperations★★codeDONE - 2025-01
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pairingper-event reminders via Email and/or Discord
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MyCC - StatsAs part of the My Clojure Camp site, we've started to track various analytics to inform us whether the changes we make are improving our impact. So far, we're tracking pairing participation, but would like to extend it to other parts of our offerings.

https://my.clojure.camp/stats
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mycc - stats/discorddiscord analyticsoperationscode
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mycc - statssite analyticsoperationscode
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mycc - stats/profileadd to profile: how did you hear about clojure camp?operationscode
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mycc - stats/profileregular survey: how upset if clojure camp shut down?operationscode
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clarify questions - ultimate goal = what want to do?; ask re: special considerations
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run a clustering algorithm on the profiles
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Operations ToolingA few things to make administering events and the Discord easier.
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mycc - eventscentralized event management - discord / meetup / google calendar / clojure calendaroperations★★code
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mycc - discordlink mycc users with discord accountsoperationscode
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mycc - discordsync mycc role w/ discordoperationscode
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mycc - discorddiscord - weekly event postoperationscode
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Website and Handbook
Our website and handbook are the primary way to onboard students and mentors.
We're not happy with Notion and just want to make a static site that combines the site and handbook.

https://clojure.camp
https://handbook.clojure.camp
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websiteremake w/ clojure toolingonboardingcodeyesDONE 2024-11
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handbookremake notion on github, integrate with websiteonboardingcodeyesDONE 2024-11
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